#{{;;starter}}

❝Madara-sama...Kagami is out for a minute... if it's him you're looking for. ❞

It was safe to assume so...it was his house after all...and one of his shirts she was wearing...

Auriel always seemed to feel a special kind of  thrill whenever she did this. Stealing one of her lady’s maid’s plain dresses and worn slippers, stashing away her silks and jewels, slipping from the place she was meant to be, and vanishing into the world below as though she was nobody important at all. For at least a little while, she could pretend she was not a princess and could wander without every little move she made being watched and analyzed.

This time, however, was a little different.

The tips of her fingers were still stained black from the charcoal she had used to dull the silver of her hair, darkening the strands that might otherwise reveal her true identity. In King’s Landing, whenever she wanted to escape from the Red Keep, her pale hair could be excused easily enough with any number of convenient lies. But here, at Ashford Meadow, with half the realm gathered to gawk at knights and princes for a little girls nameday celebration, silver hair would have been as good as announcing herself with a herald’s trumpet.

So she kept the rest of her braids that she couldn’t color with the coal tucked beneath the hood of her cloak and wandered freely through the press of merchants, mummers, knights, and smallfolk. Her violet eyes moved over everything with intense curiosity. Over the ribbons dyed in impossible colors, little wooden toys carved in the shapes of dragons and stags, sweets dusted with sugar and topped with preserved lemons, bolts of cloth that shimmered in the sun. The whole meadow seemed alive, louder and rougher and more wonderful than anything she was permitted to touch from behind the velvet rope of her station. After a while, however, her curiosity gave way to hunger. Her stomach gave a quiet rumble just as her gaze landed on a fruit seller’s stall. There, piled high among apples and pears, sat the ripest peach she was sure she had ever seen, its skin flushed rose and gold beneath the afternoon sun. Without thinking — forgetting for a moment, not who she was, but who she appeared to be — Auriel stepped closer and plucked it from the basket. She had barely lifted it to her lips when the stall owner’s voice cracked through the air.

“Oi! You planning to pay for that?”

Auriel froze as several nearby heads turned and her heart dropped straight into her stomach. Only then did she remember the one crucial thing she had forgotten in all her clever preparations: coin.

“I—” Her expression faltered, confusion giving way to embarrassed alarm. “I apologize. I did not mean to— I have no money with me.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, his hand already reaching across the stall as if to snatch the fruit back. “Then put it down, girl.”

Auriel drew the peach closer to her chest on instinct, more startled really than defiant. “No, please, you misunderstand. If you allow me to return to the castle and speak with Prince Baelor, I am certain he can settle this properly.”

That, unfortunately, only made him look at her as though she had grown a second head.

“The castle?” he barked, loud enough now that more people began to look. “Prince Baelor, is it? And I suppose the king himself will come down from King’s Landing to pay for your breakfast?”

A bright red blush colored Auriel’s cheeks beneath the shadow of her hood and suddenly she felt every inch of the borrowed dress, every smudge of charcoal on her fingers, and every single stare turning her from an invisible girl into the leading star of a scene.

Aurelia exhales slowly as she paces outside the office door, sandals squeaking against the polished floor in tight, restless arcs. She knows she has to do this. She has known it since the moment the plan was laid bare in front of her in Mistral, since Atlas closed its skies and Solitas became a fortress behind Ironwood’s walls of protocol. Knowing, however, does nothing to make it easier.

They need a way to Solitas. They need to get the Lamp to Atlas before Ironwood’s tightening web of restrictions strangles every remaining route in and out of the kingdom. Airships are locked down. Civilian travel is suspended. Military convoys are being watched, logged, and vetted to death.

But there is one loophole left.

The Krome fleet.

Cobalt Krome, Cerulean’s younger brother, controls one of the largest private fleets on Remnant. His vessels cross every ocean, dock in every kingdom, and operate under a labyrinth of corporate treaties and trade protections that even Atlas would hesitate to challenge outright. If anyone can get a small group and a very dangerous Relic across the sea, it’s Cobalt. But of course, to reach Cobalt…she has to go through Cerulean.

That bitter irony sits heavy in her chest.

Because Cerulean Krome is not just a powerful industrialist or a convenient political gatekeeper. He is the man she left standing at the altar nearly seventeen years ago. The man she humiliated in front of all of high society, whose future she shattered with a single, irreversible, selfish choice. One moment she was supposed to become Mrs. Krome; the next, she was gone, vanishing from his life and leaving him with nothing but silence and unanswered questions.

Brother of Light above…of all the people in Remnant, it had to be him.

Aurelia stops pacing, folding her arms around herself as if she can physically hold her ribs together. Her fingers curl into the fabric of her sleeves, knuckles tight. She can already picture him on the other side of that door—composed, immaculate, carved from restraint and ice. Cerulean never did anything halfway. He would be polite. Controlled. Devastating.

And she would have to ask him for help.

That’s why she sent everyone else away. Qrow. Maria. Ozpin. The kids.

She couldn’t do this with witnesses. Couldn’t let them see how badly this still tears at her, how deep this old scar runs, how part of her still aches with the weight of what she did. This isn’t about guilt, she tells herself. This is about the Lamp. This is about Victoria. This is about keeping the people you love alive.

Still, the past waits just beyond that door, wearing Cerulean Krome’s face. And after one last, trembling breath, Aurelia reaches for the handle and steps inside.

The door clicks shut behind her with a final, echoing weight that makes her flinch and for a second she just stands there, taking in the view of the office.

“…Cerulean,” she says softly, his name tasting strange and old on her tongue. She swallows, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “It's...nice to see you again. Thank you for taking this meeting with me.”

The night was still. So quiet. The only sound the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock made in a style he wasn't used to. The space beside him empty...cold...

Slowly, the pale light across the ceiling came into view, the blond man slowly sat up and looked around the empty room. He wasn't there...his bed was empty. Sherlock was wandering again.

Making sure the cloth tied over his left eye was secure, William left the bedroom and easily found him in the kitchen--cigarette in hand. He was silent, watching the detective for a moment, then closed the distance, placing a hand on Sherlock's back.

"...Can't sleep, Sherly?"

He gave a soft smile, a gentle way to say 'me too', as he took the cigarette and stubbed it out in the ash tray.

“Oh, Maeglin!”

Auriel calls out for the other elf, quickening her pace until she slips into step beside him. There is a sickly sweetness to her smile. Far too sweet, in fact, the kind she rarely, if ever, grants him. Anyone who knows her well would recognize it at once for what it is: the calm before a wholly uncontrollable storm of mischief. Still, she lays her hands upon his shoulders, as if nothing at all were amiss.

“Idril has asked me to fetch you,” she says, her voice syrupy sweet. “Come along.”

Thrown out amongst the trash in a dirty alley, much to his disgust, to his chagrin, such was a rather usual fate for those like him. He could only count himself lucky he survived this time. He couldn't use his status to save himself. Not now, not ever.

That time has passed, long ago.

Thunder rolled overhead...those clouds were getting darker. The rain was getting heavier, he still couldn't move lest his body scream at his defiance.

The twilight hour had finally arrived, causing the vampiress to stir and awaken. She moved about the top floor of her home languidly, she had no pressing affairs to attend to, no expected appointments or guests. Sonja had only just pulled on her housecoat over her shift when she heard floorboards creak downstairs, along with the thrumming heartbeat of several beings.

A glance to the clock on the mantel told her it was almost midnight, far too late for most mortals to be wandering about. And from how they crept about, it seemed that someone was foolish enough to break into a vampire's residence at night to rob them.

She'd didn't recognize the voices she could hear faintly, so she proceeded downstairs. She kept herself cloaked in the shadows, only a few oil lamps were lit by her surprise guests. Sonja didn't require them to see her way through the house, and it gave quite the breadcrumb trail to lead her right to them, even if their scent alone would have allowed her to track them.

The vampiress moved from the shadows to stand in the centre of a doorway, watching with bemusement as the group of men rifled through her cupboards. It seemed they were trying to loot her home, but were frustrated by her lack of valuables. She didn't keep much in out in the open or displayed in cupboards. Truly, she couldn't believe the sight before her and she began to laugh.

"Gentlemen, if you would be so kind as to simply take a seat and explain your visit, it would be appreciated. You entered freely and of your own will, no?" She called out, hardly concerned. From what she could tell, they appeared to be mortals. Cowboys, possibly outlaws by the look of their weaponry. "