W I L D

"so tell me, where did the blood on your palms come from? self-divination, or sacrifice?" e s t e l a a l v a r e z twenty-five • dancer • conwoman { capecchi }

[estelasalvarez-blog]

esmeraldaknight:

Solitude, too, had abandoned her, but that was her own fault, a reflex, when someone, Evie? Hale, the twat?, had quietly suggested the rest of the team should be informed and she was a pretty face who could make even the nastiest propositions taste sugar sweet so it had fallen on her to saunter back into the lions’ den as if her dignity was still intact and loop her arm around Capecchis and Lees she barely knew to deliver killing blows.

“I don’t know more,” Esme said, arms crossed before she realised she was supposed to be having a light, quick conversation with a friend. That was a lie. She knew what everyone else knew. “It’s just that. The Lohovarys are here. You would have to ask Hale Rothschild.” She said his full name, uncertain of who she was talking to. Capecchi. She had the cruel face of one, but maybe, so did she.

The woman in front of her was beautiful -- the same way the statues that adorned the Capecchi’s villa was beautiful, ethereal, everlasting. Nothing of the destruction Estela was used to be surrounded with, not the raw, sharp beauty all of those she knew were graced with -- no. That one was built like a goddess, and acted much like one, too.

“Oh, my Hale.” She sneered, the Rothschild boy had nothing of hers other than just one night shared together, one mistake to be kept a secret between the two of them -- still, his softness and his brokenness was something she was most found of. “You were sent here, after all, no?” A perfect, black arch of her eyebrow arched, questioning. “You might as well know more of my pretty boy’s downfall.”

[estelasalvarez-blog]

“What are you even saying?”

Shock washed her over for a second -- it was an unbelievable scenario, something she couldn’t really buy. If someone else had come to her and announced that the plan had gone down, the crown wasn’t theirs, she wouldn’t have believed. Still it was the truth, and Estela, fond of everything terrible, didn’t mind hiding the smile that plucked her crimson lips.

The heist was a failure and she couldn’t find it more amusing. “Tell me more.” She crossed her legs, eyebrows raised, lips still stretched in some sort of smile.

[estelasalvarez-blog]

There was a thousand ways to hide the truthfulness of your feelings. One could simply ignore them, lock down of your own thoughts was a way to escapism -- some others like to fall into exaggeration, boisterous laughs and thunder-like voices, resonating and suffocating.   

Estela tended to simply let go of herself.

She could cause destruction -- she was used to it, it was part of her being one of mayhem and chaos, being one who’s rather have them squirm in their uncomfortable manners other than simply letting them go. She liked things like they were, no sugar-coating, no softness. She could simply delve in her old bad habits, and that would suffice.

But that time, she simply picked not to be herself. She sat watching couples chatter in different idioms, and wondered how was to live a normal life. How much she would love to have a normal life -- but it was easy to walk away, wasn’t it? Not when you were one of them.

“I hope they are not having fun.” French never suited her, still, the softness of that language rolled off of her tongue in an uneven manner, demonstrating that it did not belong there. The plan was to blend in, but honestly, who knew her a little would soon figure she did not care for the quirks and turns of the heist. “I would hate if they were having fun without me.” 

[viacapecchi-blog]

“Show me London,” she said abruptly, “All of it. Not the pretty little parts with their green gardens and pretty paintings, the parts no one else would be brave enough to go to. I know you’re brave.” The realisation had cut like a knife — even with that cruelty of her stepsister’s, cruelty she had seen before, Estela was an Alvarez. And if she was no longer a Capecchi, then she wanted that name too, to slip on the girl’s bravery and cunning and mouth and beauty like a second skin. 

Violetta wanted to be dangerous like Estela: she had never been taught that, only softness, and maybe if she had been forged from diamond and not bone she wouldn’t have shattered the second she was threatened. Maybe it wouldn’t have made her unrecognisable, because if he saw those words on Alessia he would have glowed with pride but on her his mouth twisted and made him ugly and she could see, not for the first time, but she could pretend it was, that she had never seen him in that light before, why they never said her mother’s name.

She hadn’t lied when she told Lorenzo that she wanted to be like someone else. She had lied when she said she wanted to be like Alessia. Violetta slid off her seat and extended her hand to Estela, nearly reaching back to take the untouched glass and swallow it down quick, liquid courage, liquid luck, but reaching for her stepsister instead. “Teach me.”

[estelasalvarez-blog]

“This is not bravery.” It was more like a dare to the whole world to step closer, if they don’t value their lives. It’s more like an invitation, everyone gather around and see that Palermo might have its devils, but Estela is it’s own very monster, brewed in rage and fed on neglect; she didn’t need to do monstrous things anymore to prove her point -- her teeth were sharp enough already, a warning. Yet, Violetta Capecchi betrays her soft mannerism by calling it bravery, monsters are born, but by the raised chin and the clenched fists on her lap, she sees her stepsister is keen to give it a try. “You know it, but I’ll show you those places, and you’ll learn, eventually of course, there’s nothing to fear.” But us.

A smile surfaced, alcohol mixing with the thrill of the promise. She was often called crazy, a bitch, selfish, a rabid dog that should be put down. But never brave.

She never imagined this, she never expected this; at best, when Estela wasn’t entangled with Ciro, or when she wasn’t blinded by the impossible pursuit that was Luca, Estela always saw Violetta as one of her name -- just like herself, guarded, too frail, if stomped, she would wither and die; she would never take that as a palpable possibility. Something shifted underneath, something she wouldn’t tell her, not yet.

Taking her time to finish her drink and rise a finger “On the house.” The bartender whispered, and Estela, leaning to give him a goof glance of her cleavage, managed to snatch a bottle of tequila before clasping her stepsister’s hand. Soft, like he expected, like her. She pulled her closer, just an inch, “Don’t forget who I am,” she smiled, a true smile. “And don’t make me regret this.”

[viacapecchi-blog]

She was not a poetic drunk — the closest she came was wandering Florence with her veins full of red wine like the blood of Christ, laughing at Dante’s memorial. She had thought, then, that they were the same, the poet and the daughter, exiled from their cities, their cities desperate to lay claim to them only when they were dead. When she was sober, the comparison seemed silly, because the words that had tumbled from her mouth would never come close to the ones that had flowed from Dante Alighieri’s head.

Violetta stared at the glass: paired with Estela’s words, an invitation. She could do it, couldn’t she, just one drink, one last test to prove to everyone that she had survived unscathed and then she could run to Rome or Florence or somewhere very far away, Cape Town, Rosário, Melbourne, with Jett tucked under her arm.

She traced her finger around the rim of it like she was going to take it. “I don’t think,” she said, more to the bar than to her step-sister, “I have an imagination like yours.” 

And then she swears to herself she won’t say another word, because the honesty can spill from her like a glass tipped over on the bar.

[estelasalvarez-blog]

She watched her cautious movements -- every action deliberately taken thinking on the afterwards. Estela wondered if she was like this before really knowing her -- if she get to say she really knew her; poised, mannered, wary. Her lips stretched into a smirk, how such bramble rose could bloom from the same branch as her vicious sister, and hedonist brother? Was Violetta truly the soft one out of the bunch of bloodthirsty wolves? 

Compared to Estela, she was just that -- Palermo’s princess, delicacy in every fold of her body, every corner of her lips. She was all that, cherished by her mother, protected by her father -- his words still ringing on her ears ‘hold your tongue before you speak of my children’. Didn’t they know her yet, though? Her tongue was made of blades, and if held inside her mouth for too long, it would cut her insides.

“No one does, Principessa.” A bull in a china shop, Estela never calculates nor cares the consequences of her acts -- she knew it well enough, destruction and reborn. She glanced at the glass, untouched, the key her step-sister refused to swallow down. “It doesn’t mean I  can’t teach you.”

[tatrisalol-blog]

When he emerges from the backlit bathroom, it is as if he has been born again. Water baptizes him; marking him holy, cleansing him of his sins. Dmitri pauses in the doorway. His is a face gingerly wiped of blood and rust, cuts swabbed and left to dry, knuckles bandaged with expert abandon - this isn’t the first time that he’s come here to lick his wounds, and it won’t be the last. The gauze wrapped about his hands makes him feel safe, protected. The whiteness of them is comforting somehow; just like the pristine shirts that have been left for him to slip into. Clean. Different. Standing there, the bright, porcelain light streaming from behind him, framing him in a halo of gold; he is almost made vulnerable, soft. There is a gratification that dashes itself upon his features, smoothing the edges and blurring the sharp vigilance that is always weaving about him. He almost allows himself to pretend that he is not alone.

And he is not. 

But then his eyes adjust to the dark, and he sees his company on Evie’s - no, his and Evie’s - bed, and suddenly he is struck by a desperate, terrifying wave of anxiousness. She can’t be there. She can’t be there. She isn’t allowed - no, he won’t allow her to touch this sacred space. It seems so wrong to see another woman in Evie’s place that he feels sick. A tightness grips his stomach, twisting it into knots. “Get off,” he breathes, softly at first. Then, “Get off.” There is nothing polite or kind about it. He doesn’t care. Stepping forward, he looks down at the woman perched on the silk covers with such dizzying confidence, and his fists curl of their own accord; his breath hitches. Force enters his voice, hardening its boyish lilts, because he’s suddenly afraid, nervous, overtaken by an emotion he cannot name. 

“It isn’t mine,” he continues harshly when she doesn’t budge, answering her question. “You can’t be on this bed. Leve toi.” He stares intently at her, waiting, expectant. Drums beat within him, and it takes all his willpower not to respond to their call. With such a simple motion, she has pushed him backwards; back into the warzone. He isn’t ready. He isn’t prepared to fight, not in these clothes, on these floors. He stares at her, and feels himself tensing, turning back into the creature that he has tried so hard to bar from these rooms, keep from these thresholds. My god, if Evie knew - if she knew what he was doing right now - and he closes his eyes, angry at the stranger for not listening, but more angry at himself for ever bringing her here. What a stupid fucking idiot he is. 

“We need to go.” And this time it isn’t a request, or even a statement, but a command. “Now.” But despite his words, he himself doesn’t move a millimetre. His gaze, storm-filled, is still fixed upon her, sprawled out upon the sheets like Madonna on a bed of roses. That feeling rises again within him, and again his throat tightens. 

[estelasalvarez-blog]

She watched him rise and then, just as quickly, she watches his discomposure. Estela is not used to holiness, she is not used to wholeness -- she is used to things that are shown in the dark, where she was left, things that are done in the dark, for everyone is afraid of their true selves under the blazing light; she learned how to treasure those moments, those of crude sincerity, so raw it was ugly, and so, Estela learned hot to love everything ugly. What people usually diverge their eyes from, she is one prying eye, devoted, adoring it. How twisted one needs to be to expect only the worst from everyone? She could not be made whole, so she could only watch as his consecrate ritual unfold, she can only absorb such righteousness to have herself choke on it late -- body rejecting what her matter was not made of.

Th boy who burns with such ferocity under the lamplight, was, moments ago, the boy who was put together under his holy roof -- the boys with cut knuckles carefully wrapped in pure, white bandages, the boy with scorched heart balmed and cared, the boy with dying flames in his eyes now emerging, like a phoenix, like something finally coming home; and like everything under her touch, she has made it rotten to him. She watches as desperation washes him over, as frantic misery strike him and he is suddenly the boy she found on the streets, something ferocious clawing it’s way out.

She would die to watch the havoc such choleric fists could cause.

A soft laugh escapes her lips, “Don’t French me, boy.” -- his silhouette cut against the clarity of the bathroom, he is just a shadow with twisted features. Surely, she is not in a place she belongs -- her hair falls in ringlets around her head as she peers up at the strange boy, from a stranger’s bed -- his stranger --, her sharp edges don’t match with the smooth surfaces, the discreet elegance that coils in every corner of that place. That is a place of worship to him, and as though her back arches like ceilings of a chapel a she sits on the edge of the bed, there’s nothing of divine about her. 

“So take me.” It’s almost a dare -- she fights the need to urge him for more, to press his soft spots, rub salt and vinegar on his cuts. She is taken aback for a moment, and then the realization spreads through her, crimson lips in a smirk. She wants everything he can offer. 

[viacapecchi-blog]

She was staring, she knew, when she lifted her head again, and her attempt to focus on something, anything, to get through this conversation, this summons Violetta was so compelled to follow, left her gaze of red-coloured lips. Still her favourite colour, after all this time, so angry and cruel, esecially on that mouth. But easier to stare at her step-sister than someone else, tinkling glass and long hair and girls were so pretty when they laughed, weren’t they.

She almost ordered a drink. Not to drink, but to fill the silence spilling from her, but once it was in front of her, she wouldn’t be able to not drink it. Estela would only encourage her.

Gullible white men, private parties, rich fucks. It seemed impossible that two sisters could lead such extraordinarily different lives, colliding rarely and threatening to explode when they did. It had been a long time since she had kissed anyone in a way that counted — not a kiss on the cheek for Jett, not kissing knuckles and whispering — she almost missed it. Even the boys, if she had drank enough she could convince herself they were acceptable, but now they made her skin crawl except in her memory. 

Impulsively, Violetta called the bartender over, and until the last second, when she said ‘Do you have limonatas? Ah, lemon soda?’, she thought she might ask for a shot of tequila, to drink to Estela because she hadn’t said anything back to her. 

“Fun,” Violetta said, “Shame I haven’t come here sooner.”  It was easier to feign enthusiasm than to focus and stare, apparently.

[estelasalvarez-blog]

She could feel the alcohol numbing her senses -- sure, sober Estela would be loyal to her true self, she would be brash and caustic, every word burning a hole on the skin of whomever sits besides her. Sober Estela would feast on Violetta, as always -- would explore the weaknesses her step-sister tucks inside her sleeve and rub slat on the wounds; but Estela was not completely sober, no, and her anger hadn’t taken the best of her. Yet.

That’s why I don’t drink. The small, reasonable part of her mind whispers as she finished yet another glass -- drinking puts to rest the monster ever clawing her insides. She couldn’t serve to her purpose inebriated, she couldn’t serve to her god that way. She raised a finger, ordered two.

Maybe she wasn’t so far gone yet.

“More than fun, querida.” She was still smiling, cocking her head to a side, analyzing her companion. There were so many things off about her -- so many ugly secrets that Estela would die to scatter all over and roll on. “The wonders those walls hide, imagine what you love the most --” A smile stretched into a poisonous smirk, “And let your imagination go wild.” 

The extra glass sat between them, “Maybe there’s still time for you to enjoy that.”

[viacapecchi-blog]

Violetta could have loved her step-sister. She could have fallen for her, even, if there wasn’t such a practised malice to everything she did: her walk, her words, the places she loves. “You still will,” she says in her most polite, civil tone, taking the seat next to Estela, fingernails tapping on the bar in a way that irritates her even though she’s the one doing it. If she held out her hands they would shake. ‘It’s an exercise in self-control,’ she tells herself, ‘You don’t have to do anything but sit here and wait.’ 

She really could have loved the curves of her step-sister’s body, narrow collarbones and a waist to match and hips that could sway in a way that made people forget there was anything else in front of them, if she wasn’t her step-sister, if she wasn’t so cruel, and not for the first time, she averted her eyes from a room and looked at wood of the bar. Not Estela. Not a pretty girl with her head tossed back, laughing, near the door, away from everyone else. Not now.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to this part of London before,” she said in Italian, trying, reaching out for a common thread, something to say if they weren’t going to drink. “The houses are pretty.”

[estelasalvarez-blog]

Violetta was a mystery in which Estela did not mind to solve, like many things in her life.

For her, it was always black or white and a forever-lived life in the gray area, it was kill or be killed, it was thrive or wither -- Estela, like a vicious dog, always chose to attack to destroy, to guarantee her survival and to damage as much as she could; and like a hungry dog, she was never loyal -- and she was always hungry.

Still as her step-sister settles herself beside her, she beams amuse, lips playing on the edge that what for her was simply mild fun, for the other, the reason of her decay. “Well, that’s such a shame.” Another sip, another wink to the barman to keep t coming. “Never fun to drink alone.” If Estela had been brought to this world not tainted by violence, not a breed of pure viciousness, she would have cherished her -- loved her, even; but the world was not gentle, and Estela was simply a result of such savage environment. The world was loss, and she fed on it -- she could not sympathize, for she never had anything in the first place.

She could love her, though, but her bone were not of noble matter, they tried to hold such pure feeling once, and shattered her whole. 

For all that matters, Estela had drank a couple drinks before, and the loose words comes out in her accented Italian, even though she spent a life time using it. “Kensington is cute, those white building, and white gullible men.” She laughs softly. “Amazes me you have never been here, the private parties are the best part of those rich fucks.”

[tatrisalol-blog]

He shakes his head, laughs. “No, no.” The very thought of what she proposes makes him smile, a devilish, sharp slash. “You never want to come to this place again.”

But he does, and though the hall itself is strange to him, the feeling of entering the building instills a calm in his bones, his demeanor. These are the places that Evie has walked - with her cat feet and her pixie lips, turnt up at his antics, turnt down at his depravities. She’s his moral compass. But more so, she is his goddess - and maybe it’s wrong to worship her (the very notion of her) as vehemently as he does…but he’s never cared for right and wrong. His goddess is the only thing that holds him together some days. 

Ascending up three flights of stairs - which he positively leaps up, in great bounding steps - he finally makes it to her front door. Even this makes him giddy, fills him with a lightness he hasn’t known for weeks. Echoes, snatches of her voice come to him. The number on this door is 333 - the holy trinity of a church he used to believe in, the number of tries it takes to kiss a girl, the precise time at which Evie Villiers first met Dmitri Beauregard and saved his life. 

Again, he employs the same trick with the turned back and the quiet paperclip, half-expecting the door not to open. Evie’s so smart. She would never allow another thief to rob her - much less in her own home. But it’s because she’s smart that the knob gives way beneath his scarred hands. Dmitri breathes a sigh of relief and admiration, because as always, she’s one step ahead of him. This is ours, she’d said to him several years ago. Come here anytime. And he hadn’t truly believed her until he saw the things she stocked for him, the aspects of the place that had been modified to save him from his stupide, foolish decisions. 

And then they’re inside.

Now he glances at his companion, and an entirely serious note enters his tone. His eyes shine, but when he says, “Don’t touch anything, ouai?” he means it like he means very few things in his life. “I’ll be quick.” 

He has to keep himself from studying this space, analyzing whether she’s been back - breathing in the clean, fresh smell of then apartment. It’s freezing. Yet as he fumbles his way to a lightswitch, turning on the soft radiance of the wall lamps; it is clear that this place is far from neglected. A casual, modern wealth characterizes the place: white throw rugs, crisp blacks and defiant edges - just like the girl who designed it all. None of Chescote’s stuffy excess is found here. This isn’t Francis’ palace, or even Zephora’s…this isn’t a tower. It’s a nest. 

“Stay,” he says again for emphasis, pressing his gaze into the stranger’s to drive the point home. As soon as he believes it’s been established, he’s off, rushing down the hallway and into the bedroom. The shirts are in the closet, besides her jumpsuits and that impeccable black she likes so much. Spare pants and jackets tucked in the drawers beneath the king-size bed - and now he shivers, feeling the cold brush against his spine. He remembers her on that bed. He remembers touching her, his mouth against hers, his hands on her hips - and being reborn. 

He almost murmurs her name.

But he doesn’t. Because that would make her absence a reality, this silence a death toll. Here, now, he can pretend for the briefest of moments that it isn’t a foreign woman waiting in the living room, but a dark-haired English girl. Clutching his clothes in his hands, he with great difficulty tears himself away from the memories, moving instead into the bathroom with its marble tiles and lion-headed faucets. The door swings softly to a stop behind him, but doesn’t fully shut. 

There’s rubbing alcohol in the cabinet, bandages too. The water runs icy, but he turns on the left faucet to make it warm. Dmitri inhales, and with both hands braced on the edges of the sink, the sound of rushing water drowning out his thoughts; he looks into the mirror and feels all at once damned and saved, ugly but forgiven. 

[estelasalvarez-blog]

She could see that there he is made whole.

She quietly follows him, an aspect not often attributed to her own boisterous and violent persona; but she silently follows him as he leaps up the stairs, as he places before the door with the golden numbers glistening in the dim light of the corridor; and there, she sees him being made whole again. It would be a good story to be told, one day, over chipped glasses and dirty hands of stained cards, over unbalanced tables in Palermo’s unholy corners — a boy she found shattered under a lamp post in London was put together right before her eyes.

Unlocking the door is like communion, is like watching him unlock the secrets of his heart — personal, intimate, something she should not look yet, still, with no notions of boundaries or respect, she looms over to understand the quirks of this sacred ritual. In the moment that follows, she places a hand over her heart — if she doesn’t have any, why does she feel it beating? Why does she suddenly understand the reason behind tremendous devotion, without even knowing him? She feels unholy in such a place, for she doesn’t want to think of her own, now profane, temple.

It’s clearly not his place, but he belongs there — he shaped himself in a way that he would belong there, and she is certain of it. She had seen willingness, she had seen the same constructed desired handcrafted to simply be that Only for someone. The same way that boy with jagged edges fits in a place of sleek, smooth surfaces, she, with her corrupted heart, had tried to find salvation under the roof of the incorruptible. Her feelings towards Luca taints her vision, and she doesn’t bite back when the boy orders her to stay, like a misbehaved dog. She’s taken aback, suddenly, she understands.

She knows how’s to worship someone who’s your salvation; but in her case, she was swept aside to make way to the righteous goddess of her golden warrior.

Anger snaps her back to reality. A sudden flush of crimson and the beast that coils in her guts is made awake, clawing her insides, wanting out. She breathes, considering her surroundings — the pressing warning registered on the back of her head, don’t touch anything. Her legs move beneath her, making acquaintance her surroundings — the disconnected, yet harmonic, gathering of different cultures, different places. It’s much like the museums and private collections they hit every months, with the only difference that those pieces, assembled together, told a story. 

Estela passes a painting on the wall in her way to the room, it’s sight nudging a memory in the back of her head, impossible to grasp — something familiar to it, like a deja vú. She doesn’t connect the dots, she doesn’t think of it as she enters the room, following the rushed sound of water coming out of a faucet. From the ajar door pours amber light, a slash of warmth in a, otherwise, dark room. It’s shadows dancing, its forms anonymous to her  — she was not a curious cat, exploring the territory was beyond her, she doesn’t mind, she doesn’t care. Belonging where ephemeral, quickly extinguished under the right pressure, she knows well of this.

So, she opts to prop herself on the king sized bed before her  — dark hair sprawled around her head like a deranged halo, crimson lips plucked. “This your place, mon cher?” She picked up bits and parts of French from Ciro in his impossible pursuits, when he whispered against the crook of her neck only to make her dig sharp nails deeper in his flesh  — it doesn’t roll off of her tongue nicely, a foreigner, much like herself. 

She is not sure he can hear her, the faucet was still rushing and from her spot on the bed, she could clearly see his figure staring at his reflection  — even there, contrasting in such a place, he was undeniably a fighter. Knuckles raw, his guard never down; it’s not the boy he glimpsed moments ago, whole, cleansed — but it is something she could hold, something palpable and that she knows how to deal with. She watches him, curious, for once, unsure of the outcome. 

[tatrisalol-blog]

He knows these streets like he knows the scars on the back of his hands; and if they have burned him before, then he gives no notion of it now. 

They make a strange sight. Foreigners - but maybe you can’t tell in this peculiar shade of light, half-indigo, half-grey, and entirely swept across the concrete and tar. Maybe you can’t tell that he stays here, loiters these streets, because he hopes that she - the girl he lives for - will return to her home - that she’ll return and see him. Twilight is the time of night where all the worst things that a city can hide come out to play. And he runs among them, silent and unnerving, but filled with the same undying fire. Part of him wonders why the woman besides him is here, this stranger, with her designer clothes and dark-lined eyes. He can tell from her accent and the fiery pride in her steps, the very toss of her head; that she is not accustomed to the humid cold or the dreary skies of this place. London, you see - it drains you. On the best of days, it doesn’t rain. On the worst, it rains blood. 

For a long time, they move in silence. Dmitri doesn’t slow down for her, his steps sure; his turns sudden. There’s blood drying on his lips and the cold stings the cuts on his cheeks, but he couldn’t be less aware. Streetlights, lone cars, the solitary cat yowling in a trash can - are they thieves and kings, or are they merely rascals dressing up for a part that is not their own? But still he leads on, not stopping, not even to take the much needed breaths that beg against his lungs to be fed.

And when they emerge from the far east of Hyde park, and cross two streets - he feels his heartbeat freeze, stunned by nostalgia. If London has a centre, then this is his. The apartment is one among many, but it almost glows, made extraordinary, ever different. He closes his eyes, and he can see her, hear her, taste her - so much of her haunts this street. It is so different from where he had been earlier - and, he thinks bitterly, Maybe that is the point. 

“Just a stop,” he explains bluntly to his companion, but from the way he awns his head back, you can tell that it is much more than a simple stop. If adoration can be seen in one’s gaze, then it must be tinting his now. The pure white facade glows silver with the moonlight, and with an anxious, eager trepedition, Dmitri makes his way towards the front steps of number eight - It’s a lucky number in Chinese, Evie once told him. Ba - it sounds like fa. And from then on, eight became his favourite digit. 

He almost does what he’s done hundred times before: leap over the gate, find handholds in the niches of the outside wall, hoist himself up onto a windowsill. He’s halfway there in his mind’s eye before he remembers that he isn’t alone. Not this time. He turns his face to the woman besides him, someone who is undoubtedly oblivious to the discourse which occurs between him and his own heart. 

“Ah.” For a moment his brows furrow and he is a child again, very French and very torn by decision. He doesn’t know what to say to her…he doesn’t know how he could justify bringing her into the sacred space in which all his dreams come awake. But if anything, he should do this much, if only to save them both from the cold. Another long moment passes in which he tries not to think about how Evie would react. God forbid she ever knows.

At long last, he says, “Come up if you want.” And with an unfamiliarity, he steps forward as if to unlock the door. Instead, though he does well to hide it with his back, he jams a paperclip into the keyhole, twisting and wiggling it to gain them entry. The right way. The way normal people do. 

[estelasalvarez-blog]

She is a mere strange in those streets, following a stranger boy and his promise of a time she won’t forget as long as she proves him what she is truly made of. She is not afraid, as she falls into a quick pace behind slumped shoulders and no turning back, never. She wanted to hint him, so unfamiliar to not have people recoil at the mere sight of her, Estela spreads her possibilities before her; should she warn she is made of something rotten, housing in its middle a gaping void, swallowing every and any beam of light that dares to peers into the darkness within? Or surprise would take the best of them?

There was no time for talking or thinking. Beside her, the boy walks in sacred ground -- his gaze sweeps the streets looking for something, or, Estela marvels, someone to soothe the hunger that curls and uncurls inside his irises, that lingers in the slow roll of his shoulders. That’s what they are, strangers to each other, strangers to those streets -- or maybe that singularity applies only for her, for he seemed familiar to the twists and turns of the humid curbs of London. She came here to escape impossible expectations and infinite disappointments, she didn’t want anything with it, but if asked, she wouldn’t mind giving voice to her distaste -- Estela was always one to have barbs for a tongue; his reasons are hidden in the shadows, well tucked inside his coat. 

Her lungs ache and her minds blurs in soft shades of red as the piling memories nibble her frayed nerves. Shush, she tells them, There will be plenty of time and space. Would she dare share something so deep with a boy she didn’t even know the name? Would she show her most vulnerable face, her most hollowed side to a complete stranger who she would not even see again? What would her anger be worth of, if not to be there to watch the aftermath of her destruction? But then, it happens. She first senses the shift in him, lighter, familiar -- then she sees it, on the way he holds himself, on the way he looks at the building towering in front of him, his hesitation -- holy ground was found by the boy looking for salvation. Her voice sounds rusty, even for her, dubious -- "Just a stop.”

She could easily decline to follow him -- could easily be polite and wait for him outside, enjoying the cold air embracing her venomous thoughts; but she promised to show him what she was capable of. “So, is this the wretched place I’ve been promised?” Estela glances at the facade of the building, she measures the boy wrestling with the door, the same way you’d punch a puzzle piece in its wrong space -- it’s part of a bigger picture, just not right there. “I wouldn’t miss this, not really.”

[tatrisalol-blog]

Surely she’s joking. A laugh escapes him, harsh and demanding; the  sort of strange, rare laugh that could be very ugly or very beautiful, sometime, somehow. It’s a sound of disbelief, but his doubts are not momentary: they have had a lifetime to fester, and now they press against him from all sides like knives and shadows. 

“You’re funny,” he coughs, arching one eyebrow as he looks her over with clear criticism. “Funny, or out of your fucking mind.” There is a satisfaction to the word fuck - he thinks that it’s his favourite word in the English language. The sharp explosiveness of it cuts the roof of his mouth while his tongue wraps about the fluidity of what it means. I want to fuck you. And entirely different is, I want to fuck you up. His mind is racing with a thousand ways that this night could go if he says yes, a single way if he says no. He thinks, as he always does, of Evie. What would she tell him to do? More importantly, what would she want him to do? 

It hurts to imagine. But Dmitri does - and in that moment, unbidden; a terrible, scorching idea burns its way onto his mind. And he could resist it, maybe, at another time. But wounded, with a crown of malignancies on his head and a scepter of longing grasped in his fingers; he is all too happy to give in to its allure. He thinks, as he always does, of Evie. Then he thinks of the woman before him; and the way that the night will go begins to forms, a sleek panther of a thing, purring against his reason and batting aside his judgement - what little he has. 

“You talk big.“ And he cuts his gaze to her almost mockingly. “You’ll see. These streets will swallow you whole.” And though it’s a rough remark, it’s also clear what his answer is. He pushes off the wall, still staring her down. He’s made his choice, chosen his poison, and now he must only swallow it to feel it echo down his throat. Perhaps this stranger of his will share in the ecstasy.

[estelasalvarez-blog]

People never call her funny -- she is not one who usually humors people, not one of telling jokes. Estela and her sharp edges have their ways of cutting through people’s skin, of rubbing their wounds with salt, of making them flinch at the bare sight of her. Funny, was never an adjective that was attributed to her; the latter, as it comes out from his mouth with the faint shade of disbelief, is way more fitting for her. 

Out of your fucking mind.

She heard this many times, she hears this every morning when her brother gazes at her bruised knuckles, at the bloody half-moons on her palms, she hears this every time she has to buy new furniture of the previous one couldn’t handle the destruction that comes by her hands. She hears this every time her mother meets her grandfather, and yet another bar was shut down because she couldn’t control herself. She hears this as she throws vases against Ciro’s head and rips his sheets to pieces. Estela lives in a constant state of out of her fucking mind. But albeit everything, she smiles at his remark, at his laugh.

She barks a laugh, the doubt on his look prickling her skin. Why is she so keen on prove herself to a boy that she met not even an hour ago? Why does she feel so compelled to show his the extension of what she can cause, alone -- what she can cause when matched with someone that is not afraid of the wretched, just like herself? She doesn’t want to find if he has a weakness, for the first time, maybe in her entire life, she doesn’t want to press him -- afraid he will be too ripe and bruise under her touch. That wouldn’t be fun. She needs it to be fun in her own way.

“You might be right.” She wants it to happen, she wants to be swallowed hole and be consumed by the secret wasteland that London could hide in its streets -- she wanted to know if corruptions ran deep here, just like Italy, and if so, why they are so prone to hide it. She feels the excitement running in her veins, the promise of something she wont forget -- and she will make sure no one there forgets her; a promise she doesn’t make lightly. “But they will choke on me, still, bambino.”

[tatrisalol-blog]

Well then you do like it, don’t you? 

‘I never had a choice’ he wants to say. Or, ‘I was taught to like it.’ Maybe even a play on words, what the English called a pun: ‘It was beaten into me.’ But he doesn’t let any of those variations escape him, because those are the thoughts that he has when he’s most alone; and the stranger’s presence, no matter how irksome, is better than the solitary confinement of those depths. 

He’s just risen from them, head breaking through the water; sea-spray and salt-sweat. The blood on his hands is still fresh - he still has some time before the ocean devours him again. 

So instead, he gives her something that is merely a tint of the truth, a sliver of the boy who Dmitri Beauregard was, the man he is now. “Peut-etre. It’s a thing that makes me feel whole.” A thing - but he means one of the only two things. There is a flippancy to his words that discount the meaning of the statement, the terrible weight that falls upon him just to say it out loud. He doesn’t like to pity himself. Loathing is so much more solid, more tangible. And perhaps he should loathe that so few things complete him, but instead he is glad. He has latched his entire heart onto a fleeting girl, and if he were to divide his affections any further, he would surely die. 

And no matter how he destroys himself, submerging himself in ruination; he doesn’t want to die. Not now. Not this year. 

“Oh?” He raises his voice in a curious, amused inquiry. He’s tired and his cuts sting, but now that they’re here, he might as well humor her. “You don’t know this city.” A snort of derision. “Tell me, petite fille -” and he breathes out, reverting back to his native tongue. “What terrible things could you have to show?” He flashes his teeth in a wolf smile, too far from warm or kind to ever compare. 

[estelasalvarez-blog]

Estela cant grasp the concept of unity. 

As a child, she was fed on neglect -- she was gave nothing, and she multiplied that inside of her, resulting into a gaping nothingness, a hungry void. She was gave nothing and could give nothing in return. As a teenager, she found out the filling ugliness of being deranged; she found out that seizing power was better than being granted with -- Machiavelli said himself, better be feared than loved, and the latter, she never was.

Now, as an adult, the only thing that filled her was the rage, scorching her inside, at every deep breath that she takes at every new dawn. She considers him for a moment, considering that maybe she had never felt whole -- maybe, she never would. “That’s interesting.” She always wonders, how some people could be so wholesome, how they didn't have monsters gnawing their bones and scratching their skins? “To feel whole is such an impossible task to accomplish those days.” 

She didn’t care to know if it was true or not, for all she knows, he might as well be lying -- she nods and falls in a brief silence, thinking of the boy in front of her, with cut knuckles, matching her own cut ones, and wonders simply how minds rule bodies so prone to destruction like theirs.

But under that night sky, they are nothing more than strangers with no access to the demons in their closets. The positive side of ignorance is that it was gentle, and you could get drunk on it before the crushing hangover came hunting you down. “London is not my home, no.” Her smile dabs sincerity into her tone, thinking of Italy makes her realized that what people say of home not being the place, but the people, is completely bullshit. “Well, I could tell you,” She rises an eyebrows, easy smile quickly falling to a conspiratory grin -- the world was the Olympus, and Estela was Eris with her golden apple. “But if you show me the way, I can show you my ways, and make you believe in that.”

[karinapazzi]

The look Anika gives the Italian woman is not one of friendship, of happiness. No, the look is one edge with venom and sharpened by malice, a look that could kill if it had been any other woman staring back. Anika hated her, hated her with every fiber of her being, and it would be just her luck that one of the only people she really, truly despised in the world would be here tonight. The universe had a cruel way of playing tricks on her, and this was just what she’d have to deal with tonight.

She’d almost expected Estela not to acknowledge her, but Lord knew the woman couldn’t resist a fight, and whenever they were in the same room there was sure to be one. It was her arrogance Anika couldn’t stand, and though the Nightbird couldn’t see it, they were just too similar to ever be civil. It isn’t fun to see yourself reflected back at you in the worst form possible.

There’s the look, then a raise of her eyebrows. Anika’s on edge, but curious, so she strays closer. “Didn’t know I had someone waiting on me.”

[estelasalvarez-blog]

Life is, indeed, full of surprises.

Estela was away from the dear streets of Palermo because she couldn’t stand another minute surrounded by people she could not also stand. It was surprising she was still breathing and talking, without a knife plucked to her back -- vipers, and she was no better than them.

Yet, she ran into that. If life couldn’t displease her any more, she had to face one of Ciro’s toy’s through her setting state of alcohol numbness -- god, really, all she wanted was to drag the girl’s face on the asphalt. 

“You have plenty of things waiting on you, querida.” She laughs, and it’s not a pretty sound, that matches with the foul glance directed at her. “But I am actually surprised you’re actually functional without a man’s hand grabbing your ass.” 

[estelasalvarez-blog]

The wind only blows cold every time someone enters the bar, joining the warmth, the drinks and the endless chatter under amber lights. Men have loose ties around their necks, rolled up shirt sleeves and a matching wrinkled look on their faces -- tired, worn. In a corner, a group of women sat -- one of them with a tiara bearing a white veil, talking in a high-pitch, alcohol filled tone. 

Around her, life seems to follow its course undisturbed. None of those people were aware of what happened in the last couple months, none of them wondered what was to happen. Estela sits in a bar in London, away from home, and orders another drink -- the one she gets with a wink from the bartender. She drinks it without savoring -- it could be water, or vodka, she doesn’t really mind, her mind far to blurred at to tell apart. 

“Why, you’re late to the party.” Her voice is low, the weight of the third shot dragging her words in the right places. “I thought I would have to drink and entire drink by myself.”

[archivedblogposts]

From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series Text Posts (1/?) →  Kisa

[tatrisalol-blog]

He doesn’t like how she looks at him, how she appraises him. With her mouth painted red and her lashes painted black, the woman before him is undoubtedly beautiful - but he pointedly refuses to acknowledge it, instead focusing on how her words rub him the wrong way. Dmitri pushes himself off the wall, lurching slightly on his feet - but he still stands, and he still gazes out with such concentrated defiance - and maybe, in another place, no one would’ve known how hard he’d been beaten tonight. 

To be beaten is to lose. A war, a fistfight, a scrimmage in the dark. Yet in the shadows of himself, Dmitri knows with an unwavering certainty that to be beaten is so much more. The decade-old scar slashing across his forearm and the hungriness of his eyes is testament enough. And he doesn’t want her, with her sharp, polished edges, to turn his dirty pride into something shameful again.

“Actually, I had the time of my life.” and it’s almost hostile, if not for the strange softness of his voice. “You hop bars, sweetheart -” He skips his h’s. You ‘op bars, sweet’eart. “I hop alleyways.” In the harsh, not-quite-worldly light of the night streets, he keeps debating with himself on whether he knows her or he doesn’t. There is something vaguely familiar to her: something reminiscent of Italian leather and the Sicilian mob. 

[estelasalvarez-blog]

The boy in front of her is more sharp ends than soft spots, despite how purple and black he looks, shadowed under the precarious lamp light. He is the result of something that breaks and is not put back into place, something that was not born to be like that, but still, the world was unforgiving on him. There is something undoubtedly pleasing in the way his posture defies her, the way his words, not gentle -- not completely rude, either, fill the space between them.

Estela is unaware, though, of how his words are dipped in sarcasm, how his eyes, never restless, always ready for a next fight, always with his guard up, pierced into hers, as if daring her to come closer at her own risk. Estela found herself curious about the boy in front of her, something familiar, something completely strange.

“Well then you do like it, don’t you?” She laughs softly, head resting against the painted pole, looking at the dark night sky. “Now, mio caro, just because I wear lipstick the way you wear bruises doesn’t mean alleyways haven’t seen the worst of me.” She reminds she is not in Italy, she is a foreigner in a foreign country, and those streets don’t know the vicious thing Estela Alvarez is in her best days. She cocks her head, beckoning to her thoughts, a smirk stretching crimson lips. “Well, at least those alleyway haven’t. Or bars. Yet.”

[alessiacapecchi-blog]

Alessia rolled her eyes at Estela’s heated response. It was almost too easy with her. A few comments here, a couple of taunts there and the other woman would be bristling in rage. She almost liked it, a sick sort of satisfaction would spread over her at the jealousy, the sheer anger that she would evoke. But Alessia wondered how long it would last? For how long she could put up with her irritating step-sister until she was bored of her antics, her theatrics. Alessia guessed that only time would tell, time would tell whether she would need to throw a spanner in the works of Estela Alvarez and make things interesting again. 

She listened to Estela, not quite answering her questions, but turning the line of conversation elsewhere. “Luca was supposed to be here. To give you these,’’ she said putting a couple of papers in front of her that needed filling out with a description and possibly further information about which of Fiori’s men in particular attacked her specifically. “Strange, it was almost as if he was refusing to come.”

[estelasalvarez-blog]

It was like she was underwater once more -- the ocean roaring in her ears, the salty water clogging and lungs, burning, suffocation; making death closer at each desperate gasp for air that never came. It was like she was back, slipping, meeting its cold surface -- her end. If it wasn’t for him; the man that she loved to her ruin, bringing her back to life once again.

She still could feel the spray of his blood on her face, the shock on his -- Alessia’s quick hands tending on his wound as she was taken away, shivering in Ciro’s jacket and in her brother’s arm.

“Luca.” Her mind was blank, numbed by how calmly she spoke of his name, how the word rolled off of her tongue -- as if he hadn’t committed something awful, as if she wasn’t the reason for it all. Estela looked at the papers, unaware of its contents inside. “Your fucking useless paw couldn’t do a little thing for his queen?” She spat the words, but where usually would be a smirk, on her lips could only be seen disgust. “Almost time to take him out.”