LA BELLE E(S)T LA BÊTE

“Why are you so sure I hurt her?” He questions, deflecting. And then because he suspects he knows the answer, because he can only imagine that Juliana would confide in her closest friends about what happened that night—“Sometimes people suffer little pains, in order to avoid bigger ones…” It’s vague even as he churns it out, careful to walk a tightrope of discretion given their public setting. But, the married man thinks, it’s true. If he’d returned her advances, she’d be carrying on with an adulterer; degrading to both of them and insult without equal to the wife he’d promised to cherish to the end of his days. 

His parents had made that mistake, and while his father still clung to his mother like a lifeline, their marriage had been in shambles as far back as Tomas could remember. It was the hardest lesson he’d learnt, the mistake he’d sworn never to repeat in his life. 

“Sometimes,” He continues, “Things look one way from the outside, but there’s a different story on the inside. If Juliana thinks I hurt her…” He swallows, but pushes the words out nonetheless. “That’s between her and me to decide, isn’t it?” it’s uncharacteristically firm. Sometimes, he still thinks of what ifs where Juliana’s concerned; normally in those twilight hours where the heart suffers no rational argument against its questions. But most times, all it takes is the rise and fall of his wife’s sleeping form beside him to scatter all guilty thoughts into the dark, and push the press of Juliana’s lips back into the recesses of his more regrettable memories. You couldn’t have meant to hurt her, Bunny supplies, and every instinct within him objects to the implication. I didn’t, I’d never, he thinks unhappily, gaze faraway. But he brings it back to Bernadette as the waiter comes to clear away their plates.

“I might hurt you.” He agrees when they’re alone again. “I wouldn’t want to, it wouldn’t be intentional, but I can’t promise it won’t happen. Just like you can’t promise you’ll never hurt me, right?” The actor reminds her gently, the girl’s political loyalties cast in sharp relief opposite those of his own wife. The Du Ponts have been nothing but polite and non-partisan in their interactions with him thus far, but not even Tomas is naïve enough to think that’ll protect him if push comes to shove. 

And on that cheery note... “—Dessert?” He asks with a smile that whips upwards. Part of him hopes she’ll decline. The conversation’s gotten heavy, and if Bunny wishes to continue it, he’d rather reroute back to why (he thinks) they’re really here. The superficial stuff. The lights, the cameras, the movies. If Bunny wants to follow in his professional footsteps, he’ll take her by the hand and help her up the ladder.

If she wants to pry him open like a tin-can, she’ll have to find an easier topic, even if thus far he’s been, undeniably, an easy enough subject.

“Why, you just told me that people will always hurt you,” she points out, pushing away her plate. Bunny stares at him coyly, her cheeks flush with mock confusion. Truthfully, she has no idea what Tomas is rattling on about: big pains, little pains, inside out, outside in. She asks because she wants him to sign on the dotted line, so she can ferry his statement back to la capobastone.

Whom Jules fools around with in her spare time is no business of hers. On the contrary, if she happens to be entertaining the affections of a married movie star, it makes her far more interesting than she has been for a long while. It’s the way Tomas snaps it up that concerns her, how he seems to feel the need to defend himself with a vigor that far exceeds carrying Jules out of the fray. But before she has a chance to think on it further, he says:

That’s between me and her to decide, isn’t it?

Bunny nearly laughs. And just like that, the fragile film separating scene from reality falls back into place. What a laughable thought. In fact, it’s nearly as laughable as the idea that someone like him could hurt her. Still, she thinks derisively, there is nothing quite so funny as the perceived agency of a self-made man.

“Are you a fan of football, Signor Sabello?” she asks Tomas, glancing out over the terrace as she does so. She blinks up at the sky, her expression dreamy. “A few months back, I had lunch with Kylian Mbappé.” Papa’s side of the family has supported Paris St-Germain for decades; to think that it was this, of all things, that had been a major point of contention when he married her mother.

“He wasn’t half the company you were,” she reassures him, “and though Papa liked him quite a bit, he was glad, I think, that I didn’t like him more.” Bunny offers Tomas a clandestine smile. It had, of course, all been a bit ironic. “Mamma says he no longer trusts football players as much as he used to,” she says, “after what happened years ago in Napoli.”

Like acting, football is a game of deceit. It followed one player off the field, where he had become renowned beyond compare for his ability to do exactly that, and tucked under the thumb of the mafia, he lost himself to his dangerous habits. You see, the self-made man is not self-made at all. He is made by the world, which so dearly loves its stories of rags to riches; anything the world loves, it eventually destroys. If it chooses to make gods of men, it does so only to watch them burn. There can be no other ending for those who concern themselves with the burden of divinity.

“I’m not sure I'd be able to stomach it, after everything we’ve already had,” she confesses, “and I’m afraid I’ve already had far more than I should. But if you’d like something, please, be my guest.” After all, it costs her nothing to offer it. Her parents will foot the bill as usual, and though the news that reaches them later in the evening will perhaps make her wish they hadn’t, for now, she lets the camera roll.

If anything should strike Tomas as being odd about their lunch today, let it be this:

Bunny Du Pont has never once said no to dessert.

At half-past ten, the ever-regal Signora Du Pont telephoned Everett with that honeysuckle, maternal way of hers, and informed him that darling Bunny had accidentally forgotten to return the smart jacket he’d lent her on Christmas, and that she’d be coming by today to return it along with her parents well-wishes, and to take good care of yourself, wouldn’t you?

He’d lied and told her he was, voice smooth and polite albeit fraying at the edges, as he’d stood in the kitchen forcing himself to finally make breakfast after realizing, belatedly, he’d forgotten dinner the night before. Half-truths are enough for the Du Pont matriarch, and they’re enough for her daughter, too, who seems to pose candied questions to get her way of things in the charming way that so many daughters of rich men do when they’ve been doted on all their childhood.

Still, if Bunny is a little coyly, harmlessly manipulative, it’s nothing Everett hasn’t encountered in high society, and overall she seems to be an innocent, sweet girl — if sometimes frivolously self-centered, and slightly bemusing when it comes to her self-proclaimed hero worship of himself.

Though, when it comes to the Armani jacket that’s been missing for nearly six months, Everett doesn’t believe that it has anything to do with her supposed admiration. ( In fact, he hopes it doesn’t, as that would be a tad too adoring to be normal. ) More likely, it has something to do with forgetfulness, or perhaps the lack of fruit borne from his efforts to soften Katarina’s heart towards her only sibling — but either way, she’s trailing up his staircase now a few seconds after he buzzes her in, and Everett supposes he’ll find out which is the reason soon enough.

“Bunny,” Everett greets, the jagged fragments of his composure swept up into a semblance of togetherness. He accepts the expensive suit, draping it over his arm. “Grazie.” If it were a different week, perhaps his words would be filled with faint, teasing levity rather than measured, bruise-poignant heaviness, but… such are times as these. He smiles briefly, a candle flicker saturated by melancholy. “Did it get lost in your closet?”

He pulls the door open wider at her question, rote memory all but preserving him now. “No, not at all. Come in, if you’d like, I know it’s sweltering outside.” The door clicks softly shut behind her a few seconds later; he’s known her for long enough that hosting her without the rest of her family isn’t such a strange incident, but it’s certainly not a common one. He drapes the coat neatly across the back of a chair, glancing in her direction as he remembers his manners. “Would you like something to drink?”

Etiquette is not their god.

It bows to them, their servant and their lever, and yet somehow manages to laugh at them still.

I did not bow down to you, it confesses at last. I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity. But if it decries its abuse at the hands of the rich, it says little else. It twists itself around their words obediently, an expert contortionist, and assumes every shape asked of it, no matter how difficult. Not once, however, does it break. It decides there is no need for it, that such a responsibility is best left to an unyielding fragility that can only be found in people.

In the end, it is still she who follows etiquette into Everett’s home, and not etiquette who follows her. It leads the way, and Bunny lets it, for there can be no games without their rules, and there can be no life without its games, and what is high society, if not a playground to conquer and call her own?

She leans in toward him, a sheaf of hair tucked neatly behind her ear, an absent kind of attentiveness carved by memory into her spine. “Yes, that must be it,” Bunny murmurs. “So many things are hidden away in there.” She thinks of her closet, fashioned with the skeletons of old secrets. Now that a ghost lingers between them, she no longer wishes to scry the future from its bones. So the door falls shut, the lip of its handle brushing her fingers, a fleeting, parting embrace.

“Sometimes,” she says, turning to Everett, “I still get scared thinking of what I might find inside.” When she was younger, she would often curl up on the floor, pretending to be asleep, hoping for a monster to devour her like all the stories claimed they would. Though none ever came, Bunny ought to have searched harder. One had always been watching when she’d gone in to look for it, hiding in the dark, simply waiting to be found.

“How lucky Mamma came across it when she did," she says quietly. It isn't unlike her mother, after all, to keep half her hand folded up her sleeve. But truthfully, the decision boggles her, in the same way it had when her parents proposed that he marry her sister.

How shameless the suggestion had initially seemed. How uncharacteristically tactless, how utterly undignified. She’d felt ashamed of them, for them, for even thinking to ask, only to then realize that to have so willingly sacrificed their pride, it could only have been out of desperation. There had been something final in Katarina's graduating from the military academy, and her parents had known it too.

After everything, they’d still wanted her to come home.

They’d wanted it badly enough to go to her at the expense of their own ridicule, so much that they thought she would be happy to marry one of her closest friends. The truth had dawned on Bunny with the morning sun, scorching her disdain until it burned in cinders. At the time, it left behind nothing but an abject sense of horror.

Had she not been enough? Had she not proven that they did not need Katarina, that there was nothing she herself wouldn’t and couldn’t do for them? What use was there in sending her to Everett today, of all days, when she considered him neither friend nor mentor—when if she wanted to talk to him, she would have spoken with his framed picture, where the best comfort he could offer her was in his silence?

Perhaps Bunny might have loved him better as her brother-in-law.

“Is it possible to love someone when you meet them?” Tomas smiles, the corners of his mouth fanning out wistfully. “If you’d asked me three years ago I might’ve said yes. But then again, I’m not sure I knew exactly what love was, three years ago.” It’s as honest an answer as he can give as he picks at the canapes that sit neatly between them. Bunny’s appetite seems to mirror his own; politely peckish, mostly put up for the sake of appearances. “No one can really prepare you for it, it’s true what they say; you’ll know when you know. You won’t be bored though, that’s for sure… Apart from that, all I can say is that it’s never like the movies.” Here, his smile turns a little sly, faintly ironic as he meets her gaze, before favouring his glass preferentially.

And as he drinks, he watches the way Bunny’s expression tightens almost imperceptibly at the revelation that Hector isn’t dead. It was Henry who’d told him; in a bar many months ago, when the actor had thought it prudent to offer his condolences. At the time, it’d given him the bargaining chip he’d needed to beg Celeste to leave the mob. By now, he’s lost most hope of convincing her. Instead, he offers the intel to Bunny, with less passion and persuasion, although still he hopes that she might make better use of it than his wife did.

But Bunny’s reaction confuses him. The look of faint surprises lingers longer than it should — like a mask, carefully held in place until some hidden director might yell ‘Cut!’. It doesn’t melt into warmth at hearing that the man who helped her is still alive; it doesn’t spark with light that there might be similar hope for her own future. That she needn’t pay such a steep price for kindness; that sometimes, for reasons unknown, the Mob lives and lets live. Not that she should hook herself to any hope where the mafia’s concerned, but still, he’d have expected… Expected...

‘And if those people should hurt you, people you thought you could trust?’

Well, Tomas thinks to himself, brow creasing faintly in response; not that. “People will always hurt you. Sometimes on purpose, most often by accident. People you don’t trust, people you do. Why live your life constantly waiting for the second shoe to drop?” He coaxes her, giving up to battle to his waning appetite as he forfeits his cutlery over his plate and leans back in his seat. “That’s not much of a life, is it? I don’t know what scripture says,” He rebuttals somewhat sheepishly, wondering whether it’ll reflect ill of him in contrast to the traditionally Catholic upbringing he assumes Bunny might’ve had. “But I doubt it’s that. And for the record, fame doesn’t exactly bubble-wrap me from getting hurt, even by the people I chose to trust.” His eyes stay trained on Bernadette, if only to keep his mind from traveling to Pandora.

‘What makes you so certain, that the best in people is worth believing in?’

He doesn’t know if it’s the deadly quiet of her voice that raises the hair at the back of his neck, or rather the somberness of such a question, coming from the mouth of too-young a socialite. Tomas doesn’t answer it immediately. He’s still balking at the fact that it’s been asked at all, when he decides to turn the question over and volley it back to Bunny, gently. “What makes you so certain that the worst in people makes for a more accurate or more convincing narrative?”

Life is never like the movies.

Its narrative, however, goes something like this:

Once, there was a girl, and selfish though she might have been, like all girls do at some point in their lives, this one loved her parents very much. She loved them so much, in fact, that there was little she wouldn’t do to keep them happy.

It wasn’t so hard, she thought. Where her sister struggled, she took to it naturally, soaking up their adoration in the place where hothouse flowers bloomed, and when the shine of accolades and trophies faded, when all the wealth and riches no longer proved enough to satisfy her, she turned her attention to the mildew underneath. Only through the decomposition of matter could such beauty be allowed to take root.

Only from the taphos of things could the world be permitted to go on living.

So the girl grew bolder.

She continued to live her double life, both as saint and as sinner, as daughter and as demon, and sometimes she would even let the duality of it surface, until the bone showed through skin, the beginnings of an open fracture—

But in the end, it was all for naught.

Everyone remained blind to it, for in their eyes, she could do no wrong. The thrill of being caught was stripped from her, spoiled by the revelation that she would always and yet never truly be seen, that no matter what she unearthed from the dirt, no matter how many hyphae branched into veins or how deep the worms corralled their way into her septum, it proved to be of little consequence. In leaving, her sister had already done the unthinkable. By comparison, her hands would always look clean.

To see the worst in others was also to see the best in them. It meant believing there was something else below that gilded glass exterior, allowing them more than their vapid ceramic smiles, their silly painted faces, their flimsy paper hearts.

The girl saw the worst in others because she knew it to be true within herself.

People will always hurt you.

“And you?” she asks, lifting her head, still trembling. “Will you claim to hurt me too, then?” Bunny angles her face to the other side at their talk of scripture, revealing a pale, unblemished cheek. Her eyes follow the path of his carotid, the flat of a blade poised against the length of his throat. His pulse flutters weakly; blood coagulates around the ivory of her words. Given the opportunity, she would hurt him without question.

“Or will you perhaps confess that you’ve hurt Juliana?” On purpose, or by accident, causative, or iatrogenic—he’s right in that the intentions won’t matter. Such an admission would sign his death warrant where he stands.

Or sits.

Winter turns to spring, and spring to summer, coup after coup of seasons overthrown, and at the center of it all, only Everett’s suit jacket remains unchanged, collecting dust at the back of her closet in silence.

For a while, Bunny had considered it collateral. Swayed as he might have been by her words and her tears, it was never Everett’s good opinion that she’d wanted, but his influence, and once he’d implored Katarina to listen to her sweet, wronged, baby sister, sure to twist a knife in old wounds rather than help with something as silly as reconciliation, she would gladly return what belonged to him.

But Everett had not made good on his promise, or so Katarina’s usual brand of indifference would have her believe. So she'd kept the jacket as an accessory to the framed picture in her bedroom, lest anyone doubt her alibi of what she believed a good role model to be—not as a keepsake, but as a calling card, a summons of sorts—and when la capobastone had interfered, removing yet another degree of separation, she'd shelved the opportunity.

Then Maeve had blown everything to smithereens.

Somewhere, amid the detritus, the inner workings of her heart began to unspool; in the aftermath of it unravelling, Bunny had forgotten Everett entirely. She told herself that Maeve’s death did not affect her, that Maeve’s spirit should not flatter herself so kindly, even as she’d stumbled out of Fiore Verona that one fateful morning, having left behind the souvenir de la malmaison rose, where it laid supine on the counter like a cadaver waiting to be identified.

She told herself that Maeve could not hurt her like this, that she would not fall prey to doing nothing, so she'd gone back to the Adigeo and bought every piece of clothing Maeve had thumbed through a few days prior, as if she could assuage herself of the idea that some things no amount of money could remedy, and returned home to find her mother rifling through her things.

How silly Bunny had been. Now she must pay Everett a visit, one her mother considers many months overdue. The funeral stretches behind, and her birthday stretches beyond, equidistant on a lever that spans four days in time. For a moment, Bunny simply sits on its fulcrum, balanced on her center of gravity; then potential becomes kinetic, and she tips forward into the back entrance of the hotel.

As she makes her way up to Everett's penthouse, she tries not to think about how many times Maeve has walked these steps before. The jacket sags suddenly in her arms from within its plastic cover, a limp body that withers away into nothingness.

Bunny drops it as if it has scalded her. She glares at the heap of fabric on the floor, even as her throat tightens and her head starts to spin, and as she sweeps it back up into her arms and rises to her feet, clutching the jacket to her chest the way one might a life-sized doll, the lock on the door slides open.

Just last Christmas, Everett had found her artfully staged beneath the moonlight, seated on the marble steps of Villa Santarossa with tears slipping down her cheeks like freshwater pearls. How disappointed he must be that she has none for him today. Her punishment is a well run dry, and so Bunny offers him the only thing she has left: her sweet, empty smile.

They both know that she’s being entirely too forward with her line of questioning, but Bunny Du Pont has succeeded where so many others have failed. Where few topics are truly off-limits for the normally openly amenable and loose-lipped actor, any questions from the media with regards to Celeste he’s persistently deflected over the last two years of his marriage. In his guilelessness, Tomas doesn’t often think of privacy as a tool to protect himself. But he’s always, always understood it as a means to protect his wife, and in so doing— their marriage. 

But in plying his sympathy, Bernadette has discovered the key to unlocking the truth and springing it from his lips. Not the full truth, and still a version of it coated with enough sugar to make it sweet— just as much for the young girl’s sake as for his own. But it’s the closest he’s come to a confession nonetheless, when he opens his mouth to answer her question. “Yeah, you could say that’s experience talking. My wife and I, we’re night and day. The more that time passes, the more aware I become of just how many differences exist between us that I didn’t notice at first. That isn’t a bad thing,” He’s quick to tack-on, “You could just as easily say there’s no chance we’ll get bored of each other any time soon. Her differences make her just as much who she is as the things we have in common. I love her for both.” 

Tomas Sabello doesn’t just search for silver linings; he weaves them into tapestries, sells them into films, tangles himself in them for comfort. 

In a way, he’s wondering if Bernadette’s doing the same when she speaks in soft, but seemingly half-hearted defense of her parents. It might be bias that has him suspecting as much; having heard an earful from Katarina about how sorely those same family figures had failed her. She hadn’t minced her words. He’s wondering if the younger Du Pont is mincing hers, but given that this rendezvous has been facilitated in large part thanks to Eleanor Du Pont’s charming efforts, he wouldn’t be so rude as to ask. So her defense of them goes uncontested, the actor merely offers her a gentle smile when she looks to him as if for comment. 

“Isn’t it a good thing to see the best in people?” He asks instead, smoothly hooking into the next available topic that makes for more appropriate discussion. Bunny’s friends. Among them, Juliana, whom he’d rather not discuss, but can’t escape without incurring the canny socialite’s misgivings. His voice drops to a careful murmur. “If you’re referring to Hector… He isn’t dead.” The actor confesses carefully. “He’s left the city - I don’t know how, I don’t know where - but maybe that means things aren’t as bleak as you imagine them to be.” 

“So maybe, it’s still worthwhile to see the best in people.” Tomas concludes, voice rising again like a frothy, sea-spun tide. He wishes he could answer with equal conviction when she asks why he helped Juliana. It’d been so crystal clear on the night of the Gala; a complete no-brainer. But after she’d kissed him, after he’d cut her out in a desperate bid to keep his heartstrings from tangling, everything had become muddled; like a pool of blood with his battered heart in the middle. He studies the tray of canapes sitting between himself and Bunny, expression faraway. 

“Because I didn’t just see the best in her… I was-… I am sure it exists. And that it’s worth preserving, no matter the colour of her allegiance.”

Another confession. Another truth for Bunny Du Pont’s growing arsenal.

If Bunny is too forward, it is only because she has no wish to go back. For every question Tomas answers, she dares to take bigger bites; for every answer Tomas questions, she waits to see if finally, he will protest. This is no dance, as nimble or quick-footed as it may seem: a stick lashes at her heels, no carrot in sight, and it forces her to tread with intention. It does not mean, however, that the path she follows is straight, and Bunny walks them down a long, winding road. Does she pave the way to salvation, then, if her intentions cannot be considered good?

In response to his story, Bunny smiles. Day and night do not live together; they split custody of time's hours, forever destined to remain apart. “Did you know you loved her when you met her?” Tomas speaks of differences, and commonalities, and she remembers Papa’s story, his hunting trip accident, the way he’d spoken about Mamma. “We have a saying for that, too,” she murmurs. Needless to say, Papa's take on it had not been quite the same. Still, she wonders: does Tomas love her for both, or in spite of both? “I keep wondering how I’ll know,” she says, glancing up at him. “If it’ll be like how it is in the movies.” Perhaps that had been the error of all her previous admirers.

She’s almost sorry, now, that she didn’t invite Celeste. Surely it would be to her detriment to have a Montague emissary pick apart her words, and yet, something about the way he says it piques her curiosity, like an anachronistic stroke of paint. Bunny wants to scrape it off with a scalpel, to skin it alive, if only to see what kind of imperfection she might discover underneath. “I can’t stand when things are boring,” she agrees, rather amicably. How lucky for Tomas, then, that he happens to be an entertainer. “Sometimes I think I dread that most of all.”

But of course she speaks too soon. When Bunny brings up Hector, she invokes a ghost: Brielle frowns at her in the market, groceries cradled in her arms as if she has something of value to protect, and Bunny sneers back, even as a tumour of doubt seeds itself within her, malignant in its shapelessness. All too soon, the memory overwrites itself like a palimpsest, replaced by blood that rushes to her ears in the cadence of Tomas’s cautious voice.

He isn’t dead.

Bunny stills, careful not to react.

How could that be?

No, he must be mistaken; even if it were true, then how would Tomas Sabello, of all people, know such a thing? Just as soon as Bunny would resent him for it, now she thinks it better if Hector were to remain dead. If Tomas is right, then things aren’t as bleak as she’d imagined them to be—they are far bleaker. But for Hector to have escaped the jaws of humiliation, after everything Bunny had been forced to go through? For him to be alive, when she had believed for so long that she would meet a similar, terrible fate?

Bunny trembles at the thought of it, but not out of fear.

She won’t let it ruin her appetite, not like this, not now. Instead, she leaves Hector in her little black box of uncertainty like a pastry she no longer wishes to eat, where he remains stranded in the quantum superposition between states. Her lips curl into a half-moon, her eyes damp but bright, and they reflect the light of his statements in place of revealing her own. “Oh,” she says faintly. Bunny feigns cluelessness so that she doesn’t have to mask the confusion, as if the news relieves her; as if she doesn't wish for Hector to also suffer. “In that case, maybe it is worthwhile.” Were it not so, Tomas would not have told her anything at all.

it’s easier to spend time at katarina’s home than his own little flat. perhaps it’s because it is not his tiny apartment — it’s grand and familiar, something akin to his family’s once-home in spain. he tells himself he doesn’t miss it. he tells himself that there’s little else bringing him to katarina’s than distraction — but he is demeaning the woman and her worth to him in doing so. somehow, somewhere between a blink and a breath, she has become important to him. he doesn’t want to believe it. he doesn’t think he’ll ever admit it. but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. somehow, someway, kat and her cars and her cats have gripped a string of his heart, winding their way into importance.

he still scoffs and is rude and is more childish than he needs be. it’s better that she doesn’t know.

there’s a knock on the door and he looks around briefly. no one besides him is there but it’s still instinctual to check. he’s half-tempted not to answer. if it’s katarina with full hands, that’s her problem and not his — but if it isn’t ? curiosity has never settled well with piero — it’s a little too dreamy, a little too … tempestuous — but he stands and is quick to go answer it.

seeing who it is, he doesn’t bother to conceal the roll of his eyes. bunny du pont. of all the people he could have thought to expect, somehow he didn’t think of her. he’s disappointed. of the two du pont women, his favorite is the elder, obviously. most of the time, he doesn’t quite have care for bunny. but that’s fine: he tells himself he cares for no one else, after all.

the annoyance written across his features drops to a bland expression at her remark. it cuts deep, but he won’t let it show. so to combat that, he feels nothing, he shows nothing. he doesn’t bother to comment ( but ideas of what he could say flit through his mind — he’s allowed here, more importantly usually earnestly welcomed. the idea of copping a blow towards cyrus is appealing — could the pair of them function without the other ? ). instead, he swallows, his lips pursing. “ good afternoon, bunny. “

he stands by the door as she walks in and he considers briefly just walking out and shutting the door behind him. it would be no skin off his back to do so. it’d probably save him some exasperation. instead, he closes the door and turns round on his heels. he walks back to where he previously lay and he’s annoyed to see she’s taken his previous seat. he says nothing, and takes seat in an armchair. he looks around. maybe katarina’s cat will come to eat the younger du pont. it’s a pointless thought — he would never be so lucky.

there’s nowhere to look but at bunny, so he stares at her with deadened eyes. he doesn’t like her. she doesn’t like him. in another life, perhaps he’d hold some admirance towards her. in this one, though ? he isn’t fond of her. he could absolutely not care less. she’s annoying. strike one. she’s arrogant. strike two. she’s a friend of cyrus’. strike three. the list of things he doesn’t care for about her could go on. he doesn’t want to waste his time or energy in giving thought towards her.

the idea of sitting with her, saying nothing, while waiting for kat to come back and bring him some reprieve is agonizing. talking to her ? also agonizing. it’s a lose-lose situation.

when she speaks, he resists the urge to sigh. but he does respond. whether or not he seems interested ? it leans towards not. “ i don’t keep tabs on kat. “ piero gives a little shrug of his shoulders. “ sometimes i’m here and so is she. sometimes we’re both here. sometimes neither of us are. ” he’s struck briefly by how often he is there compared to how often he isn’t. “ maybe text her and ask. she usually answers me quickly. ”

her next comment — the meaning slips by him briefly, and then it stings like a slap to the face. it’s mother’s day. he hadn’t realized. barely, his spine straightens, and the corners of his mouth tug downwards. it’s getting closer and closer towards his parents having been dead a year. how has it not even been a year ? in an avalanche, somehow he’s overwhelmed by thoughts he had done his best to suppress. for a second, he’s gripped by grief he refuses to address. his widened eyes glance around frantically, but when they land on bunny once more, they still. he takes a breath, he shrugs again. “ perhaps once, what’s there to understand now ? i have no one to please anymore, none but the capulets. thinking of them versus my parents ? díos mio. incomparable. ”

he locks eyes with her and stares. it’s a challenge. it’s a warning. don’t press those buttons. but he cannot let her have the last word and so he’s carelessly flippant. “ having dead parents just means there’s a needless weight off my back. perhaps one day you’ll get it. ”

Had Piero been raised in Verona, or even somewhere in France, Heaven forbid she ever consider the possibility of being raised a Spaniard, perhaps they would have learned how to tolerate each other a long time ago. Dislike is too strong of a word for what she feels: Bunny wrinkles her nose and thinks that the space between them tastes like a flat, lukewarm soda, one left out to sit for far too long in the sun. She pointedly ignores his suggestion to text Katarina. After all, she wouldn't want to give her sister the wrong idea.

Sometimes I’m here and so is she, says Piero. Sometimes we’re both here. Sometimes neither of us are. He might as well be telling her the weather forecast. The sky is blue, she hears him intone. Sometimes it’s cloudy. Sometimes it rains. Whatever value the Capulets see in Piero surely cannot be attributed to outstanding conversational skills, and Bunny resists the urge to yawn. Instead, she raises a brow. “Is it so lonely where you are?” she asks, her voice imbued with sympathy. Her smile flickers coyly, like a will-o’-the-wisp intending to lead him astray. As if she means to remedy his dilemma, Bunny gets up from where she sprawls on the divan; she seats herself delicately on the armrest of Piero's chair, and watches his eyes make saccades around the room.

“Yes, I imagine it must be,” she echoes, pretending to humour him. "Incomparable." He’s right on that count, at least, in that their situations are. Her lips curl into a luminous sickle as she angles herself toward him, threads of hair spilling over her shoulder like straw-spun gold. “You don’t miss your parents at all?” She holds his gaze, but only for a moment too long, and with her eyes rimmed in innocence. Will he claim to be brave, then, or heartless? If it’s easy, of course, then it isn’t fun, but it’s starting to make sense to her now: the scintillating personality, the not-quite-indifference towards his parents, why Piero chooses to spend his spare time in the company of a particular thirty-year-old stick-in-the-mud instead of someone his own age.

Harriet listens to the inference of how predictable she had been, withdrawing herself from society in a manner reminiscent of a scared animal had not been her intention; backed into a corner of grief’s design, her only alternative option as her heels scraped the wall being to lash out at the person standing in front of her. If Vivianne was to be proved right Harriet had severed herself from a toxic tumour that had embedded itself onto her side in separating herself, watching as it regrew beneath her very nose as she let her guard down. The knowledge was not lost on her - all she can offer is a brief raise of mouth edges by way of apology - also knowing there is little she would have done different if it happened again.

“Your parents have always been so darling,” she tells the other, in part because she believes it and in part because it is the polite thing to do. It was true that the Du Pont and D’Angelo families had been intrinsically linked for some time - two halves of a figure of eight, inseparable even if they had attempted to pull back from one another. Life long friends, her mother had always described them as though any divergences from the label would be sacrilege in and of itself. “And far too kind to me,” she amends, wondering how after everything that had happened, that Bunny and Katarina’s parents could still think of her in the same manner.

“Work discussion is not suitable conversation for the dinner table.” Harriet is imbued with the spirit of her mother in the moments that she responds, having heard her father be lambasted more than once as they had eaten it was simple to emulate. A treacherous smile pulled at her lips once more, not to be silenced in spite of the sip of coffee that she indulges in to try and tame it. There were instances that she missed it - how simple it all was - how easy the laughter had come to her and the most pressing issue being whether she had finished her homework, or remembered to put her grandfather’s scalpel back where she had found it. “You can tell them I would be delighted to come to dinner,” 

Bunny laughs, retracting her incisors, and it resonates like wine glasses that sing under the touch of damp fingers. “My parents are only as kind as they think people deserve,” she responds. No one could argue that after everything she’d endured, surely Harriet, of all people, deserved kindness, and yet to say that they granted her such sentiments on an altruistic basis would not be entirely correct either. That thinly concealed layer of envy, which an eight-year-old Bunny would later realize masqueraded upon her parents’ expressions as reticence, had long since shed itself from the day of Harriet’s wedding. In the face of her losses, they could safely assert themselves once more.

“It's almost too quiet here, sometimes,” Bunny confesses. She dons her most woeful look as a shroud for good measure, then nips thoughtfully at the lip of her drink. "Don't you think?" And all in spite of the relocation. How badly she’d once wanted to work here. How strange, for someone as well-travelled as she, when she had spent so many summers abroad, nestled deep within a labyrinth of grandeur where oeuvres of beauty were tended to with a loving hand; where those behind the scenes worked tirelessly at maintaining an illusion of timelessness, so that the world could forget, if only for a moment, the ever-encroaching limbs of decay.

But there was no place quite like home, was there? The Twelfth Night had its own charm, made sweeter by the glimmer of pestilence that spoke to something deep within her. She had coveted it since she was a child, peered at it curiously through the looking glass with undeniable want, and once Bunny truly coveted something, it could never resist her for long. The Twelfth Night was meant to be hers. She knew this with an unwavering certainty, beyond her desire to stay close to Rafaella and her own artistic aptitudes for sincere forms of flattery. One day, she would have it in its entirety, or she would not have it at all—

But if Bunny could not have any of it, then she would make sure no one else could, either.

She rises to her feet, the cup in her hand, and wonders what Harriet would think of her if she knew. “Then it’s settled,” Bunny beams. “I’ll tell them it's a surprise guest. They'll be so excited to see you again.” Already, she thinks of how pleased her parents will be to claim that they were the first to host her, and of the extravagant feast they’ll prepare to commemorate having a fourth seat filled at their table, even as she leans in to kiss Harriet's cheek. “Thank you so much for the company," she says, somewhat cryptically. "If anyone’s too kind, it can only be you.”

When she leaves the room, she pours the remainder of her coffee down the sink.

Bunny, Theo believed, did not deserve what she had received at the hands of the others. Wild Capulets, too dazed to notice they were hurting one of their own. It made sense on such a chaotic night, but what did not make sense are the accusations that swiftly turned towards them. She claimed they were high on their concoctions, that it was il sangue that floated through the veins that carried their limbs to beat down upon this defenseless soldier. Such a thing could not be true, Theodora believes incredulously, for it is wholly against the chemical makeup of their product to do such a thing.

Il sangue di fata was designed to block all pain from the body. Even early on, aside from that, Theodora realized its euphoric side effects, the way others wished to dance and sing as this shiny powder took hold of their minds. Violence had never been seen under the influence of their concoctions. While others might have felt the nudge to indulge in their vices while high, Theodora had never seen a case where users felt that carnal urge to destroy. No, it was not quite possible, they were certain. And so, their mind begins to draw conclusions: these people had taken what they thought was il sangue and succumbed to false promises. Those Capulets had mixed il sangue with another substance. The monsters had used their drug as a scapegoat to justify actions either completely sober or while it was wearing off, so they could not be held accountable. Either way, Theodora did not see themself as the target of blame, and Bunny’s pointed accusations did not sit well in the air between them. 

“Do you seek to blame me for the actions of others? For your own misfortunes?” Theodora accuses, feeling the likewise anger rise in them. The heat of their anger is not a flame, however. Instead, it is steam, mysterious and swirling as it rises, drawing the eye, seeming harmless until it touches your skin with a searing pain. “Do you wish to go back further in the blame? If it weren’t for your parents, you wouldn’t be born, and none of this would have happened to you, either.” I hope it hurt. So she wished to spear them. They will do the same, only their blade is whetted with the poisons only they can concoct. Had Bunny not come so viciously, had the wounded animal not learned to snap at anyone offering a gentle hand, perhaps Theodora could have helped, could have explained what they believed of all of this. But to bite the petty hand that has the answers is to damn yourself in the fae kingdom. “Perhaps you should blame your parents.” Perhaps you should not be here.

Perhaps you should blame your parents.

Is there anything, Bunny wonders, for which one does not? She glances at them, her gaze curious yet haughty. “Do you find that it helps to blame yours?” she echoes. Perhaps this is how Theodora chooses to see her now, as a spoiled infant who knows nothing of gratitude. She does not claim to know much about their childhood. Even so, Bunny thinks herself singular. To be spoiled is different from what it means to be ungrateful, but many mistake the two to be the same.

Her parents weaned her on the world. They gave her its still-bleeding head on a silver platter, and in return, they asked for comparatively little. Why should Bunny believe that she should have never been born, when she had always been told the world would be poorer without her in it? She was their sweet, precocious, avaricious baby girl; they fed her sugar by the spoonful until it caramelized in her blood, until she could neither taste nor feel it any longer, until she was left to rot in excess with a gnawing, insatiable hunger. She had never once starved, never once come close to knowing the ache of poverty—no, her need was pathological, born of a world so far removed from survival that only in the prison of gilded cages did such things fester and thrive beyond all reason.

How keenly people invoked Sisyphus, but what of Tantalus in his stead? Of course Bunny sought to blame others. There she stood, knee-deep in a pool of water from which she could never drink; doomed to forever lie beneath her own personal tree of knowledge, one whose branches receded only when she would reach for its empty promises and fruitful answers. But to blame her parents, when the truth was that they hadn’t known any better? She knew they had done their best to do right by her, as if they could settle the wrongs of an embittered past. How could she possibly fault them for that?

“I thought you might care about the reputation of il sangue,” Bunny replies coldly. Her face grows pale, her lips tinged blue in the winter light. Is this not the beauty of human error, so multifaceted in its flaws, in its insistence that the human response is terrible yet wonderful, at once a treacherous and innocuous thing? How unpredictable, how mysterious, how entirely individual in its behaviour. Surely even the Fair Folk envy how science bends to human nature, for there are natures, being human, that even by design, science cannot predict.

In retrospect, it matters little. Il sangue di fata’s name has been sullied. Orpheus is dead. If anyone else still hurts from the events of la purga, then it can only be Theodora, yet Bunny still bares her teeth, exposed like free nerve endings, the only salve for a girl who knows no other way to feel. She is glad for their anger: hostility is easier to weather than the sting of kindness, and far simpler to endure than the insult of pity. Besides, if Bunny cannot blame her parents, and if she cannot blame Theodora, then where does that leave her? Grasping at straws as she falls from grace, as she tumbles down into the abyss below, into its open arms and chasmal gaze—

These are the sequelae of her actions: that she will never forget how the panic begins to set in, or how the darkness seems to crack Maeve open from her center, spilling forth like the tears that overflow until she cannot see; that she will forever remember the way the gravity of the situation pulls her into its embrace, like the hungriest of lovers, and the way the light both starts to leave her and lead her to the place of no return.

Black holes form from the death of a massive star.

Maeve is dying, and it marks the beginning of a catastrophe she cannot escape.

Trigger warnings: suicide, animal cruelty, gore, asphyxiation

‘Tell me, is that what marriage is like? To have someone who supports your every wish, with whom you can share your every dream?…’

Bunny leans forward and Tomas has to resist the impulse to lean back in response. Not from the girl herself, but from the words that tumble from her lips and hunt him down in turn. Wasn’t that the hope, once? That that’s exactly what marriage would be?… How naïve, how much more bogged down and unromantic the truth.

“I’m afraid it’s not quite as simple as that…” The actor begins, shifting in his seat as he wonders how to put it. He could lie, he’s done so enough times in front of the cameras – white lies to soothe a fantasy-loving public, gentle subterfuge to protect his marriage and his wife – but to do so here, over a brunch that’s supposedly staged for the sole purpose of having the Du Ponts’ youngest daughter learn something from him, feels a step beyond requisite dishonesty. He’ll spare her the bullshit if he’s meant to be doing some good.

…Though, not enough to throw Celeste under the bus in order to achieve it.

“Your spouse could be really different from you,” He explains carefully, keeping his tone light and practical. For a Romantic, it isn’t easy. He hadn’t thought about half of this stuff before getting on one knee. Not really, not to the merciless extent that it’s hitting him in hindsight. “You might not actually agree with – or support – their every wish… And they might not be able tosupport yours.” The actor’s mind travels to countless discussions, some mild, others heated to scalding potential, about Celeste’s investment in the mafia, about his own criticisms of it, about the possibility of leaving Verona altogether versus the risks of staying long-term… 

“Sometimes it’s inevitable that you won’t agree. Sometimes, you might not even get along – but that’s where love becomes so important.” He adds quickly, lest Bunny perch on the wrong part of that confession.“You don’t forget it. You don’t let the bad outweigh the good. You love each other and you keep going.”

It’s not so dissimilar in a friendship, and as Bunny alludes to the one she shares with Maeve and Juliana, Tomas finds himself nodding in agreement. “I understand,”He doesn’t – not in the way she means, “It speaks highly of both her friends and her choice in them that you worry about her. But… She’s not-…” He falters for a moment, considering those words. Going off with strangers, Bunny says, and for a minute (a minute too late), the actor can’t tell whether she’s alluding to the way he ferried the heiress out of harm’s way at Mona Chen’sGala – or whether Juliana’s disclosed anything about that ill-fated kiss. There’sa beat of silence that he feels ricocheting against the walls of his heart.This time, rather than assume, rather than placate her politely, the actor asks her outright. “What are you afraid of?”

And yet it’s his turn to lean forward when Bunny suspects that he’d feel nothing but contempt for those who merely fill the roles they’ve been given. “No! Not at all,” He argues, shaking his head emphatically. “Not everyone has a choice. I know-… I know that it’s a luxury to get a choice, and that especially in Verona, withthe way things are… Not everyone gets one.” His words are vague but the intended meaning is clear: Children don’t choose their families. Children can’t always choose to reject their parents’ alliances. The implication is strong enough that he’s referring to politics, though he won’t express it so rudely over a meal – but as soon as those words leave his mouth, Tomas wonders whether it’s something else entirely Bunny’s referring to. 

He can’t help the way his mind travels to Katarina – after-all, she’s the Du Pont he’d befriended first –and to the gossip that had always clung to her much-discussed refusal of her parents’ aristocratic precedent.

He wagers that it’s also not a polite topic for brunch.

Which is why the actor merely opts to listen, attentiveness written in his features as Bunny wonders openly what it’d be like to go against the grain. It’s athought that’s interrupted by their waiter, who comes bearing lavish trays of food. Finally, Tomas grins. “I changed my mind - You’re welcome to any liver so long as it isn’t my own. Bon Appetit, mademoiselle. Did I get it right? I’m afraid I only learnt the essentials.”

.

She lays it on thick, and then wonders too late if he considers her thick-headed. “Pas du tout,” she replies easily. “C'était bien fait.” Bunny picks up her spoon, watching as it glints silver in the sun. She waits for the waiter to leave before she continues. “I hope you won’t think it too forward of me to ask if you speak from experience,” she says, pretending to be none the wiser. Isn’t that how the old adage goes, that opposites attract? How often had the question of marriage come up when the three of them were children? Not that any of them had cared enough to be honest about it: Juliana, ever so faithfully, had stated only the obvious; Maeve had glanced at her briefly, then said she didn’t know; Bunny had smiled and set her sights on Tiberius as he left the villa, hoping to scandalize them.

She mulls over his words thoughtfully. Everyone has a choice. They need only look closer, and yet many still do not, because to accept the alternative is far easier; in doing so, they fail to realize they have already made theirs. Bunny chose to join the Capulets. She made that decision on her own, independent of her parents, and one day, she will have to take responsibility for it. But if Tomas intends to extend that deadline as a knight in shining armour—a choice that would be consistent with his pattern of behaviour—then perhaps it will provide some necessary insight on his prior reasons for acting as such. So Bunny will not disagree with him openly, nor will she prove disagreeable. Instead, she plays her part.

“I won’t fault them for simply wanting what’s best for me,” she says softly. The film of her smile fades. It decays with the half-life of a radioactive isotope, even though it has only ever lived half a life to begin with. “Or for taking away certain choices of mine, if only because they missed their chance to make better ones.” Such a notion, of course, is inherently ridiculous. She tamps down on her pride to draw forth his sympathy. It isn't as if she needs further assistance with obscuring her intentions, but she dabs at her mouth with her napkin all the same, unable to pinpoint why speaking of her parents in such a manner sours on her tongue. Then she blinks up at him to see if he might correct her. In truth, however, she already expects his response.

Tomas claims that love is so important, that one must keep going in spite of disagreements, that the bad must not outweigh the good. It follows that he will not protest. Their spring brunch plays out like a low-budget movie; if cannibalism is present, it lies only in its shameless regurgitation of another film that came before it. Bunny knows how this story goes. But she must leave with more than an autograph, or she cannot leave at all. If she could, she would ask him a question in lieu of a game. Tell me, she would say to Tomas, presenting him with three objects of their parents' desire, which of the following does not belong with the others?

Once, she’d been afraid of the answer. She'd dreaded the way Juliana and Maeve’s laughter seemed to resonate so easily, a soundless horror, a frequency she had to pretend she could always hear. She knows better now than to lose sleep over something so insipid. Now, she must convince him that they were once cut from the same cloth. “I am afraid of their hearts,” she answers absently, “and of their tendency to see the best in people.” How readily they loved; how rarely she loved, if at all; and how reluctantly she loved them, in spite of it.

“In November, I accepted help from someone I thought to be similar.” Bunny stops, realizing that she has never spoken openly, willingly, about this before. A familiar bitterness rises in her throat, corrosive like stomach acid. She waits for it to settle. “I wanted to ask him why he'd helped me,” she continues brightly, after a pause, “but they seem to have buried him with his secrets.” The Montagues had gifted her with a pair of bloody fish, wrapped in Hector's jacket. It had been presented that day at the Cathedral, along with all the other evidence used to indict her. How very Sicilian of them, to send such a message: to say that Hector Rivera now slept with the fishes, and that they waited to see how the Capulets would respond in kind. “For a long time, I thought I would end up the same.”

Some things take far longer than a bullet wound to heal. “And yet, I can’t help wondering if maybe he intended for it to turn out like this.” It was easier, after all, to hate him that way. One could not ask questions of the dead. But she smiles flimsily at the thought of desecrating his grave, of robbing it for those secrets, and of walking on his bones, and then of piecing together the fragments herself. “So you will forgive me, signore, if I don’t trust so easily anymore.” Her eyes still water from the memory of such a rancid smell. In spite of it, her gaze remains steady. So you will forgive me, signore, she means, if I must ask you. “Why did you help Juliana?”

walking on shards // @stlapin may 10th, community center, early evening

Ramona wasn’t quite sure why she was here, and the uncertainty rooted itself into her bones as though it was what held them together in place of sinew and muscle. It stiffened her arms as she crossed them crookedly against her chest, tightened her shoulders and hunched them rigidly as she leaned against the wall in a lonesome corner and turned the question over and over in her mind – why am I here?

At the beginning, it had been a dual matter of honoring her brother’s memory and acknowledging that her own hand was one out of the many that had stolen him away. It hadn’t quite helped her feel better, as it emphasized the hollow, ache-filled truth that she had only lent Andrés the support he had needed once he was far beyond receiving it. Yet even though it had taken away the safety of obliviousness and the comfort of deniability, it had given her something far more precious in return – understanding. Attending the support group gave her insight that allowed her to understand the cruel cluster of circumstances that had sent him scurrying down the path towards his own tragic, unforeseen end – and in turn, it helped her acknowledge and come to terms with it in a way that she would have certainly failed to grasp otherwise. Before, that had been her reason; to feel closer to the ghost that never left her side.

Even though that reason remained, it didn’t feel quite so simple now. Standing here as she was, stomach curdling with dread and back bowed underneath a hundred toppling burdens, it felt as though Ramona was punishing herself; and such was how she found the answer to her question. Why was she here? Well, the reason was this: she was reminding herself that just as she had failed to save Andrés, she had failed to save Valentina. And even though their deaths were different, the dastardly result was one and the same; she was left shouldering the loss, and could do nothing but heave as she reminded herself of how she had earned the weight, and how she was deserving of it.

Scathing tears sprung to her eyes, yet before she could even grapple with holding them at bay, a presence was suddenly appearing at her side, with a plastic cup of water suddenly in her line of sight and a halo of golden curls shining in her periphery. Ramona tentatively took hold of the cup, then blinked up at her unexpected companion. Her lips parted, yet when no words came forth, she merely offered a waning smile, muttering, “Thanks. Was it really so obvious that I needed it?”

.

A vast number of groups frequented La Scaligera, and to her credit, Bunny Du Pont had attended no small number of them. Perhaps boredom had driven her to such strange habits: one game of Othello had led to a society meeting on the cultural preservation of backgammon, and from there, she had stumbled upon a group on the woes of incontinence, and yet another advocating for low-FODMAP diets in the gut-sensitive. If the various associations and societies noticed a cherubic, golden-haired creature among their ranks, present one moment and absent the next, they paid her no mind.

It was not so much a matter of mockery, she thought, as it was a study in character. Given the proper material and the right medium, she could be an apt pupil, and so sitting through sessions at the recreation center had turned into something of a hobby, as well as a lesson in learning—a welcome transition from the more serious matters of the heart, though she by no means meant her own.

Bunny had recently switched her Fridays over to the Cat Fanciers’ Association. Though she didn’t fancy cats in particular, what she did fancy was attention. Katarina had adopted two cats. One had nearly bitten off her pinky before slinking away, and as someone to whom animals had always taken a shine, Bunny was more determined than ever to win him over. Upon reading the atmosphere of the room, however, it soon became clear that somewhere along the way, she had taken a wrong turn. This was no society of cat purists. No, she had stumbled, rather accidentally, upon a bereavement group, and as is characteristic of those who have not yet carried the burden of intense personal loss, Bunny found herself intrigued.

So she'd stayed through the session and observed quietly, while across the floor, another individual did the same; with the meeting concluded, it seemed it was only fitting that Bunny should approach her. “Some people are good at telling,” she replies, “and also at not telling.” She takes a seat in the adjacent chair, equal measures prim and proper, and begins to probe. Why hadn’t she spoken? What story did she have to hide? “I might have missed it, but is the proper etiquette for a newcomer to simply listen?”

As Ramona’s face fills with emotion, Bunny waits respectfully for the tears to subside. Her expression remains serene, even bordering on understanding, and yet a part of her can’t help hoping anyway that she looks prettier when she cries. (Does ugliness lend itself to authenticity?) Regardless, she accepts her thanks with the utmost grace. “You never know what kind of people you might come across here,” she muses, her voice thoughtful. She looks into her own cup, then offers Ramona a honeyed smile in return. “I do worry that someone might try to take advantage of a person's grief.”

Tragedy is not always fair when it strikes. It does, however, make good on its promise to always choose its victims blindly, though those lucky enough to be spared will never know how close its pointer falls on the wheel of misfortune; instead, they take comfort in the knowledge that they are safe, and then they convince themselves that they were never once at risk to begin with.

Such is the inevitable security of retrospection, and it is for these reasons that Bunny so easily mounts the steps to Katarina’s palazzo in a white smock dress with puff sleeves, seemingly unperturbed by the ghosts that have since taken up residence in her home. Today isn't a designated day for sisters, after all—not that Katarina would warrant any form of gratitude, even if it were—and there are better places to go and more exciting things to do, not to mention far more important people to see. So she knocks impatiently, only for the door to swing open as soon as her hand reaches it.

The person standing in front of her is decidedly not Katarina. After a beat, Bunny blinks up at him through her lashes. “Looks like Kitty really has let herself go these days,” she says sweetly, her words far too sly to be innocent. “We don’t usually let the help work out of uniform, Pietro.” She’d made it clear to Cyrus that she had little patience for such petty grievances; if she wanted to be bored to sleep, she could do so well enough without him. At such a vantage point, however, she would be remiss if she didn’t take a closer look, and so she smiles at the boy who has somehow earned both Cyrus’s ire and Tiberius’s guidance. Neither feat is insignificant, but as she searches his face, her interest wanes. Even a disgraced soldier’s assistant still trumps an initiate, do they not?

Personally, she doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. Bunny slips gracefully past him into the interior of the palazzo, her cotton sleeve just barely grazing his arm. None of it explains what Piero is doing here. She collapses onto the nearest divan and props herself up against its upholstered headboard, chin overtop the back of her hands, looking for all purposes like a delicately crumpled calla lily. Katarina herself is nowhere to be found.

Harriet interprets the absence of a dismissal as an invitation, stepping further into the room, her hip coaxing the door back toward the cavity in the wall it occupied with a nudge. Already tempted. Amusement emerges in the form of gentle laughter exhaled through parted lips, teasing the edge of her mouth upward after it left her. Fingers reluctantly detach from the disposable cup, relinquishing the comforting warmth the container imbued her with, both hands wrapping around her own after leaving the other one down on the table within Bernadette’s reach.

“You deserve to be spoiled, Bunny,” she quips with ease, mirroring the thoughts she was sure were not unfamiliar to the youngest DuPont. Harriet remembered fragments of her youth, watching the DuPont’s lavish their youngest with everything her heart might desire was something that Harriet - contented Harriet - could not understand. Why did she need so much? How did she not appreciate what she had? The memory, even now, seemed to slip through her fingers - hard to grasp long enough to truly understand it - like granules of sand that she could see sprinkled across her friend’s presence, remnants of her past.

“It’ll be a while before they miss me,” her comment is dismissive, without being rude, the intermittent work that she had taken on for the Natural History Museum as a favour to her former manager something without a looming deadline, she able to work at her own pace. It meant that she was uprooted from her office at the Twelfth Night when she was called upon (and when she was free to leave) but, in recent times, her leave of absence had transformed into a blessing. The museum had become busier in recent times, finding now that, if she had to choose, she preferred the novelty quiet nostalgia of her past compared to the loud chaos of her present.

Harriet hoists herself onto the desk, slotting neatly into the proffered space, legs crossing at the ankles while she indulges in another sip of coffee. “It’s out secret, of course I won’t,” her mouth twitches upward in tandem with one eyelid, an assurance with an accompanying wink, remnants of the child she had known Bunny DuPont as bubbling to the surface of her exterior even now; the endearing naivete that melted stubborn expressions like butter. “You can tell me anything, Bunny,” she reassures, shoulders rising then falling in a swift shrug to diminish the severity of her next statement, “I don’t have anyone else to tell.” 

It was the truth, a crucial piece of what made Harriet herself, with no cards of her own - no ulterior motive to boast about - it meant that she was left without the inherent need to gossip, to share what information others bestowed on her. There were a few, however, a few people who managed to bypass the extraneous self-preservation techniques that she had established over the years but even they were rare in number, rarer still that a situation arose where she would need to share something she had been told with them.

You deserve to be spoiled, says Harriet, and with a great deal of superciliousness, Bunny sinks her teeth into her words. What could anyone possibly know of what she deserves? She sits up straighter and laces her fingers together, the fatigue sliding like water off her back. You deserve to be spoiled, she says, and Bunny gazes up at her old family friend with moon-eyed delight. Is that so, dear Harriet? The statement thrashes about wildly in her mouth, still caught between her lips in the throes of death. Spoil me, then.

When Bunny responds, it is with equally deceptive levity. “You might have someone to tell,” she pouts, “if you paid us a visit more often.” The ever since goes unspoken. She looks over at Harriet and remembers, if only briefly, the news about her son. “My parents miss you plenty,” she continues, her smile as effervescent as her praise. "They would love to have you for dinner.” She’d made a similar joke not too long ago on a restaurant terrace with Tomas Sabello; now, of course, she speaks not of a fictional cannibalistic serial killer but a pride of lions, and how prideful they are indeed. “I know they think the world of you."

The Du Ponts thought the world of only themselves, and they thought of only themselves as the world. It was true, however, that her parents had always seen Harriet in a favourable light. There was something to be envied in the D'Angelos despite their recent string of tragedies. After all, they had achieved with Harriet what the Du Ponts had never quite managed with Katarina. “But they’re terrible gossips.” Bastian in particular had a penchant for encouraging unconsolidated rumours; when asked properly, her mother would take a secret to the grave. “So you mustn’t tell them about what shenanigans we get up to here,” she says to Harriet, her voice hushed. She raises a finger to her lips, speaking with such seriousness that the effect of it appears almost comical, and so they sit in their little closet, hidden from sight, while the Capulets linger like rot inside its walls.

What her parents didn’t know couldn’t hurt them. That was the philosophy by which Bunny lived. It was not so difficult to understand: she merely thought she was doing for them what they thought they were doing for her, and though such sentiments were perhaps ridiculous, at the very least, they were reciprocated. The hand that fed her had done so much too indulgently; nothing could result from such constant excess other than an attenuation of the happiness that was to be had from consuming it. Still, she would not bite, even if her sweet smile had always hid jagged stalactites for teeth; even if she was left with a hunger that could not be sated and sought the remedy on her own.

Secrets were not shameful things, but they were individual property—meant to be whispered into a hole and covered with mud, to be stowed away neatly in the dark until the time was appropriate. They had no place in common spaces.

It was enough to accept the truth of their existence.