VAGUS

They had lost their sureness as Paola had her skins — sloughing off flesh and certainties in the dead of night, cruel fingers dressed tender under the glow of the moon. They had forgotten themselves and, more importantly, what they knew to be true; love, suffocated by the crack of a spade, trust, bludgeoned Montague red. Both, washed from under their nail beds beneath fluorescents, swallowed by the gurgle of a drain. What do those mean to you? She asks, but they know she really asks of them, what do I mean to you?

The girl you loved, the girl you trusted — do you forsake her?

Before Marcelo can answer, forge indifference at the hearth of rage, she bids them to bow at her machinations; hand themselves to her without armor. What a fool. Paola had bested them, yes, but they had been kissed by Ares long before she knew his touch; long enough to recognize it was the dead who laid down arms when their rival boasted blade, not the victor.

I want my brother. I want to remember who I was before you. I want my father. I want to win.

 They spin the cylinder, finger the trigger.

“Nothing you can give me,” Marcelo answers, flat, certain, smooth, because they think they believe it — BOOM— the time had passed for surrender, no white flags will be raised by her hand, no matter how willing she swathes herself in its ivory. “My want is mine alone, it doesn’t concern you.” Anymore. 

Gilded treasures, apology, oaths…they crumble meaningless in her palm. To give, for her, is to take. No sentiment free, no compassion without its dancing strings — they empty their pocket, they take knife’s edge to twine — you don’t own me. They think, idly, of Paola’s fascination with their fealty; to Damiano, the Montague’s, Roman. 

“What makes someone deserving of loyalty?”  She had asked then. “A common goal,”  they had answered — and so she bore herself the name of their worship, laid with whom hold their heart, pledged vengeance on those Marcelo would cut sternum to skull — lay down your arms for me. 

Still, they can’t understand why it is their piety she asks for, why them she yearns to sway most reverently.  They turn their back to her altar, cry to the Heaven’s all names but her own on bent knee. This, her smiting. 

Paola separates herself, then, as if she knows what they’re thinking, as if to lower herself below devotion…a mere scrap of flesh to spoil, and no more — benevolent, benign, chaste. They suck their teeth.

“A reaper,” Marcelo refutes, because bait on a hook is not entirely the same as espionage; a leaf among the wild not the same as Venus flytrap. “a spy.” They angle their chin, above, but nearer still, “you aren’t writhing, you’re watching — this isn’t another of your little games. Oversight has consequence.”  Worse than my desertion, they think, worse than losing what we had. 

When she outstretches her fingers — warm, feather light, beckoning — they bite the urge to jerk away, to push aside, to lean in. Like poison, it takes root, coursing empty ache through the blue of veins traced underhand. Marcelo’s gaze holds resolute to the time, the gentle probing of her touch pivots in their peripheral…some trip wire blurred by manufactured disregard, imploring they jolt, beseeching their demise. 

They ask for a gutting, and she sharpens the scythe. 

They ignore it.

 It’s too familiar; like the smell of mahogany on their childhood staircase, the thud of gold chain at their neck, gifted one bygone birthday, the sound of engines in the driveway heralding the return of a family they missed more and more every day. Familiar and dead. 

“Now,” they say, curt, clipped, direct as they lean their arm free to grab what evidence remains of their tryst here. It’s cold where she traced, riverbed curves flushed icy with absence; a bitter sting of phantom touch. “Leave nothing behind.”

Ironic then, the baggage of their love she cuts loose and abandons in her wake. Hate was too visceral, too agonizing, too effective — let her think its opposite is indifference. That they think of her as one might a stranger on the sidewalk, an unfamiliar face in the crowd…

Let her be as insignificant as she begs them to think her. 

“Second door on the right, don’t drag your feet.” It’s the last they say to her as they part, Marcelo’s hands discreetly tucked into pocket as they set off in the opposite direction. Under the strain of cotton their fingers are locked into fists…not so very apathetic, after all. 

She has floated tetherless all her life. Mothers want apologies and fathers demand responsibility, but orphans—they answer to no one, because they belong to nothing, and because nothing belongs to them. You can break the toy in their hand and know they will not flinch, because they anticipated the loss before the desire came. You can abandon them by the side of the road and sleep restfully that night, because orphans are nothing, so it is natural that they already know: they mean nothing to anyone else.

But Marcelo is a jagged fragment cutting the heart. It pierces her, clenches teeth into her until she bleeds. Paola has tried to understand why it is them who she returns to; the loss she anticipated but cannot stomach. Just another orphan, they are both supposed to mean nothing—but they mean everything to her. 

It’s true that what they want is theirs alone; she was a fool to think Marcelo would have let her know. She has taken enough from them already. But the two of them, they have been utterly alone in this world. They have stood on the side of the road and watched the crowds walk by, damned by the eyes that will not look back at them and the hands that will never open to them. They have been heartbroken and too proud or too angry or too frightened to hope for anything more.

So she tells them: “I want you to be happy. Whatever has happened between us, that’s never changed.”

It is a small comfort to know Marcelo does not think of her as bait on the hook, wide-eyed, vapidly blinking in the face of death. Subtle and severe, how they slip some semblance of self-assurance back into her hand. Mercutio, Marcelo, momo—how strange it is that the name most terrifying is the kindest to her now.

Paola nods. She promises to them: “I won’t let you down.”

And when they untangle themself from her; they turn sharply away and move without looking back; when they step out into Verona where their hearts are only fodder for the rats and vermin; Paola wills herself to keep her word, just this once.

Just in front of the gala entrance, the unmarked car rolls quietly to a stop. Paola looks out the window, presses a fingertip to the glass to test its tint. The opaque black of it doesn’t show even a smudge or a residue, but her heart trills like a bird overhead, screeching an alarm. They will all see her; every politician, every generous benefactor, all of Verona’s wealthiest in one room to cast her out.

With any other captain, she would have hidden her nerves better than this. But once someone has seen you naked enough times, you forget to be uncomfortable caught bare. Vulnerability becoming a habit, an open target for them to carve and cut into carcass.

“You’ll stay close, won’t you?” Her voice trembles in her mouth as she asks it. She doesn’t think to be ashamed of it in front of them.

Before they can answer, an usher opens the door of the car and steps aside for her to step out. Paola swallows her protests down and smiles, instead, taking a hand extended to her and hoping she manages to begin her mission gracefully.

Paola speaks of trust as a clothed sinner does devotion — some weaponized hypocrisy, whetted on failures and flagellations, some gospel wrought with lies. A hanged and bled husk she laments her eulogies atop, still picking splinters of its marrow from teeth that gnash with empty want. It was a killed thing, and she its peril; trust would never be safe near a beast who had spilled its blood, once licked from her maw so innately. A predator who learns its taste…or so the story goes.

Marcelo was done making Perdita the exception to all rules; hanging her among the most white hot of stars when she burned more voraciously on brimstone and hellfire. They had sundered some cartilage beneath the breast to force her where she didn’t belong, some ill fit organ rejecting the heady rhythm of their heart, demanding silence when it beat incessant with affections.  And they were paying for it now. 

Both knew now what the other was, what they had to offer…and most certainly, that it wasn’t enough.  

“Suppose,” Marcelo agrees evenly, the pulse of heat throbbing steadily in each ear drowning out the love she speaks of; like forcing out a word so often it ceases meaning, its tangibility felled upon ones tedious tongue. “Unfortunate, then, that wanting and doing aren’t interchangeable.” They’re just words, they remind themselves, and curse then that it’s necessary to at all. Paola’s love was the swing of the gallows, the striking of the guillotine — a one word war cry carried over mountain and prairie to cut them at the knee. It wasn’t a job, it was a threat.  Still, something cruel stirs to life at the fall of her eyes, the familiar thrill of culling tenderness from where it belongs least. The two were locked in battle, after all — crossing swords for more than one impetus — afflictions of fondness had no place here. It was time Marcelo came to terms with this as surely as she had; the paths tread were those of loneliness, narrow enough for one to pull ahead, and one to fall behind. They were done basking in her shadow, choking on the sting of Paola’s dust. 

“I’d expect so, soldato” Marcelo answers with the straight-spined tenacity of a seasoned Captain, “the time’s passed for second guessing.” You made your choice, they say, now die on this blade of your making.  She stumbles upon her words — was this, too, some shifting of the Venetian? Some carefully strewn bending of the ankles to give the illusion of their upper hand? Everything was strategy; minute shifts thundering into the fall of Sisyphus’ boulder. One sluggish slip and Marcelo could be cursed with peering at the wreckage of their own naivety, flattened Montague’s and slaughtered brother.  No, she’ll have to do better than that.

“Time for both, no?” they return, brows pinching as they turn their attention away from Paola, skewing it more favorably on the watch clasped to their wrist, ticking away the minutes, “thanks to your achievement in punctuality.”

For all her love of words, they fail her now. She blinks up at Marcelo in a stupor, drowned by a swell of feeling that overwhelms her to silence. I love you, she had tried to say, and they had brushed it aside. Her pleas, mere scraps to be discarded, forgotten. Hadn’t they known how to read her, before? Marcelo had been charmed, once, by her clumsy tries at affection. Then, she needed only to run a finger down their spine, whisper their name in the dark, and they would understand her in full. Even when she had tried to hide from them, they saw into the heart of her – and still, they let her stay. Just for the night, she’d said, just for a little while longer; and Marcelo had looked at her, with a knowing that undressed her further even as she laid bare, hearing exactly what she meant.

It’s not just want for me, Paola thinks, with a passion she doesn’t know how to let out. I’m trying, Paola thinks, but she doesn’t know how. She reaches for something to show them, tangible proof to prove them wrong. Instead, she asks: “And you? Trust, love – what do those mean to you?” She means to stop there, but she slips, she stumbles – she asks: “What is it that you want, momo?”

“Not soldato,” Paola gently corrects them, “the bait on a hook.” And they are not her captain; she would be wise to remember that. She is not a soldier of theirs to train or guide or protect. She mustn’t forget: this is her place now, one small part in a group of vagabonds and wildcards. Everyone has their own role, and there is no one to help her, catch her. It’s not so different as picking pockets in Rome.

Why, Marcelo asks, and Paola wonders if this is not the question they’ve been asking since the night she confronted Valentina, reality shattering any delusions between them. They both wanted too much; they’ve taken too much from the other already. Raised by literature and scripture, Paola desperately tries to turn back the page, but Marcelo rose from the ashes of a house burned down; they survive by refusing to look back. They march forward and demand answers, but the answer Paola has for them is as simple as it is unfathomable. They will never believe it, she is sure of this.

She gives it to them, nonetheless.

“I was glad because I wanted to see you.” I always want to see you, Paola thinks, as her hands betray her and reach for them. Like the touch of light on skin, her fingertips trail along their wrist, as if she would like to see the time when it’s their eyes she wants. Look at me, see me, see me. “I was surprised because you hate me.” 

Trust. Had she not yet bludgeoned it? Did she not pick its bones from her teeth, hands red from dissecting what flesh remained? Paola had made a massacre of it, fed on its weeping body and wiped the evidence from her lips, but Marcelo remembered. They fear they’ll never forget it, the gift they had once laid at her feet torn to ribbons and stained upon the lips they’d kissed. What did it mean to her, but a means of filling her stomach?  What did it mean that she could look to them now and promise there to be no other fool that sates her as wholly? Marcelo tightens their jaw — if it is trust she decorates their memory with, they will defile her altar. But not tonight, not at the expense of a family built on that she licked from her maw.

“It’s my job,” they clarify, nearly flat save the air of something more cautionary, a warning that if she were one such what-if they would handle even her accordingly. They don’t promise to break it, they don’t bother wrangling that tenderness nor whetting it into something of a weapon to be wielded — it’s what she would expect from them, it’s just what she trusts they’ll do.

Still, they’d hardly call Paola a rookie — she was a veteran fraud — notches carved tediously by a silver tongue and a gentle hand. They had gotten her places, more than Gabriele or Roman or themselves ever had, perhaps. A ladder forged from pilfered whims — what was one more rung for someone like her; someone lain in the dirt most of their life, now bowed at the feet of Gods, nearly close enough to draw their ichor should she want for divinity herself? Marcelo couldn’t be sure, did not yet have a quick enough eye for her darting fingers, but they would. They’d wager they’re getting better, even, for the pads of her fingers brushing against their throat feels nearly predictable, the sort of audacity they had learned to expect from Paola when they silenced their own long enough to listen for tells.

“No,” they respond stiffly, allowing her to smooth their collar, ruffled lapels, whatever discreet hooks she may pierce them with. They won’t let her reel them back, not this time — but let her try. “You know what you’re doing. There’s very little I could teach you of deception you’re not already familiar with,” Marcelo breathes, as airy as they can manage, as light as they can force it. “If there was there’d be no use for you as bait,” they elaborate, though there is more truth to it than they care to admit. They prided themselves on being the best at a number of things, but this? The lies, the cover of anonymity, the tailored flattery and intimacy — it was no use. Paola was the better, and they both knew it.

Marcelo feels the urge to shove her away, to threaten that there was no one else keeping as close an eye on her as them, yet they stifle giving her the satisfaction. “That’s the idea,” they speak instead, briskly, as if there’s no time. They try thinking of her as anyone but Paola. Brielle, Santino, Odessa, maybe. Just a job, just work. The way her eyes linger, dark pits falling upon them for just a beat too long, makes it harder to pretend. Paola, coveted for what made her forgetful, for her gift of being most overlooked, and yet how hard it was for Marcelo not to place her innately, as if identifying their own reflection.  

Over her shoulder they watch her fingers work, less aggressive, more practiced at wearing things down; ever so patient, unlike Marcelo. Even her progress frustrates them, but not as much as her inquiry, nearly coy, as if she didn’t know. She must have some idea; Paola wasn’t stupid, not even if she played at it better than most. A long beat follows the words that die in her throat, longer than they wished for, longer than can be interpreted as insignificant. I can fix this, they think, she isn’t the only one that’s learned something. Gently, uncharacteristically, an impression of a Marcelo in a dream somewhere, they reach to brush her hair behind her ear, to guide it slowly, their fingertips trailing to the nape of her neck before they release her, “you were surprised.” They want to surprise her, they want to startle her with how little of them she might recognize still. They want Paola to fear what else she might have carelessly overlooked. “Why?” they ask instead of giving her her answer, tilting her head with a forced tenderness to better reach the lobe of her ear.

There were answers, ones Marcelo could hear ringing in their head: because I don’t trust you not to cross the Montagues. Because I think you’re going to hurt Roman and it’ll be my fault. Because I can’t let you get away with any more than you already have. She knows as well as they do, of that they are certain. Yet, there’s an answer she reaches for still, an admission she expects for free with bated breath, and they want her to feed it to them. Tell me how to hurt you, they goad, tell me what you want from me so that I can keep you from ever getting it again. They don’t want to care anymore, they don’t want to play this tiresome game, but it’s as reflexive as blinking, or swallowing, or breathing. 

She blames it on the warmth of their touch. The rippling heat in their fingertips, kindling to all her defenses. It lulls her so sweetly. It fools her heart and makes it an easy target–but perhaps she wants to be. She has tried, after all, to outsmart Marcelo all this time. Every trick, every try–a failure. She wanted to win them over, and look at them now. The warning in every word, every look, as if to say that she can come as close as she wants; there will always be a chasm between them, still. If it were to easy to take what she wanted from Marcelo, Paola would not have stayed long enough to know them; to love them. 

The one thing she has not tried, she thinks, is sincerity. “That’s one of the reasons I trust you,” she muses. “This isn’t just a job for you, not for either of us. But I suppose we all want to trust the person we love.” And that is the heart and the center and the end of it all, is it not? She loves them and she has placed her faith in them, despite all the ways she has been failed and failed Marcelo, too. It is too plain and painful a truth, and perhaps the clever thing would be not to say it at all–but Paola is past the point of cleverness. 

There is no fire or flame in their voice, but Marcelo’s words crush her to dust all the same. They push her back into place, remind her who she is. Paola shrinks, pulling into her body and taking their reprimand to heart. How casual their cruelty is; how devastating, too. The sharp sting of it is stronger than her courage, and she admits defeat without protest. “I understand.” Paola lowers her eyes from theirs, and repeats, quieter than before: “Yes, I understand.”

Desperate for a distraction, Paola thinks only of the mission ahead of her. If Marcelo thinks it won’t be a challenge, then she’ll make sure it isn’t. She will make the night a success for il mietitrice and pay the price for it; because if Marcelo saw a liar and traitor in her before, then any success in deception will only prove their point. I’m going to lose them, Paola thinks as she pulls apart the last tangle. The wire is undone in her hands. A smooth, clean, perfect line. At once, revulsion turns and spoils on her tongue. Pickpocket fingers, the hands of a beggar, these useless limbs that kept her stomach full but can’t hold onto a single good thing. Is this all she can do? Has she not learned at al? The wire disappears as she clenches her fists. 

It’s as if Marcelo senses her defeat, coming to raise her hopes again. When they touch her, Paola inhales, sharp, sudden. Don’t they know, by now, that she desires them? That she dreams of them? She wants to touch them back, but with her back turned toward them, Paola is vulnerable, refused to even see the look in their eyes. Her own flutter shut, imagining the Marcelo of what seems like centuries ago, when they only knew each other’s name in empty pleasure. Too soon, they withdraw. Weakly, Paola hangs onto this hollow and unexpected hope, the one question they ask of her. She wants to give them an answer they will accept, but the words escape her. The world has gone still, and her with it. 

Marcelo wonders just how many days, weeks, months it may take for them to see Paola for what she is. It was all too easy to acknowledge it — if it howls and bites like a wolf, after all — yet it was an entirely different beast to look upon the girl they’d known and see it on her, see it biding its time between the walls they had clung to. Tonight is perhaps the closest they’ve ever gotten. It was almost easy to look upon her now, all deceitful glamour and practiced allure, and imagine all the many spaces Paola might bend to fit. How different did she look; how easily she had killed the woman that Marcelo had tried to bury now once, twice, three times too many, and shrouded her in such enchantment — too easily.  Even swaddled in silks or the finest cashmere l'inferno smoldered through; dressing its bloodied fists did not change the nature of the monster nor the bloodshed it prophesied, not as it did Perdita’s. 

Her voice is kind, the sort of warmth that leads gentle memories from dark places and reaches to clasp their hand, to guide them back as if they’d never left. Marcelo had found horrors in the light, had made themselves one such creation from its brimstone, but in the dark? Paola could see through its shadows far more favorably. They refuse her the advantage, eyes blind and fool hardy, again. This honey, so sweet on her lips, only recoils their own. You do — Marcelo thinks bitterly — and your aim once sighted rivals even my own. Still, they could never quite place her intentions once that beating organ stay warm and vulnerable in her palms, what could she have taken from their own to make her stay? It had seemed Gabriele was at last abandoned and yet her act remain unplaced. So then, what? What was she after? There is only acid in their throat, now, only a burning and aching care they must be cautious to silence lest Paola take it for her own. 

It only grows harder to mask as she speaks, no, begs for them to remind her she had perfected becoming nothing but a distraction, no bit of substance to the months she had spent at their side; how she had not even given them the option to make her anything but. Marcelo’s gaze narrows on the wire, their fingers grounded to the coils beneath, far from the tulle that gathers at her slender ankles, “your particular skill set lends you an edge. If you weren’t ready Damiano and Matthias would not have sent you in place of a more seasoned recruit.” They’d wondered why it was they hadn’t, though the answer rings true in her words — pretty and new. Marcelo had, for a curious moment, considered they were to blame for Paola’s role in all this. As if her torture and their impassioned cries to Gertrude about her potential importance to their cause had swayed the ladder. Yet, it’s more likely still Perdita knows better — she is not so very vital, and neither are they.

When they glance upward, a resolute mask, a comrade rather than a long forgotten something or someone, they’re startled to see a glimpse of her disguise fall loose. The dark of Paola’s gaze slipping away from them, trapped, before it fights itself free again. The corners of their lips turn, their tongue bit to a bloody pulp behind their teeth. “Focus. If you dwell so much on what you’ll  do wrong you leave no room to make it right. You’re here to think on your toes, and I’m here for damage control. Let me worry about the what-ifs.” Marcelo doesn’t mention that they’ve only volunteered because of how well she thinks on her toes, about the fears that she may pirouette past them where not even Roman could reach to reel her back. 

Their attention returns to the wire, then, Paola remaining in their peripheral. Perhaps it was not the control she could wield over the others Marcelo should worry over, but the control she had over herself. That look in her eyes settles like molasses on their mind, fingertips less agile as it spills over. Before they can beat it back, cage it behind a dam of apathy, Paola’s touch brushes across, stirring its resolve for liberation. Marcelo’s mouth opens, a cry of rejection balanced on the tongue as she makes her case in its absence, her fingers dancing along the tension in their own. “Fine,” they breathe curtly, a feather ruffled out of place by the gentleness of the wind. It twitches their jaw. They won’t mind if it kills them. “Turn,” Marcelo speaks mechanically, the  tangled wire dropping into her palm as they tug their hand free from the warmth of her. 

Once, Paola was well-versed in Marcelo's tongue, knew how to read between the lines and shadows of their eyes, could make out the honey even in the harsh bite of their words. Marcelo speaks in war paint and blood, hellfire and bomb sites; Paola sifts through the wreckage and finds the truth among ashes, the child who alone survived and has forgotten to live. She knows that child, was that child, is trying to let that child rest at last. Marcelo speaks without warmth, their voice hardened, their heart unreachable. Paola leans into all that she’s learned about them, and hears instead that they don't find her completely useless. That should she stumble, should she find herself backed into a corner and swarmed by demons, Marcelo will find her.

She should feel a little foolish for trusting them still, but this is Marcelo. In the early hours of the night, helpless and hallucinating, she cried out for help, and they answered. Long stretches of silence hanging between them, betrayal fresh and the taste of rust and copper on their tongue, Marcelo came when she called. It is laughably easy to trust them, even when the ground they stand on has crumbled to dust. There is no foundation to Momo and Perdita. They stand on a razor-thin tightrope, one wrong move away from free-falling — and still, Paola dares to take a step toward them.

I love you, she wants to say, I love you still. "There's no one else I trust with the what-ifs," she says instead. Look at all you've survived, she thinks. The price of war is too steep and too bloody; Marcelo keeps trying to pay it, standing with their back erect and their eyes still burning. If Paola can trust anyone without thinking twice or looking over her shoulder to make sure they're still watching, it's Marcelo. They've never given her reason not to, after all; she's the one who's pushed them to doubt her, again and again and again.

"Giving the rookie advice now, are you?" Paola tries her hand at humor, smiling tentatively up at them. "I suppose you have the right. You're one of the most seasoned Montagues." Feeling brave, she reaches out with her free hand to adjust the collar of their shirt. It's too intimate of a gesture for whatever they are, less a relationship and more the lingering suggestion of smoke on the wind. She pretends they're getting ready to attend the event together, her hand in the crook of their arm, secret smiles exchanged between them. "You'll have to critique me. Keep an eye on me." A thoughtful pause, before Paola adds softly, "I have a lot to improve on."

Marcelo, if anything, was a masochist; perhaps even more than they were a sadist, a Montague, a force to be reckoned with. They’d proved as much tonight, volunteering per their own free will to trail after one Paola Damasco, to gaze upon the wreckage of a future felled before it had time to sink its roots into the earth and gasp its first breath. They don’t regret it — not yet, anyway. It had become startlingly clear Perdita had fed on Verona, had swollen her stomach on deceit and opportunity while Marcelo still blindly deemed her its prey. Let this rose of a girl lull the king with the stark red of her bloody petals, let her pierce Roman with the thorns of a brambled heart, but the Montagues she would not take with him, not if Marcelo could help it.

It would be far too easy for her to slip into the crowd, to disappear between bodies and sew the secrets of their damned brother to every Capulet ear turned her way. Even easier, still, to garner information she might hide beneath that shadow of her heart, too bare and tender for Roman to question, too immersed to recognize his fingers stained black when he caresses its beating — all for you, she would purr, and he would gleefully stay none the wiser. It hits too close to home, and Marcelo shakes the white-hot flares of heat from their fingertips, stretching and coiling them as they begin to unpack the wire Paola was to wear tonight. An earring with a listening device, a simple yet effective method; they would hear everything, perhaps too much, but at risk of losing the Montagues to her they would do far more.  

Had they ever seen her wear earrings? Marcelo, with some relief, can’t recall. Perhaps she was at last fading from their mind, abandoned as she should be. Still, their finger traces the silver, as if her flesh, as if she might feel the weight of them there when it pierces her skin. They swallow thickly. Traitorous were these thoughts that bombarded them, these brief moments that would overtake them, still. She had, at last, made a choice — the same she had always made — their best friend, their brother, their Roman. Marcelo had to choose themselves, had to remember the reason they had swung and split blood for eleven years before her. Vengeance. Paola could not give them that, and so they would carve her, and all the colors she had brought to their life free; would lay the bones of it in the desert to be picked at and bleached by time while they watched their own palms dye vibrant red without her.

Suddenly, they hear footsteps. No one should arrive for at least twenty minutes, if not more, and Marcelo’s fingers gently skim the weight of the gun at their waist. Had the Capulets been given warning? 

Paola — they think it accusatorially at the same moment she passes through the threshold, their brows furrowed as she breaches their quiet. Of fucking course it’s her. “You’re early too.” It is said in such a way Marcelo can only suspect is meant to unite them, to tether the two together again when nothing is there to keep them from drifting. They don’t respond. In fact, they glance down at the earring before she can continue, before their gaze can skim the transparent black fabric that clings just so to her body. Weeks ago they would have twisted the threads in their fist, breathed against her lips how they preferred it without the slip getting in their way. Now, Marcelo only wishes she’d worn a longer one, perhaps even a jacket. They won’t offer their own — even if it’s tempting.

Then she asks, demands them to look upon the exposed flesh of willowy arms and milky thighs wrapped so naturally about their waist and remember that hunger. You look perfect, they think, in a way Paola has never quite looked. Marcelo had ached for her hair, wild and unkept in the morning, her jeans that never quite fit, exposing the sharp angle of her hip bones, her birdlike sinews, so very delicate, so very unprepared to break bones or claw through dirt from six feet underground. Now, she looks precise, refined, elegant — they suspect Odessa must have had her hand in it. 

They don’t want to look at her, even further from being their Paola, even closer to being that of Roman’s. Still, it stirs a certain need, a certain urge to be the one that’s smeared her makeup,  ripped her dress, pulled the pristine waves from her hair loose. They blink at their fingers, still busying themselves with straightening the listening device. “They come in every shape and size,” they sigh, abandoning the jewel of her earring to double check their own piece, “the bar for aesthetics is low. It’s less about how you look and more about what you do with it.” Their voice is even, its hard edges and sharp barbs strangled beneath their boot. There is nothing left to fight for here, they remind themselves, no reason to bare your teeth. 

This is work, and she is only business.

Hope — the one timid tendril of smoke left on the wind after a forest fire — deflates in her chest. There is no trace of her Marcelo in the flat line of his voice, hardened and ashen like lava turned to stone. Marcelo doesn’t lift their gaze to meet hers, and can’t see the bare bones of a flinch across her features. The utter lack of emotion, the complete betrayal of the Marcelo she knows. As if she is a stranger, they seem to dismiss her as soon as she enters; and perhaps he’s right to. She has cast them aside one too many times, trampling over them as Paola chases the ghosts of her past as if it will return her girlhood. She’s looked them in the eye, offered her heart only in pieces and half-truths, and asked for them to open the door to her, again and again.

It was foolish, then, to think that Marcelo volunteered for the mission for her sake. To protect her or shield her from the snapping jaws of Verona’s wolves, dressed in finery and weighed with jewels. But there is no fondness in the steel of their voice, and Paola struggles to remember a time when Marcelo thought to protect her at all. 

If she tries very hard, she can almost imagine Marcelo grabbing her by the hips, pulling her toward them with one hard tug and pressing the sly curve of their lips to her ear. She can almost feel their breath on her cheek, their touch sending warmth to the graveyards she still keeps in her heart. Paola thinks back to the times when they might have reached for her and she might have reached back; holds onto the memory for strength as she sucks in a breath through teeth and draws close to the beast who swallowed Momo.

“Not everyone can see to the heart of things like you do,” Paola reminds them gently, every word steeped in affection that she can’t help, not if she wanted to; and she doesn’t want to, she wants to drum the words against their ear until they believe her: I love you, I love you, I love you. She wants them to listen. She wants them to see the phoenix who has burnt herself to ashes in pursuit of the wrong thing, flung herself off a hundred cliffs thinking martyrdom is the greatest love one can offer; the phoenix who emerged from the flame again and again, looking for a soft place to land. She looks at Marcelo, and she wants to land in their arms, in the center of their chest, in the palm of their hands.

“These social circles are only distracted by something pretty and new, or so I’m told. And they need to be distracted so I can slip this into their hands.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a small capsule, familiar to them both. A twinge in her stomach like longing, like hunger, pulls Paola away from Marcelo for a moment. She refocuses her attention on Marcelo, hoping they didn’t notice. “Let’s hope for both our sakes that I surpass the bar for aesthetics, low as it is.”

As Paola closes her eyes and welcomes Odessa’s feather-light brush sweeping color onto the lid, she considers the way sliping into a new self is not so different from a snake shedding its skin. After all, this trick in her arsenal is defined by loss. She keeps a loose hold on her self and surrenders her name without a bat of an eye; it’s all she knows. Paola is in the eye of the beholder, after all; she is not so much a sum of her parts but a halfhearted collection of every judgement made of her. Orphan, thief, beauty and bait — she floats purposelessly among them, choosing only what people need her to be lest they discover Paola has little to offer after all.

"It’s enough, Odessa.” Paola’s touch is light on Odessa’s hand, stopping her friend’s endless fiddling with her hair. "You’ve done more than enough. If the mietitrice are successful tonight, it will all be because of you.” A pause, and then a gentle promise that she has seen her friend for who she is, ambition and potential and all: “I’ll mention this to them if all goes well.”

It’s the first mission that rests entirely on Paola’s shoulders, but the mietitrice work as one unit. Most times, it hardly matters who bears the greatest weight. The only reason anxiety trills and hums cacophonously in her bones is because the captain overseeing them tonight is none other than Marcelo, who decided they could not trust Perdita. They will oversee the mission with a hands-on approach — in case one of you tries anything. Marcelo did not have to look toward Paola for her to understand who they mean.

She walks to the gala alone, heels clicking rhythmically upon the pavement. Night air licks at her skin as if preparing Paola for the cold burn of Marcelo’s rejection. The warmth she once leeched from their arms, that hearth-heat she once spooned into her mouth in stolen moments and bedsheets — she can’t seem to find it in them at all, anymore. She must prefers the blistering flame of their anger to the ice of their resentment. Their unforgiveness.

Paola coaxed them to her in extremes — the rage of a wildfire devouring hillsides and burning life from its root, the gentle lap of a wave that risks drying out for but one chance to kiss land. Every return was a sacrifice, and every departure Marcelo ached to do it all again. They often wondered how it was they had ever mistaken Paola for the lamb when it had been them who begged for slaughter when her palms ran clean of their blood. How Marcelo always demanded pain over the threat of impermanence, of the promise of something empty and deserted in the hollow of their heart. She had become too comfortable with their flagellations, with the lengths they might crawl to escape digging another grave. Their anger was a leash that always led them back, their screams the chorus that sang of their devotion; no detachment had ever truly bred in the chaos of their rage, they could never bear to abandon it long enough. 

“I hated it,” she speaks, as if she might understand what it is they feel. Is the stone sunk in the recesses of their abdomen hate, is the unbearable warmth prodding beneath their flesh hate? It is something else entirely, they think, something worse, something that came to a very different name once, not long ago. Still, they would not lead it licking its chops to Odessa’s door, or to the foot of a friend’s bed. It had not crossed their mind the first time she had found herself in Roman’s arms and it did not now. There is only her, and the regret that she is there at all; that Marcelo might drink her poison two, three, four times perhaps before it slows their gullible heart as intended. 

Paola reaches for them, glimpsing their anger and honing it, clasping the flames between her palms. This is where they howled, where they threatened to burn her mistakes upon flesh and tore from her grasp. This is where they bared their teeth and damned their king and rushed to the streets that bore them. This is where they’d gone wrong every singe time. The noose they slipped into, the building they traipsed off of, the power that Paola ogled — certainty that the pain was too great a drug for a brute like Marcelo to deny, confidence that the L’inferno could resist no flame lit within them, proof that they cared more than they raged. 

Were agony and love not fingers interlocked, chained wrists, reflections of the same ailment? If one existed so, too, did the other crawl from its shadows. They could never separate the two, had not even wanted to try at risk of losing the other, but perhaps it was time. Perhaps it had always been their fury that needed the culling, rather than their atrophied heart. Perhaps with it would be loosened the poison that rotted away beneath Marcelo’s breast, these shackles that had condemned them to this cursed rhythm. Stake this feeling, they warn, stake it and leave not even anger for it to rebuild its bones from.

Marcelo’s jaw is tight, a wire threatening to snap as she desperately clings to them, and it’s with more effort than they care to admit that they unfurl her fingers from its tic and drop them to her sides. “You hurt me,” they agree lowly, words they never could utter, the truth they had always preferred to suffocate beneath resentment. Is it not exactly what she wanted, exactly why she’d sought Roman out? They want to clasp their palm across her mouth, to stifle the names that flow from her tongue with no regard for how they wriggle beneath the skin, and leave her there choking on each syllable. Look into my eyes, she pleads, and they do despite the fear, the dark of their pupils flitting between each of hers, searching not for regret or sorrow but for that thing they command to show itself, that lifeline they clutch at in the dark — apathy.

“Roman comes to mind. I doubt you were anything but bare at his feet,” they hiss, cracks in their surface bleeding white hot. 

Who else? Surely not them. Meaningless, carefully placed words were armor. Naked they had faced her in chainmail, her chin lifted and her smirk victorious, but they would better protect themself next time. In battle with Perdita they would learn to harness their anger, a most reliable weapon of hers, and slit the column of her throat with a trained coldness instead. Fires burned red, yellow, the most vibrant of oranges, but most dangerous of all was that of icy blue. In time, she, too, would understand the nuance of its bite.

They wait, forcing their face stoic, eyes burning with heat they have not stomped out still as they stand a safe distance from her touch. Their spine is painfully straight, as if pulling away from her, from the murmur of her lips to skin. Leave it for Roman now, those hushed, tender, promises — they had never done Marcelo any good, not really. They nearly take a step back and untangle themselves from the web she desperately weaves when her final trick lashes out, hotter than the blue flame, sharper than the cut of any blade they might have dreamt of. I love you. 

Their stomach plummets, lips parting traitorously in angry surprise.

It was cruel. More cruel than anything Marcelo had been able to inflict on her. On her lips rests the parting words of their fathers each night, the scrawl of Bellamy’s writing on postcards, the giggly feverish consolation from Roman after they turned sour from his teasing. She finds the home in their heart, made from the words of those they hold dearest, and calls it her own. She leaves no inch of it untainted by her bloodied fingers, prodding at their insides for weak spots to nestle inside of.

Breath ebbs from their lungs, pulling familiarly in their chest, making room for the same wrath they now fight to banish. Marcelo wants to punish her, they want to take Paola’s love and rip it down the middle, leave it drifting to the floor to be trampled and forgotten. Yet the resolute part of them decides not to touch it, to shift past its snapping jaws, to watch on as it suckles the ego from her next mark, instead.

A humorless smile touches their lips at last, nodding slowly in the silence that pools between them. It’s not true. Not at all. Not even the sliver of them that still falls to its knees to be loved as they are now, ruined and hungry, can make sense of such a barbed love — it would sooner leave them bleeding out on her kitchen floor. They had not survived all this time to be felled by petulant, false, hopes. 

“Not enough,” they speak quietly, assuredly. 

Marcelo did not know the truth would scrape its way out until it did, until their brows furrow at it wafting through the air, until the implication they deemed themselves worthy of any love, much less that Paola could not possess, is ousted. But didn’t they? Had they not come to celebrate her promotion? Had they not threatened to tear the Capulet limb from limb who had dared to mar her? Had they not taught her to protect herself, carved a space for her in their life, watched as she called their friends her own, more than they had ever known themselves to be capable of before her? They needed more than boxing gloves. They needed more than Paola was willing to part with. 

If Marcelo was to be the sacrificial lamb in this story, then Perdita was nothing less than a lion, fangs bloody and stomach protruding from feasting upon the scraps of themselves they’d torn loose and offered at her feet. 

They were out of things to give, they were done with wanting to be taken apart, eager that in doing so she might sew them back together and somehow make them right again. The truth was that no one could, but more so, that she wouldn’t be the one to try to. 

Light fills them when her laugh chases after their own, born in the darkness between them, yet velvety and warm as her breath tickles against their flesh. Marcelo had missed this most. As the sun descended and the light was snuffed by shadows they had revealed their pains, yes, the raw and ugly whispers, the knuckles fisting sheets, but so too had joy boisterously slipped their lips, unconstrained in the ache of wide lips, unbridled from the column of their throats. It had been their joy that most startled Marcelo. The fleeting, cheerful remnants of their own banished ghost; a corpse with no headstone, a death with no certificate. It had never come to Marcelo when they called it on their own, too far from their body to be commanded, too disconnected from their mind to understand the desperation to be inhabited by such childish and innocent phantoms again. Yet it had dared return, briefly; in slivers, in glimpses, in the pursuit of its own match in Paola. 

Her finger traces their lips in the upward curvature as if tending to its return, as if she can see the way it floods them and urges it higher, their own eyes dancing across the pink stains of her cheeks, the clumsy echo of her words, sudden and joyous. Marcelo had gathered tears in the dark of these eyes, they had coaxed venom from the crescent of this mouth, as was the intent of their native tongue, but then so too had their name painted grins upon her lips, and carved laughter from her ribs. That, they were still learning; how to forge tenderness, how to speak to delight without startling, but Paola had given them the tools, had draped her body across their lap as if marble and guided calloused hands to work. 

Try as they might, they had not broken her yet. They were beginning to understand she was not so easily taken apart, and that perhaps they were not so certain they wanted to make her so. It was her strength, after all, and their own weakness, that had led them here; to the place where their grief existed, as it always would, but where happiness, too, persisted. 

“Merda,” Marcelo breathes out, amused, “her clothes were in the wash, is all. It’s far too long a story for how little patience you’ve left me with, Paella.” They smile teasingly, lips brushing across the part of her own, “and I never did get to properly thank you for my gloves.” 

Mine. Marcelo had never fought against belonging to anyone as they had Paola. It was their teeth in her heart, their knuckles prying open the ivory bars of her chest, their snarls growled against the bared column of her throat, and still she asked for their hand. They had yanked it from her time and time again, contempt and resentment flexing empty fingers, and yet she had reached, had dared to brush the pads of her hand against the lines of their palm in longing. No longer would it be denied to her — no longer could they pretend they wanted it to be.

“Yours,” Marcelo breathes against the force of her lips, her body melding to meet their own, their hand rising from her hip to close against the back of her neck, pulling her nearer, wanting her closer. They let themselves go, their hunger guiding greedy palms, a deep noise plied free by her mouth, when at last she drags herself loose. Then it is Marcelo who leans forward, who settles nearer, desperate to capture her body against them once more, when Paola’s lips begin to move, when she asks,  “how much is too much?”

Frowning, Marcelo watches her down the bridge of their nose, chest rising and falling as they consider the breadth of such a question. Did she not believe them, then? Did she think they’d kept Odessa a secret from her, denied her the honesty she once had deprived them of? They shake their head, raising the hand from the nape of her neck to brush strands back from her forehead. I didn’t sleep with Odessa, they think to blurt, but at the same moment —

“I slept with Roman.”

Their stomach sinks, something cold and heavy filling their abdomen in its place. The chill that takes root at once scorches them and leaves them frozen, their dark eyes left jumping across Paola’s expression as they still, unmoving. “Roman?” It leaves Marcelo’s mouth dumbly, as if they had never heard or spoken his name in their life. Because if there’s anybody that deserves to have a good thing — it’s you two. Roman had said that, they remember, none of that would ever be worth losing you. How they had let him tighten the blindfold about their eyes. At last, that ever familiar warmth returns, that white-hot heat, that blistering rage, and as gently as their fingers had once found their home in Paola’s dark hair, they are pulled free now just as roughly, pushing her from the spot on their lap as they stand from the chair with a clatter. 

“Why…” their question falls to silence, it does not matter why. Their expression hardens, their jaw tightens. “I should have known,” Marcelo admits tensely, a mirthless laugh escaping, “if you want for the king and him you so badly then have at it, Perdita. He is no brother of mine — not that it’s ever stopped either of you before.” Had she thought of him as their mouths met? Imagined their hands were that of the Montague’s? They swallow thickly, envy burning the back of their throat. Had Roman left them that night, inflated on grandeur, and slipped back beneath the sheets with Paola? Had they laughed at what a fool they had been, to not only fall for their charades once, but twice? How long, this time, had they been dragging Marcelo at their feet?

It was about a girl. Of course, it was about a girl. A girl whose scars they had traced, and whose pleas they had knelt to, a girl who had seen the blood drip from their hands and returned, a girl who had tasted their suffering and recognized it for her own. It was about a girl, but it was also about Roman. The boy who had everything, the boy who pledged to lay it down for Marcelo’s sake, the boy who tightened the leash at their throat and commanded their heart onward. It was a lie, these people Marcelo had loved. Even worse was that they could not believe it. That they could not see them for what they were after being shown time and time again. 

Loss; it was an old friend they denied, an omen they rebuffed. They had let the two stab at their back bloody to avoid its knowing whisper, all to face it again in the end. That, they did not know they could forgive.

There is a certain stillness in the air, just moments before lightning cracks and thunder roars. A sort of calm, the entire world suspended for a moment in time. Everything around her seems frozen as Paola watches them process the information. It all hangs in the balance as Marcelo, almost disbelievingly, repeats his name: Roman. 

She wants to tell them so many things. A hundred words for I’m sorry and a thousand for I will never hurt you again come to mind. It’s not that I wanted him over you, it’s that I lost you and I thought you found better than me and I wanted one person who made me feel like the Paola before you, who could suck the life from someone’s marrow, spit out the bones and move on without this knot in my chest and this rock in my stomach. Or perhaps, I cried when I came home; right here, right where we’re on the cusp of reuniting, I wept like a babe, with shame, with guilt, with longing, because when you know who you want and you try to cover the wound with someone else, it just makes you feel more hollow, it just reminds you of how much you gave up.

Instead, Paola swallows it down. She folds back every word and saves them for another time, waiting patiently for Marcelo to respond. 

First, they react. They wrench away from her and push her away, and Paola stumbles over her feet. Clumsily, she reaches for them. She can hold back every word, but she cannot stop the violence of her desire for them, the ache in every muscle and the heaviness of her bones. So close to returning to them, so close to losing them all over again, Paola reaches out for them; her hands stretching to hold their face against her palms, to bring their forehead down to hers so they can see only her, so they can forget that the rest of Verona is out there waiting to make a plaything of their grief.

“Why?” Paola repeats, as if the very word leaves her throat raw and bloody as she asks it — of herself, of them. “Because I thought you had found someone else and I hated it. Cazzo,” she curses, the word strange on her tongue, “I hated it.”

“I hurt you.” Too greedy, too desperate, Paola reaches for their hands as if she can tug them back into her arms. “I know, and I am sorry. Momo, Marcelo, L’Inferno,” she beckons them, voice gentle as she considers all that they have gone through — all that they have survived. “Look into my eyes and tell me you still believe that I could want for the king when I have only felt hope with you. For who else would I lay myself bare like this?” Certainly not Roman, who is a friend and, occasionally, temporarily relief into the past, away from the present where Verona has torn apart what little faith she had. Certainly not Felipe, who watched her make a mockery of her heart and her loyalty from the shadows without a word.

Paola seems surprised, and it reflects on their own expression. Had she really thought herself to be nothing to Marcelo? That they might care so very little for her they would dare to bargain and trade her for more? If there is more than Paola, they do not want it. Truthfully, they’ve wanted for no one else, months spent trying to harden their flesh and bone to her, efforts wasted on a body that reflexively bent to heed her every call. How they had longed to blind Paola, pluck the sight of themselves, fractured and foolish, with pleas to stay and dreams of vacation, out of her head. Yet, she had inked them to her marrow, swallowed them to rest in the pit of her abdomen and it had grown louder than their screams, their insults, their threats. Now, they are silent, they let the moments in her arms wash over them, too withered and beaten to fight against their current any longer. 

But still, her eyes swell with disbelief of it, the expression of a girl who had white knuckled these memories in vain, thinking she had clasped only at their shells alone, carcasses of life that once burned brightly now stolen by time. Paola had not been taunting them then, they realize, with her honeyed words and the intimate nicknames and conversations she’d pulled from shallow graves, no. She had been, in her own way, hoping to breathe being back into its decay, in much the same way Marcelo had been for years, recalling the fondest memories of their own family, as if living for them could somehow scrub away at the death that had swallowed them. They had not been so fortunate as Paola. 

Yes, she speaks, and in them that cord is again struck. The very same tether they had tried to convince her was cut, and trampled at their feet. The very same that thrummed at momo, that reverberated to the gentle hushes she whispered against their hair deep in the night. The cord that existed only to tie Marcelo to her, and her to them, lashed and starved and stretched to its limit but resolute, and unmoving, still. Hope. It was all that remained of those they had loved the most; it had been a God that never spoke back, a face that would never be placed, a touch that could not satisfy their loneliness, and it had been Paola. Only they hadn’t recognized it at first; a future that had not existed before her taking root in their mind, a yearning that they had not ever allowed themselves to indulge in before her lips to theirs — did it not come to the same name?

The corners of Marcelo’s mouth waver, bewitched by her smile. It is one that feels familiar, after so much doubt and confusion, it exists as if to say all this time we were not so different, all this time we have only chosen not to understand.

They had arrived at the bar still tasting a bitterness on their tongue, and now they taste only her lips, the echo of their stolen drink still lingering on her tongue, her her her; which is perhaps not so different from them them them. There is hope between them, in the pulling of her to their lap, in the heavy rise and fall of their chests, but there is something more, too, something dwelling in the ache of their chest. Something like —

“Odessa.”

Marcelo frowns against Paola’s lips, a deep surge of breath spilling between them as they rub an impatient circle into the skin of her hip with their thumb. They could be adventurous — but never that adventurous. With brows cinched at the center they lean in, a quick kiss peppered to her jaw as her words die in her throat. “What about her?” Marcelo groans, lifting their chin to search her face at last, bewildered by the panic that’s suddenly etched across her gaze. They half think to look behind them, as if the youngest Vernon had found her way to Paola’s home and crawled in through the fire escape, but they know better. Instead worry straightens their spine, head tilting quizzically as her lips begin to move again, sluggish, unsure…

“ODESSA?” Marcelo begins to laugh, full and hearty it rises from their sternum, lips splitting wide as they raise a brow, “together? With me?” They pull a hand from her waist, rubbing it across the stubble on their chin to silence the laughter that threatens to bubble, “and here I thought we’d nearly buried the hatchet, Damasco.” Wetting their lips Marcelo shakes their head, a chuckle escaping their grimace, “Odessa and I are the furthest possible thing from together — even further than that, even. I’d go so far as to say any accusation of us being anything but is entirely unforgivable, even for you, tesoro.”

If she were wise, she would not have asked. If she were wise and not desperate — her parched heart crying out for Marcelo to soften the blow that has been swung to her ribs again and again at the thought of Odessa in their lap, manicured nails sitting pretty on their arm, full and painted lips at their cheek, their neck, their wrist — then Paola might have let the hunger that drives a moan from her throat speak for itself. She would not have asked about whatever came between them when they have only just crossed the canyons that kept them apart. She would have let joy settle deep in the crevices of her cracked affection, and hold Marcelo as she has longed to hold them: without reservation, without shame.

Perhaps the wise do not seek out the pained truths and irrevocable tragedies of the world, but Paola and Marcelo share one central truth: they do not trust what does not make them ache and burn. With laughter and dismay, Marcelo throws back the curtain and makes a mockery of her hurt. Odessa is a far-flung fantasy, perhaps more akin to a nightmare than a dream — and Paola is a fool, who nursed a wound and sought worse remedies than mere alcohol and aspirin to stop the bleeding.

If Paola were wise, she would not have asked for this. If Paola loved Marcelo any less, she would not have asked for this.

But she does. She loves them exactly this amount: the depths of their suffering, the lengths to which they have lost and lost and lost. Their families, their hopes, their idyllic futures — and even each other.

For a moment, Paola is split open with joy. A plea of laughter stumbles out in staccato as they simultaneously flush with embarrassment and openly admire Marcelo’s grin. With one finger, Paola traces the wide sweep of their lips, pressing a fleeting kiss as if to imprint the memory. “You can’t hold this against me,” she insists, “she was wearing your shirt, don’t you remember? I came to give you a gift, and I see Odessa behind you in your clothes, first thing in the morning…”

And then I ran to Roman and rather than cry to him of my troubles, I climbed into his bed and bit back your name.

Just one moment. Just one moment of savoring Marcelo like this, the echo of a laugh still hanging between them, their chest flush against her own, hand firmly at her hip and mouth opening against hers. “Blame it on how much I wanted you to be mine, momo,” she breathes. Just one more moment. With the breathless passion of a woman marching to her execution, accepting the last taste of fresh air and the faces of those you care for most, Paola claims their mouth for what she dreads will be the last time. Her lips part for them as their warmth invades her senses, reaches down to her very core and swells. 

She stays like this, fervent and burning deep, for as long as she is able. But every fire has its ashes. Every soul has its grave. When they pull apart, Paola’s eyes glisten with anticipation of what is to come.

“How much can we forgive of each other, momo?” Paola murmurs. “Our secrets, our threats, our cruelty… how much is too much?” Their chest is solid under her palm, and she wonders: will you come back to me, even after this? This close to joy, just one mistake away from a whole heart, Paola thinks: I will wait for it, regardless.

Paola does not wait for Marcelo’s answer. She looks them square in the eye and confesses quietly, “I slept with Roman.”

It worries her. Marcelo can tell. The thought of pulling the trigger on an empty barrel, the fear of her blades dulling and her steel tongue turning to lead in her mouth. Marcelo, too, had felt that rush of doubt. The torture proved them useless — their heart, clenched like a fist that could not be swung, that demanded sacrifice to unwind; a tithe even Marcelo could not pay, as battered and bruised as they had been. A payment they owed not only themselves, but Damiano. If they had been cursed, a bird with no wings, for an eternity rather than a handful of months, would it have been collected from them in other ways, or would the Montagues cut their losses, a smile on the lips of Marcelo’s boy king as he coos you’re free, at last? Unwanted freedom, sutured to the ankle like iron.

They cast their gaze away from her defeat.

Paola’s hopes had already been strung up and bled dry. When she looks to them, chest rising and eyes solemn, they understand there was only ever one answer to the question upon her lips. That if, perhaps, Tiberius had been the one gasping for breath before an audience Marcelo would have recognized that sooner. But they don’t. Even still, with their eyes finally returning to pierce through the dark of Paola’s, there is the urge to deny her, to clasp at the nights spent under Damiano’s roof, and the years at their brother’s side, and summon their loyalty. But war is war, no matter how dear a figurehead is to its footmen.  

Perhaps it does not matter if your Gods look fondly upon you, if only there is someone who has cast their gaze aside and glimpsed beauty where the divine deemed none. They tilt their head, a bloated moment of silence as they trace the seams of Paola they’d become most inconsolable to lose. The slope of her cheeks, the dark strands draped over her shoulders, wide eyes always watching, and the tinge of blue veins — had she gouged the last of Gabriel from them, after all? The L’inferno understands what’s asked of them as perhaps only those forsaken would, then resign to answer, as only a mouthpiece singed by its solitude can — “no.”

They cannot let it turn to ash on their tongue, or swaddle it in the brambles of their bitterness. It is a truth, although perhaps it would be more truthful even to admit, “she’s not dispensable, for without her what is left?” Though, they decide against it. Their Paola is not expendable, but then again her Marcelo may be.

Their own answer surely is one she’d expect; enough to stave off her hunger, but too little to sate it entirely. Never having words like the poet Gabriel might have been, nor the bleeding heart of the romantic that Roman is, but an honest answer most certainly. Yet, Paola’s catches them off guard, a glance in her direction, a brow raised at her confession of hope. Not strung up and bled dry so soon, it’d seem. 

Marcelo, always the omen, never the beacon; not a light waiting at the end of a tunnel but a flame that threatens to trap you, leave you clawing and grasping at your own throat between its walls. How had they, then, with only scraps in the palms of each hand, salvaged what they had expected long since curdled in the depths of Valentina’s corpse? How had they, harbinger of death, cleaved life from its bones? If ever there was hope to be given by Marcelo, they are sure it is Paola who put a name to it and took it for her own where they had been too blind to see.  

“Do you still?” They ask after a long pause, hazel hues searching her expression for regret in having to admit no; in having to dash the warmth that rises from the cobwebs of their chest unbidden. 

Still, she is not empty of astonishment, never low on shock, and when they playfully pull at her glass the rest of her body heeds its example. It’s the liquor, Marcelo thinks hurriedly, a shadow of a smirk pressed to their mouth. It’s taken root in her gravity, plucking at her restraint, it bends her toward the nearest rock — but then she stays. Too near. Near enough to remember the taste of her lips, the sighs tenderly brushing their own, and as their smile fades they begin to wonder who is is the rock, after all, and to what do they cling to in it? 

They swallow thickly, a beat of time they may have used to push her and their past aside had they more sense, but she doesn’t pull away, so neither do they. Stuck, still, in this familiar orbit. With their shoulders wound tight and gaze narrowed on the rise of Paola’s chest down the bridge of their nose, Marcelo leans, just a fraction, just a hair, back before she is clambering forward.

“Don’t stop me.”

Fingers dig at her waist. They won’t. The other wrist lifting to tangle its palm in dark strands as their mouths clash. They can’t. A hum pulled from somewhere deep in their throat. They don’t want to.

Eyes dark and solemn, L’inferno gives her more in one word than Felipe’s breathless declarations ever did. More than Roman whispering sweet nothings against the curve of ear as the sun slipped beneath the horizon. More than Tomas’ outstretched hand, his magnetic charm. Felipe and Roman and Tomas — they all called forth the sun when they were there, but they always left, too, and where did that leave her? Alone in a world blanketed in ice and frost, and the dusty taste of being abandoned yet again. 

Marcelo has come to burn through glaciers. Marcelo has come with swinging fists and a guttural roar in their throat. They don’t have the syrup and honey of her past loves, but they do what matters: they stay. Whether it’s with a smirk glued to their lips and a dare in their gaze, or  fury and loathing in every glance and a scathing insult lashing out at her skin... they never left.

The sweetest word she knows, then, is no. No to every fear she’s had, every lesson driven into her with every home that did not want her, did not choose her, every person who did not take her with them as they chose a better life than anything she could offer. Before Marcelo, Paola stands: carved into, broken down, made a fool by ghosts who rise from the ashes, declared a puppet by a war she thought she had no choice but to join. Before Marcelo, Paola does not hide: not their sins, not their mistakes, not the darkness breathed into her from her days as a sly-fingered orphan on Rome’s brutal streets. 

She is begging them to tell her yes, she is indispensable. Again and again, she paints for them a portrait of who she is: forgettable, belittled, less woman than she is a tool and a weapon to be used. When they decide otherwise, Paola blinks with disbelief; and at last, she smiles. Her answer to their next question comes easily, then: “Yes.”

Hope is not always the beam of light against the window, or the bird that perches on your shoulder and sings a tune of kind dreams and a hand to hold at the end of the tunnel. Marcelo does not take her into their arms and promise that the sun will rise and her heart will be made whole. This isn’t the hope they know, and it isn’t the hope she can trust, either. 

Paola studies the cuts and bruises that Marcelo doesn’t try to hide, searches for the scars so imbedded into their skin that she can’t imagine a time without it. She thinks of the times they made her laugh while entangled in their bedsheets, and every vicious word that stripped her bare and left her conscience raw and bloody. Marcelo does not give her the hope to believe that things will be better. That the abyss can be stitched together again. That what is unsalvageable can be salvaged, that what is devastated can be remade. No — Marcelo gives her hope that she can survive the wreckage.

(I DON’T GOT A GIF BUT I NEEDED A BREAK HERE SO WHAT IF I’M A FOOL)

The barest taste of them, and Paola is a woman famished. Desire pools in her belly, clawing its way free after months of denial. Her hands reach for Marcelo; they’ve always been desperate with greed, have always wanted more than they can fit in her palms for fear that whatever she catches will slip away between her fingers. She grips their shoulders, pulling them flush against her. The months stretch between them, but this feels familiar, natural, inevitable as the rise and fall of their chests with each chasing breath. 

She pulls away to inhale sharply, fill her lungs again with air, but even that moment away from Marcelo feels a waste. She wants too much, and she’s been starved of warmth for too long. Her lips find the base of their neck, she’s tugging at their shirt in a silent demand of its removal — they have a million and one of this exact brand, the same color and fit and style, the only time she’s seen a shirt of theirs that didn’t look exactly like the others was…

The image of Odessa in a shirt with bright, blue lettering across the front comes to mind. Immediately as if on cue, every muscle in her body stills. She is frozen again, a mess of ice that won’t thaw until she knows — until she asks…

The lilt of Paola’s laugh is a blade, forged by the hurt strangled in her throat and pressed to their own, Marcelo can feel its weight as they swallow. Do they think she’s dispensable? It feels as if the very existence of such a question is as near a strike to their face as Paola might ever again manage. When she had been returned, nothing more than a bruise with a heartbeat — Marcelo had come to collect her. When they plucked lies from her teeth, and swallowed the jagged glass of each into the pit of their stomach with no regard for what blood it might shed — Marcelo had returned at the call of her parted lips. Paola is under their skin, a sliver, an infection, and there is little chance of digging her free without misplacing the vital organs she had rooted around; their heart, their mind, and their stomach, surely, for never has it lurched so violently at the thought of drawing blood. 

Hazel hues pull from the safety of the floor, at once trained on the uncertainty in Paola’s eyes; another phantom to be banished. “No.” Their knuckles strain white against their glass, and it’s with frustration they can’t find better words, ones that might release them both. “You’re not,” Marcelo speaks instead, a warning, as inlaid with anger and sharpness as any threat of death ever spilled from their tongue, “the dagger hidden under the cloak is still a weapon; perhaps the better of the two, even. They’d be stupid to take you for granted.” It’s easier to speak in them’s, in strategy, rather than to speak of me’s, of i’s, of longing. They don’t ask how it is she cannot see their palms outstretched beneath her, a net for her to collapse into were she to fall, and they don’t tell her, either, how they doubted the ability of any blade that required the cover of veils to taste flesh before Paola. How long ago that seems, their body marred in the scars of her proof.

Hearing her call them a Montague, hearing her refer to herself as one in the same, is still jarring. Had they not been called Montague since the beginning of time? Is it not as much their identity as Marcelo, or Mercutio, or L’inferno? Yet it has always been distinctly separate from Paola, no matter how closely the two dared to intertwine; as if she had carved a new face, a new name, a new life for them from the marble of their own tomb. She speaks words aloud that clasp to form a mirror, a reflection of the very gift they feel born from those same palms, and calls it their own. Had they really done the same for her? In the quiet of Pandora’s home, in the streets of Paola’s hunger, had they created with fingers cursed to ruin? Had they constructed something new from the bones of her grief, alone?

You were never useless, Marcelo wants to say, you can’t light a fire without a spark among the rubble. Yet, it’s Paola who chases the sentiment away, who will remember them always. They feel their stomach tilt, one violent wave of unease after another roiling through their center at her words. Had she condemned herself to live alone with their memory so soon? Not even Marcelo had the strength to deprive her of them, a fact most apparent and unwanted during silences like these. “I could think of a part or two more worthy of remembrance,” they note in a voice far softer than that of their earlier ire, a voice attempting to slough off its weight, and returning that much heavier for its effort, “you didn’t exactly come back for my esteemed trustworthiness after all, no?” It’s an attempt to be teasing, it’s an attempt to be accusatory. A joke and also a question; if you’d always trusted me why did you lie? If you didn’t trust me, why did you return? 

Marcelo’s melancholy is shirked as quickly as Paola’s fingers steal away their glass, lips rising defiant at the clatter of her sluggish limbs. “I’m drunk?” they repeat, tongue swiping out to wet their lips and hide the burgeoning smirk at her words, “I will not ask Henry, he’s an ass kisser and a pathetically unreliable source.” Brows jump at her rebuttal, the prick of a poker, the first lick of fire striking flesh as they perilously fondle its flames. “Guess I’m too drunk to recall,” it comes too fast, an avalanche teetering over a ledge, the toppling of a glass from a table before the slice of broken glass, “why don’t you remind me, Damasco?” It’s too easy, and comes too unbidden; Marcelo’s gaze flits away as swiftly as their tongue bites itself. 

“You would have me suffer your company sober?” They deflect instead, fingers reaching to pull Paola’s glass from her grip in retaliation. 

There is no such thing as a beautiful weapon. A knife is beloved only for its blade; a gun is kept close to easily press the trigger. A weapon is a tool, and a tool is not desired. It is merely necessary, and you feel its absence only when you feel death’s grip around your throat and the enemy’s eyes up close. She is the dagger hidden under the cloak, but she wants to be the hand tucked in Marcelo’s pocket, the flower pressed between the pages of a book on their dresser. Paola listens between every tense word from Marcelo’s lips, searches hazel eyes and finds not the one who bruised her lips and held her tight against their chest — but the anchor who beheld her scars in its mangled, wretched glory and told her, so tenderly that it aches still to think of it, that she would rise anew. From ashes and from agony, Paola would become stronger.

And perhaps she is stronger now, meeting their eyes without trembling and without worry. But in many ways, Paola is weak. Her heart consumes her, as famished and starved as any corpse. “Yes, Perdita is indispensable, as long as she’s useful.” Her breath shakes and shudders as she inhales, long and deep and slow. She tries to gather whatever courage is left. With the edge of a sharp blade in her gaze, she asks, “But what of Paola? What of your Paella?”

Because their Paola still lives. She has always waited just under the surface, chained by fear of their fury and shame of her sins. There is little left of her, to be fair. Skin marred and made unholy, relics of war and regret and guilt and deceit carved into her flesh as if she is a blank slate waiting to be marked by the terrors of the world. A twisted sense of loyalty, a grave understanding of love, grief that weighs her down until she can hardly remember to walk — and still, Marcelo’s name burns inside her. Does she not find her way back to them time and time again, no matter how her knees knock together with worry and her heart stutters with anger? There are some fires that can be smothered by the night; yet Marcelo finds a way to spread in spite of the dark.

Try as she might, Marcelo has held her together. If L’Inferno can survive the loss of many, can she not survive the loss of one? If Mercutio can find strength in their grief, can Paola not make a home of hers? If Marcelo — the last child left, the sole Rosso to emerge from the flames — can belong, then can’t Paola belong with them, too? 

“I came back because I felt hope with you.” Without fanfare, without motive, without any emotion in her voice, Paola says to Marcelo what they should always have known: that when the mirror terrified her and life shunned her, Marcelo made Paola wonder if there was more to living than scavenging for scraps and sifting through wreckage for some mere consolation prize. With Marcelo, Paola was vibrant. With Marcelo, Paola was free.

She’s too drunk to defend Henry, and she’s too charmed by their snark to bother. Somewhere, Odessa waits in silk robes and cashmere slippers, perhaps even wondering where her Marcelo is so late in the night. There is another heart in Verona enraptured by Marcelo, but has Odessa ever seen Marcelo laugh? Has she ever traced the curve of their lips as they smirk in her direction, or the scars that tell a story of a soldier who thinks they have so little to live for that they readily sacrifice their own flesh and blood?

Perhaps Odessa has held Marcelo as they whimper through night terrors or washed the blood out of their wounds. Paola doesn’t care. There are parts of her that bear Marcelo’s name in softer, stronger ways than her flesh and bone is marked with Valentina and Gabriele — and those parts of her are weak.

Paola is utterly, horribly, finally weak.

Date: July 20th

Time: Evening

Location: A cafe near the river bank

Status: Open to all

Verona is always showing its teeth. It’s either snarling, or laughing. Tonight, Priam feels, it’s the latter. 

It’s one of those nights of brutal self-inquisition, when Priam finds the four walls of his lavish penthouse too suffocating and seeking no one’s company in particular, the Capulet prince finds himself sitting in a café, outside, nursing a bottle of wine, and a cup of black coffee, an odd combination, and watching river march to the beat of its own drum.

He got people killed today. Quite a lot of them. All for his personal gain. Sure, it advances the Capulet agenda, no doubt, but the new weapons deal solidifies his position within the mob like never before, and it’s just a beginning. Priam now has the blood of a few Capulet pawns he willingly sacrifised to lure out the Montagues and their weapons supplier, and even though he feels no remorse, it’s a strange feeling. To play with the lives of others like a puppetmaster. At least they met a swift end in a shootout, but the Montagues he had taken by the police will have no such luxury. They’ll die in prison, but only after they spill the information Priam needs and after they start to beg for a merciful death. He’s seen to that. It’s amazing the influence Taravalla money combined with Capulet power can buy.

Priam’s reach grows by day.

He will follow his ambitions like a cat chases sunshine on a lazy Spring Sunday. Other be damned.

A toast to his own victory, Priam pours another glass of the finest wine on the menu, and whilst his eyes are fixed on the amber liquid, he can hear a sound of a chair drag against a pavement. Unexpected company.

Not interrupting pouring the wine, Priam greets a newcomer with an entertained smile. “Want to hear a joke? A circus animal, an infant and a virgin walk into a bar. The bartender asks, what can I get you, Mr. Montague?”   

—

Secrets carry on the wind in Verona, and the air itself seems tinged crimson today in particular. She can sense the way the earth shifts to and fro in this city, pulled to the areas where the bloodshed is dense and the cruelty reigns freely. Paola’s grown used to it, admittedly. Even as she sits in Montague headquarters, a book in her hand from the library just outside, it takes a beat or two before the hairs on the back of her neck rise to a point and goosebumps raise on the flesh of her arms. It’s eerily quiet, and that is never a good sign among the Montagues.

The story unravels rather quickly, and the name perched on every golden tongue is the same. It makes her lips quirk with uncharacteristic affection; one that she should have left behind long ago, and somehow forget to scatter with the ashes of the woman she once was, the heart of a kinder and softer woman. Priam is no friend of hers, not anymore. But for all of her stoicism, for all of her gentle yet unflinching ways, Paola is a sentimental woman. She cannot help but remember the time Priam once made her laugh.

She knows where he’ll be, knows his favorite spots in the city like the back of her hand. Paola has always been this way: memorizing a person’s daily habits, studying the way their brows arch and their nervous tics. It’s come in handy ever since she arrived in Verona. It comes in handy now, as she slips into the seat across from Priam and smiles gently at his attempt at a joke. “What bartender wastes their time with an infant?” Paola asks. “Take it from a former bartender herself. You only deal with the person who has cash — someone like you, old friend.”

Where Henry goes, so too does Paola. It is the very nature of the job. As his personal assistant, she lingers in the corners of the room, keeping eyes on Henry not just as her boss but as a fellow Montague. With shared tragedies between them, the two have become something like family, and Paola will never forget the sight of Henry accepting death in his own home until she begged hi to live. 

date: december 25th location: the streets status: @paoladamasco​

Marcelo can remember their last holiday as a family. It’s less distinct than it was once — smells and sounds muted in favor of blurred expressions and dull touches — but it stays woven into a placid stretch of mind that refuses shirking their most gilded moments in favor of those bloody and raw. They wonder if this moment too — Paola, pulling her scarf closer as they blow on hot coffee — will rest beside it, or be forgotten like the Christmases past, buried beneath the snow and lights hung for all but them to delight in. Marcelo hadn’t expected to find themselves in her company today, after all; a clumsy, forgetful, misplacing of a date so otherwise important. Yet, it is Paola that they walk in stride with, gaze still adjusting to the stark light of morning after hours spent swallowed by the dim of their room. 

Let’s get coffee, she’d said, their fingers meeting the stubborn strand of her hair that refused to stay tucked behind one ear, giving it a chastising tug. Did she have nowhere else to be? They’ve known the answer all along, haven’t they? Why else would she choose to rot at their side?

An arm instinctively wraps around the petite slope of her shoulders now, pulling her closer as they pass a decorated tree. Marcelo hasn’t mentioned the gift in the back of their closet, tucked away for weeks, as if they were still deciding whether or not to give it to her. Whether or not it is something they can give away. It was easier to forget in the barren stillness of their apartment, no mistletoe or ornaments in sight, and harder here on the streets, where holiday spirit spills at them from every corner. 

“D’you fall for all this?” they tease, finger flicking out absentmindedly toward the decor, “don’t tell me you have a tree, Paella.”

.

In the middle of war, there is so seldom peace. She has stepped into the mouth of the beast, let the Montagues hold her in between its teeth. Amidst the darkness, she's all but forgotten that life used to mean more than grudges repaid tenfold and the touch of a gun like the kiss of a lover. The snow that falls melts as it touches her skin, reminding Paola that — forsaken and cold and alone as she sometimes imagines herself to be — she remains full of warmth. 

And she is not nearly as alone as she believes. Paola leans into Marcelo, laughs at their jabs and their dismissal of the holiday season. “Of course not,” she answers truthfully. Christmases were a dreadful occasion at the orphanage, with prayers on loop for hours and nuns ensuring they could recite every verse of Jesus’ birth. “We share that in common,” Paola reminds them, though the way she looks up at them betrays her very next words, “we’re not very sentimental, are we?”

𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘 𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐃𝐀𝐘, 𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐘!

my sweet friend, writing partner and one of my favorite people in the universe, happy birthday to you. i love you dearly. @ofrosso

𝗧𝗢 𝗨𝗡𝗟𝗢𝗖𝗞 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗕𝗜𝗥𝗧𝗛𝗗𝗔𝗬 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗘𝗡𝗧, 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗘...