toxidromes

date: 7 giugno 2019 location: Byblos Art Hotel Villa Amista status: closed, for @theodoramoreaus​

It’s quite unfortunate that Astrid was not in the know about Theodora and Katarina’s falling out. It’s more than surprising that as much of a gossip neither she nor her new fiance Leandro had not heard about it. 

Instead of sitting closer to Theodora and spending her time at the engagement party speaking with her, the blonde sits only partly listening to Elisabeth Montuori talk about her five year old son Amedeo. From the photos she proudly (and rather loudly) shared, the young boy is a spoiled thing with a splotchy, pinched complexion that mirrors his father who sits on the other side of Elisabeth (and by Kat’s count is on his fourth pour of bourbon). Somehow, the parroting brunette has even managed to damper her sweet tooth, and Katarina only half-heartedly picks at the slice of chocolate cake she’s been served. 

Why exactly Astrid Scaletta had felt the need to celebrate her engagement party with over half of the people she’d graduated with over a decade ago escapes her. But, without work as an excuse, the blonde could find no real reason to reject the invitation. Besides, she’d liked Astrid plenty when they’d been in school (at least as much as you can like someone who butchered her French worse than anyone she knew). It’s just rather awkward to not be able to strike up a conversation with the woman who up until two months ago Katarina had considered to be one of her closest friends, and with the seating chart of the event, was seated beside them. 

She’s half-tempted to shove her slice of cake into Elisabeth’s mouth if it would get her to stop chirping about her son. 

Quietly, though perhaps not quietly enough, Katarina mutters low under her breath between an irritated bite of cake. “If you’re done talking about your son that you always pass off to nannies, maybe you’ll tell us about your new assistant of the month. Andres? I heard he was a part-time model.” Wrinkling her nose at Elisabeth when she turns towards her husband, she washes down the bite of chocolate cake with wine, and makes a face at the poor pairing it makes. A different one would be better, Katarina decides, and she takes her napkin from her lap to stand before the inevitable speeches are to begin. 

These sorts of environments are no trouble to Theodora, and was actually one of those in which they thrived. They knew sometimes they were invited by old acquaintances for all that surrounded their appearance, and they couldn’t exactly blame any of them for doing so. They were enigmatic as always, floating about with billowy fabric accompanying them. Many tried to engage in small talk, and all seemed to walk away with more questions than answers, exactly the way Theodora liked it.

But in the moments they were confined to their assigned seat, Theodora’s mystery became more of a wall than the swirling clouds that normally followed them. Their last interaction with Katarina had left everything between them so tense, and they could not help but feel more shut out by her than they had when they first brought up the issue. They were sat right next to each other, and Theodora knew there was no point in trying to make awkward small talk when Kat was clearly unwilling to share anything with them in the first place, including the fact that she’d planned to come to this function in the first place.

They listen to Elisabeth’s story primarily because it’s the only noise close enough to focus on, and they’re certainly unable to strike up a conversation with Kat. The topic of children has never interested Theodora, who never plans on having any of their own. They aren’t the only person not quite invested in this portrayal of a wholesome family, they learn as they hear Kat’s voice clearly beside them. “If you’re going to start something, at least say it loud enough for everyone to hear. People love a good show,” they mutter, sipping their own wine after. They mean it in a way that is not bitter, unlike the wine that slips down their throat. Truly, they would be more than amused to see the room erupt into chaos, and they had a feeling Kat might, as well.

It almost makes her laugh that Theodora thinks this had ever been about winning. Victories didn’t always lie in triumph; that was a lesson she’d learned long ago. She supposes, in a way, that it’s a good thing her fellow emissary has read her so wrong, never one to want to be an open book. Lucrezia would hate to be predictable. “I’m sure if you had a spouse who Matthias injured in the past, you’d feel a little differently about whether or not to fight him.” The love she’d once felt for him may very well have evaporated but that didn’t mean she was going to let a Montague lay their hands on Mikael. Not to mention the fact that he’d spilled Easton’s blood too.

A long sigh is exhaled, wanting to make it quite clear just how tiresome it was to consistently have everyone judge her admittedly-slightly-less-than-moral actions. “Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you’re Matthias. You want to hurt me. You want to fucking kill me, even. And then you shoot and you realise that I’m entirely capable of letting you instead injure someone who’s innocent.” Lucrezia flashes a grin, as quick as the bullet that had landed in Harriet’s shoulder. “You’d probably reconsider spontaneously trying to murder me next time, no?” Whether that message would manage to make its way through Matthias’ skull remained to be seen, but it was certainly an intriguing experiment. It was a pity, quite frankly, that Theodora couldn’t appreciate that. “I made my move. Whether he wants to keep playing this game and risking more civilian casualties is up to him.”  

Their ire doesn’t quite hit its mark in Lucrezia, who stares at them blankly in the exact same way she had once regarded her teachers as they attempted to right the wrongs living inside a child who pushed too many boundaries. “You’re contradicting yourself. I can’t pick a fight I won’t win and be a coward, surely? But I will let you have selfish, why not.” This time she does laugh, a tinderwood-dry sound. “But show me a fucking Capulet who isn’t.”

Living, in and of itself, is a war. It was the first lesson Theodora had ever learned, in fact. On their own, against the elements and a world that turned a blind eye to their suffering, they’d learned that living was not a guaranteed thing, that they would have to strengthen themself to stay alive. The war was less about the physical, fighting strength they did not possess, but it was a war nonetheless, made up of endless battles. Lucrezia had attempted to win this battle against Matthias, and in the process, engaged Harriet in a battle for her life she had not come prepared to fight that night. Civilian casualties did not sit well with Theodora, not in this instance. “You forget me, Lucrezia,” they reply, smug with the fact that it seemed as if she’d never truly known them to begin with, exactly how they liked it. “I’ve patched up Orpheus numerous times when he’s fought Matthias Warren. Sometimes there were minor wounds, other times he was hurt very badly. I’ve even seen Warren do it myself. But I did not once find myself stirred, my fury directed at a fight I could never win, because I know it is not my fight to join. If your husband was foolish enough to get involved with him, that’s not your problem, nor is it mine, and nor is the problem of the woman you injured, especially.”

There was nothing that could excuse Lucrezia’s actions, in Theodora’s mind. Sure, they could imagine the panic she felt at the momentary realization that this man could end her life, but they still remembered what she had done to get herself into the situation, in the first place. “If I were Matthias Warren, I wouldn’t have considered killing you until you stabbed me first. I can feel no pity for you when your own poorly considered actions got you to where you were in the first place.” There was no hiding the disdain they felt, and truly, they felt no need to. “You poked the bear and then threw someone into the carnage when you couldn’t handle his claws. What did you truly expect?”

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—

She will not stare into it only to find her own choices staring back.

“No, I don’t,” Theodora conceded with a shrug. Though, as surprising as their response might have been at first, it made perfect sense when they began to speak again. “Of course, that’s because I never knew my parents, and I can’t even begin to imagine a single thing about them. Perhaps I was never born at all, but placed upon this earth and thus have no parents to blame.” They’re musing is incredulous, of course, a way of keeping mystery about them and to keep them from exposing too much about where they’d come from, but it did not erase the fact that they had no parents and they had never known a set of parents to begin with. Part of them assumes their biological parents are dead. Part of them forgot they must have existed at all.

Perhaps it was cruel to point the finger at Bunny’s parents for ever birthing her, but Theodora didn’t much care. It was those same parents who raised their daughter to be so accusatory, after all, to dare to insult them and their craft instead of attempting to understand what had happened. If she had come to Theodora asking about the drug’s effects, they would have gladly informed her that the drug alone does not do such things, and they may have ever helped her investigate exactly what had happened. Instead, she comes to spit acid accusations about their creations, and as they are extensions of their own heart, Theodora themself. Any sympathy they could have held for her the night of the Purge was gone.

Maeve, they say, and Everett’s attention snaps to them like a magnet to metal. He hasn’t been paying much attention to his former soldatessa the past few weeks, too focused on the gaping hole Lillian’s left in his heart to worry about much else; briefly, he wonders if he should have. A thoughtful crease furrows his brow as Theodora continues, apprehension gleaming in clear, green eyes. Everett knows before they say it. Foolishly, he wonders if he stops them, that reality will remain superimposed upon each other like a cat that’s both dead and alive. Words, like spells, have power — to speak truth into the air, or cover it up forever. Theodora chooses the former.

Maeve killed two people the other night.

Everett’s gripped with a faint nausea, or something like the aftertaste of it. She’s killed before, in front of him, no less, the day he carried an emaciated Orion from his Montague prison amidst pouring, slate rain — a knife that Everett himself taught her to use lodged in a man’s flesh. Hearing she’s spilled more blood is no longer a novelty to him considering their line of work, but the frequency of it, less than a month after her last… He swallows. Hopefully, this isn’t indicative of a growing pattern.

“Madonna e Cristo,” Everett exhales, tipping his head back and squeezing his eyes shut for a brief moment. “When? And why…?” His attention traces Theodora’s features, their thick brows and straight nose, as if he can glean more about the event from their expression. He looks for sorrow, anxiety, grief — and finds nothing but a faint apprehension, as if more concerned about his reaction than the event that transpired. Everett licks his lips, searching for the right words. “I haven’t been up to date with such things since… since the funeral.”

“I understand,” they reply. Theodora imagines those who loved Lavinia were still dealing with their grief, and they would never scrutinize the way people process such pain. After all, it was pain that fueled their operations and pain of others they sought to eliminate. Grief can be all-consuming and it can be blinding. He already looks uneasy, and Theodora isn’t sure if it was better to tell him before dinner and make him lose his appetite, or if they should have waited until after and risked him losing all he’d just eaten. “It’s why I figured you would want to know if you didn’t already.”

“Maeve was doing a job for me. I’d sent her in to drum up younger interest in my products,” they explain. Theodora knows they’d sent her into that environment, they know she’d met those men because of their initial prompting. But, they hadn’t known what she was going to do next, without permission from anyone else. “She’d decided to try some sort of deal on her own. One man introduced her to another who claimed to want to get involved with distribution, but their intentions were only to harm her in actuality. She was too upset to give me details, but I know they attacked her and she defended herself.” They sighed. The image of a bloody, sobbing Maeve in their kitchen was all too fresh. “Maeve killed them before they could hurt her. She came to my house immediately after to tell me.”

Their expression is serious, and perhaps even a bit regretful that this had ever happened. “I doubt this is how you would have liked to find out,” they admit. “But I knew you and Maeve are close, and thought you should be informed.”

date: 1 june 2020 location: theodora’s laboratory status: closed to @theodoramoreaus

It’s not often Catherine feels so detached and removed from Theodora Moreau’s lab. In fact, there’s hardly been a day in which the littlest Daly didn’t feel comfortable. From the very beginning, il sovrano delle fata opened their arms and ushered Cat in; they dubbed her their lucciola, and she’s been at home ever since.

But now, this home feels more constricting than freeing, especially with Verona’s budding principessa delle fata’s life having ended so abruptly. She feels the corner of her eyes prickle, but she does not cry. Rather, she caps the solvent with which she’s working and sets it aside, knuckles blanching as she balls her hands, nails digging crescent moons into her palms. 

She can’t do this. She just can’t.

“Theo,” Cat says, voice still raspy from the unholy, ragged sobs that tore from her throat the night prior. She doesn’t look at them, choosing instead to keep her head down as she continues, “She was just at my house, learning about il sangue and il anello, you know. We were happy. Maeve and I hadn’t spent time together like that in so long and she just–” Words fail, and she’s suddenly feeling terribly small in the presence of one of the few people that have always been in Cat’s corner as she’s faced with the ugly truth: that no matter how happy Maeve seemed that afternoon, it couldn’t have been true–not entirely.

Theodora knew exactly what was on Catherine’s mind the moment she entered the room. Her expression gave away the troubles working about in her mind, and they were already too many degrees of separation too close to Maeve’s recent death to imagine their apprentice was thinking about anything else. They hadn’t been close with Maeve long, but they knew she and Catherine had been close. They’d even seen the places where the influence of one rubbed off on another. Two sources of good in Verona, both worn by the city’s cruelty. Maeve’s strings had frayed with such sharp evil that they had finally snapped. Theodora would do everything they could to protect Catherine’s.

They should have called and told her not to come in, that they would take this day to feel. They should have instead called her to their home to give her the comfort they see she needs, and yet they had been immobilized by the unfamiliar, prickly feeling of guilt instead. The lab, while constricting Catherine, helped Theodora. Their pain always hurt less when their hands were busy.

She grins when she shouldn’t, the curve of her lips a cut across her face lined with signature red, unflinching in the face of Theodora’s obvious ire. It never ceased to amuse Lucrezia just how easily she got under people’s skin, for better or for worse. “Theodora.” The echo carries a hint of bored mocking, as thought sounding out each of the syllables were a chore. Awaiting their reasoning, the response dances through the space between them, as ridiculous in her own opinion as scolding a creature for lashing out when scared. A single sharp laugh is expelled. She gives a light tug of their hair before allowing the curl to unravel from around her finger, letting go. There’s no denying what Theodora is referring to; Lucrezia stands by her choices but knows others won’t be so caring. “You’d know all about cowardice, wouldn’t you? So quick to judge me for doing what I needed to stay alive – but where were you?” Something dark and nasty stirs in the hollow of her chest, flexing its claws against the bones of her ribcage. “I know you were at the museum that night. Did you enjoy the show? Maybe if you’d chosen to help rather than blame the person who was being shot at, I wouldn’t have had to do what I did.”

In the number of months that followed her friendship with the eponymous owner of the Dark Lady, Harriet had begun to think of the establishment as a safe space. It had been one of the first places, outside of her friend’s houses, that she came after her stint in hospital, reclaiming her bar stool feeling the same as stepping over the threshold of her apartment; a homecoming. She had tried, but never been able to put her finger on what exactly made her so comfortable, perhaps it was the knowledge that one rarely met the same character more than once within these four walls. The benefit of the Lady being that she could meet an exaggerated version of a day-time persona or another person entirely, perhaps that was the fun.

Yet the melodic words that captures her attention is someone she knows, however feeling their previous interaction had been. “Theodora!” The picture that had formed of them in her mind’s eye was blurred, like a photograph that had been over-exposed to the sun, but the voice was something she could not forget. Her mouth stretches into a smile that illuminates her features, surprised (pleasantly so) to find the other here of all places, genuine in spite of the manufactured circumstances that surrounded them on all sides. “Thanks to you,” she assures with ease, brows raising as though to dispel any potential argument that she would have been find with or without them, “I would have bled out on that floor had you not been there.” 

In an impulsive gesture, she reaches outward and takes the other’s hand in her own, offering a gentle squeeze in an attempt to convey both the gratitude and significance of the words that followed. “Thank you for saving my life.” There was a moment where Silence could have steered the conversation into heavy waters, before it could take the wheel Harriet shifts backward in her seat, righting herself. “Won’t you let me buy you a drink?” Harriet had always been taught never to assume, even now she wouldn’t want to force an interaction the other might have preferred to be fleeting. “It is the least I can do.” The hypothesis she had made to Vivianne about Theodora rings in her ears, her own words reverberating around her the inside of her skull - They did save my life, the least I could do is buy them a drink - not knowing then that the universe would allow her to fulfil her wish so soon.

The lighting is dim even during the day, and Theodora appreciates the liminal space it creates. It’s good for their business, for the illusion they craft, but it’s also a bit of comfort to feel as if time has stopped for a few moments and they could simply exist here, not worrying about where they have to be next or what the next hour is supposed to look like. There was a chance for anonymity here, though Theodora never took it. For a place so associated with debauchery, it’s almost humorous that Theodora can find it almost relaxing, at least at an off-peak hour such as this one. They relish in their break from the world, and it’s here they’re surprised with the woman they almost suspect is a dream, for their only memories of her are not of her so in-tact as she is now, but rather quite bloody and pale as the color seeped from her skin into their desperate hands.

Yet, there’s nothing not lively about the way she says their name, and it is as if life itself is contained and birthed from the smile she flashes them as they sit beside her at the bar. They cannot help but smile in return, grateful to see her doing so well, at least by appearance alone. Truthfully, they weren’t sure when, or if, they’d ever see her again, so this is one of the rare welcome surprises Verona occasionally gifts them with. “I am no doctor,” they point out with a soft shake of the head. “Though I’m sure you’ve already thanked them for getting you back on your feet so quickly.” They wonder what her recovery was like, how close the bullet was to somewhere much more dangerous, how relieved the doctors were to watch her monitors stabilize as the moments ticked on.

I rarely just say anything, they admit cryptically. Everett watches them glide away, slightly bemusing but not at all unpleasant. They’ve always been a bit of a riddle, despite the predictable support they’ve offered him in the past few months, always a bit too dreamlike and mercurial for Everett’s grounded preferences — but he supposes that’s a bit of their charm. The mystery, as hazy as the sheet of rain that currently falls against Verona’s cobblestones. Faintly, as he sits beside her and waits for their food, Everett wonders if it was that quality in particular that drew Orpheus to them, an unsolvable puzzle for an insatiable man.

“You provided the coupons,” he counters, slipping his wallet into his pocket. “But if you really insist, you can pick up the bill the next time we eat.” Next time, because life goes on despite the loss that’s only begun to slowly dissipate like thick fog at the rays of dawn. Next time, because it’s a promise to himself as much as it is to Lillian, that he’s slowly but surely healing from her absence. 

Step by step, meal by meal… He’ll pull himself out of his hellhole, and step back into the sunlight of society, beginning by listening to whatever matter Theodora seems so keen on sharing. Everett quirks a brow, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. Even now, he isn’t exactly sure how they gauge gravity of situations, given that they speak of murder and meals in the relatively same, placid tone of voice. As such, he’s not certain what he’s in for. If a small part of Everett hopes it’s simply office drama, another part frets that it must be something serious.

“Dire consequences?” The repeated words taste unfamiliar on his tongue, but he watches their expression carefully regardless, as if he can sieve an explanation from their features. “Now you’re making me nervous.”

“I wouldn’t say coupons are entirely comparable to a meal itself,” they pointed out, though they didn’t seem to argue too much, especially not when his offer satisfied them. “Alright, we have a deal.” Though, Theodora wonders if there will even be a next time, depending upon how Everett takes the news they’re about to present to him. While they don’t know him well, they know enough about his rejection of violence and his protective nature over some of the other Capulets to know the image of Maeve with blood on her hands will likely upset him. They didn’t see the act in itself as abhorrent, especially knowing the circumstances, but they’d learned not too long ago that their moral views conflict with the elder Craven’s. They can only hope he won't suddenly lose his appetite each time he sees them after this.

Theodora is not nervous. They cannot find it in themself to be nervous, even as they know the reaction from Everett will not be a pleasant one. The act they’ll describe to him was inevitable, and in their eyes, it was warranted. While they were not forced to make that choice, they do not fault the decision of the girl who was, but they knew from the pain in her eyes that it affected her more than they wished it did. Theodora hoped Maeve would see the necessity in her actions, and while she may have acknowledged that, it didn’t make the shock of human life lost in her hands any subtler. They hope the blood doesn’t linger in her mind.

“Maeve,” they began, thinking of how best to word it. “She’s not the one who was hurt, thankfully. But she was attacked. She did what she had to.” They didn’t think they had to explain any further, but they did, their tone hushed under the hum of fluorescent lights. “Maeve killed two people the other night.”

There’s something about the dim lighting and the silhouettes lined in neon that brings a new life to Theodora’s pulse. It’s the mystery, they’re certain, the mixture of darkness and pleasure that allows not only them to revel in the fog they’ve surrounded themself with, but also for their creations to thrive. The Dark Lady has been a loyal customer and a trusted distributor since nearly the beginning, and from that has blossomed a partnership Theodora is very thankful for. It’s easy to sell euphoria and no pain to those who are already seeking pleasure. It’s even better for them when those customers continue to seek their concoctions, and it’s good business for Mona when they return, specifically, to her domain to seek them out. 

They’ve returned to discuss distribution of their latest drug, faeries ring, after some slow negotiations early on due to their recent medical history. The meeting is fairly smooth-going; with the success of fae blood, they knew it would be no problem to distribute one more bit of magic, so the only thing that needed to be discussed was quantity and prices. Thankfully, for as elusive as she was, they found Mona to be fairly agreeable, but it could be the mystery that shrouded them both that allowed them to get on so well.

– 17.05. Twelfth Night. @theodoramoreaus

She can feel their eyes on her, a darkened gaze that follows like a shadow. Despite assumptions likely made by those who do not know her, Lucrezia doesn’t enjoy the attention of others when it isn’t of use – made worse by the fact that she can’t figure out why her fellow emissary has been giving her a cold shoulder, camaraderie falling flat. Unenthused by the idea of bringing them a peace offering without knowing the cause, she faces the issue head-on with a desire to disperse any ill-will the narcotics manufacturer held ( it wouldn’t pay well to get on their bad side, she knows ). “Mikael looks at me like that when I forget to close the garage door,” she muses lightly as she approaches the other. The ghost of a smile plays across her lips with cold simmering determination. Whatever they had to say, now was the time to say it. “Unfortunately I can’t use the same method that gets him to stop on you.” Lucrezia gently reaches out to catch the end of a stray curl between finger and thumb, winding it around her finger to tether Theodora in place. “So why don’t you go ahead and tell me what the problem is, Theo.”

“It’s only been a few days—” When Theodora asks again if they were going to be informed, Katarina’s quick in her attempt to speak over them, to protest that while her decisions were made without them they weren’t something left to collect dust or be forgotten. In fact, how many photos had there been to pack up in the Palazzo? And, how many of the majority included Theodora? How much does Kat cling to those memories? Her tone wavers from the thin line at the very accusation, yet before she can attempt to explain that it was a choice made for sake of safety, for sake of feeling some semblance of control still over her life that seemed to only ever spiral further into a hurricane she could no longer manage within herself, indignation cuts rife through the air with her next words. 

“If anyone understands what it’s like to be discarded, abandoned, or rejected, or tries to ensure they don’t do the same to the people they care about, don’t you think it’d be me?” Her brows furrow with her words, searching their eyes for some semblance of understanding, for the familiarity of one of her friends that had known her for over two decades of her life. But, the truth is this: despite Katarina’s intention to keep the events of her life managed so that others don’t worry, the woman has unintentionally left herself to be perceived as what she herself abhors: someone as neglectful and dismissive as her own parents were towards her. “Theo, please.”

Despite her attempt to reach out to them, her friend— a friend she’s kept out of the immediate circle of information, a friend that she now venomously wonders about their own whereabouts and lack of anything in the past month— takes a step back as they respond to Katarina’s plea to speak elsewhere. A friendship falls apart in a shopping gallery for all to see, how high-society of them. In retrospect, she’ll bitterly add this to one of the many public outbursts she’s been a part of throughout her life. But, she never would have thought that one of these instances would take place between herself and Theo. “If that’s what you want to tell yourself, then fine,” She cuts coldly, pulling her arm back to pocket her hand back into her coat. The comparison to a doll on a shelf is like a slap in the face, heart twisting with memory and self-loathing and she can’t help the way the words sharply fall from her mouth in poor defense. “But, no, I wanted to show you what a mess things are at the apartment, and maybe you’ll believe me.” Maybe you’ll understand. They’ve already made up their mind, though, and Kat can’t magically erase the hurt she’s inadvertently caused. 

After a heartbeat she adds a softer, quieter: “I’m sorry.” Despite the fact that Theo has already taken a step away to create distance between them, Katarina neither takes a step towards nor away from them. She will not be the one to walk away. “You’re not a doll. You’re not a memory, Theodora, you’re my friend.” You’re like a sister to me.

They cannot let her continue with the excuses, hurt taking hold of their broken hands. “And how many days has it been since everything else you’ve neglected to tell me?” Theodora interrupts, brow furrowing in frustration. They don’t care if one thing had happened too recently to tell them, if she needed some time to process before revealing what happened. This was merely the feather that tipped the scales, the thing that showed them how much she had neglected to tell them, how much of her life they were no longer part of. If she’d been upfront, or even if she’d not tried to apologize, they may have accepted that fact, moved on with their life, but it’s her desperate attempts to pick up the already shattered pieces as if they were whole that frustrated them. If she cared, why would she not show it?

“Yes,” they agree, “which is why it’s even worse that you’ve seemed to become the type of person who does that to others.” Understanding is not found, only betrayal and hurt, still behind a misty mystery as they keep their composure for anyone whose gaze might land upon them. Theodora knows the things Katarina had been through, knew she should understand how they feel more than anything else, and yet there’s no sympathy there, because in their mind, she of all people then should have known not to do this to another, if she knew how it felt. They didn’t need a full autobiography. They didn’t need anything more than a reminder that she was there, and that she still cared. They found none of that.

Theodora knows they were not the most communicative either, and yet, they know they didn’t exactly have the means to communicate recently. Their hands kept them from doing something as easy as picking up the phone, and once they were able to dial again, they found themself comatose, and the concussion that followed forbade them from making any first move in communicating as they healed. And yet, people reached out. And yet, they foolishly had assumed Katarina would have done the same. The sharpshooter only succeeded at aiming for their heart, and perhaps their last nerve, with her sharper tone. “Do you think I’m not making this judgement based on the evidence given to me?” They snap back. “Am I so out of line when everything from my viewpoint — which is severely limited but not of my own doing — suggests this feeling?” Who is Katarina to scorn how they’ve felt when she is the one who made them feel this way? “It doesn’t matter what you’ve intended to do when you’ve been doing this for longer than just this one instance. That is the point.”

I’m a chemist. The other tells Harriet who finds enough strength within her to form furrows in her brow crafted from intrigue, repeating the profession in a, barely there, whisper. “A chemist.” The echo did not ring with disbelief, rather acted as a key that opened the door to another world that she herself was unfamiliar with, so far from the path she had envisioned herself on there was no harm to be found in imagining now. In another life, it might have been Theodora who relied on the kindness of Harriet, she thinks, as though a different career might have removed her from harms way. “A chemist,” she repeats once more, the exhale as soft as a summer breeze, while her energy dripped from the hole in her shoulder.

Harriet remembers it then, attempting to squeeze the fingers of her left hand, the absence of panic at her hand’s lack of response would be something she would concern herself with in her right state of mind. “I’m… an… education officer.” Each fragment of her sentence was punctured by a beat of silence, the words taking substantially longer to transmit between her brain and her mouth. “I’ve been here… for almost… four years.” It was becoming harder to recall fragments of herself from before now, as though they evaporated beneath the sunlight - meant to be creatures of the night - not meant to move forward in life. “I worked in Museo Civico di Storia Naturale before.”

This war will not touch you any further. Theodora endeavours to make her feel better, offering assurances that Harriet knew, deep down, could not possibly be kept, but it still brings a fleeting smile to her expression. “You are very kind, but this war has taken everything from me,” her confession is raw, unfiltered truth, dripping from her mouth in the same slow oozing manner of her shoulder wound, not something that would be volunteered willingly in a different circumstance. Her thoughts drift to Max, to her family, to each and every one of the people who she considered friends - watching how the turmoil transformed them, bending them until broken, already too far gone for her to save them. Already lost.

“I have nothing left to lose.”

Her breaths became deeper, as if it took more to produce them, and all Theodora could do was keep the pressure held upon Harriet’s shoulder, watch the red soak through the fabric and onto their hands, and hope they will not have to feel life exit her tonight. Some might wonder what their compulsion was in helping her, in clinging to her in the hopes that it would help Harriet cling onto life for a bit longer. They had always wanted to lift the pain from Verona, and this was another extension of them doing the same. It was also because Harriet didn’t deserve this, that this was not her fight, and thus this fight should not end her because she happened to brush fingers with it accidentally.

Apparently, she had brushed fingers against this war before even this moment. Fate had brought her in such contact again, and Theodora wondered what exactly she meant by that. This war had taken so much from many, whether they knew it or not. It had taken from them since birth, and now, they hoped to give back to Verona. They hoped to grow bigger than this war. “It will not take your breath,” they promised. The slick sensation of her blood beneath their hands was ever prominent, a mocking reminder that this may not be a promise they can keep. “You will not lose your life.” But they realized as the words left their lips that they could not be so sure of that. Perhaps if Theodora could give Harriet a moment of hope, it would be all she needed to hold on until help arrived.

“Are you sure you’re not just saying that?” he remarks with a wry smile, though he’s already half-decided what he wants to order for the both of them. ( Slow, but steady. It’s alright if he smiles. This is what Lillian would want. ) He’s found Theodora’s presence to be a grounding, stabilizing one since he’d shifted positions from capodecina to emissario, trading a sword for a pen to be confined to the office that’s now nestled safely away at Twelfth Night. They aren’t close in any sense of the word, but Everett respects them, and he likes them, and when it comes to working with another mafioso, that’s the most one can really ask for.

His eyes flicker back to the menu as they mention the coupons, and shrimp with chili sauce and something strange sandwiched in between. Bemusement plays across Everett’s features. “Hold that thought.” Whatever it is can wait; he’ll order for them first, then prod afterwards. His mind remains untroubled as he speaks with the cashier ( as untroubled as one can be considering the loss that still weighs heavily on his mind ) and pays for the meal without any intention of allowing Theodora to pay him back. They did, after all, provide a few coupons — and that’s the excuse he’s planning on using if they decide to contest him on it.

A minute or two later, Everett ambles towards Theodora as he tucks the receipt into his pocket. “I ordered the shrimp with chili,” he announces, before a cautious curiosity steals across his expression. “Best to ease the stomach when you imagine the things one’s had to do recently?” He paraphrases their words, fixing them with sincere, green eyes. His voice is still lighthearted, untainted by whatever news Theodora might give him. “Don’t tell me that’s your segue into confessing that you were the one who nearly deleted the hard drive of all the clients from Portugual.”

“I rarely just say anything, not when it comes to what I want,” they reply with a small grin to match his own. There’s something not quite genuine about the grin, but you wouldn’t know it if you were not so familiar with the enigma that was Theodora Moreau. Certainly, they ‘just said’ a lot of things, especially to keep their illusion swirling about them. But they would not deny themself the things they wanted, especially something as inconsequential as takeaway. What would lying to Everett about making the decision benefit them? But that was not the reason their smile did not quite blossom the way it should have. No, it was odd to hold this expression when they picture Everett’s own expression wavering under their news. While they think there is nothing to mourn over, they know he’ll think differently. They don’t allow the thoughts to sour their meal, though.

They listen to the request, agreeing it is best to not announce to those working at the counter that a colleague of their two customers has recently killed two people. Plus, the thought of blood and death may not spoil Theodora or Everett’s hardened appetites, but those in Verona who lived a life removed from the mobs likely did not have the same strengths, and they could never tell who was within earshot. They move to protest as Everett hands over a card to the cashier without thinking, but they still hold their tongue for a moment longer until he returns.

–

Their teasing lifts her spirits in a way in which she didn’t know they needed to be lifted. Catherine’s chest puffs out in a show of bravado as they comment about her passion and their desire to see just how far their lucciola would go for them. She is a crusader on behalf of Theodora Moreau, just like how Theodora has been a crusader for her since she joined the ranks of the Capulets and was taken under the wing of il sovrano delle fate themself. There’s little Catherine wouldn’t do for the saving grace that is her mentor, for one of the few who believed in her even when she didn’t believe in herself. “That’s all I ask,” she says with a grin. “Just let me know, cara mia, and I’ll be there as quickly as I can to right whatever hypothetical wrongs have been committed against you.” She’d tear through the streets of Verona if it would help Theo.

And it’s full of secrets I’ve still yet to show you.

She feels like she’s a child again, hoisted atop her father’s shoulders as she reaches for the candies on the highest shelves in the candy shop. Theodora’s words imbue Catherine with a sense of wonder and gratitude; the gifts they give always are just right. She thinks about what the secrets to yet to be seen and what they are. Is there another alcove, perhaps? Or maybe there’s a hiding place to be utilized, should (Dio forbid), the laboratory be found. “I can’t even begin to imagine what other secrets are here,” Cat murmurs, taking the lighter from them to light her own joint.

I don’t say that to just anyone, Theo says, and Cat’s heart sings. There’s something so endearing in hearing this from the lips of the person they hold so dear. There’s something utterly moving about being trusted enough to tell her things so dear–so why, then, hasn’t Catherine done the same for them? She thinks of Brielle, of the woman who’s filled half of her heart and then some. Would Theo want to know?

They ask if she’s happy, and she can’t help but think of Brielle King. Despite the damning affiliations that oftentimes keep them apart, the Montague woman makes her happy. True happiness, then, would probably be on the same side as Brie, fighting alongside her rather than fighting to not fight her. It would be the absence of worrying if la capobastone will send her to attack Beatrice. She takes a long drag.

Is she happy?

“With us and the lab itself, I am,” Catherine responds through a stream of smoke, blue eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Il anello di fata is doing well and I feel as though I’ve practically grown up in your lab. There was a time where it was the only Capulet place in which I felt accepted.” She takes another pull from the joint, a smile curling the edges of her lips as she thinks about her earliest months as a Capulet.

“But, am I happy with the entirety of my life?” Catherine lets out a breath of a laugh, shoulders rising and falling in a quick shrug. “Are any of us wholly happy with the entirety of our lives, Theo?”

There is a weight that’s visibly lifted from Catherine’s shoulders that puts a soft smile on Theodora’s features. They only ever want to feel at ease and to feel free. Though freedom has many different contexts, and there technically is no freedom when your life is devoted to following another’s orders, Theodora wishes upon Catherine the freedom to be her truest self. It is why they took her under their wing, for they saw that beautiful spirit within her and wished to foster it, in the hopes that they could prevent this war from blowing out the beautiful flame she carried. She need not compromise herself for a war that only asked for violence. Their innovation found away around that, though it was not exactly what they were aiming for in the first place. After all, they condoned the violent acts and have for a long time, and it seemed like Catherine was learning to permit them, too, be it from her own hands or the hands of others. “I know you will,” they replied earnestly. They remembered the triumph upon her features as she explained to them the retribution against Santino on their behalf. “And I appreciate anything righting you may do, even if it’s only for yourself.”

Their back pressed against the wall, feeling the uneven surface dig into tired muscles. “Oh, plenty,” they said with a growing grin as they exhaled the smoke that swirled in their lungs. “And in time, you may likely know them all. Perhaps you’ll begin to curate some of your own.” Theodora could only hope that Catherine would let them in on some of those secrets. They could only hope that before she began to let down mysterious curtains of her own, that they would get a slight peek behind them. Theirs had been in place long before Catherine, and they’d remain still, but each passing moment, they allow her further and further backstage.

The way they describe it, power is a mere fact of life; no different from the birds in the air or the wind in the trees. Vivianne wonders if the emissary resents her power, or whether they accept it with no different a mentality. After-all, Theodora is not bereft of such influence themselves; what with the drugs they create and distribute, the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Verona’s citizens under their own narcotic thrall. 

“Is that why you do the work that you do? Because it lets you dictate the lives of others?” Before coming to know the chemist, Vivianne found their work to be a grisly, uninviting thing. Now, she sees both its danger but also its allure, that much better.

She remembers the little flask the emissary had left in her own hospital room in December; with the reassurance that it would take her pain away. Was it just her pain it’d take?… She’d never drunk a single drop – far too cynical to accept tonics from people she couldn’t read. And yet she’d kept it. It was somewhere in her bedside drawer now, next to a rosary she’s kept due to equally obscure compulsion. Neither one, does she yet intend to return to their rightful owners.

‘Especially not Orpheus,’ they counter, when she asks if the deceased ever tried to control his lover. Vivianne takes the answer and drowns it at the bottom of her glass, which she promptly refills with wine. Would that she could relate; Cosimo’s influence extending like asphyxiating tendrils from their political to their personal life…

Would that she could confess such a thing to Theodora.

But it’s no use, and besides, the emissary has growing pains of their own to consider. Vivianne listens quietly as they attest to the aches in their permanently-damaged fingers. “Tu sei coraggiosa,” Vivianne tells them, you’re brave. “Though I’m sure you must be quite sick of hearing it already.” Not that they had a choice in accepting the fate dealt them like the downswing of a hammer. Still, Vivianne doubts she’d see it with such practicality if their fates were reversed. 

‘But peace, as you define it, is achieved when there is only one side remaining, yes? Or do you suspect that this war is never ending?’ The emissary ventures, and Vivianne turns the question over in her mind. “No — I do believe it’ll end. After-all, nothing lasts forever.” It’s not romantic hope that makes her predict the war’s end, but exactly that; a cynical, fatalistic view of the world. “Even peace,” She continues, raising one shoulder into a shrug, “Always ends eventually. Even if every last Montague died, even if every last one of ours did too — other interests would rise in the place of ours. In time, those would lead to other wars. It’s human nature.”

“No,” Theodora answers immediately. They do not wish to control lives. They do not wish to be a puppet master and cut off the circulation in their fingers from the tangled multitude of strings they must control. They began their work to help, to ensure hearts wouldn’t feel as concrete-heavy as their own, to lift the pain both physical and emotional that Verona loved to hang above the heads of her citizens. “The choice others make to find solace in my work is their own. I wish to heal these people, not control them.” They wish to heal those willing to be free of pain. It just so happened that many people were very willing when it came to everything that ailed them.

“Very. I do not ask to be brave. Sometimes there is no choice if you wish to keep living.” It was the sad truth in Verona, at least. Sometimes pain was inescapable. Theodora simply saw the use in it. It was a lesson Theodora had learned as a young child, and it is that scrap of truth that hung from the legends of their childhood that kept the people believing every rumor that swirled about them. “And I certainly don’t ask to be recognized for bravery.” It is not what Theodora would like to be remembered for, that they have known for some time. They wish to be known for their innovation, for their crafts and their mystery and the way in which they lifted pain from Verona’s tired shoulders. Bravery was for heroes, and Theodora had decided they were not one, for they never intended to die like one.

“I’m selling my home.” She doesn’t mean for what she says to sound as flat, nor as cutting as they do and as soon as she speaks she immediately bites her tongue. But, she doesn’t bow her head or stutter out an apology. No, that wouldn’t be very Katarina of her, now would it. But, her blue eyes do attempt to convey a note of remorse that she can only hope that someone that’s known her as long as Theodora has might see it. Before Lillian, before Bernadette had been born, there was— there is Theodora. What a terrible friend she’s been to forget to tell them. 

“I was going to tell you.” It’s not an apology, not yet as she tries to take the opportunity to explain herself. “But things have been so…” She trails off only to shake her head, making a second attempt to explain. Bernadette is now her assistant, the Carabinieri have chained her to a desk until next month, she’s moved into an apartment that she already hates, “—The Palazzo was broken into, and having such a large space to myself really isn’t necessary,” Half-hearted at best, her conviction is lacking. And that is wholly unlike her, much like the explanation that is neither here nor there in answer. “I—” How could she explain?

When she catches the eye of one of the shop employees, the blonde remembers that they are out in public and the last thing she wants to do is cause a scene. So she meets Theodora’s gaze once more, twisting one of the rings on her finger before she tries to reach for one of her most treasured friends to lay a tentative hand on their forearm. They may have grown apart a bit in adulthood, but that does not mean they are an afterthought. “You aren’t an afterthought, Theo, please. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Can we talk about this somewhere else?”

“Were you going to tell me? Or are you saying that as a way of trying to wipe away the dust you’ve left us to gather?” Theodora was frustrated. All they’d done, all the times they’d held Katarina through rough waves, and all the times she’d done so in return, and all the times they had done those things in that very palazzo, now felt as if it was nothing to her. They were no stranger to the way life pushed and pulled people away from one another, paths conjoining and then parting, only to meet later on, and to an extent they had both felt the pull of life’s current. However, there was a difference between that and the deliberate pushing away Katarina seemed to have been doing over the last few months, and it while it was painful, Theodora had finally come to acknowledge it.

They couldn’t help but feel bad that the palazzo was broken into. If they’d known, they would have done something to help — they weren’t quite sure what they could have done, really, but even if it was just helping sweep up some glass or pack up some boxes, they would have done it. Instead, it’s another afterthought to mention to them, and those broken glass shards they would have helped to sweep now stick painfully into their flesh, each one a sharp reminder that what they had with Katarina is just as broken as a fragile windowpane. 

date: 20 May 2019 location: La Pagoda time: 21:01 status: closed for @theodoramoreaus​

“Is it worth it to just order individual combos, or just order two or three entrees a la carte?” Everett stares at the menu, feeling rather strange and out of place returning to every day life after… after everything. He hasn’t been out to eat since Lillian passed at the beginning of the month, save for the occasional coffee, and somehow dipping his toes back into the normal mundane seems foreign at best and traitorous at worst. He knows, of course, that she would want him to be happy and to appreciate the little things in life as she’d always encouraged him to do, but doing it so soon after her passing…

It’s been three weeks. It’s felt like thirty years, or thirty minutes.

Everett pulls his coat tighter around him. It’s the same one she’d given him as a birthday present in September, still rain-damp from the light shower drizzling outside. Lillian wouldn’t want you to wallow in grief forever, he reminds himself. She’d want the small, incremental steps to healing, even if it looks like getting a mid-work dinner with Theodora Moreau and asking them for their ideas about how to split Chinese takeaway. It would be a poor way to honor her memory to let his grief turn him into a shell of the man he used to be, even for a short while.

And so he skims the menu, huddling over it alongside his fellow emissary, and takes a tiny, mundane shift towards acceptance. ( It hurts, still. And it’s hard. But if he’s patient and forgiving to himself, he has faith he’ll get there, one day. ) Everett hums indecisively. “Why does all of this look so good, anyway?” A beat. “You said you had a coupon, didn’t you?”

There’s an itch that plagues their throat as they ponder the menu. It’s an itch to say the words that don’t quite fit within the dull tan walls of a takeout restaurant that’s managed to keep its floors free of mob business since its birth. Theodora thinks of it, thinks of what they must say to Everett that they have yet to tell him within the confines of the Twelfth Night Museum. They push it back a moment longer. “That depends on what you want. I’m starving, so honestly, what works best for you I’ll be pleased with.”

No other words will soothe what tugs at the back of their mind. Theodora does not hold their tongue to protect Everett — he is a grown man who is more than capable of processing the harsh truths of this world and has done so for as long as he has been a Capulet, perhaps even longer. There is something to be said about the barrage of heavy news, following the recent deaths of Lillian and Cassian. And yet, Theodora does not necessarily qualify this as bad news — Maeve did what needed to be done, and they did not fault her for that, nor did they think two fewer men who sought to abuse someone like Maeve was a negative in this world. But still, they could acknowledge when such things weighed heavy on the girl who did not want to harden her heart to this steel-coated city, and how an act so far from her character might impact those who knew her well.

“I do — I’ve one for ten euros off the order and another for free drinks, so please get what you’d like. It’s best to ease the stomach when you imagine the acts one has had to do recently.” It’s easily slipped into the conversation, and yet the next sentence is spoken as if that was never said at all. “I am partial towards their shrimp with chili sauce.”