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Realistic or Modern 𝐈𝐍 𝐃𝐘𝐍𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐀 : ̗̀ in character

Lore
Here
IN DYNASTIA

i. HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER ?
Today, a year ago exactly, a family burnt to the ground.

Details from breaking news interrupting daily programing and grisly tabloids lap at your feet. They made your ears hurt, in the first few months. Such a tragedy, yes, the firefighting team who were on the scene report the temperatures were above, and how come the bullets didn't match the, suicide that could have been prevented, if only we as a society. Whatever shock you might have felt at the beginning died out with every drone of a newcaster's voice, every detail that's been dissected like the body of a saint laying on church marble. It's been a year alright - filled with tension, near war, pointing fingers and whispers spewing acid. Nobody knows who did it. Nobody wants to suspect their own family. Eyes watch suspicious eyes, see enemies in every shadow and gesture. This was no suicide.

And the murderer still walks.

The peace still stands. On wobbly newborn legs, but neither Adamski nor Avancini have broken it yet. No one believes it will last forever, though - just enough for a memorial and more.

Today, to honor three lives extinguished, the two families have stepped together in remembrance. A small gathering has been arranged at Keypark Hall, a private venue in the half-forest outskirts of the city. Trees seem to stretch into eternity here. The skies are bloated with black bruises, threatening a storm sooner or later. The memorial will be held for a few hours - a small lunch followed by mourning speeches and mingling. Waiters and catering staff walk busily up and down the white-washed hallways, a few guests already bunched up in hushed groups. No one dares to talk too loud.

Guards of both families stand at every corner, eyes glinting. There is a stiffled sort of peace, even for a day meant for the dead. Tension coils its long tail around the room and squeezes.

Today, a year after the murder, you woke up to a letter. Addressed to you

Details ;;

Time/Weather: 11:40 AM. Rainy, 64 F.
 
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♡design by howlingwoods, coded by uxie♡
 









scroll








the hierophant



Marzanna
Adamski.













mood

disinterested but staying alert











outfit

Marzanna's outfit consists of black pants, a buttoned up formal black shirt, and black boots on small heels. She accessorized with two thin gold necklaces and golden strand earrings.











location

Keypark Hall











interactions

Casimir











tags

miyabi miyabi















A year ago, Louisa and Andrej died. Well, no. Perhaps that was putting it too kindly. A year ago, Louisa and Andrej were murdered.

Death is no uncommon thing. Neither is murder in their circles, but the fallout of this one was something else. Everyone might say, out loud, that they were mourning the loss of the three young lives. But the weight of this death came from the loss of a chance at true peace, their loss a symbol.

Today, their two families were joining together, the peace between them still held, a fact that Marzanna couldn’t force herself to fully believe, even as she was getting dressed for the event. For a year, she’d been holding her breath, expecting the glass shield to shatter, to release two packs of wolves down onto one another. Every day it held felt like a stroke of luck, a rare good dream.

But not today. Marzanna didn’t much care for these events, they were useless to the ones they were supposed to be for anyways, but she knew how important it was that the peace be kept today. It didn’t matter that she was almost certain that whoever had killed the couple would be attending.

It had rained through the night. Someone a little more spiritual might say the weather was fitting, the sky hearing the mood of the two families and echoing it. In any case, it hadn’t helped her sleep, not on top of the stress of the impending day. She had almost discarded the letter she woke up to, but had just shoved it into her nightstand. She’d have time to deal with it after the event was done.

Marzanna was used to being tired, looking tired. It didn’t matter, so long as she looked more put together than tired, which she always did, between tight ponytails and carefully chosen items and the only makeup she ever wore being that to cover up dark circles under her eyes.

She’d taken her time getting ready today, almost enough so that Casimir had to wait for her to join him. Not for too long, of course; she still had to be there and be there early, this was as much an opportunity for asserting her place in the family as any other. But taken what time she had nonetheless. She’d met him outside, stepped inside of a black car, the driver someone paid by their family she didn’t know the name of.

The rain coated over the windows.

Casimir said something about hijacking their ride, his voice cutting clean through her thoughts.

Marzanna almost, almost smiled. His humor was well known to her by then, always sharp, always on the edge of danger.

“It would save us both from what’s likely to be a very mediocre meal,”
Marzanna’s voice almost always sounded the same, a practiced stillness to it, showing emotion is a weakness, yet there was a tint of humor to the words, Casimir didn’t offer a reply in return, his expression momentarily serious, dropping them into a heavy silence.

The car pulled to a stop.
“Lunch with the dog pack. Memorial gathering with murderers,”
Marzanna said just loud enough for him to hear, and stepped out of the car, unfolding an umbrella for the steps still remaining to the hall.

She’d been deputy for a while now, although the loss of the previous one still rang strong throughout the family. Not just their loss, again, but their murder. She’d stepped in during a time of high tension, right after an Avancini assassination, when the rival family made their city a minefield, a lifethreatening force to both sides of the conflict. When she was young, and hopeful, and it was her first time with her face out into the spotlight. A time when just surviving was an accomplishment, and Marzanna had been trained her whole life to step into the position and not just survive it, but excel. Ever since the peace treaty had been signed, her job became magnitudes easier.

And yet, it also became magnitudes harder to make an impression from. Survival, command, were no longer impressive. The Avancinis, now, were a quiet, awful, unbroken tension instead of the danger of constant conflict and violence. For today that was alright. Today all that was needed was to keep the peace intact.

Marzanna’s hand was gripped tightly around the handle of her umbrella as she walked to the gathering, the raindrops bullets shooting against her nylon shield. The world was covered in a screen of gray, blurred out, until the private hall focused itself into view, shining white and gold, as though it had missed the message of darkness and grief the rest of the world was given.

The luxury was nothing new to her. Her life was full of functions like this, the blinding glamor almost an earlier memory than the life of underground crime. The double speak, the manners, the need for everything to be perfectly in place, a perfect impression of their wealth and position. Of course, of course, this place had been set up not for them, but for the memory of Louisa and Andrej. And of course, this wasn’t for Louisa and Andrej at all, but to see these families together, to the perfectly mannered interactions to test the strength of their peace.

Marzanna put on a practiced smile before stepping in, putting away the umbrella, the warmth of the building embracing her entrance. People were filtering in, two families, yet no one happy to be there. Guards stood at the corners, waitstaff walked up and down the halls as the lunch room was still being prepared, in Marzanna’s eyes it seemed that everyone was holding their breath as if a single wrong one would set off a flame to swallow them whole.

There was no mistaking the tension in her muscles as she walked, always held just a little too tightly, as though unable to fully relax. Cautious, yes, everyone here was, but a little bit more than that. Marzanna's eyes watched the slowly growing crowd, but she kept close to Casimir, unwilling to give up the comfort of someone she knew so well beside her.


♡coded by uxie♡
 






VICTOR R.








THE EMPRESS



On the second Friday of the month, Anaya brings her father’s ashes to group therapy; a curious thing she always did but Vic never mentioned it. Always early, Vic fills his paper cup with bad coffee, staring off into the faces of his peers with attempts to study their expressions: a skill he’d picked up, but was never quite good at developing. The atmosphere was often unnervingly quiet, another checkmark on the list of things he could never quite get used to; for a group therapy session, they weren’t quite open—even if they’d all been particularly familiar with each other. Anaya often reminisced in good memories of her father, a luxury Vic didn’t have, but he listened intently: either to live vicariously through her passionate praise or to fill the void of what should’ve been his familial relationships.

And she droned with little complaint or interruption.

Anaya must’ve thought it was more therapeutic than sharing with the whole group; all of whose faces were painted in sorrow, grief, or the sullen thought of nothingness. He knew better than to put a boundary on someone else’s grief; a thought to live by and one he’d garnered after years of attendance.

“Dad, meet Vic. Vic, dad,” Anaya introduced her father, whose ashes were carefully tucked into an urn, for the hundredth time. Maybe it was how she coped, but one wouldn’t catch Vic passing on harsh judgment. People had their coping mechanisms; Anaya’s was just another in the pool.

In the mostly quiet room rang the equally as quiet droplets of water coming from a nearby faucet. One, two, three, four—shit. How many was that already?

He snapped back from wandering thoughts, subtly shaking himself awake and returning the grin Anaya had plastered on her cheeks, “oh, uh. Hi, Dad. Nice to meet you again.” And for a moment, he stood frozen. Upon further reflection, maybe it wasn’t great to play along—Anaya deserved better than to hang on (and maybe he should have also taken this piece of advice that had been peacefully tucked away behind pursed lips)—however, it pained him to see someone at such a stage. One that he, despite not experiencing much, understood completely.

Vic still had no idea how to interact; should he have taken it and shook its handle? Or would that have been insulting? The man pondered again, ducking his head sheepishly, chin tucked into his chest and neck craning forward; regular interaction always made him wary, especially this one. He made sure to tread cautiously—mindful of his actions, the words he used, how he carried himself.

Most would’ve found it unsettling to talk to a dead guy like that, especially one whose ashes came in a fragile marble vessel; he knew he’d get no response, but to see Anaya feel better about grief would’ve been enough. If only he’d apply that to himself. “I’m glad you’re here again. Gladys told me bringing dad’s ashes was fucking weird,” right. Gladys. A decrepit, bitter old woman who knew better than to get in someone else’s business, yet still chose to for the sake of knowing. Dark eyes shot to Gladys, her frail body leaned against the plastic table covered in linen, treats lining its surface as if to celebrate surviving another day of wanting to wallow in self-pity. Congratulations, you somehow managed to overcome your sadness for a few minutes: have a cookie, it’ll make things less painful. If only that were the truth, maybe then he’d be able to cope with the indescribable pain that had weighed down on him since birth.

“It’s disgusting! Young lady, you shouldn’t be carrying around dead things,” Gladys spoke between sips of stale coffee, eyes trembling yet harboring a strength he thought would’ve fleeted from her mind. Anaya looked down at the urn, Vic doing what he thought was the only thing to do: place a firm hand on her shoulder in reassurance. It worked, even when doubtful of his comforting ability, it worked. If only Gladys could’ve seen the product of her actions—as if that had even mattered.

♠ ♠ ♠​

This meeting was much like the last; Imogen, another young woman whose red hair cast like fire in the distance, held a tv remote in her hand, flipping mindlessly through channels with no goal in mind. Her intention was clear: that she wanted to fill the silence as much as any other person there.

Bodies formed in a circle: cold, metal chairs screeched with every little movement, showing resistance against the linoleum flooring. And in the middle was a space cleared especially for those willing to share. It was routine: someone stood there, vomited out the words at lightning speed, shared their sob stories, and everyone would clap to celebrate the bravery it took to even say anything. Vic, however, still wasn’t one of those people—wary of sharing his experiences. The last therapist he saw ran out, sobbing with their head in their hands, shouting about how he’d given them issues. Granted, he couldn’t blame them; his story was another tragedy yet to be unleashed, and he wasn’t ready to face it.

“You all were asked to bring something to share. Why don’t we go around in a circle, so everyone gets a turn?” Roger, a man in his late 40s whose blonde hair thinned at the top of his head, scanned the faces that surrounded him.

That’s when it settled in: that Vic had to share. Sure, he signed up for it, but he only did it out of courtesy.

Anaya shared her childhood stuffed animal whose memories were tethered with her late father; Imogen brought a lighter, saying something about it being her lover’s—the one who landed himself in jail; Gladys, as smug as ever, brought her favorite Chanel bag—the detail on it pristine as if she hadn’t used it in years. And that might have been the case, a widow like her didn’t leave the house much and Gladys always made it a point: that she had people to do things for her. But that must have led to her loneliness.

Down the list of people, there was a screeching halt. There was silence, eager eyes landing on him, awaiting his portion of show and tell. You got this, you can do it. Just stand up and share.

“Uh. Sorry, can I use the bathroom? I’m feeling sick,” he blew it. Out of the many chances, even with his self-directed pep talk, Vic couldn’t bring himself to reveal much. The man stood from the seat, pushing it back with his legs before he stammered another sentence. And without hesitation, he flees. He learned many things from these sessions: that he was much more of a coward than he’d initially thought; that loss could’ve been more than just losing a loved one—or multiple: you could lose your keys, your glasses, your favorite pair of shoes, anything with sentimental value and it would be just as devastating. Some people came to cope with parting with a childhood toy, others came to mourn, some came because they were forced to—something often suggested (though, it was heavily encouraged and forcibly run by) by other therapists that thought maybe it was a good idea to sit in a room with other people going through it.

He is, in essence, sadness shrouded in cluelessness; the feeling of loss with the pull of never being found; the weight of nothing and everything on concave chests.

♠ ♠ ♠​

Rushed footsteps followed behind him, a soft voice calling out from the empty corridor; Anaya’s familiar voice flickered in the air. He froze for only a moment, feeling her body collide with his—and the sound of something breaking. And dust—no, ashes.

Oh no. Oh god, no.

There was a silence, a deafening one, followed by the sound of crying. “Oh shit,” Vic managed to murmur under his breath, awkwardly patting at the ashes scattered on his jacket. How was he going to explain this to Em or Hugo? Oh yeah, some girl just ran into me and spilled her dad’s ashes everywhere—I even got some in my hair. Nice one. “Anaya, I am so sorry. Here lemme help clean that up—” his gesture was cut off by a swatting hand as he reached, tears falling from her eyes like a waterfall. She was a mess, he was a mess.

How do you recover from that?

You really can’t.

To make things worse, it looked like he was solely responsible for the events that had taken place in a matter of seconds. It was like a car crash, one you couldn’t take your eyes off of: and that’s exactly what people had done. Heads peeked into the hallway, watching the mess unfold as Anaya sobbed uncontrollably—an awkward Vic standing over her as the scenario set in. She refused his help, but leaving her alone to try to pick up the rest of the ashes that hadn’t landed on him seemed wrong. There was scrambling at his feet, small hands scooping up ashes and bits of the urn; the crunching of debris under his feet filled the air as he stepped back, inevitably making it worse with every move he’d made. There was no way she’d be able to forgive him after that and, additionally, no way he’d be able to show his face after this. But he had to and the thought made him almost tremble. Almost.

“Suddenly I have to—” In a flash, Vic hurriedly fled the scene, sure to cover his face painted red in embarrassment.

Heavy, metal doors flew open—the sound of his body slamming against it as he ran out in his chagrined rut—and rushed footsteps slammed against the damp pavement. The sun, much like earlier, was hidden behind thick clouds of fog; his suit, dampened by rain, further intertwined the threads with ash. A tug in the back of his mind urged him to turn around, and for a moment he considered it. Coming to an abrupt stop with the soles of his shoes slid on wet concrete; another part of him refused—he’d done enough damage as it was, and maybe going back would be another punch in the gut. What made it worse? The tiny inkling that he’d done worse than what had ensued; yes, it was an accident, but in his mind the damage was irreversible; from carrying the ashes, literally, on his shoulders to running out and solidifying that case, he didn’t know how he’d look Anaya in the eyes again—nor did he know how he’d even show up to group therapy.

What was left of him, and the thoughts that countlessly bombarded his mind was how late he’d be to the anniversary. Respectfully, while he hadn’t been particularly close or had any idea of how he felt—with the constant doubt of his own feelings—Vic still wanted to show up. Not only for himself and the reassurance that maybe he was, in fact, a functioning human being capable of emotion, but for the sake of others: they needed a shoulder to cry on if there was the case and he was willing to outreach it, if they get past the fact that he, in all of his 6’4” and expressionless stature, was covered in a questionable substance.

Scrambling. A lot of it, mixed with feelings unfamiliar—or was it the fact that he had no idea what it was? The most identifiable trait, if any, was the fact that his chest felt tight: he knew no meaning to this, even after countless hours of group therapy (most of which was him evaluating rather than participating).


♠ ♠ ♠​

Convenience came in different forms: from having a washer and dryer at home to having where you needed to be only a short few steps away. It was eerie, how group therapy had been snuggly tucked next to a private hall—one specifically holding the death anniversary of familiar faces. And as much as he shooed the thought away, it continued to seep in through the darkest of corners: the death of a beloved mother, his, a grandfather, and a father that—although he despised for the majority of his childhood—held memories that he wished to keep. To sift through the bad and hang onto the good, no matter how little, lent comfort or, at least, what he thought comfort was.

His continued swatting at the ashes hadn’t wavered, not once. Was it disrespectful to try to get them off? Now that he thought about it, it very well could have been: Anaya’s father, or what was left of him, met pavement, droplets of rain, and cool air—something that could’ve been avoided had he been a bit more careful. It was his fault or so that’s what the tug in his gut had told him.

Maybe he should keep the blazer as is, covered in burnt shards of human remains. And maybe he should return it to Anaya, she could salvage the pieces that were left behind. Or was that weird, too? Vic shook his head, running long, spidery fingers through his dampened hair with an exasperated exhale. There was no way where it would make sense that he show up covered in a stranger's ashes; no way to explain such reasoning to Em and Hugo without looking like a maniac. He'd mulled over the multitude of conclusions to which this scenario could meet its end, the only real solution—it seems—was Marnie; unlike he, she was endlessly prepared for what could happen, especially with his countless run-ins with stain-inducing, painful moments that he should expect to rear its head in at every corner, yet Vic has gone unprepared again.

He fishes the phone from his pocket, dials numbers, and attempts to wipe away the specks of remains that had somehow wiggled their ways into small crevices. The ringing, waiting, left him sitting anxiously in dampness; Vic, however, remained standing, as if a tree that's taken its roots. "Marnie, hey. I—uh—can you pick me up? I'm in front of, y'know, therapy?" Vic could've said it with more finesse, though the anxiousness that welled into his throat left little of it.


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INTERACTION
Marnie, on phone.

LOCATION
in front of therapy facility

TAGS
neon reverie neon reverie (Marnie) mother of sorrows mother of sorrows (Em, brief mention.) boo. boo. (Hugo, brief mention.)


scroll

"Caminante, no hay puentes, se hace puentes al andar."

 
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mood :
drunk, disorderly, out-of-his-mind, nervy

location :
keypark hall
outfit :
mentions :
uhhh I kinda forgor…

interactions :
Matezh — mother of sorrows mother of sorrows
Bechtel
• • • hero

A reckoning is coming. Who shall be spared?

His hands sat docile, not out of respect but rather immobilization. Fear. A dog hit too many times, unsure of how to cross the road, how to walk on Emilio’s leash. Or was it Matezh’s? He let it turn to fermented swill, adding to it with the contents of the flask he’d managed to get ahold of, swiping it off one of the coats checked at the front.

We didn’t forget.

Across the field and through the ornate table formations, a host of blond on blonde ruminates, accented by whatever other shade his father decided to add to his collection. Never him. Eddie took another sip of gin, frowning in the Adamskis' direction and his fingers’ earthquakes. With cheeks puffed out, he felt like a chipmunk. Futile, reachless animal, bound to become tiretracks.

We didn’t forget.

He shouldn’t feel so attached. He shouldn’t feel like he got caught with his hands jawing around the cookies in the jar. He joined the Avancini only a month or two prior to their deaths. Strangers. It was like grieving your mom’s dog that you met only twice before. A dog with its throat slit and left to rot as roadkill. Like the squirrel he ran over two hours ago or the body he dumped in the river twelve hours ago.

Hearts become scarred after an attack. Charred, as though all that kinetic energy burned it up. The walls wear away and soon, it bursts like the strawberry grasped between his teeth. At a funeral? Oddly festive. The heart remembers; it does not forget.

With beaten puffs above, his torso ached, and his shoulder creaked.

Someone you trust has already betrayed you.

Once more, the silhouette enchanted his gaze. Hands that clobbered him remain ghosts around his face. They can’t mean me, he reasoned. Yet, guilt is what fries his thoracic corner, turning arteries into bombs. All he is, all that remains. His fingers shake still, but at least he can remove himself from the haze. Father ignored, not forgotten, Hero took another drag and soured his face at the taste.

He snapped the flask shut, missing it the first time, before finally twisting the knob tight. His knuckles blushed with the movement, overzealous due to the lack of weight. Sighing, Ed unbuttoned his suitcoat and stuck the metallic container into its interior. Tweed. Unlike his father’s personal style, outfitted with elbow patches. Hero smiled as he trekked the Keypark expanse and approached. A sea that rose up past the walls. Dauntless, not by choice but by nature. Of course, alcohol helped escalate the rising waters.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Edmund began, stopping up short and wobbling. Much like the peace, he was on unsteady feet. Still, he held out his hand, waiting for its mirror’s image to grasp it.

Using the free arm, he reached into the opposite interior pocket, like a man sticking his arm into a water moccasin hole, and pulled out the edge of the letter they’d all received. In that moment, it was less of an animal reaching out to poison him with its teeth. Instead, Hero was the slimy eel and the letter only served as his license to have such a title.

“I’m presuming you haven’t heard.” He let the letter go back into its resting place, no longer a glowing golden sign of his change.

Near his heart, it felt like a target sign.

Stuffing his hands into his pockets to anchor himself, Ed hiccuped. “I joined awhile ago,” he offered in explanation. “Thought since we’re allies it wouldn’t matter.”

At least, if the letter references me, I don’t have to live in fear of what he might do to me. His smile remained penchant, though it curdled with the growing stain of gin on his breath. At least, my hands have finally been set free. It was his legs, sea-sick, that trembled now.

“Do they know?” He referenced the brunettes and head-blonde that he knew must be in attendance. “I doubt you told them,” Hero’s smile was flat and grotesque, teeth hidden under the droopy curtains of his lips. He stumbled backwards, regretting his liquid lunch.

“I think,” he started, voice gaining traction. “That everyone should start this renewed peace off with the truth, right?”

“How about, dear King of Saint Heights, you tell your ‘children’,” he was almost yelling now, “About the one you left to die?”

The truth will always prevail

H.E. spat at his father’s feet, but he found the alcohol did more than make him sloppy. It dimmed the sense of defeat. Black upon black. His irises moved, trying to detect something, even just shock, within Matezh’s gaze.

It was digging down to the center of the Earth. Futile, and worst of all, immature. He felt his glassy eyes begin to stir liquid.

“I don’t mean to ruin your day,” he continued, quieter. He reached into his jacket once more, revealing the flask and downing the last droplets.

His tone remained strong. “I just don’t want to have the finger pointed at me because no one knows the real you.”
coded by reveriee.
 






alyona
















mood.


get me out






outfit.


x






location.


memorial venue






tags.


n/a














Since Alyona turned twenty-four years old she’d dedicated two days of the week solely to her parents. While she preferred to maintain some type of routine and visit on the same pair of days, she knew that wasn’t an option—at least not for a long while. Her change in occupation left her so drained—either mentally, physically, or some combination of the two—that the strength to pull herself out from under warm bed covers was often nowhere to be found. Mornings had thus become a different kind of affliction for her, so when the balance between responsibility and exhaustion teetered towards the latter and she hadn’t seen her family yet… well…

A clear streak ran across the broken mirror—destroyed during a fit of agony a year ago and unfixed because a clear image would only remind her of what she was. When steam began wrapping its arms around the object, Alyona ran a hand across its cool surface, bits and pieces of glass falling into the running water before her. Something like a groan, or maybe a whine, escaped her lips as she stared ruefully at her reflection.

She didn’t register her actual face—she rarely did—but the bruises, though? They were impossible not to notice. Purple and blue were painted along the side of her left eye like a counterfeit Van Gogh, spread across her tan skin in a pattern of light and dark, light and dark. Her fingers lightly traced the worsening marks, wincing whenever she pressed a little too hard in certain spots. Tears stung the corners of her eyes, but they disappeared as quickly as they’d appeared.

“Thank Allah for makeup,” she murmured to herself with a small cough, even though she wasn’t sure how well yellow concealer would save her this round.

Alyona took her time getting ready for the day, spending most of dawn touching up her makeup under various lightings. She tried her best to make it all look natural, but natural only went so far when she had a monster to hide. It was obvious one side of her face was packed a little heavier than the other—a fact she hated, considering she usually only covered small blemishes and hardly wore full coverage. She wasn’t planning on anyone getting close enough to scrutinize every detail about her, though.

Her outfit laid flat on her bed sheets, onyx black against the creamy white. It was simple enough with a short dress and knee high boots to match, and while she should have checked to make sure there wasn’t a single speck or flake on them, her attention was drawn to the small table perched against a window. A smooth, open letter whispered to her tauntingly, begging her to read it again and spiral down a new path of worry. It rustled as she stepped closer, as if laughing in victory.

The rustic envelope it came in was the first thing Alyona noticed that morning. A groggy mess upon waking, she nearly slipped on the parchment when she’d gone to pour a glass of water. Her clumsiness was followed by an array of foreign curses left to simmer when she finally read the letter’s contents.

Somebody you trust has already betrayed you.

Just as her body had done when she first read the letter, it went frigid. An invisible force ran its cold, icy finger down her bare spine. The hairs on her arms and neck rose as she fought a shiver, clenching and unclenching her jaw in some vain attempt to ground herself to the present. Blurbs of a nightmare clouded her vision. She could hear a phantom in her head, screaming louder and louder until she almost swore she heard the words “The truth will always prevail” directly in her ear—the side with the bruise.

Throbbing pain brought her back to reality as she blinked away whatever trance she was momentarily in. Her plump lips formed a scowl as she covered the cursed piece of paper with a book. There would be another time to ponder what it meant and who sent it. Right now, she had to focus on looking presentable and unbothered by the suffocating tension she’d soon have to face.

*​

“You made our daughter do what?”

Alyona watched her parents with feigned disinterest as they bickered. For two individuals in their grumpy sixties—both plagued by their own life altering illnesses—the way they managed to argue while simultaneously professing how much they loved each other was a mystery. Although, it did bring a much needed smile to her lips. A small one that was barely noticeable, but a smile nonetheless.

“My Love-” Her father began, casting a sidelong glance in Alyona’s direction. The dark-haired woman only shrugged as she continued wiping her mother’s hands with a damp cloth. He shot her look of betrayal that made her bite back a giggle as he switched to their native tongue. “Listen to me. I only wanted to find the best gift for you. Something that your beauty could make shine.”

“Don’t switch languages. I want everyone to hear how much of a fool you are.” Her mother huffed. Alyona swore she saw her father shrink back in his seat, or at least as far as it would let him. Maybe it was a mistake to visit the hospital before and not after the memorial. “You made Fatemah drive around all day as your chauffeur when she could have been resting! You know how hard she works.”

A feeling of regret mixed with shame began fermenting in her gut. There was an acidic tang at the back of her throat she chose to ignore. If her mother knew what kind of work she did to survive, she wasn’t sure if there’d be so much passion in the room. She wasn’t sure if her mother would want to see her at all, really.

“Mama.” Alyona sighed when she realized her father had lost all his defenses. She couldn’t blame him for going silent. Her mother was a lioness when it came to her daughter’s welfare. The days when her mother could actually take care of the younger were gone, but she had to give the woman credit for trying. It was a nice feeling—to be cared for, even if she felt like she didn’t deserve to be. “It’s fine. I’m okay. Are you finished with the hat?

“I can take them to the pediatric wing if you are.” Alyona nodded to the knitted bonnet in the woman’s too bony hands and the basket of other knitted items beside her. Her mother opened her mouth to say something, but Alyona was already up with her arm looped through the carrier. “I’ll be back.”

*​

Regret was indeed a well-known and well-understood word in Alyona’s glossary of most hated terms. She cursed herself silently as she drove to her next destination, one hand on the wheel and the other pulling down the visor so she could check her makeup. No one within an arm's length would be able to see it, but she could tell the bruising was poking through the foundation.

Did someone just honk at her? She honked back.

The rain had begun right after she’d dropped her father off at his home. Of course it had, and the dampness made some of the makeup shift and fade. She blamed the cheap products and her own forgetfulness, one of her biggest flaws if she were asked. She blamed that damned letter too because if she hadn’t gotten so worked up over it, she may have remembered to toss something for touch ups into her purse.

Her vehicle came to a skittering halt, wheels screeching slightly against the wet ground. Alyona attempted an apologetic smile towards the valet, but she could guess it looked more like a sneer from the way he lowered his gaze in submission. She had to hold back an expression of regret as she forced a large pair of thick sunglasses onto her face, ignoring the lingering stare that quickly warmed the back of her neck.

She was absolutely terrible at apologizing.

The taps of her heeled boots quietly bounced off the walls as she slowly made her way to the main room. People were scattered about, already in their familiar clusters. Some Adamskis turned to glance at her, eyeing her the way she eyed them. Both sides were studying each other like foreign objects beneath a magnifying glass. They eventually looked away, probably deciding she wasn’t a threat to whatever taut rope strung the two families together.

There wasn’t anyone she wanted to speak with there, but there were those she wanted to avoid. She wasn’t confident in holding a conversation with them if they confronted her—a truth her pride wouldn’t allow herself to admit. The thought of standing in the same space as them alone made her want to reach for the nearest drink. And if the letter was somehow related?

Oh-

“Excuse me.” Alyona stopped one of the waitstaff carrying a platter of wines and champagnes. She peered at the glasses for a few seconds before her nose crinkled, pulling her long hair back and away from her face. “What’s the strongest thing you have?”





”let’s run away together.”


♡coded by uxie♡
 
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baroque adamski
❝ god, you even make funeral attire look hot. ❞
mood
anxious, over stimulated
outfit
x.
location
Keypark Hall
interactions
matezh mother of sorrows mother of sorrows , the lover.

❝ Unfurl your wings little dove and pretend that you do not see the arrows the world has shot at you. ❞​

It was a short straw that had been drawn to convince the world to bring out a day like this one. Pewter skies cried down the lamentations of the lost and loveless, a striking race down panes of glass. A chill bit at the foolish who braved the weather for daily activities, the coming whispers of winter in each gust of wind as a sun-missed cheek pressed against leather. Games were being played within the confines the vehicle as it pulled along the streets towards a hallowed designation, a bitten cheek and avoidant eyes only the first roll of the dice as the youngest sat uncomfortably near the father.

Baroque fucking hated this.

He had wrecked his own car a few days before and ever since found himself confined to a close proximity to a viper. To some it might be considered nice, a good period of 'bonding' time that made the youngest Adamski stare more longingly towards the spoons at dinner as a way of gouging eyes over eating soup. Tented were his fingers now, a push against the leather interior as silence hung like a funeral veil over his face. Hardly two words had been given as even courtesy to Matezh since a string of complaints on demanded redressing not once but twice that morning.

Irritating.

Nothing would change that now, the sight of their designation rising before them like an ugly sore against polished smoke. Tires hadn't even finished fully turning before a handle was pulled at and a body moved freely into the rain. Despite the designed threads decorating his body there weren't cares about the damage of rain, a pelting of water on carefully styled curls glancing off them in the initial moments. A turn of cheek gave the slightest angle of face towards the other occupant of the car, a tall figure bent just enough for decorum to speak before he would take his separation into the event.

"Thanks for the ride, dad." Bile bit at his tongue like a poison he willingly swallowed, the venom towards his father only buffered by a carved expression. Hardened eyes only briefly showed the distaste he had for the demeaning view at a car ride before curls lovingly brushed the air and he stepped away from the man of money. There was not time in his patience to continue or begin a conversation with Matezh, not through an occasion like this one when there was the chance at a much better goal.

Through the rain he traveled, lengthy limbs striding with grace across the graveled ground through groups of huddled forms under the protection of umbrellas. Fancy entrances were not the agenda for his current path, the scarf he had brought being pulled from his neck as he stepped within doors and felt the confidence swiftly drain from his body.

Like bones his fingers traced along the fabric bundled in his arms, every fiber tickling the bruised skin as rings caught along threads and tore. Baroque could only muse quietly to himself the irony in feeling so skeletal when the grip of a reaper settled so firmly around his neck. Black and white was the world and each step seemed to sink further into the ground, a suctioning that pulled both limbs and eyes downwards. Events like these would always bring a sensory overload to the lithe man, limbs and digits that twitched and restrained themselves from the clasping at ears and the squeezing of eyes.

Fuck.

He had to get away.

Surely eyes wouldn't follow an unimportant soul as he weaved through shades of death. The click of the heeled ankle boots he wore pulsed at an eardrum, a relentless pounding that only seemed to stop as an arm shouldered into a bathroom. A pound of his heart and fabric fell to the floor as he clutched at the row of sinks, the perched arches of his fingers losing color with a tightening grip. Lapses of time fluttered lazily as eyes stared straight at the mirror before him, a sallow visage greeting wild eyes. Fumbling through gel were the fingers that reached into a pocket, the white pills retrieved slipped onto sickened tongue before a swallow was followed with a weakened sigh.

The cool feeling of modern technology pressed against already chilled skin, an input of password and the unfamiliar scrolling a path that Baroque rarely took as a means of communication, even with the floozy lifestyle he lived. Clicks echoed in the bathroom, a noise that pulled at teeth and grated at skin as it happened one, two, three.

More and more he typed, each letter drowned in a gasp for life before a whoosh sent off the message and the phone faced a hard fate against the counter of the sink. It would send to the person he knew had to be at the event, a spirit he found so different from his own but addicting all the same.

'Bathroom?'

One word that signaled as a beacon for the slumping man, a heavy breath pushing out his chest as the illicit substances began their rapid hold over a filled mind. Eyes blurred and the oxygen came easier as a back touched cold and he slid downwards to the floor. A hand reached out, grasping at the thick fabric of a designer scarf that he pulled to his lap in a dry heave, lips touching scratched cloth before his form settled again.

Baroque knew there was no means of truly escaping from the rest of the venue for the entirety of the event, not without punishment at least. Even a future slap on the wrist was a raw sensation he didn't crave and, as much as he didn't mind burning bridges there was a rectangle of plastic he needed to reach a rendezvous for that week.

Baroque was too weak to not succumb to the need for that so he settled.

"Fuck, fuck you."

Even from the hiding area in the bathroom he could hear the beginnings of a commotion from the main venue hall, moving hands that pressed in caves over ears to block out the noise. Only vibrations could touch the youngest Adamski, the slur of drugs and the pain of anxiety blocking his senses as brown eyes rolled sideways and closed, the lengthy lashes squeezing as swords against the mood lighting. Trapped within his thoughts he could only hope he didn't return to the event to find carnage of irreparable damage. This was why he loathed every meeting of multiple family members, an issue only brought to a spark quicker by the presence of his 'ex-brother' and 'rival' family.

The noise, the noise, the noise.

He wanted out, he wanted something else. There was a craving for more of the white pills and the desire to bite the finger of the man who gave them to him. Beads of sweat marked the anxiety, a tongue that seemed incapable of wetting lips as the noise came and went and Baroque sat there; a fool.
/* ------ credit -- do not remove ------ */
© weldherwings.
 
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d. azalea washington
















# avancini




# the fool










♡coded by uxie♡


location: the memorial hall
outfit: click here
tags: koala koala , brief mentions of other characters
-

At 7:30 AM, Azalea's alarm clock went off. It only buzzed twice before her hand slithered from under dark green covers and pushed the alarm switch to 'OFF.' Within a minute, Azalea was sitting up in bed. The sky was grey with rain clouds, and it had already started drizzling. She watched the dim light touch the sparkling leaves of her plants on the balcony. When she inhaled, the air was fresh and perfumed with the faint scent of petals. She had dreamed the night before but now struggled to remember exactly of what. As the rain strengthened and the sky grew lighter, the dream was washed further and further away until it lay just out of reach.

By 7:45 AM, Azalea was up and about with a watering can, tending to her indoor greenery. As she watered, she imagined floating up and looking down on her little world, seeing herself and her apartment with so much clarity in her mind. It was clean and comfortable and utterly green. Azalea had been practically homeless after her release from prison. She could have returned home to Martha, but it was out of the question in her mind. However, when she joined the Avancini family, Emilio made sure that she was taken care of. When she had asked him if she could fill the place with flowers, he gave her a nod. She moved in and put the flowers and shrubs all around. She called it "Azalea Path." From the air, she saw herself in this moment, watering her loves. Watering her heart. It will bloom beautifully, she thought.

At 7:55 AM, Azalea was eating breakfast: oatmeal with blueberries and buttered toast. As she ate, she watched the news. There were wildfires raging on the west coast. Trees were burning, decorated with flames from the trunk to the highest branch. Flowers were blackening and going up in smoke. Azalea watched with indignation. The image of vegetation burning was personal for her, and fire was political. She often thought: Who decides what deserves to burn? Who decides who deserves to burn? The outcasts of society had been used as kindling for centuries. Witches. Religious minorities. The poor.

Azalea reflected on something she had read in a book: in the days of the Roman Republic, a man named Marcus Licinius Crassus formed the first fire brigade, comprised of his five hundred slaves. He would arrive at burning homes with his brigade and only agree to put out the fire if he could buy the home at a meager price; he would later lease it or sell it back to the homeowner or someone else entirely for profit. If the owner of the burning house refused to be scammed like this, Crassus and his five hundred slaves would stand by and watch the flames render them homeless. Did he feel powerful, Azalea wondered?

After breakfast, it was reading time. Today, she cracked open her copy of Some Imagist Poets and went through with a pencil as she read, marking anything notable. The rain outside grew stronger.

She read Richard Aldington's "The Poplar:"

Why do you always stand there shivering
Between the white stream and the road?
...
Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!
You are more beautiful than they are.​

Her interest was piqued, but further reading soured her impression:

I know that the white wind loves you,
Is always kissing you and turning up
The white lining of your green petticoat.​

How typical of a man, Azalea thought, to make a beautiful, natural being into something to be molested. She was bitterly reminded of Ovid's Daphne, her cursed namesake—made even more cursed by the fact that she always heard the name in her head in her parents' voices. "Daphne! Daphne!" Her mother’s voice echoed in her memories like a dirge, and she shivered. On the contrary, her father's voice (when he was himself) was dulcet. When he said the name, Azalea could almost believe the kids' version of the Greek tale that they told her: that Daphne was a beautiful, young girl who loved the forest so much that she turned into a laurel tree, producing pale-yellow flowers for the rest of her days because it delighted her.

By 9:00 AM, Azalea was in the shower. The water, too hot for her sensitive skin, hit the floor like the rain outside hit the ground. Azalea felt that she was like those flowers on the balcony, invigorated by morning showers. Deja vu hit her. Is that what she had dreamed about? Being a flower in the rain? Everything's coming up beautiful, she thought—I'm coming up azaleas. She reflected on the opening lines she had marked of John Gould Fletcher's "The Blue Symphony:"

The darkness rolls upward.
The thick darkness carries with it
Rain and a ravel of cloud.
…

Palely the dawn
Leaves me facing timidly
Old gardens sunken:
And in the gardens is water.​

It reminded her of what today was about. If weather was a language, rain would be the word for death. The dark clouds rolled upward, scourged on by the sun, to announce to Saint's Heights that today was the anniversary of the murders. The fog spelled out grief. Azalea hadn't been with the Avancinis long enough to have known Andrej or Louisa or to have fully felt the impact of their deaths. She mainly heard about it from her superiors. But what she had heard and felt in her time as an Avancini gave her enough of an idea of how serious the matter was. The soil covering those three caskets (one of them child-sized) had borne dangerous buds over the past year: paranoia, resentment, dread. The big question: who was the murderer? Who decided that they deserved to burn?

At 10:00 AM, Azalea was dressed and sat thinking about old gardens sunken. The gardens of the mind flooded with death—with the darkness that the sky brought to Saint's Heights this morning. And in the gardens is water. As if suffering were the thing being cultivated. Azalea thought of her father. What flowers populated the garden of his mind? What fruits swelled on his boughs of thought? The unanswerable question: What was it that blighted his blooms?

By 10:30 AM, Azalea was plotting her route. She had no car, couldn’t drive anyway, and wasn't interested in getting a driver, so she plotted out a trip that ended up being half walking and half subway. Thirty minutes later, she had left her apartment with an umbrella in hand. As she walked out into the rain, she imagined the plants she had just left behind whispering in the dismal light of her apartment but unable to hear each other over the pouring rain.

At 11:10 AM, Azalea was on the subway train. A few people looked, but it likely had more to do with her outfit than her bud of a reputation. Since she was still a little fish (and also because Auguste had helped her to become semi-capable with a firearm), she didn't worry much about being attacked. Sofia Lorenzo was most likely to attack her out of anyone, and Azalea found the idea of being afraid of Sofia ridiculous. She chuckled in her subway seat just thinking about it.

There were four stops before it was time for her to get off the subway. The first passed. When the subway car stopped at the second one, Azalea noted the street name: it was the street on which the downtown bookstore was located. A place where college students spent a lot of time studying and where fourteen-year-old Azalea had spent a lot of time stealing whatever she could to cultivate her mind. She remembered when she had stolen a copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses and learned the truth about Daphne, her cursed namesake. A nymph that Apollo tried to take for himself.

She never asked her parents why they lied about the story because she knew why. 'From the lion runs the timid faun, and from the eagle flies the trembling dove.' Who wants to tell their daughter that they named her after a victim—after prey? '[Daphne] seemed most lovely to [Apollo's] fancy in her flight.' Daphne looked most beautiful to him when fleeing; her terror made Apollo want her more. What bullshit. Azalea had later read somewhere that most laurel forests had disappeared, unable to survive in the Mediterranean climate that grew progressively drier. It confirmed what she already knew: Daphne was dead. Good riddance, she had thought. Better to be dead than to be a victim, petrified by innocence and unable to fight back.

Perhaps this is why Azalea found her face burning up whenever Louisa and Andrej's child was mentioned: petrified by innocence and unable to fight back. Yet, not even given a chance to grow thorns. Fireweed responded to fire by blooming through the ash, a wild purple smile on the wasteland. Azalea found this so admirable. But a baby? What chance is there for regrowth for one who has barely had the chance to grow at all? She almost scoffed. Children were forced to bloom in a wasteland—little phoenix flowers unto a garden of bones—or else choke on the ashes.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.​

Azalea frowned. What if, instead of being made into a laurel tree, Daphne had been set ablaze so that Apollo's fingers would burn when he touched her? Would that make the story more or less tragic? Azalea imagined Crassus, with his five hundred slaves, arriving and watching the flaming nymph. He offers his extinguishing services in exchange for Daphne's agency—in exchange for her submission—but she declines the trade offer. The slaves look on as she burns to death, and for a moment they envy her freedom. It is she who decides that she should burn. Azalea found herself thinking about Jin, who at times seemed to burn like someone in purgatory: as if accustomed to the fire. Is self-destruction the best protection against the cruelty of the world? Was that why Father...?

By 11:39 AM, Azalea was walking into the hall. She had been diligent in getting ready, appearing well-dressed in a way that may have been inappropriate for a memorial event. As she entered, a few heads turned. Some glances were more polite than others, and it wasn't hard for Azalea to figure that the meaner glances came from allies of the Lorenzo family. Even these Lorenzo allies, however, wouldn't go so far as to cross the Avancinis in broad daylight, so Azalea wasn't too worried. Only Sofia was bold enough, and she was nowhere in sight. Even then, it was hard for her to shake the feeling of being new on the scene. She felt like a twig among oaks.

Azalea wandered over to the other side of the room and took a moment to admire the bouquets she had ordered to be sent to the hall: lilies, chrysanthemums, and carnations in expensive glass vases. Classic flowers for events having to do with death. She walked by the lilies and chrysanthemums breezily but lingered on the carnations, eyeing their white and red petals. For a second, the red looked like blood, and she felt a sudden desire to not be standing alone. She looked around for anyone she knew. She noticed Vic hadn’t arrived yet and figured that he was probably coming from therapy. She hoped that Gladys, that annoying ass old lady, hadn’t given him any trouble.

Azalea eventually spotted Alyona and relaxed slightly. She walked up just as Alyona appeared to be getting a drink from a waiter. She slid to the other woman’s side. “Good morning, Yona!” Her tone was warm. She scanned over the waiter’s platter with a smirk before picking a glass at random and taking a sip. “So, I’ve been getting a couple of weird looks. I imagine you have too, right? And not just because we look incredibly beautiful.” Noticing the thick sunglasses, she leaned forward slightly and added, “You good?”

 
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CASIMIR S.








THE HANGED-MAN



Flecks of muted morning light through sheer curtains broke through panels of glass, sparsely touching the furniture. Though still dim, Casimir could still make out the books and strewn about pill bottles in his room; loose tendrils of brown hair falling in front of his eyes, though not obstructing his vision. A stifled sigh, the shuffling of slippers against old wood, and the ring of his alarm blended with every pass of excruciatingly long seconds. The click of a kettle sounded off in the quiet room, steam meeting the air above, melding with the thick air that squeezed into his lungs; a lit cigarette placed between his lips, a sharp exhale, tired eyes burned with the overwhelming sensation of tears.

He hadn’t cried much in years, only so much in his childhood.

Had it been the grievous atmosphere or the death anniversary, it was only clear that nothing would be the same; with only a year’s passing since the death of Louisa and Andrej, one Casimir had surprisingly been devastated by, rising tensions transitioned into temporary solidarity engulfed both the Adamskis and the Avancinis. A year, though it may not have seemed long, managed to compile death: like participation medals after multiple trials. He’d seen death; experienced the pain at a young age and even now, despite being the shell of a man, he felt the itch of gloom encase its hands around his neck.

Theo barely remembers the faces of his family, only smudges in his memory that he wishes he could fully put together. Recollection only came in short washes, and even after, Casimir suffered at the hands of static. He could, however, remember the feeling of shock that coursed through his veins, adrenaline mixed with stinging tears; fresh pools of blood on marble floors; screams of terror and cries for mercy; those memories, as much as he’d like to forget, were vivid. No drug could make the immeasurable pain go away; highs were temporary, but the memories further etched into the crevices of his brain like hieroglyphs, were forever.

Matezh should have killed him rather than spared him; at least then, Casimir wouldn’t suffer.

Dreading days where he’d have to see the murderer of his family again, face to face, as well as the family he was never fond of—in fact, he hated them—Casimir shuddered at the thought of being overtly friendly with this group of familiar strangers; they may have been convinced that he’d seen them as family, but to him, they were nothing more than chess pieces. He awaited their downfall much like any other enemy of theirs. And rightfully so. Their actions were unforgivable, even in the wake of his acceptance into their mess of a home.

Was home even the right word?

For now, however, he had to dwell with the ones he hated most. The fact is that, although he may despise the Adamskis, in a cruel twist of life, Theo is afraid of the emotional connection he'd grown with them. Guilt speckled with his own inner hatred for not only them but for himself is constantly plastered on the walls of his mind. Confused. He questioned himself every day as to why; Theo, Casimir, whoever had this emotional attachment to the Adamskis, made him hate himself more than he already had.

He sought vengeance, but the curious mind gained a love indescribable. Theo hated it; Casimir hated it. The further dismissal of such feelings caused more turbulence than intended. Maybe then,

***​

Dark coffee splashed with every tremble in his hand; most days they were steady, however, the overwhelming dread that came with the present-day often loomed above him. Encased in a cage of grief, held by the bars of his own horrific passages of time, Casimir was unable to wipe away the sadness that came with losses he fell familiar with. Hazel eyes stare down at the dark liquid, steam against his pores; there sits a reflection of the man he wasn’t. Casimir Adamski, no longer a Sayed—he lived a nightmare in flesh and ties.

Casimir’s jaw clenched at the bitterness, tired eyes barely able to keep themselves open. His sleeplessness was, and had always been, a plague that further exhausted his body; heart torn asunder, deep lines under his eyes indicative of what has been, and the slight twitch in his eye.

A finger tugged at the collar of his turtleneck, an uncomfortable amount of cloth clinging to his neck with little give; he followed with a gulp, finishing off the last of the black coffee—its bitterness sitting in the back of his throat. “Is this shit even worth it,” deep huskiness settled at the end of his lips, lingering with the air that chilled his skin—even under the long-sleeved attire. The gold watch worn on his right wrist ticked with the inevitable passing of time; never a fan of keeping time, Casimir covers it—he was early, anyhow.

Another pill washed down, Casimir awaits its effects: to numb himself of the pain often settled; the lit cigarette as company, he keeps it lit, taking drags whenever he feels.

***​

Rain trickled against the roof of the car, windshield wipers a constant reminder of the weather. He didn’t mind it. Rainy days, rainy nights; the sky’s tears seemed to kiss the earth, though it may have been more of a curse than a blessing. None of it had touched his clothing, pristine condition without a single wrinkle or droplet. This drive, although short, left him with Marzanna: intrusive thoughts often came in waves; thoughts of family, several attempted recollections of faces, scheming, and the unfortunate occasion of having a melody stuck in his head—unable to place what song it had even come from.

"I could hijack this car right now and nobody would know until it's too late," Casimir spoke with half of a joke, a slight pull at the corner of his mouth, words fluttered to Marzanna. She found it a joke, short laugh in response and he laughs back momentarily. Silence engulfed the two of them, his half-smile dropped into a straight, narrow expression that implied he hadn't been joking. Though, she may not have caught onto such an expression; perhaps convincing herself that his humor was instilled in this, as well.

Wheels came to a quiet halt, body slightly lurching forward as their driver parked the plain car -- though Casimir never favored drivers.

Casimir nods to her statement, almost sneering at the thought of having to indulge in the grievances of others; "What a life we live, right?" Disbelief. He felt it, not for rubbing elbows with the Avancinis, but pretending that he'd cared enough for both parties to make his attendance. Though he had to gain trust, evaluate both enemies, take note of the actions of his peers before making his move on the proverbial chess-board.

He pulled a flask from the inside pocket of his blazer, taking a swig from it without hesitation; this should save him for a little while, right? Casimir hadn't required any further recollection, not again—whilst his thoughts ran rampant in several directions—awaiting for the right target to hit, yet failing miserably with every agreeance. “Get in, get out. You will be fine, Casimir,” the man reassured himself, calloused hand placed against his heart, its beating wilder than the coincidental sound of sirens whizzing past the private hall. Dread, it choked him up, beckoned to slam him into cold concrete and inevitable pain.

The feeling in his chest was tight, yet his face remained emotionless; for the most part, the feeling of grief had faded temporarily. Had it been the pills mixed with alcohol? Or his general desensitization at the hands of himself, wanting to separate from the emotional wreck he would’ve been. There was a built-up feeling unfamiliar, and that there, terrified him more than anything. It was neither hate nor grief, happiness or anxiety.

Heavy doors pushed open, a slight shake in his stance as he tried to piece himself back together, Casimir enters with an eerie calmness. The pills had finally begun working; however long they would last, he begins a countdown until they start to wear off, awaiting the overwhelming feeling he'd numbed temporarily.

Marzanna's presence falls closer to him, her comfort given to the wrong person, but he bites down on the grimace. "You want a drink, Marzi?" A flask is offered to her, a bit of alcohol left that was meant to settle the nerves. "We'll need it to get through this shit."


scroll



INTERACTION
Marzanna

LOCATION
memorial

TAGS
ravensunset ravensunset




scroll

"ترى للوقـت هـزَّه وأنقلابـه .. تهزِّ جبالها لـو هـي رواسـي” -خالد الفيصل."

 
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scroll








the magician ✧･ﾟ:



evangeline













mood

sooo many things can go wrong











outfit

sad day, not ugly day











location

Keypark Hall











interactions

mr. kim











tags

.V1LLAINISM._ .V1LLAINISM._















Saint's Heights had never been a city that greeted its residents with a golden glow, the one that warms people from the outside in and basks them in an incomparable radiance. No, contrary to its name, every morning is a dreary affair, if not a battle―spears of light struggling to break through legions of dense cloud and wispy fog. Most fail, extinguised out of sight with no one to remember them. No one to mourn them. The lucky few who poke through find themselves muted, corrupted, something more akin to the light of a waning moon rather than that of a rising sun.

It is unforgiving. Harsh. Dreary. Just like the always slightly ajar curtains that let such dead light inside the bedroom, the silk red blanket that becomes a sea of blood under its glow, or Evangeline's inability to sleep on rainy nights, they are facts of life in Saint's Heights.

And none of them are pleasant.

Sleep had wanted to claim her all night, singing a sweet lullaby to calm her spirits like a mother would her daughter, but the splatters of rain on glass, the sound of them exploding on impact in one last display of violence―going out with all the subtlety of a firework as if to say 'Look! I was here! I existed!'―kept her wide awake. She didn't hear water. She heard hell. All of it amplified by the thumping of her heart. The rushed and clumsy footsteps of a young, helpless girl being dragged through puddle after puddle. Her unanswered questions. His stern voice. And then...

The alarm. It was one of the defaults, but not the siren sounding one. That one reminded her far too much of firetrucks rushing to the scene of a house fire, of police cordoning off a crime scene, of ambulances carrying out bodies in bags―three to be exact. Her hand revealed itself from under the covers, grabbing the phone off the bedside table to see just what else she needed to be cruelly reminded of today.

The anniversary of Louisa, Andrej, and their child's death.

---

Breakfast, a luxury in and of itself nowadays―the work of a mere foot soldier was more time-consuming than she expected and a spy doubly so, was nothing more than a letter. She had sliced the envelope open late last night, more interested at the idea of physical correspondence still being used than whatever silly message lay written inside it. And although Evangeline had written off its message as silly indeed, she still left it at her kitchen table to be reread the next morning.

It was now that next morning, and rereading the contents of the letter provided little clue as to its origin or its author. The meaning was not lost on her, however, but she could hardly take it seriously. Threats are best made in person, not through outdated means of delivery with nothing to prove that such, if any, retribution is coming. Whoever thought that this would be menacing clearly underestimated their target, but undisturbed as she might be, signs of frustration―little habits she usually wouldn't let slip had it not been this specific day―adorned her mannerisms: fingers combing dark brown layers of hair back to get a clearer look, strands tightly twisted around a finger then released right before it hurts, nails leaving marks where they had unknowingly burrowed into skin.

Today was all too much, and glancing at the time on her phone, she had no more energy or space for a poorly executed joke. So the letter was burned―it and all of its threats turned into ashes in front of Evangeline's eyes. The stove's flames danced around for a little while after, moving in unpredictable ways and finding themselves reflected in a blank, umber stare.

How can a fire so easily wipe out the existence of three people, but when faced with rain, it ceases to be?


---

Sometimes the way the world worked made no sense to Evangeline. It seemed to like to twist things―putting people in difficult situations without a second thought―and watch those affected suffer. Especially her. When Andrej first perished, she had already well been a year or two into her stint as an Avancini. No new recruit would've felt what she did upon hearing the news of his and his family's demise, but she was not new. Not to him at least. She had grown up in his presence, lived most of her life with it, and now her days would continue without it because the universe was completely undeterred by a tragedy such as this. It always is.

She remembers being unable to express her true feelings at that time. It seems that this year, and the next, and the next, and all the years after that will be no different. A part of her wonders if that counts as betrayal, if all that the elders were worried about regarding her loyalty is coming true.

That was what she thought as she left her rented studio apartment late in the morning dressed in a modest, all-black ensemble with only an umbrella in hand. She had shaken off all her lingering emotions from the hours before and meticulously dressed herself for the occasion, covering up any evidence of the restless night that had been plagued with intrusive memories. Now, it was just a simple walk to where the memorial was being held. She made sure not to step into any puddles just in case the hem of her skirt and shoes became drenched, an embarrassing look for anyone―Avancini or Adamski― to walk into a memorial like.

Evangeline glanced at herself every once in a while, whether it be in a passing window or the screen of her phone, checking for anything that was out of place. Maybe a strand of hair fell out of its place or her lipstick began fading. It was these little things that formed peoples' impressions of you first and foremost―she had more than enough experience with that to be an expert in the subject. But out of all the reflective surfaces around, it was never a puddle. She had had enough of the rain, of water, of fire, and of death, but all were to be in great abundance today which made the most awful sight of all on this very dreary day the memorial hall entrance.

It was moments like these where Evangeline truly felt like an outsider. She was not allowed the company of people she's known for decades and had to entertain idle conversation with others she'd betray at a moment's notice. Nowhere was truly right for her, and there was not a thing anyone could do about it.

But every once in a while, she'd meet eyes with someone, and for the briefest of moments, Evangeline would convince herself that it was all okay. She would make it through this debacle alive and unsuspected, going on to live another day.

Meeting Mr. Kim's glance for only a split second was all she needed. That charismatic smile of hers, a tried-and-true fatal move when it comes to playing around with peoples' emotions, makes its way onto her face for the first time today as she flags down a waiter. They rush over, like a dog waiting to be praised by its master for listening to directions, and Evangeline's tone is thick and sweet like honey, a treat to spoken to with.

"A glass please while I wait for the service to start."



♡coded by uxie♡
 
Last edited:



Doctor, can you fix it up with a stitch? I’m craving structure in this mix. I fear I’m leaking out. Someone tipped me over by my spout. While

dakota adamski








Dakota hated funerals.

He remembers his parent's funeral; their bloody, hole-filled bodies tucked away in glossy, ornamental boxes, lined with gold trim and finished with a bouquet of tasteful flowers. Six feet of dirt and worms being shovelled over the expensive coffins concealed the crime, betrayal and brutality from that day.

It was quite a turn out actually. Adorned in black, over three dozen solemn-faced gang members surrounded the young son of the deceased. A handful who were present for his parent's murder had retired their smoking guns with handkerchiefs and forced tears.

They told stories of how much they adored and respected his father. The same who plotted his downfall. Dakota wished someone had the guts to say how they really felt. Then, at least, this whole event wouldn't of been one big lie. He deserved better than that. His mother deserved more than that.

It made Dakota sick. No—it made him angry. Fucking furious.

The young child scrunched up his tiny fist, biting on his tongue hard until his mouth tasted like metal. Diana's comforting grip on his shoulder was all that kept him from screaming.

That and his cousin's expressionless, dead eyes.

Those same eyes he saw that night.

Instead his heart began racing; ribs grasping his beating heart in a chokehold. Dakota's breathing became shallow and his head spun with incomprehensible thoughts. They came at him a million-miles a minute. He couldn't breathe.

He remembers falling to the ground in the wet grass, gasping for air as all those eyes stared at him.

They never stopped staring.

Watching.

***​

The family doctor called it panic attack. Something Dakota had become all-too-familiar with over the years. A bottle of pills, some breathing exercises and an inhaler — for when it triggered his asthma — were meant to keep it at bay.

So, yes, if it wasn't clear — Dakota was not a huge fan of attending this celebration or whatever the Adamski and Avancini families titled it. He didn't know the family well but like some who would attend today, he wanted to keep this period of peace going. Only a few more months and you can get out of here.

Unbeknownst to his "family", Dakota had gained the confidence from Jasper to make a handful of independent business opportunities and deals that could lead to a stable income. Sure, it wouldn't ever reach the heights of the Adamski fortune but it was enough to let him pursue his dreams in fashion. It was also enough to study abroad for his final year; his prestigious university offering a placement in Seoul which had birthed many of his favourite designers.

For now though, Dakota would play along.

A monochromatic look of black pieces from his wardrobe were placed over his wiry frame for today's affair. He debated wearing something a little more daring but he would rather blend in for such an event. A beanie was also debated to cover his dyed-pink hair but was that even respectful? He knew the rule for no caps but isn't a be—you've spent enough time overthinking this.

Dakota huffed, fishing his phone from inside the crumpled quilt that was heaped on the end of the bed. His studio apartment was in disarray. Or as Dakota saw it: perfectly disorganised. Sheets of fabric, sketches, magazines and half-finished muslin designs were strewn about in a fashion that Dakota remembered each item's place. The only true mess lay on the couch from his movie marathon with Eddie the other night. I wonder if Eddie is already there?

Eyeing the time on his phone, Dakota headed for the door, debating if he should walk there. Thankfully, Keypark Hall wasn't too far away and honestly he needed a walk to clear his head.

A crunch from underneath his foot sounded as he stepped outside. Lifting his boot up, an envelope revealed itself as the culprit. That's strange. They didn't usually bring mail up to his door. It was usually left at the café downstairs.

Gently tearing the letter opened, Dakota skimmed the letter.

For Dakota time didn't pass, time standing still, but ten minutes did. He stood there, body rigid and all those thoughts rushed to the forefront of his head, threatening to bleed out his nose.

He definitely needed that walk.

***​

Fifteen minutes and constant glances over his shoulder later, Dakota slipped into the venue. As a child he learnt that standing up against the wall meant that only people could watch you from the front. It had become a bad habit of his; usually finding solace and comfort with his back situated against the wall.

The wall's comfort wasn't enough today. He could already feel the tightness in his chest and each time he blinked he saw the letter's menacing words. Please. Not now.

He spotted familiar faces throughout the sea of black. Marzanna and Casimir came into view, seeing his mouth move, Dakota wondered what he was saying? He was telling her about that night. It was him who betrayed me. The letter was right.

Eyes flickered to a raised voice and found Eddie, alongside his father, who Dakota didn't dare to look at. No, it was him! Wait no—Eddie would never betray him. Right?

Dakota didn't hear the slight wheeze in his shaky breathing.

Jasper. What if he told Hannibal about my outside business deals?

The seed of doubt was all he needed to spiral into full-blown paranoia. A seed that needed no watering and would soon explode into an overgrown, unruly mess; branches jutting out windows and roots cracking the tiles underneath.

More accusations piled on one another, too fast for Dakota to pay them all attention.

All he could focus on was everyone's eyes on him. They were glued to him, undressing him and seeing him for who he truly was. All his secrets were obvious, as though brandished on his body for all to see.

Hand on the wall, he used it to guide him to the bathroom. The room seemed to shrink; his vision a perpetual camera in-and-out of focus.

Light-headedness was next. Each step more weightless than the next. Stumbling for one of the stall's doors, Dakota barely found the time to push down the toilet's lid.

A rattling hand reached into his cardigan's pocket, attempting to find his inhaler. Please. Please tell me I brought it.


mood | panic attack vibes
scroll

location | bathroom, keypark hall.

tag | mentions: eddie, jasper, matezh, marzanna and casimir.





/* ------ credit -- do not remove ------ */

© weldherwings.
 






hugo.




filler



filler



filler



filler



filler



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  • home (filler tab)



































beta radio



i need my prayers








A day of remembrance; the dead were dead and even memories were but hollow shells, devoid of sinew and life. Reaching out with one's mind wasn't the same as reaching out with a hand and finding another waiting for you. From an outside standpoint, it was a useless endeavor to try and recall those who had passed on from living and breathing; could anything really be gained by devoting a day to their memory? What an obscure word, memory. Something that simply was but had no physical presence, yet something that seemed to flow through a person like meltwater through a dried-up creek. There was a hunger for things of the past, half-satisfied by lingering in things that once were, but never fully satisfied.

Hugo Young struggled with this concept almost constantly. There were those who told him to let go, and others who told him that the dead lived on in his memory. What was he supposed to do? Set up a shrine and promptly forget about its existence? Were the dead merely like the empty room in his apartment, left the same since their departure but never entered? Layer upon layer of dust collected and Hugo was afraid to sweep it up.

The letter had been read and swiftly tossed into the wastebin by his desk.

For everyone else who was heading to the memorial service, the names Andrej, Louisa, and Juni would be on the tips of every tongue, three lives lost much too soon. But for Hugo, the small family hardly earned more than a moment of contemplation as he got dressed. Their story was a tragedy but the black he wore was not for them. Four lives were lost a year ago today, but one had slipped through the cracks, overshadowed and left in a dumpster to rot. Now it seemed that only Hugo was left to mourn; he was out of tears to cry but the sky did it for him.

Even if there would be no pictures of Jakob at Keypark Hall, no mention of his death, Hugo would hold vigil for him.

He sat on his bed for far too long, staring at nothing in particular, his shirt still unbuttoned and hair uncombed. It was as though his body was trying to convince him he lacked the strength to stand, and for a moment he was tempted to believe it. But just as he always did, he stood, allowing physical memory to carry him through his routine so that his mind could stay where it was, peering into the dumpster and combing aside shadows to remember Jakob's face because more than anything else he was terrified of forgetting it.

Yes, his memory, as obscure and indeterminate as it was, seemed to be a part of him that he simply would have to accept without understanding.

The drive to Keypark Hall was silent. He picked up Emilio and Carmen on the way over—why the latter couldn't have found another ride, he didn't know, but Emilio had offered it to her, despite it being Hugo's car. He longed to be alone with Emilio, to speak to him about the things weighing down his heart, but with Carmen present he settled into miserable silence, offering no more words than were necessary. He was uncharacteristically sullen but perhaps Carmen would have enough sense to remember why; after all, she'd known Jakob, if only by name. Everyone did. He was the kind of person you liked to be with.

Or, he had been.

In a way, Hugo was glad for the hum of reverent conversation, once inside. The white noise dulled his senses and hammered like the gentle fall of rain that he'd almost escaped unscathed. Despite the umbrella, which he now folded and placed in the rack by the door, a few stray drops had hit his shoulders like tiny cold daggers; one had even hit his collarbone and trickled down his chest like an icy finger. At least he hadn't gotten any on his glasses.

The first order of business was to grab a drink and seclude himself as far from anyone as possible. There was a lovely empty corner on the east end, so Hugo headed there, leaning back against the wall and next to the cast iron bust of some political figure. The last thing he wanted to hear was Andrej, Louisa, and Juni. He just wanted to think of Jakob and wallow in his misery. Was that too much to ask? The cast iron bust could keep him company.

But good things like comfortable depression were never bound to last. Hugo's phone buzzed, and although he had half a mind to ignore it, he tapped on the screen and opened the message. There was a slight, nearly unnoticeable change in his face almost immediately. Lips set in a tight, straight line, he abandoned his drink on the tiny pedestal next to the cast iron bust. Guard it for me.

It was as if he was a different person, suddenly given purpose and a chance to chase something that would make this day feel like it had been worth suffering through. It was what Hugo had been craving all day—not a distraction, but a reason to carry on. Sometimes his mind was so wrapped up around itself that he couldn't see the things he held closest to himself. And yet there was a sense of urgency that fueled his steps, down the pristine white hallway to the bathroom. Danger? Here of all places? Something must be wrong.

He flung the door open too fast, eyes gazing too wide, only to find nothing. A single stall was occupied, but the door hung half-open. He's not here.

Now his heart was pounding for a different reason. Without a second thought for the person crouched over the toilet, Hugo fled, tapping a waiter's arm and asking if there were any other bathrooms. Upstairs was the only word he needed to hear before he walked as quickly as he could without looking like he was in a rush, climbing a marble staircase and turning around the curling golden banister, eyes scanning the walls for the sign that told him he was in the right place.

Why am I so worried? He's probably just being stupid again. These thoughts were forgotten as he pushed open the bathroom door, slower this time, and found who he was looking for. A black sheep, scarf held tight like the wool that had just been shorn off. Hands pressed over ears, face hollow with canyons that silently echoed his agony, perfect even in pain. Hugo knelt down, a finger curling under his chin to lift it just a little higher, dark eyes pooling with an emotion he couldn't believe he still felt, even after all this time. His heart battered against his ribcage in fear as he tried to imagine what could have caused him to crumble so.

"You're scaring me,"
he whispered, wrapping his arms around the other fiercely, not asking for answers but hoping that he could provide the solution. The other felt so cold, so cold—how long had it been since the last time? A week or two? The ache in his heart grew into a ravenous hunger, and before he could stop himself, he kissed him on the lips, savoring the taste that there was never enough of.
"I shouldn't be here."
And yet here he was.
"This better not be about the damn car, Baroque."







♡coded by uxie♡
 
artificer
location
keypark hall
mood
helloooo
outfit
let a woman keep her flowers.
mentions
vic miyabi miyabi
marnie edwards
there are corpses waltzing underneath these gray skies.

skies that weep over their loss.

some grief you can’t outrun; it settles well enough in your soul to paint it a bit more blue and twists your mind into an endless search of glimpses where ghosts breathe and the past is present. it makes you seek all that is left of those gone, cling to memories that bring life back into those forms burned or buried. an eidolic sonata hums for those that listen to it; their whispers bending to what those hearts are broken and bruised into hearing. you will be tormented one way or another, cursed by the very memories that bring them back to life. and you know it, know deep in your bones that these fragments of the past exist only on begged and borrowed time..

but some people rather be ruined than changed; they can't help but cling to these illusions — as if letting go means a forever exile from the world where ghosts are still alive.

isn’t that why you should move on? yes — but what are people without their ghosts; for some, marnie knows, the opposite of haunting is something very lonely. so she doesn’t judge, even though she does not quite understand; death doesn’t weigh on her heart like it does others. what happened to andrej and louisa is nothing short of a tragedy, one that brings stark reminders of how love can mend fire and ice, engrave its eternities, but never explain its loss.

marnie feels for the pain it has caused — she just doesn’t share their mourning. call her foolish or perhaps mad, her belief makes it so that no one truly dies even after death. andrej and louisa might not be gods, but there lies stardust in their souls, a cosmic matter that can occupy hollow vessels of new. they will be once more, may it be in this realm or not, and the romantic in marnie imagines they can find each other again, too. they might not be the same, but they can be better, live better; and that’s the mercy death has given them.

It is a mercy death grants all.

the memorial is not something marnie attends to remember the dead, her purpose being found in supporting those who live. let her be the bones protecting what is delicate and precious when yours have become brittle — the sedulous sun to your melancholic moon. nothing is ever truly broken in her eyes, and while she can’t be the one to mend everything fractured, she will treasure those shards, keep them safe and sound until you’re ready to try glue them together again.

call her and she will come to you, just like now; her car pulling up to the front of the building where the distress call had originated from. eyes squint in attempt to catch the tall figure of her friend through the rain blurred glass. when she does, her smile brightens. “vic!!” the artificer greets cheerfully while opening the car door for him. as he climbs in, she can’t help but to gasp. “ you-- " eyes widen at his soaked form, "don’t tell me you have been standing in the rain all this time?? what if you catch a c-” words fall where eyes wander. there is water clinging to his form; water and something entirely different. she stares at the wet ashes, lips parted, and the image of a girl and her urn flash through the mind in memory.

oh….

oh dear…

marnie clears her throat, before beaming an easy smile again. “well, look at that !! it’s nice to see you again, sir –” yes, she is talking to the human remains. “uh so sorry to have accidentally kidnapped you, but i promise you will be back home soon again.” her gaze travels away, in search for a better suited compartment, which happens to be a yellow tupperware box. “let us just move you somewhere safer” and carefully, the ashes are transferred from Vic to the box. it’s not a flawless process, but it could’ve been worse. in the end, the head of the avancini stands semi-ash free and one’s father sits comfortably in a tupper box that might or might not have a drawn smiley on the lid.

kind of a win-win, right?

marnie hands her friend a towel.

“i brought two clothing options,” she tells him, knowing very well the reason he called her. there is something about victor that attracts so many occurrences of misfortune; is it a god’s blessing that has him still alive despite it all, or a curse, for he lives to experience every tragedy again and again? marnie can’t be the god who prevents, but she can be the one who weaves good endings from bad beginnings. or at least, she tries to, as much as possible.

“you have one that says, i am the boss here and you best believe it!” shown is a picture of a stylish black and white suit. “orr, one that says, i am the boss of the avancini and rocking prints because we are waaayyy cooler.” next, one with a multi-colored floral design; finger guns empathize the cool part as a grin spreads across the face.

“uhh, i’ll take the black and white one..” is his disappointing, soul-crushing response.

marnie pouts. “but that’s so boring…”

vic’s blank stare let’s her know there is no convincing him otherwise, and a sigh escapes her.

“fineeeee, your suit is in the back. go and change so we can go to the memorial.”
​
and so, some time later, marnie and vic enter keypark hall, one dressed more colourful than the other. gone are the traces of broken urns and fallen ash, the only death that lingers the one they are there to honour. how this day will come to pass, no one quite knows — but marnie does know this; while it's hard to forget pain, it's even more difficult to remember sweetness.

there are no scars to show from happiness,

and we learn so little from peace.
coded by natasha.
 
The Hermit
location
Keypark Hall, Downstairs Bathroom
outfit
X
mentions
N/A
Harris Félicette
Harris’ heart was lodged firmly in his throat, his mind broadcasting white noise like thousands upon thousands of shrill, disembodied voices screaming in his ear at once. He felt dread these days like a primeval itch that would never cease- today, it was all too palpable; almost like a solid entity that wished to engulf his whole body, chew, and spit him on the concrete to dry like a worm. That morning he had taken far too much time trying to convince himself to get out of bed and go to the memorial- not out of lack of respect for the dead, but wondering which would warrant more contempt: his presence or his absence? This event would be the first time in 5 years that he would see so many members of the Avancini in one day, and in one place- the family he once called his own by birthright but now treats his name like some forbidden utterance. He was certain that his being there would evoke some more than unfriendly stares.

• • • • • • •​

He sat rigidly in the driver's seat of his old, worn-down van, glancing with seasick blue eyes at the console clock.

11:35 AM.

He didn’t want to go in earlier than he had to, but the longer he waited the worse he felt. Picking through his pocket lining, he took out the letter he received this morning and tried in vain to smooth out the crumpled parchment, letting his eyes scan over its contents for what felt like the hundredth time today.

The truth will always prevail.

What good had the truth ever done him? Untidy furrows were sewn across his brow- it had to be his parents who sent him the letter, right? It was just like the fear-mongering couple to be this dramatic. But for all he knows, they could be dead. They should be dead. He crushed the letter within his fist once again and let it fall out of his hands and onto the vehicle floor with feigned insouciance.

His head slumped on the top of the steering wheel like an exasperated sigh, eyes shut tight as he returned to his compulsive inner debate: stay or go? He hadn’t even the foresight to bring an umbrella, and cursed under his breath at himself as the sound of rain falling on the van’s roof formed a mocking crescendo. Come on, just get it over with. Get in and get out. No one’s gonna die. He opened the car door and made his way through the rain, through the doors, and into the building.
• • • • • • •
​
The stagnant air within the room felt heavy as an oil drum, dripping hot black tar down his shoulders and back. Heads turned almost mechanically in his direction, like wheels on axles. Standing here, now, it didn’t feel like there was anything sacred about this ceremony. Almost instinctively, he set to finding the most out-of-the-way spot where he could exist as innocuously as possible. However, an immediate, clumsy twist of the ankle sent him stumbling forward and colliding face-first into a poor, teary-eyed older woman.

“I’m so, so sorry, I…'' He choked on his words and froze momentarily. “I have to go to the bathroom. Bye.”

He hurried off with movements mechanical, the absurdity of his behavior not lost on him. Grabbing a sparkling glass of champagne as he went, he ducked into the main floor bathroom and situated himself in front of the mirror, downing the entirety of the tiny glass in one go. He took a handful of paper towels and set to wiping down the rain-spattered surface of his blazer, silently assuring himself that when he leaves this bathroom, he will get through this event as painlessly as possible. In that moment, he felt unwillingly Ozymandian; ‘look, ye mighty, and despair!’

coded by natasha.
 
Last edited:









scroll








the hierophant



Marzanna
Adamski.













mood

stressed, staying alert











outfit

Marzanna's outfit consists of black pants, a buttoned up formal black shirt, and black boots on small heels. She accessorized with two thin gold necklaces and golden strand earrings.











location

Keypark Hall











interactions

Casimir, Hero











tags

miyabi miyabi demonology demonology















In the time Marzanna and Casimir had found their place in the building, the hall had already seemed to double in people. It wasn’t an occasion to be late to, and yet not one anyone wants to spend more time than necessary in, and most had seemed to find that careful middle. Her father had stepped in alongside Baroque, who had almost immediately slipped off somewhere, a luxury only the youngest sibling could have.

Marzanna had no misconceptions about the attention she received as the second-in-command, daughter of the leader of her family. Thankfully, more often than not, this attention came in the form of glances and whispers that attempted to be subtle, ones she could smile and wave off, rather than direct approaches. Marzanna was not liked, she knew this enough, but she would be respected. In her position, the better option of the two. Today more than ever, with the weight of the occasion, the peace treaty, every Avancini here, it had to not bother her.

The event was nothing Marzanna wasn’t innately familiar with, or particularly enjoyed. The luxury of it all was nice, of course, but it was nothing she wasn’t used to or didn’t have back home, and the lunch would be empty polite conversations, perhaps a speech about the losses experienced, sure to bore Marzanna out of her mind despite the interested, caring expression she’d put on, and then it would be over. That was, of course, the best-case scenario. The one where the peace held another day. At least for now she had a conversation partner she could enjoy the presence of.

Casimir pulls out a flask and holds it out towards her. Her expression didn’t reveal much, perhaps a slight raise of her eyebrows if one was looking for it at the action, yet,
“You know they’re serving drinks here?”
Her reply is short, matched with a tiny shake of the head. He was right, a drink would make her swirl of thoughts more bearable, but it wasn’t worth it, not here. She didn’t bother elaborating. Small talk was a necessary skill in a job with any sort of rank, such as hers, yet thankfully, Casimir wasn’t one of the people she needed to keep the small talk up with. He wasn’t someone whose opinion of her would change with an empty conversation. A relief, as Marzanna had never enjoyed having to do it.

Casimir had been a part of the family almost as long as Marzanna could remember. Her cousin had been brought in as a child, with Marzanna never being fully told what happened to his parents, though like the few other deaths tearing holes into their family, she had little doubt it was some Avancini mixup or other. In any case, Theo was one of the people she was raised nearest to, right after her siblings, perhaps alongside Evangeline. She remembered the five of them as children, play fights and lack of understanding or what their families, lives, were. And just as surely, she remembered growing up. The increases in expectation, the personalities solidifying into what they now were. The countless other family meetings she’d spent near Cas to avoid being bored out of her mind. Even the time back at home they spent together, though lessening over the years as both of them took on more responsibilities. In any case, he was as much of a friend as Marzanna tended ever to have.

There was always some quality about him, some unhappiness, though who in the family truly was? He was as reserved, as closed off, as calculated, as brimming with quiet anger as the rest of the family. A wolf in as much of a pack can hold with the levels of distrust the Adamski kept. Marzanna considered herself to know him well, or at least well enough.

A voice rang out through the hall, snapping her out of the silent reflection.

“How about, dear King of Saint Heights, you tell your ‘children’, about the one you left to die?”

An Avancini, tousled dark hair and a suit that was markedly not black had approached Matezh. The words rang through Marzanna’s mind as she tried to decipher them, connect the scene in front of her to reality, the bloodstained letter flashing in her mind. It stopped as soon as the man took out a flask and downed the remaining drops.

The words may have made little sense to her, but the wobbly motions did. He was drunk, and the Avancini either didn’t care about this event at all, or couldn’t even keep their own in line.

There couldn’t be a fight that day, especially not before lunch had even begun. Marzanna shot a look at Casimir, knowing he could decipher the displeasure in her expression, before making her way over. She made eye contact with one of the Adamski guards standing by the side of the room, a small hand signal getting him to come towards them as well.

Her father was no easy man to read. Had he taken a tiny step back at the man’s tone? Surely he wouldn’t have. The Avancini had kept talking, accusing Matezh further.

“Why don’t you step away and find someplace else to sort yourself out.”
Marzanna spoke as she stepped in beside her father. It wasn’t a question. Her tone was cold, practiced, only slightly harsher than the one she used to give out orders when needed. Perhaps a touch quieter, as well; she did not want to escalate the situation. Her voice was steady, unbroken, her shoulders held stiffly upright.

If her actions were done out of fear, or out of wanting her father’s approval, wanting to prove herself worthy, rather than any care for Andrej and Louisa or even for peace, did that matter? She looked at the man opposite her, gaze unwavering.


♡coded by uxie♡
 
baroque adamski
❝ do you remember that night in cabo? ❞
mood
relieved, tired
outfit
x.
location
Keypark Hall
interactions
hugo boo. boo.

A sonata.

Music in the form of physical touch that turned his face towards the sky and filled his eyes with an image of everything.

This must be what Adam felt like when the heavens gifted him with Eve. It was a salacious burn, tender and warm and wrapped in the decorum of love. He would lean into the touch even as the other pulled away, stretching out the moment briefly before escape was allowed. Amusement pulled at his lips, the hands that were covering his ears moving to mimic the finger under chin. A crooked limb then pulled closer the face he admired so well, a fondness growing with the admiration of Hugo's features. When asked about the reasoning to his sheltered bathroom behavior, however, a tongue click and scrunched nosed signaled his distaste. "Car ... no, it isn't about that. I didn't mean to worry you, either." Sighs accompanied the words, the ringing in his ears aching with each syllable. Curls loosely swayed as Baroque leaned forward, chapped lips briefly pressing into cheeks in a lingering greeting.

The dissuasion he had offered seemed as weak as his limbs, a stirring of legs motioning to stand as a sense of urgency rose.

Every second they spent together in this way was a chance against the crowd down below, a challenge even he felt nervous taking on. Hands moved, palms pressing against the exposed triangle of skin of the older male with the laziest of winks before a shuffling pulled him upwards and away from Hugo.

Boots animated themselves, a dragging along the floor as the moment was abandoned and Baroque found himself before the mirrors again. "Perhaps I'm being dramatic, I'll admit to that much." A lean pretended the inspection of hair and face, pulled skin under fingers doing little to remove the dark circles that stained his complexion. "But you have to admit the premise of the majority of us being here is an abhorrent excuse. I just — the squabbling; it's too ... them."

Shuffling of fabric filled a gap in the silence of their space as his gaze directed itself towards the object of his current affections. It was impossible to stop the automatic swelling in his chest at viewing such a suavely dressed man and knowing it was he that got to steal his attention so easily. Twists of a prideful smirk played itself onto his features as he stepped closer, offering fingers that touched lovingly where they could.

"Hugo —" The air of hesitation was palpable in his voice, nerves that just reached into pupils as he traced along a hardened shoulder. "If you want to talk ... about anything, really, but especially about, well ... him." Words trailed off, a tongue uncertain on his offer even as a sense of affection egged on the words. There had been a lessening sense of emotional touch between them lately, a tension that ebbed and flowed with the ties of their respective families. Lost souls were a hard subject to bring up around him, dismissal more common than conversation.

As much as those surrounding him looked down upon the vapid airs he gave off he wasn't nearly as daft as he led on. Hugo had to be feeling something. It was an itch Baroque wanted to scratch, the begging in his mind painting over exhaustion as he yearned to be the one he went to.

"Tonight, that hotel on the corner of 6th and Washington. I can manage a few hours away before they come find me." It wasn't much, not even an offer that sounded as genuine as he wanted it to. Still, Baroque felt obligated to try, a step and bend closer giving the comfort of a kiss, the burn as rampant as ever before the swift pulling back. "Think about it, Hugo." Teeth gave a slight appearance, as comforting of a look as he could push out of a sickly appearance given to the other man before responsibility beckoned and he pushed on the bathroom door.

Only the briefest glance back could be afforded, a finalized unspoken gentleness given to the other before Baroque moved to return to the memorial service.

A hand ran down the length of the bannister as he eventually descended the stairs, only a slight wobble in his steps as eyes soon gazed over the architecture of the hall he had previously ignored. It seemed macabre, almost, to mourn something as foolish as death within the more intricately sculpted parts of the world. Masterpieces of stone that held ghosts now in their softened walls and polished floors.

Sigh.

Fingers slipped into pockets, a scarf wrapped snugly again around his neck as the haughty form of Baroque Adamski finally made a real appearance within the memorial. Slipping carefully between bodies he was drawn towards refreshments, gaze kept high and avoidant as he weaved past the noise and into a quieter place in his mind. Exhaustion still dragged down his weight, a battle against a force of nature as a glass graced his grip and the vermillion punch to his lips.

There were concerns to be had and it, unfortunately, did not rest with the lain bodies of the family being honored.

/* ------ credit -- do not remove ------ */
© weldherwings.
 
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  • filler

















The rain was loud, painfully so. The heavy rush of water coalesced with the dull ache that beat inside of Carmen’s head. She grimaced, curling her fingers into her pillow as the ache grew and pulled her from the warmth of her slumber. Her body heavy and mouth tasting of gin from the night before, she willed herself from the nest of twisted sheets. “God,” she sighed, pressing her palm to her forehead, “what the fuck.” She was parched, her throat dry as she tried to croak out her words. She reached for the glass on her bedside table. If her lights were on, perhaps she would have noticed the nature of its contents: the remainder of what she’d been drinking the night before. Coughing as it burned her throat, she stepped from her bed, knee buckling as soon as her foot found purchase. The room was spinning and her mind was alike television static, pings of liquor-stained memories clouding her head.

“I could really use a coffee right now,” Carmen groaned, traipsing into the kitchen. She had managed to slip into a pair of linen trousers, a black bralet, and a pair of dark sunglasses to filter out the dim morning light…rough was perhaps the word to best describe the sight beheld by her housekeeper, “black.” She collapsed at the kitchen table, propping her elbow up with her head in her hand. She furrowed her brow -- something was happening today…but any attempt to recall made her head throb. Chances are late-night Carmen drowned it out on purpose. She had the knack for fucking herself over like that. Though not every morning was like this; waking up after an evening of literally whatever the fuck she could get up to, body aching and mind swirling as it struggled to grasp any semblance of coherence. No, but the mornings were always slow…quiet. Sometimes Laura, her housekeeper, wasn’t there, and her presence wasn’t a necessity, but her routine dawn greetings brought Carmen something that could echo comfort -- a snide remark as Carmen emerged from her room, some back-and-forth, and repeat.

Carmen waited for the usual spite-filled comment from Laura, but nothing came. Perhaps that was because she had already left, leaving Carmen flat-faced against the table, the smell of coffee waking her from her five-minute doze. "Shit,” she pushed herself up, her blurred vision focusing on the silver tray Laura had left out in front of her. Her coffee, and a letter. She grimaced and pushed the sunglasses back over her forehead, eyes squinted as she opened the letter, trying to catch the words multiplying before her. Her heart dropped, but her lips curled to a smirk. A joke, it had to be. “Laura,” she called, pushing herself from the table, waving the threatening paper between her fingers, “what kind of mystery bullshit is this?” She was smiling, her words coming out in a light laugh, but the longer she waited for a response, the more the words clung to the quiet air -- the memorial was today. Her smile faded.

***

The car ride was like pulling teeth. Although she’d managed to cure most of the hang-over, the silence made her nauseous. She sat quietly in the back, forehead pressed to the window as she lazily studied the raindrops. She had almost not wanted to get in the car, the letter’s message echoing inside her head throughout the ride. Occasionally, her eyes would flicker over to Hugo, the black sunglasses from the morning masking her stare. He didn't seem off per se. He sat rather morose, and it was not as though Carmen were not privy to its reason, so she withheld a lot more than usual, filtering the nagging voice begging her to fill the air. Why drunk Carmen had texted Emilio asking for some company to the memorial, she couldn’t recall, nor particulally wanted to. She had her own suspicions; flashes of her sitting alone in someone’s bathroom, eyes wet as she scrolled through her camera roll full of people she didn’t give a damn about. Loneliness was a bitch, and maybe Carmen had thought being trapped in a car with those she somewhat cared for was better than showing up alone, but somewhere along the drive to Keypark Hall, she realized it wasn’t.

Carmen took off her sunglasses before entering the hall, running a hand back through her hair in an effort to ensure she was presentable. But of course she was, and she knew it. In high-waisted dress pants, a dark turtle-neck, a long duster coat and some black oxfords, she flashed a ‘memorial-appropriate’ smile, exuding a calm demeanor as her dark eyes lingered on those in the crowd she had yet to meet -- though, she was anything but calm. She found the words from the letter arranging themselves, the names of the deceased reforming as theatening messages before her. She needed distraction. Wandering through the gathering crowd, her vision settled on Evangeline; a mere foot soldier for the Avancini's, though the aura surrounding her was on another level, an air of sophistication Carmen would not expect from someone of her standing. Perhaps she was over-qualified, but useful nonetheless. "Evangeline," she strolled over, surprised that the other woman was alone, "what's the bet that everything goes to shit within the next," she checked her watch, "thirty minutes?"

There it was, Carmen couldn't hold it in. With an affinity for speaking her mind in the moments she shouldn't, she was never the type to bring home and meet the family.








Carmensita




strength











Emilio, Hugo, with Evangeline.










mother of sorrows mother of sorrows boo. boo. xayah. xayah.













♡coded by uxie♡
 
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alyona
















mood.


get me out






outfit.


x






location.


Keypark Hall






tags.


Azalea blue-jay blue-jay















Alyona had half a thought to run away when she saw a familiar face stride over. However, the server was already off to grab her a gin and tonic and, of everyone in the room, Azalea was actually the person who she disliked the least. Though dislike was probably too strong of a word to describe how Alyona felt about the younger; it may have not been the right word at all, truthfully.

The dreariness of the day’s event suddenly began settling in. The remembrance of three young lives lost, and maybe the premature mourning of the end of peace between the Adamskis and Avancinis. However, there was another death around that time that had gone unnoticed by most. His face haunted her dreams, turning them into painful nightmares that kept her body glued to the bed in fear and agony. Most nights were painted red; maybe that's why she loved the rain so much. It washed away her sins and sorrows while she hid herself deeper within the dark forest that shrouded her heart.

The day was meant to honor the three lives lost, yet for her, it was a mnemonic of the person she wronged. The rhythmic thumping of water against the windows helped some, but she could feel a scream clawing at the base of her throat like a beast trying to free itself from a cage. Each thump against the window was met by the equal pounding of the beast.

Thump. Pound. Thump. Pound.. The truth will always prevail. She wanted to run outside and cry somewhere no one would ever hear or find her at. Nausea briefly washed over her, and she tried to replace her moment of vulnerability with bitterness—a common tactic of hers. Fuck memorials.

In a way, that’s what Azalea was too—a memorial—and she couldn’t tell if it made her nostalgic or sad to remember the time when she was naive and innocent. All she knew was that it hurt to look or speak to her most days.

Before answering, the dark haired woman swirled the contents of the champagne glass she held—an appetizer for the stronger drink to come—and took a light sip to force the nausea back. A creamy, airness filled her mouth; the bubbles whizzed through the liquid like stars, whirling and spinning along her tongue like they were tangoing. She could taste sweet spices with hints of apple and pear pastries. It was the perfect flavor for autumn, accurately capturing the warm flavors and scents but disappearing so quickly like the season itself whenever it came.

Alyona let out a satisfied sigh, a small smile on her lips. “Oh, these?” She lightly touched the rim of her sunglasses—to push them up higher than to specify if anything—and subconsciously tilted back in her chair. “Headache. The light makes it worse.”

A partial lie. Her head was aching and it was growing in strength every minute she had to sit in Keypark Hall. Lack of sleep combined with a few missed meals often did that to her. Azalea didn’t need to know that, though.

“Did you walk here?” It was mostly an attempt to steer the subject elsewhere, but behind her thick sunglasses, she could make out spots on the tip of her friend’s dress that were darker than others. Her shoes mimicked the same pattern, though more dramatically and noticeably. Wet from rain, she’d noted as she pursed her lips and looked at the woman again.

“You could have texted or called me.” Alyona began digging into her small purse, not really sure what she was looking for until she actually found nothing; annoyance flared in her chest but she bit it down. Her hazel eyes flickered to the set of napkins sitting on the tabletop near her, and she grabbed a few before sliding them over to Azalea. “If you have to walk far again, and it’s raining, let me know next time.”

A bit of worry could be found in her voice, and she silently cursed herself for letting that slip. Old habits really died hard for her, however, and for a moment, it felt like seven years ago when Azalea first joined the Lorenzos and Alyona felt the obligation to befriend her. A big sister taking care of her little—that’s what they were. But she would never admit that out loud.

“Your drink, Ma’am.”

Alyona jumped, a hand rising to her chest as she whirled to meet the eyes of the server from earlier. Her glass of gin clinked lightly against the table as he set it down. She blinked at him, as if forgetting she even asked for a drink in the first place.

“Thanks.” She murmured, somewhat embarrassed by how startled she got.





”let’s run away together.”


♡coded by uxie♡
 
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azure
































#avancini








#page of wands




















♡coded by uxie♡



It’s early and Azure’s iPhone starts vibrating back and forth across the night-table. After the seventh buzz or so she finally gives in, sitting up to face the morning - sheets of white sun cut up by the blinds come in through the large window and batter her eyes hard, but only hard enough to cause a dazzling headache, not to shock any kind of awareness into her. Yet her hands, of their own shared mind, search the area around her for her lighter and her Camels, finding them pushed to the very back of a drawer that she can’t remember putting them in.

She takes one out of the pack and by the time she lights it her mind has made the leap to the present moment, a ringing bell scattering away a film of dust. She reaches back and unplugs the phone from the wall, then very weakly slips down the side of the bed and onto the floor. A dingy patterned bed-cover follows her there.

She has a missed call. Azure calls the number back:

“Hello?” There’s something ragged and biting - or bitten - about her voice. Not a condition of anything. She just sounds like that.

Who is this?

“You called me.”

Oh, yeah, hey. He doesn’t sound excited - he sounds newly aged, tired.

“Anything?”

Yes, there’s a… letter from property management, something from the… probably the power company, and then, uh…

Great. “Yeah?”

Yes, there’s, um. There’s a letter.

“From…”

No postmark. It looks… yeah, it’s just this letter, and it has no names on it. There’s a seal on the envelope.

Azure corrects the slump of her spine at this, taking a short urgent inhale of the cigarette as she does so. “Did you open it?”

No, I was waiting for you to call.

“Okay, tell me what it says.”

Sounds of paper being sawed open, then: a little too long of a pause.

“Come on. Every word.”

An even longer and more worrisome pause. Then it comes out in a hurried stream:

Wedidntforgetsomebodyyoutrusthasalreadybetrayedyoutherestwillfollowareckoningiscomingwhoshallbespared there’s a question mark here thetruthwillalwaysprevail. And there was a seal on the envelope that has a thing on it, but I can’t tell what it is.

Before it even occurs to her, her throat latches itself shut and for a moment Azure is spent for breath, the edges of her vision swimming with danger.

After another, however, something autonomic kicks in and she cries out with laughter. She laughs and keeps laughing and throws her head up and covers her eyes with her cigarette hand, her other hand still holding the phone. For a second it's as if she's left things behind again and returned to the meagre sleep from before, time and want and need nonexistent - and then she’s back inside her body, lungs afire with renewed sensation, her formerly businesslike posture now origami.

Is there a joke here that I’m not getting?

“No, sorry. Ah-hmm. I- Sorry.”

Are you playing a joke on me right now?

“No, I’m not. I’m sorry. I’ll be around probably… tomorrow, or so? I’ll call you. But you’ll get it by this weekend, I assure you.” The tune of her voice says there’s something really funny about this to her, even when there really is not.

You know, I really don’t think I want to be doing this anymore.

“A hundred, then. I'll double it.” She reaches the end of the cigarette, finally, and tosses the remnant in an old takeout coffee cup swishing with ash and filters. Her other phone, a Nokia flip that predates her iPhone by about fifteen years, buzzes once and then does nothing.

Opening strange letters, threats in the mail - not something I’ve really enjoyed, not something I really want to keep doing. And it’s not about money.

“Look, just say what and I will give it to you. Within reason, but I’ll… look, you have all the power here. You are hustling me. Like, let me repeat what I told you before: this might be the easiest get-rich thing in the world. These people... it’s a prank. It’s just a prank. It’s nothing to be so bothered by.”

You ran out of your house and you’re gonna make me unwrap a bomb for you. I’m getting rid of your number and that’s the end of it. Find someone else.

“No, listen to me. I pay you hundreds of dollars to look at my fucking tax returns and my credit card statements and fucking… and the occasional strange envelope, whatever it is, for hundreds of dollars, and you’ve been glad to do that so far and now it’s too personal for you? Now it’s too much? You should really get the fuck over yourself just a bit. You really need to get the f-”

Azure notices mid-sentence that the breath sounds of a connected phone call aren’t there. He’s gone. She plugs her iPhone back into the wall and then just sits there nodding at the dark green motel carpet. Above her, smoke licks at the alarm on the ceiling, but nothing happens. She went up and took it apart weeks ago.

* * *

The room is strewn about with many of Azure’s belongings. The pile weighing down the room’s other bed is like a monument now, a stack of emptied luggage and garment bags and boxes. With a new cigarette shooting from her lips Azure is going through her closet, perusing what’s there, allowing what she’s through looking at to pool at her feet. She takes out an ankle-length puffer coat and a jade two-piece skirt set and a tall pair of boots. More like a graduate student with wealthy parents, maybe a campus drug dealer, less like what in her mind a thief would look like. But these observations all come from a practice of flitting her eyes away when the hollowness yawns. Circumvention as an art.

The text message on her second, older phone reads: 4280 W 15 ST GY AUDI 2014 5T6L1O 0900. She retains this and then deletes it.

In Azure’s bathroom there is no space on or anywhere near the sink with all the skincare serums and shoplifted makeup sponges and things - some of it used once and never again, just clutter now. This room, a dim devoted shrine with a sole swinging lightbulb, is where most of her rehearsals take place. But today in the shower, when she tries to do or be anything? She dissolves, breaks apart like the fragile waves after a storm.

Under Azure’s bed there’s a composition notebook with written lists of her own desires. It’s as close to poetry as she could ever get. In it there are pages dedicated entirely to what she would like to find in her future apartment, sometimes conflicting, much scratched out, and jammed between certain items on certain pages are dreams for herself that she wrote out inadvertently, absently.

So it might look like this: wide open windows thirtieth or higher a balcony with a view to know what love is and not miss it a real glass chandelier rosewood floors china black countertops to be able to give something of value to others lots of light a rooftop pool. But when Azure tries to imagine someplace with all of these characteristics simultaneously, she discovers that she just can’t. So she just brushes her wet hair in the morning, puts her face on, gets dressed, and steps through the door with her backpack.

* * *

It’s a day for rain clouds and she’s wearing wrap-around shades. There is an anxious charge in the air, a dry morbid electricity. Glancing from side to side, Azure doesn’t see anyone else near her who really seems to catch onto this or express as much. Everybody is straight lines and right angles and set watches today. So it’s either that she’s been barred from understanding the what and why of other people - a suspicion that she’s held for some time already - or, or, whatever happened to give her such a poisoned view of the world is something more recent. Her sleep last night was more a babyish crawl towards sleep than the real thing, so that must be it. That must be it.

But alas. She has to do real work today. She has to be like the serrated edge of white light that found her this morning. So she flushes out every part of her inessential to her function, eliminates the unnecessary, shrinks and economises and files down. When she steps off the bus she has transformed into who she believes, without any doubt, is the best version of herself - the person who can only do things, who is incapable of wonder or self-doubt, who is protected from joy. The thief.

* * *

Pounding down the street from the bus she turns down one avenue, then another, and then an alleyway, arriving at the small private parking lot of a corporate office. There are two wired cameras at either end that Azure can readily see, maybe a third that she can’t, and far above her high-rise buildings of glaring windows and steel seem to be craning their necks down in judgement, in disappointment. She crouches next to a parked SUV, throws the hood of her coat over her head, and begins to wait.

She takes out her phone, the older one, and waits for the black-on-green numbers to roll over. 8:51 becomes 8:52. 8:54 becomes 8:55. Just as it has gone countless times before, the nimbus of an imminent something makes her smirk with self-assurance. It’s the rising floodwater effect - where even the most prepared person can forget how fast life really moves and start flailing and die. Knowing that, knowing that knowing won't save you.

She shrugs off her backpack and unzips it. Inside is a control unit that resembles a laptop with a thumbnail-sized LED display on the top edge. She presses one of three buttons on the lateral edge and the display comes to life. Then she digs down to the bottom of the bag and removes from it its smaller companion, a boxy transceiver that fits in the palm of her hand. It sports an antenna pointing from the top and a button that aligns with where the pad of Azure’s index finger rests. She brings the transceiver up to the nest of her jacket pocket and keeps waiting. It’s 8:57-

No, it’s 8:58, and a grey Audi is pulling in now. Azure has her hand gripped around the transceiver before the car stops. When it shuts off an executive gets out, locks the car with his key fob, and then is gone from sight. Azure hits one of the buttons on the control unit repeatedly until the display reads AUDI 33 KHZ. The transceiver winks a blue light at her, which tells her she has the signal, but she doesn’t move. 8:59. She zips her backpack up and shrugs it back on.

9:00.

9:01.

9:02 and she takes off in a scramble, a black blur, nearly colliding with the Audi’s driver’s door with how fast her legs pump to get her there. She holds down the button on the transceiver until the blue light flashes three times. The door is open. She practically somersaults into the car. Her finger is on the transceiver button once again. Three more flashes. She jabs at the ignition and the car roars back to life for her.

When she was younger there would be an audible click in Azure’s ears with a devious instant like this. She can’t remember when it stopped, but nowadays there isn’t any sound at all. Only the radio. She takes a corner onto a busy street and turns up the volume:

*-AND AT KEYPARK HALL LATE THIS MORNING A MEMORIAL WILL TAKE PLACE FOR ANDREJ, LOUISA, AND INFANT JUNI NAGORSKI, THE FAMILY WITH REPUTED TIES TO BOTH THE ADAMSKI AND AVANCINI MOB FAMILIES, WHO WERE FOUND DEAD IN THEIR CIMMERIAN HILLS HOME EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO TODAY. THIS REPRESENTS THE FIRST-*

* * *

The corrugated door of a small lonely garage clutters down to the floor. There are chains and disassembled engines all around and harsh fluorescent lights. She steps up and out of the car with her bag and the lights sizzle on her forehead and then, only then, does something appear to her that didn’t before. A grey Audi. Sure. But she had been rifling through the compartments of a high-class sedan very similar to this one - almost identical? - when a peril she didn't think she could ever really grasp befell her, jumped out at her from the backseat. Azure tries to avoid it but it overwhelms her: not the same model year but it doesn’t have to be. This is the same model of car. The myth of her life as it currently is sits parked in front of her now, rendered in the contact of skin and aluminium, and she hadn’t realised it. Or she had, maybe, and she … chose to soften it, just swallow it like nothing, let it be residue on the roof of her mouth. Like she did with so many other things.

She sits back inside with the door wide open and just lingers there, waiting for something but not certain of why or for what. She pops open the centre console with a movement of her elbow but doesn’t peer inside, just stares right ahead, frozen. She’s in the living room with Lea and Lea is dragging her rolling suitcase towards the front door with both hands. Lea, don’t, I will deal with this, just don’t go away. And then Lea’s reply, or one of them, or something Azure herself later pictured coming out of Lea’s mouth, the shape of the words: you’ve already dealt with it. Why would you need me here? I'm furniture to you.

She finds her hand has reached in and her fingers have looped around something jangling and precious. Carefully, she reveals to herself what she’s found. It’s a long stringy necklace beaded with small dewy pearls. It’s like something a spider wove, not jewellery. It’s expensive. It’s so obviously a gift, was so obviously a given gift with the balmy smell that clings to it. Why is it here, and not in a box? Does the owner of this car have someone so important yet so unknown to him that he only knew to buy jewellery like this for her? Was it a look on her face that brought it back here?

She drapes the necklace around her own neck and angles the rearview down so she can herself. It doesn’t really change anything - it doesn’t pale the confusion and hunger in her face, she doesn’t seem more intricate herself for the lacing design crossing her collarbone. In the mirror she just sees a really glamorous lost child, cheeks beaten, head fortified with too many thoughts.

Someone moves around in the back office. Azure gets up with all her things and leaves before she has to see anyone.

* * *

“I’m looking for new clients.”

Claud, on the other end: I haven’t heard anything from Malaga yet. But the temperature I’m getting is that the right number of people are in the right number of places. So be Zen.

“No, I mean, I’m looking for new clients.”

…Someone made you a better offer and you're taking it, huh?

“I didn’t say different clients, I said new clients. Were you really expecting that?”

Well, you don’t really parade around wearing the team colours, so to speak, so sure.

“Your people are from Spain and Central Europe. Half the Avancinis aren’t even Italian. So… you know. But nobody’s approached me, no.”

So…?

“Who do they have now at the trainy-?”

No, okay, no. I’m… I’m going to stop you there.

“No, but, like, who even cares about whoever it is that drives a stolen car up a ramp into a fucking warehouse? Where does loyalty come in at all at that level? I need you to explain-”

Let’s not have this conversation today. Ask me again in a week.

“Oh, because of the dead people, and the baby, and they had to wait a year until they could put them in the ground, or something? I’ve not been having a loyalty conversation. I’m not important enough to have a loyalty conversation. So I don’t get why I should be, like, held to that, or beholden to that.”

For someone not close to the family - through genes or anything else - there’s a deep offence very clearly detectable in his speech now. Because the people who live the longest are the people who choose one or the other. You’ve made your choice. You should-

“I never took an oath, I chose… not to go to jail… because someone I was stupid enough to get involved with got caught doing something that’s very easy to do without getting caught. I chose because of an idiot. I didn’t know anything before that and I still don’t.” She’s straining to believe that she’s really saying any of this, that part of her could be convinced of its worth. It's acting and it makes her nauseous.

And you would do well to remember that fact! Because-

“Come-”

Because there are bigger concerns that you're not accounting for. You have your little sandbox where you make your money and then you think that’s the world. So, so, I am, in fact, not going to spread your name around or contact whoever or whatever it is you wanted me to do. If you want to put yourself in the middle, fine, but I’m not going to help you do that. And if you had any sense at all you'd be thankful that I tried to talk to you.

“Oh, because you know everything? You’re a broker. You are a mid-level manager. You spend most of your time on a goddamn boat. But thanks for looking out for me, Daddy. I love you!”

What happened with you that's got you like this? Did something go wrong th-

“Nothing happened this morning.” Too quick, too well-enunciated, and they both know it. And just like that, Claud is speaking to someone entirely different.

Right.

“I overstepped. I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

…My patience for this kind of shit is very thin. Please consider that before you come to me again with this.

“I will.”

You’ve been walked out on for saying less. Consider also why I’m not doing just that right now.

She knows what he means and what it shouldn’t have anything to do with but a knife falls inside her anyway, chops through bones and sinew.

“Okay.”

Goodbye.

“Goodbye.”

Click.

* * *

Azure lets her eyelids hang half-closed, her hand around her neck as if pressed tight to a wound. Every so often her seat will rumble enough that her head will tap the glass and those eyes will be forced open to see the world: the eclipses of passing streetlights in the mirrors of her sunglasses. The slender branches of trees like the paths of lightning through the sky.

She knows where she’s going now, because she elected to go there, but she’s distracting herself from it with thoughts about how she should go back to her old foundation, with how - oh! - in the glass she can see a spot on her lower lip where the colour has smudged away. She digs to the bottom of her backpack - past her RF interceptor - for a makeup bag, and withdraws from it a lip brush that she runs very smoothly from one corner of her mouth to the other.

There’s an ominous few seconds of utter quiet in the street before rain starts pelting down. Against the roof of a moving bus it’s like gunfire. Against the hood of her coat it’s like the hiss of a dead television in a room upstairs.

An iron gate surrounds Keypark Hall and in its smithing, Azure can see the impressions of ivy and small nestling flowers. She expected there would be a whirl of people with black umbrellas and chauffeurs with their shoes in the gutter but it’s more like sad ballroom dancing, everyone slow and disinterested and lethargic.

She smokes a cigarette. There’s a gilding glow that emanates as if from the white marble building itself, a visual echo of something worthy within. She can even hear what must be the ridges of champagne glasses making music inside. But she roots herself to the spot, then tries really hard not to appear that way. She smokes and smokes another and wrinkles her nose. She’s aloof, she’s ignorant.

A man chased by wisps of grey hair runs out into the rain with his blazer over his head. He’s older but there’s less dignity to him than there would be to a mourner - he’s staff here, more likely for the building than for either of the attending parties. “Are you here for the memorial?”

“Uh… yes, I’m sorry, yes. It’s just hard.”

“Did you know them?”

“...Yes, I did.”

The man crashes his brow and she can tell he’s a natural disbeliever, and would normally be able to see through her now, but the rain is so fucking loud that the gears in his mind simply turn to acknowledge what she's told him as fact. He leads Azure over to the front steps, which are partially covered.

Shaking his jacket out like a carpet: “So are you with…?”

“Me? No, no, I knew… I knew Louisa from childhood.” Her tongue feels petrified in her mouth. “Which is why it felt strange to be here, with these…”

“Yeah, I won’t say anything, but… another breed.”

“Yeah. Yeah. We… well… cigarette?”

“No, thanks.”

“Yeah, we… our moms knew each other. And it would just be the two of us, you know. Playing together. We lost touch over the years and then… you find out about something like this. Not just that she… chose this life, but that…”

“...That it ended this way.”

“No, yeah. So it’s been hard to… do the math with that. It's been hard to accept it.”

“Yes. Well. My condolences to you. What a terrible loss.” The man walks away, squeezing his hands in his pockets to dry them off.

“...Isn’t it?” Azure says, to nobody but herself, before twisting her expended cigarette under her toe and following him inside.
 
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hugo.




filler



filler



filler



filler



filler



filler









































beta radio



i need my prayers









To cave at his lover's touch came as naturally to Hugo as breathing. It was with relief that he did so this time, unlocking the gate of his inner fortress and letting him inside—mostly. The inner sanctum remained closed as he struggled to sort out the feelings that had been gripping him for a solid week now—feelings that were mostly about Jakob, but which inevitably tangled together with Baroque in a mess that Hugo didn’t even want to touch. At least he could be certain about this moment, and this man in front of him, and the way he looked at him like he was the dearest thing in the world. Hugo was a glacier, but around Baroque became little more than a puddle. A wave of relief carried him deeper into the moment, and his fingers trailed across the other’s black-clad shoulder as he stood. Hugo was quick to follow, wishing that he could have felt Baroque’s fingers on his chest just another minute longer.

“When aren’t you?”
His fingers danced on Baroque’s hips as if he needed to hold the man steady while they stared in the mirror. He searched his lover’s reflection and found canyons forged in weariness, an anxiety that gnawed at him like a parasite.
“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t pay them any mind; bad blood won’t be washed away by champagne and funeral flowers.”
He couldn’t bring himself to smile as Baroque turned, but his fingers gripped a little tighter, and he sighed, his heart fluttering as he caught the way the other ran his eyes over him.
“You will outlast them.”


He wanted things to stay like this, just for another few minutes. Was that enough to catch up on weeks of lost time? Fleeting rendezvous, counting down the hours they had left and spending them on warm wine and conversations until three in the morning. Hugo’s hand slipped into Baroque’s pocket, leaving behind something tiny and soft. He’d find it later and smile, and add it to his collection. Hugo called it stupid but it was just another reason why he worshipped the younger man.

“Hugo…”

“Hm?”
A sense of dread puddled in Hugo’s stomach.

“If you want to talk ... about anything, really, but especially about, well ... him.”

An offer was made, and it was made when Hugo hadn’t expected it, so that suddenly he cracked, his lower lip trembling like a child trying to hold back their sobs after being stung by a bee. He didn’t want Baroque to see this weakness within him—he was supposed to be the strong one, offering him the support he needed, like what he’d tried to do just minutes before. He stared at some indistinct point over Baroque’s shoulder and willed himself to hold together, just for a few moments longer, so that Baroque wouldn’t have to see him broken. He was an eggshell and Baroque was tapping on him. His tongue was dead weight, offering no reply, his lips hardly moving in response to the kiss, but his hand squeezed the other’s as a sign that he was listening.

Should I go? He felt like Dante as he descended the stairs to the main hall, having waited a few minutes after Baroque left to ensure that nothing would be suspected of him. His mask was back in place, an indifferent expression that sought out nothing and nobody in particular, and yet he found himself creeping on the heels of the conversation that Baroque had hinted at. Could he make things right? Probably not. But to see his lover so shaken made him feel like he had to try. He felt like a rat crawling into a den of vipers as he caught Matezh’s gaze, but the patriarch wasn’t his target. Stomach flopping with outrage, he instead made a beeline for the source of the event’s discord.

Hero was a man that Hugo had never stopped watching. He was a loose cannon and there was nothing more dangerous than a weapon he couldn’t control. In some sense, this felt like his responsibility, but he could hardly blame himself for the fact that Hero had decided to come here drunk—he could smell it on him—and done the one thing he shouldn’t have. There were a million other people here. Of course he had to go for the one that had the power to snap this fragile stalemate like a toothpick.

Not on my watch.

“I apologize,”
he interjected, sliding beside Hero and placing a firm hand on his shoulder,
“for his effrontery.”
It was all he had the patience to say, and it was all he left Matezh with, as well as the younger women at his side. Her eyes burned; Hugo could tell that she’d already made an effort to dismiss him, to no avail.

His hand closed around Hero’s elbow, but the man immediately shook him off, stumbling to the side and spitting a profanity like it’d been stuck between his teeth. So Hugo did the only thing he could—he grabbed the collar of his tweet jacket and pulled. Hero’s glazed eyes finally pinpointed his captor, and suddenly Hugo could feel him twitch and cringe under his grasp. He offered little resistance as Hugo pulled him aside, embarrassment flaring on his face as he shoved him into a side passage, away from the eyes that had been burning into him. Hardly the most graceful exit, but the most efficient.

For a moment, he couldn’t find his voice; Hero plastered himself back against the wall and stared at him as if he fully expected Hugo to deck him the moment he blinked. Smoothing his hands over the creases in his shirt, Hugo took a deep breath in through his nose and really did feel the urge to deck him—he wouldn’t, but still, the desire was potent.

“I was thinking I would send you home, but I’ve changed my mind. You’re staying until you choke on your own humiliation.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and sneered.
“I knew you’d snap eventually. Maybe I should send you home with father dear."






♡coded by uxie♡
 
Last edited:
mood :
drunk, disorderly, out-of-his-mind, nervy

location :
keypark hall
outfit :
mentions :
uhhh I kinda forgor…

interactions :
Matezh
Marzanna — ravensunset ravensunset
Hugo — boo. boo.
Marnie — neon reverie neon reverie
Bechtel
• • • hero

Why don't you step away and find someplace else to sort yourself out?

For a flutter of eyelashes, he glanced at the woman speaking. His half-sister. A gargled scoff emptied his chest. A glare towards his father, who still said nothing. He was a paper doll, letting himself become inert. A passive way to avoid interacting with wrath. Am I more real than you?

"You know," he smiled, stepping into Matezh's arm's reach. "I'm impressed. You made your kid more of a man than you'll ever be."

A compass that found the strongest pull. Eddie shifts, almost toe-to-toe with Marzanna. The liquor wafts off him, bounces off her meticulous form, and tunnels his nostrils. Weakened toes grip the earth through his dress shoes, and his eyes meet a dual form. Blood in the same mixing pot of their gazes. "D-Do you even know who I am?"

He swallowed hard, searching Marzanna's face for a recollection, a remembrance. His lids softened, no longer bugged-out with the chemicals his brain sent coursing through his system. There was the plushy edge reserved for the in-patient ward's cuffs and baby-proof countertop edges. "I'm your broth-"

A hand around his shoulder, and he felt as though he was being pulled through the floor, back to the earth. His own grave, dug and bought by someone, likely Matezh. The panic roared, seared the nerve endings. An ugly crow-like screech pushed from his throat, a reaping call. It was too choked to be worth much in terms of attention, and despite his protests as the man tugged him away, he faded from the fanfare as quickly as he entered. His point, lost and muddied by the faces of his kin, fell to the wayside and became useless. At least, all I am is a headcase.

If Matezh told a slim sliver of ham's worth of the truth, he was a mental patient turned lawyer for the Avancini. Another example of how the Adamski prevailed in bloodline and sanity. I wonder where he thinks I get it from. Ed tried a glance back, pulling from the rubber-band heft the man kept him close with. His father and sister became creatures who could not see him, figments of his childhood imaginations while he, too, became a pestersome ghost. He was a mystery to his own blood. A headcase, like I said. All I am, all I am.

He reared as a bull, unwillful to accept his own-designated fate. The person ahold of him was a roadblock to be pushed back with his hands, scurried away from in the name of the truth, and he clawed his way freely, albeit drunkenly. A swath of black fabric, respectful and demure. A peak of glasses and molded cheeks. The world swirled into a pit, into a hypnotist's tool. Quickly, H.E. fell ill against the power of a much more sobered man. Hugo. His blackened pupils affixed on the other's. They were connected, transmitting information on a superhighway of vision, and Hero trembled. He allowed Hugo to pull him off to the side, a paper doll who's given up and allowed the folds and creases to become rips and ridges. He understood, now, the consequences of his transgressions

I knew you'd snap eventually.

Stuffing his fists into the pockets of his trousers, Eddie eyed the other man as a wounded dog, yet still his teeth pulled into a snarl. A kicked animal who still, despite it all, wanted to live.

"Actually, that would be precisely what would save the treaty. Couldn't you tell? That's what I wanted. Perhaps he'll tell me all the family secrets." He gave a nasty smile to Hugo, still straightening his own shirts and blazer. A hand through his curls, pushing them back and away from his stove-coil-hot face. "There's a traitor amongst us. Wouldn't want it to be me who gets the finger because my siblings have no idea I even exist, would I? If that's what 'choking on my own humiliation' means," He used air quotes, sloppily. "Then count me in, gangster-in-arms. I'll drown in the humiliation. At least then dear old Dad can't keep hiding his own embarrassment."

Finished with Hugo, he brushed past the young man and effectively undid everything that has been fixed about his appearance. In the distance, he spotted a dazzling array of florals outfitted with a spike of blonde hair. He stalked forward, stomping like an evil little boy who wanted his lollipop back, but as he neared Marnie, he gave way to that same softness he held in front of Marzanna.

"I didn't think you'd ever show up," he opened with, spotting Vic with a small grimace. He pushed back his curls from his face once more. "Where have you and oh-cappy-tan been?"
coded by reveriee.
 

KEYPARK HALL — MEMORIAL CATERING STAFF
Tick. Tock. Tick.

Every passing second drove the waiter responsible with announcing the arrival of lunch closer and closer to a nervous break.

At any normal service, such an action was no more than another day in this line of work. He and his team diligently worked to provide refreshments as the guests filed in, making sure to account for each and every person's attendance at an affair as sorrow as this. All the while, those not on the floor would be finishing the dining course prepped only a day or two before the service. When it was near completion, the head waiter would wave him over, signaling that it was the right time to announce the start of the meal. Then, amidst a crowd of mourning people—many of whom would be swept up in the giving of condolences and remembrance—he'd ring a bell before making his voice known to all. The waiters on the floor would file into the dining hall just after the attendees found their seats, and meals would be served hot, filling those in mourning with, at the very least, a physical sense of warmth.

But this is no normal service.

And the poor waiter isn't sure what to do at the sight of a confrontation in the middle of the hall. He knows who the attendees of today's memorial are, members of Saint's Heights' two greatest criminal families, and he knows of what they've done—what they do. Maybe not knows, but rumors run rampant and the mind takes those and warps them into the greatest nightmares imaginable. He can only imagine what they'd do to him. It's worse than the searing glare that he feels at his back from inside the dining hall, a warning from the head waiter that he should be more worried about his job than his head if he doesn't bring them all inside soon.

The spit on the floor makes him cringe—its originator, in contrast, is drunk and almost pitiful. Almost. The absolutely undisturbed, if not emotionless, stare of the older man scares him. And by his side, a woman similar in age to the aggressor with a chilling glare. Whereas his boss is all fire, she is all ice, and the man does not know which is better or worse at this point.

But in his hesitation, a man no older than he, diffuses the situation, and the waiter can finally let out a breath, a sigh of relief even. Saved by a devil but saved nonetheless.

The waiter carefully lifts the bell that had been tightly grasped in the palm of his hand with two fingers and shakes. It’s small, something akin to what a master would use to call his pet hound over to feast, but it rings loud and clear over the newly settled silence and even a bit beyond. The eyes that turn sharply to rest on him cause his voice to catch. Yes, they are hounds, but he feels like the prey—one caught in a trap where one wrong move means the end of it all.

“Hm! Ahem.” A few coughs to clear his throat and steel his nerves. Can they hear his trembling, the shaking of not just his voice but his body? Can they smell his fear? “We would like to announce to the attendees of today’s memorial service that lunch is beginning. If you would all kindly file into the dining hall at once, and take your assigned seats as noted by the placards in front of each chair.” Kindly. That was the operative word here. He wasn’t sure if he had the stomach for more moments like the one he had just witnessed today. And before his boss saw him lose the contents of said stomach on the job, the waiter turned heel and fled into the kitchen.

The footsteps of everyone else soon follow suit.

Details ;;
Time: 12:43PM

Seating Arrangements:
Table 1 — Victor Rivera miyabi miyabi , Carmensita Da Costa Rocha mxlly mxlly , Casimir Sayed miyabi miyabi , Azalea Washington blue-jay blue-jay
Table 2 — Hannibal Dimitrescu arthur morgan. arthur morgan. , Evangeline Huang xayah. xayah. , Mr. Kim .V1LLAINISM._ .V1LLAINISM._ , Marzanna Adamski ravensunset ravensunset
Table 3 — Alyona Kriselyov koala koala , Hugo Young boo. boo. , Baroque Adamski cavitea cavitea , Morena Almanza Agrael9996 Agrael9996
Table 4 — Auguste Cortes qunqun qunqun , Tomasz Adamski Elucid Elucid , Jin Ahn .V1LLAINISM._ .V1LLAINISM._ , Hero Bechtel demonology demonology
Table 5 — Kiko Na Chiangmai miyabi miyabi , Jasper Mistri Wandering Owl Wandering Owl , Azure Dahl celadon. celadon. , Harris Felicette LeilaRF LeilaRF
Table 6 — Dakota Adamski idiot idiot , Vincenzo Salvatore koala koala , Marnie Edwards neon reverie neon reverie
 
Last edited:
















Movement



Hozier








Auguste Cortes



  • .




The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.

Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.

Isaiah 57:1-2

A black tarp lowered gently into the warm embrace of the earth, carefully and lovingly as the gravedigger climbed out of the hole and stared

Who was he? It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. For the gravedigger’s sanity, at the very least, it had to not matter.

A prayer uttered once, under breath. Not that he was a believer, but the owner had been wearing a silver cross. It’d been stained with the deep red of blood where the knife had entered their chest.

He held the cross now, dangled it from his fist. There were drops of blood that had congealed, clinging to the bit of metal as if it’d save its owner from their fate.

Despite it not mattering at all, after the chest had stopped rising, the choking ceasing, a glassy eye look of despair mixed with resignation and peace cementing itself upon the former gang member’s face, the gravedigger had, in fact, looked in the wallet of his victim to try to figure some things out..

Salvatore Burns. Had a picture of his dog in his wallet, and a newly created gym membership card.

He’d come into money recently - a new and expensive watch told that story, shoes that were much too expensive for the dirty alleyway which they’d found themselves in. The expensive suit. The flashy rings. It screamed new money - and the dates on it all said recent.

It, at least, partially explained why he found his way onto Death’s hitlist, now didn’t it?

He’d taken the shoes. And the fancy suit. And the rings. And the watch. Anything that was worth money - they’d wash the blood off and sell it later, he’d get a cut of the entire thing - and then wrapped Burns’s body up in a trash bag.

Buried with nothing, except for the silver cross. Death was kind, after all, in very quiet ways. The chain slid from the gravedigger’s grasp and landed on top of the black plastic with a rattle.

A shovel was picked up from where it had been discarded, and so went the gruesome and labor intensive task of burying a body after a kill, sweat dripping down his eyes as he layered dirt upon the dead man as the moon crossed the night sky above.

It was not until the sky had turned white and pink and orange with the waking world that the murderer and gravedigger had been able to fall into the soft white sheets of a bed, clothes discarded and thrown about - only being able to truly remove half of them before the embrace of sleep had claimed him…

… Only to be reawakened an hour later by the high pitched beep of his alarm going off.

Auguste groaned as he slammed a heavy hand down on the offending box. But he’d already been stirred from his slumber. A shift and a groan, his head having a pressure as he unsteadily rose from his coffin, the tendrils of promised sleep clinging to him as he left his bed.

A calendar alert on his phone. “Memorial service”

A groan escaped his lips as he ran a hand over his face, punching in buttons to an espresso machine. Two self-administered slaps to his face to fix the clouds that had formed in his brain. This was all too much effort, did he really have to attend a stupid memorial service?

Another alert popped up. “Yes you have to go.”

Fuck his preparedness.

He drank his coffee and cleaned up his apartment from the rapid discarding of clothes that he’d taken part in. Auguste, at least, tried to not be too messy of an individual. The cooking of another meal occurred during his second cup of coffee, fried eggs and avocado toast as he slapped water onto his face. A third cup of coffee found its way into his system as he read the newspaper and organized some paperwork that he had to do.

After that, he found something suitable to wear and tied his hair back in a messy bun. Earbuds found their way in as he climbed onto a bike and rode all the way to the memorial service.

A quick glance around him. Weaponry counted, guards counted with a quick once over as he chained up his bike and smoothed out his clothes in a couple of quick preens before entering the gathering.

His eyes remained alert throughout, watching. Waiting… Glaring at anybody that attempted to approach him. His other identity as Death remained a thinly veiled masquerade, not that that many people approached anyhow.

Counting. Counting the amount of weapons and guards again. Both on the Adamski side, and then on the Avancini side. Who would win if someone were to draw.

He didn’t like the survival odds, personally. He didn’t like this one bit. Who were they commemorating again? He didn’t keep much track of Avancini politics, that wasn’t really for him. His job was to be the punishment. The attack dog straining on the leash with a bloodied smile and a sordid history that kept everyone from doing anything stupid.

… Perhaps he was supposed to be pleasant at this kind of event and rub elbows with the people around him. But the idea of leaving the corner he’d nested in filled his chest with a tightening anxiety and a lead pit in his belly. So instead, he just…watched, and waited. And waited. And waited.

“Ahem! Sharp coughs of a man who wanted to be dead, attracting everyone’s attention like that, made Auguste turn to look. Perhaps just to see the grisly execution that was surely about to occur. “Take your assigned seats"

So he did. Shuffled about with a couple of apologies for stepping on feet until he was seated rather politely into his chair.

Alright.

Now what.






/* ------ credit -- do not remove ------ */

© weldherwings.
 
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vincenzo
















mood.


tired






outfit.


x






location.


Keypark Hall






tags.


Dakota idiot idiot















The Man.

The smell of sea salt and fish attacked the man’s nose, stabbing at his senses from every possible direction with a knife made of venom. Vision blurred and mind fogged, his head rolled to the side in a vain attempt to sit up straight on the chair he awoke in. His whole body slackened before a small jerk traveled from the top of his head down to the tips of his toes, making them curl involuntarily in response. An inaudible groggle escaped his lips—dry and cracked from lack of moisture. He could barely remember what happened to him.

Pain. Heaviness. Exhaustion. Every part of him felt deprived of life and mercy. He didn’t know what day it was or how long he’d been sitting there, arms and legs bound to a cheaply crafted piece of metal. His mind was filled with only two images.

The first was the overgrowth before him, creeping and crawling along the earth and into the cracks of the walls. It feathered along the shattered windows, fighting for light that didn’t exist wherever he currently was. All he could make out were the tips of trees and bushes whenever the moonlit sky wasn’t shrouded by dark clouds.

The second image was his face. Perfectly carved and chiseled, yet softened with age. Dark eyes to pair with his dark hair. A malicious grin that made people want to run yet glide their fingers across his full lips. The devil’s incarnate is what he was, and the Man was a fool for falling for all his sweet lies and soft touches.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

A deep voice, smooth like velvet, rumbled in the Man’s ears. It traveled down to his core, stirring an emotion he wished wasn’t still freshly burned. His captor was cleaning a knife diligently with a piece of cloth, blood quickly dyeing the white fabric red. Blood. He looked down and nearly vomited as a mangle cry was plugged in the base of his throat.

Ten fingernails. Gone. Two fingers. Gone. The agony of it all, paired with the memory of his months with Vincezo, must’ve made him black out and temporarily forget what had happened only minutes ago.

”Vincenzo.” The Man croaked, voice barely above a whisper and practically unrecognizable due to the swelling in his mouth and throat. ”How…” He wanted to ask how Vincenzo could deceive him like that, or why him of all people, but his words were caught in a sob. No tears actually fell, though. There wasn’t enough water in his body for that.

Vincenzo only smiled as he stepped closer, blood and mud squelching beneath his pointed boots. “I have a memorial I need to attend in less than twelve hours and I have a flight to catch soon,” he began, the tip of the knife pressing lightly into the spot where he was missing a nail. The Man let out a cry and his body shook in response, warm liquid he didn’t know he was storing soon pooling into the center of his pants.

Vincenzo didn’t stop. “Let’s try this again, bambino. What do you know about Andrej, Louisa, and Juni?”

*​

Vincenzo.

Two showers and multiple, vigorous hand washing sessions and he still couldn’t get the red out from underneath his fingernails. Vincenzo stared at them as he sat lazily in the back of his car, his assistant glancing back at him from the rearview mirror as they rode in silence. The only sounds were the pattering rain against the windshield and the wipers trying to clear it all away.

“You should have worn gloves. You were careless.” She commented before turning her attention back to the road. She swore and honked at a car that was driving a bit too slowly. The car honked back, making the blonde swear in response.

“You should watch your tongue before I claim it.” Vincenco responded casually, slipping his hands into his pocket and pulling out a pair of thin, dark gloves. They weren’t in season, but he didn’t need people knowing what he’d been up to for the last forty-eight hours. It wasn’t as though anyone would be thoughtless enough to ask, but sometimes questioning gazes alone ticked him off the wrong way.

“I’ll throw up into your mouth if you ever try to kiss me, Vince.”

Vincenzo let out a loud laugh, one that shook the car and brought a smile to both of their faces. His expression softened slightly and he offered a thankful nod towards the woman. She must’ve seen the stress rolled into his shoulders, weighing his body down a little more than usual. That might’ve just been age, though. Maybe the slight guilt he felt for killing a man he made fall in love with him. It was difficult to tell most days.

“Be on call, Livia.” They probably sat in the parking lot for thirty minutes before Vincenzo finally ordered his assistant. He stepped out of the vehicle, an umbrella already ready for him before he even opened the door. He nodded towards the employees that escorted him into the building, fingers dancing above his suit jacket as he buttoned it.

He was a late arrival, as per usual, but everyone was so caught up in their own circles that no one had noticed him slip inside. Like a cat, he prowled through the crowd, avoiding people he didn’t really want to speak to yet. There were three people he wanted to speak to first, but one immediately stood out with his pink hair and slightly droopy shoulders. He silently followed after him to the restrooms.

Carefully, Vincenzo strolled over and knocked lightly against the stall door. “Breathe, Dakota.” His voice was a low pur in the younger’s ears, hand moving in smooth, light circles at the base of his back when the door finally creaked open. “Don’t let them see you weak.” Them. Whoever they were. He didn’t know what troubled Dakota, even if he’d tried prying the answer out of him many times over the years. The young man was a box that made even the best locksmith ponder in confusion.

He let Dakota speak before an announcement was made that echoed across the walls. With a soft nudge, he urged the male forwards. “Let’s talk and walk. If we’re lucky, we’ll be sitting next to each other like old times, yes?” Vincenzo offered a lopsided grin, a stark contrast to the other cold features of his face.





”ciao.”


♡coded by uxie♡
 
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