YOU ARE THE REASON
Jules of Nature
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Janaina Medeiros
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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@julianacapulets
You are embarrassed about your blood, its redness, the way it is just coming out of you with no concern for anyone’s feelings. You are (…) embarrassed to be alive.
In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado (via salemwitchtrials)
Danno Collaterale || ft. JC
VIVIANNE.
Those words resonate within her. Sinking into her soul like water to reluctant ground. The girl doesn’t know how close she comes to inundating and uprooting the carefully buried rhizomes of Vivianne’s heart. Even as she tries to push away those words, memories well up inside of her; bringing up the past in a series of bleak flashbacks.
She thinks of a single shot ringing in a quiet cabin, of fingers finally dropping from around her airway and letting her breathe; precious, panicked, lungfuls of air. She remembers that she’s only seventeen, and that she looks down with a sickening lurch to see that the bullet was loosed from her own gun. Is it worth the guilty oxygen in her lungs?… She remembers innocence lost; slipping from between her fingers faster than the trickle of blood from the glassy-eyed Montague, dripping into a growing pool of translucent red.
There is more than one way to die, Vivianne.
She thinks of the pitter-patter of rain, deceptively gentle as it dampens her hair and laps against her cheeks; blurring the distinction between rainwater and tears. She remembers a throat sore from screaming after him. Confessing her love even as it’s lost - even as he turns his back on her and walks away. She remembers the feeling that she’s going to be sick; and wondering, wondering if it’s the chill of a November night cutting through her nightgown, or just the unforgiving stab of scissors as he cuts her out of his life without a backwards glance. How am I supposed to live without you?… Tell me, cuore mio, because I don’t remember.
… There is more than one way to die, Vivianne.
She thinks of leaving her twelve-year-old son on a train station. Of swiping quickly, impatiently, at tears that she can’t afford to let him see, even while his little hand is closed tightly, desperately around her own. It’s been years since he’s clung to her like this, because no preteen wants to be seen clinging to his mother - and it’s only taken the very real threat of separation to decimate his boyish pride. ‘Non, maman, s'il te plait, ne le fais pas!’ - Don’t do it, mama, please don’t do it, he begs her and she does it anyway, forcing his fingers to unfurl from her own with a silent push forward. She remembers trying to look stoic and strong as he’s helped onto a wagon, as red-rimmed eyes burn with fresh tears, as every maternal stitch of her skin threatens to rip apart at the seams in trying - and failing - to keep contained a haemorrhaging heart. She remembers gouging crescent-shaped marks into her own skin as she suppresses the instinct to pull him off that godforsaken train and selfishly look for other, less painful ways of keeping her boy safe. But the train leaves, and the woman that makes her way home is merely a corpse, a mockery of what it means to be alive.
There is more than one way to die, Vivianne.
An involuntary shiver runs down her spine as she inhales steadily and refocuses her attention on the present. On the future, too. She think there’s a question in Juliana’s eyes as she meets them, but Vivianne doesn’t endeavor to answer. Instead, two simple, barely audible words leave her lips. “Lo so, Juliana… Lo so.” I know, she tells her simply, and leaves it at that. The woman forces herself back into the constellation of turning gears and pragmatic deductions that make up her person. “E credimi,” And believe me, “It brings me no joy to see you suffer. I would not deign reduce you - nor would I force you back into that gilded cage of your father’s own making. If you wish to be involved in Rafaella’s release, so be it. I expect only that you will use every tool in your arsenal as we’ve trained you to, over the last few years. Before you reach for your gun, remember to use your greatest weapon, the one none can take away from you.” Vivianne taps her skull. “Exercise it to its full capacity and composure - no matter how much you rage inside. Master that, and you’ll exceed even your father.” The Underboss tells her quietly, and the greatest confession lies there, in what she doesn’t say.
You are not Cosimo Capulet; a weapon, made King… You are his daughter, a flower with a crown of thorns, a battlefield of a girl with a heart like a drum. Beating a song that will end this war - or else bleeding out a deluge, that will drown both sides of the Adige.
——————————
mentioned: @ohcoriolanus, @evcravens
There is more than one way to die, Vivianne. Understand me.
Juliana had meant for the words to bring Vivianne closer to her—and yet, they seem to pull her so much farther away into herself. It is impossible to miss, even with her presently dilapidated state of mind. Still, it is difficult for her to begrudge the older woman for it. In part, because she cannot help but question what leg has she, even, to stand on? More & more often, the woman-girl finds herself walking through the haunted palace of her mind, wandering chilly halls and reverently mourning the very ghosts that sang her to sleep, even when sleep would not come. If anyone could, Juliana herself did understand that it was not exactly a choice—just as it was not exactly the opposite of one—when one found themselves yanked backwards into the past with their heartstrings. She understood the particular agony of it. There is nothing to be cross with the Underboss over, as she sees it, though; if anything, it is the closest to a state of vulnerability the two companion’s have approached since the hellacious affair that had occurred at Teatro Nuovo, and Juliana has begun to resign herself, wearily, to the simple fact that it is difficult, agonising circumstances, the raw moments, that bring them closest together.
Besides, it is not as though Juliana Capulet has ever minded the quiet.
In the periphery, of course, she remains watching Vivianne, still. After all: the woman has the nasty habit of being rather impossible to ignore, imposing as a shadow but too inherently magnetic to be only that – a trait that she’d spent most of her formative years greatly envying. In front of her, however, is the gruesome display unravelling on her canvas and Juliana redirects the majority of her attention to her brushstrokes until her companion frees herself from the clutches of whatever it is that holds her soul captive. Not enough of it, evidently, for it is the faint shiver that wracks the Underboss’ body recaptures every fragment of Juliana’s attention before the two words that chase it can.
I know, Vivianne tells her—and her eyes mean the words.
The woman-girl’s torso twists to face her companion once more, lifting her head to meet Vivianne’s eyes head-on. There is no missing the way Vivianne puts herself back together, and Juliana does not take it for granted any longer, not for a moment, that it is a privilege to be privy to such vulnerability. With the same vehemence that Juliana’s words had drug Vivianne to the past, Vivianne’s urge Juliana to the present. The Underboss does not have to call for attention; over the years, the heiress has learnt the necessity of reading between the lines, has grown to know that the words uttered as just as important (when not, occasionally, even more so) than those which were not.
As it is, the ones that Vivianne grants her are enough to shake her to the core. And how could they not? How painfully aware she is, Juliana, of the incredulity her ability to take charge of the legacy generations of her family has built. She has not missed the glances or the raised brows, the questions in their eyes, and the fragility and innocence attached to her entire identity to the masses; Capulets, Montagues, and neutral parties alike. It jolts like a lightning bolt to the base of her spine to hear anyone, much less the infamous Cosimo Capulet’s right hand, anoint her with words of exceeding a man known for his cunning intelligence and his palpable power over their fair Verona.
“I need you to know something, Vivianne.” Truthfully, Juliana does not mean to respond, not just yet, but the words begin falling from her lips before she gives them leave to, right when she stands, whilst her feet lead to the door to press it shut, firmly, just like a gravestone into the earth. “A secret I’ve kept for approximately two months. A secret I have not shared. A secret that you will swear to keep between us, and swear to not act upon as a solitary, independent unit, for you and I must be a team. I need you – Vivianne, I need you to know, and I cannot tell you until you give me your word.”
I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.
Rumi
TOMAS.
He doesn’t think of the consequences.
Doesn’t think of the implications as he holds Juliana close, her head tucked beneath his chin, the ragged sound of her breathing straining every part of him as he seeks to soothe her. It’s not nearly enough. But he needs her this close; needs to feel like his helpless, undeserving hands are doing something to hold the fragile pieces of her heart together - if for no other reason than that he can’t bear to think of them on the floor. His hands may be unworthy, but the floor is no place for Juliana Capulet’s feelings, nor the thread-bare hopes that make up her prized heart. He’ll carry them, he’ll protect them as best as he can, until such a time as she’s ready to take them back and protect them with her own two hands. He finds one of those gentle hands now, and brings her knuckles up to his lips with the ghost of a kiss.
“I’ll do it.” He tells her in a heartbeat, mouth still lingering pensively against her skin for a few seconds more before he drops her hand and draws both arms around her again. ”I’ll do it, only don’t cry.” He feels the resounding echo of her heart against his, and it sends a frisson up his spine; a warning. Too close, it sings, too close… And reluctantly, the married man releases her. “Please don’t cry.” He pleads again, allowing himself one final, painfully-brief intimacy as he captures one droplet from her cheek and lets the tear sink into his finger. He doesn’t know why it affects him to this degree, but he’s quickly realizing that he can’t stand the thought of Juliana crying. There’s a visceral, inexplicable clench in his chest and Tomas is sure the mere sight of her tears steals his breath away with unprecedented cruelty.
“I’ll do it,” He repeats hoarsely, pushing down a toxic mixture of fear and dread. The full horror of his promise doesn’t hit him right away. Right now, nothing quite compares to the gut-wrenching feeling of standing powerless and watching Juliana weep - and he’s certain, so certain - that he’d do anything to stop it. “I’ll find her, I’ll-… I’ll ask every Montague. My wife, even. You saved her life, she-… I’ll tell her that if I have to, if she knows of Rafaella’s location but doesn’t want to tell me. If push comes to shove.” His tongue is running faster than the gears in his mind, and it isn’t until he goes home later tonight that he realizes he can’t breathe under the weight of what he’s promised the Capulet heiress. “I won’t stop looking until you’ve found her. Until she’s returned to you. Io giuro.” The actor tells her. I swear. Already, their time is running out. Already he takes a step back, with a quick glance over his shoulder. “Go, Juliana. Leave first… And don’t put your life at risk, please. Please.” Tomas emphasizes, resisting the temptation to reach for her again. “I’ll find her. Stay safe and I’ll send word.”
So long, she has kept the two of them in opposite rooms & opposite floors within her heart. So long, she has been telling herself that Tomas Sabello is not her secret – reminding herself, every time, that every meeting of theirs has forever been right here, right at this spot, right beneath Rafaella’s nose the entire time. Yet she has never truly spoken to Tomas about what it is that her beloved cugina means to her, just as she has never let her heart bleed out of her mouth to Rafaella, never confessing what it is that this man means to her, and thus, never having had to explicitly put it into words to figure out for herself. She has never had to do this.
And today, she does it. She weeps in Tomas’ arms and lets him know that Rafaella Capulet is her family – that there is no Juliana without Rafaella, that she would not know how to be anymore, let alone whom, that she would have to go about the universe without her mind, for that was what they were, the three of them, were they not? And this part she had told Tomas, once, in the infancy of their companionship, murmuring to him of the way the three cousins intertwined intrinsically into one whole unit; the head, the heart, the hands: Rafaella, Juliana & Tiberius.
Today, Tomas Sabello presses his lips to her hand and makes a promise he means with his soul. Tomas Sabello aches with her. And Tomas Sabello, the very one who had only weeks ago spoken of never becoming one of the mob’s pawns, swears to her, without a thought: I’LL DO IT. As if the two of them know not precisely what his word means. Still, he swears to her—and there is no time left, is there, for Juliana to figure out just what Tomas is to her? Everything that she believed she knew a matter of mere minutes ago, she no longer does, and she knows the mistake she made as immediately as the realisation pummels into her chest, wrapping a hand around her worn-out heart squeezes. His fingers stroke away moisture from her cheek and there is nothing left to figure out, is there? There is no need for a complicated analysis of what Tomas Sabello means to her over gelato and champagne, no need for her thoughts to be put together in a puzzle-piece formation that makes sense.
There is only one word. Only one and it rings louder than the heartbeat in her ears: EVERYTHING. He is everything.
Please, he begs her—and no one has ever begged Juliana for anything before. It has always been her, pleading. Her, faltering & fractured. Until him.
Nothing else matters when she brings his hand back to her cheek. When her mouth is as reckless as his, and presses to the inside of his wrist, his pulse throbbing beneath her lips. “I –” her whisper fans out against his skin, and her hands tremble around fistfuls of his jacket. And she cannot say what she wants to.
Juliana had come with the intention of donning a mask for Tomas, just as she had ever done with most in her life. She’d convinced herself of it. She had been prepared to loathe herself for an eternity, resigned herself to the fact of it, telling herself it would be alright, it would be worth it, so long as it got Rafaella home, so long as her Rafaella was safe. But she did not know how, did she? Juliana did not know how to lie to him. She did not know how to deceive him. How could she promise him something she knew, already, that it would be cruel to?
She couldn’t. She could only try, and try, and try to halt her tears, for the sight of them tore at him. She could not give him the promise he wanted. She could not give him a thanks – for which version of it had any hope of encompassing all that he deserved? Juliana can only give Tomas this: Her head canting and her eyes beseeching his before her fingers pry the flutter of his dark lashes lower, lower, and lower till they fall shut, so it hurts to leave him, and hurts worse for him to watch her. She gives him her lips at the heart of his palm, and devastated words.
“Mi tieni il cuore qui, Tomas.” You hold my heart right here, Tomas.
And like smoke, Juliana Capulet disappears, leaving behind no more than a teardrop in the cradle of his hand and the ghost of her perfume in the air.
mentioned: @rafaellacapulet
– EXEUNT JULIET
Start by wiping the blood off of [her] chin and pretending to understand. Repeat to yourself “I won’t leave you, I won’t leave you” until you fall asleep and dream of the place where nothing is red. When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it. Oh, when you used to sing it to sleep.
written by Caitlyn Siehl, “Start Here”
[For a moment Rafaella forgets what she holds in her arms, hands going lax, arms going numb in shock before she catches it at the last second, a rogue apricot rolling away. But she couldn't find it in herself to care because - is Roman really so stupid as to be caught in the snares of another Capulet woman?]
Rafaella: ...
Rafaella: I believe it's necessary to have further clarification on the subject before I allow you to wear this particular crown.
[She remembers that there are better conversations to have this - and there is also a carton of gelato that is melting - and tells herself to keep walking, not quite seeing the streets, but knowing the path to take all the same.]
Rafaella: You're not in love with him, are you?
[ Juliana's laugh is tinged with comical hysteria; the shards of it burst past her lips with such haste, her phone nearly falls right out of her hand. ]
Juliana: Uhhhh... I know I love a good tragic romance, mia sorella, but I would never allow myself to go there. That isn't it. He's attempting rebellion against Damiano Montague, it seems? Apparently, the first draft of his letter dates back four years, or so he wrote me. Which I took with a grain of salt, I swear to you, because he's ROMAN MONTAGUE.
[ Her breath quickened, scarlet fingernails drumming anxiously atop her writing-desk. ]
Juliana: He sent his first on the twenty-ninth. I responded by the third. His second just came, and I – have a response written. What on earth am I doing?
( she holds her breath in a tell-tale sign of nerves; hers coil & entangle, throb maniacally. yet her hands, for once, remain steady – for they are learning, finally. a thumb taps digits onto the screen, and she listens to the line ring on... and on... and... )
JULIANA: Isabella? Buon pomeriggio, mia cara amica. I'm not bothering you by ringing you up right now, I hope!
ORION.
She could stand to be a touch grateful. After all, while they were making obvious plans to set Rafaella free, he was doing it better and with next to no evidence, ensuring the Montagues would have cause to become suspicious of one another in due course. He’d saved her precious cousin, and all she has for him is rage. It doesn’t matter that he would’ve saved Rafaella no matter what her last name was. Juliana Capulet has no common sense in the least, and it’s evident from her half tied shoes to the bitterness in her gaze.
He raises a brow at her pathetic threat. Barefoot and nonchalant, his posture doesn’t change, his breathing doesn’t quicken, his pulse remains even and controlled. Orion is the man who, at barely twenty-one, laughed in Cosimo’s face for not offering him enough money to join the cause. His daughter, with her bird-like grace and sheltered existence, cannot hope to understand what it would take to truly threaten him.
Orion reminds himself that Rafaella would like to keep it that way.
He’s moved her briefly to her own room while he figures out how to deal with Remmy without disturbing her, but that won’t last. It’s hers, and he wants her in his space, in his domain even more so than she is under his roof. Still, it’s easy this way for Juliana to find her footing, despite his preference to keep her out of the room entirely.
He understands her need to see Rafaella breathing more than he lets on. It’s his care for Raf that concerns him, and for her need to seem strong for her cousin, despite what Juliana might have to say about it. He watches as her eyes threaten tears, but she doesn’t let them fall, even though her mouth quivers. Orion feels no remorse. She chose to bear witness rather than waiting for Rafaella to invite her, and that comes with its own punishment.
❝ Are you satisfied ? ❞ he hisses as she pulls the door shut, watching as she puts her gun on the table. ❝ She’ll forgive you, of course, but you know she wouldn’t want you to see her like this. You just don’t care. ❞ He doesn’t have to question whether the words he’s saying are true, because deep down, Juliana chose her own need and comfort over what Rafaella would’ve wanted. They both know that, even if she won’t admit to it.
After a moment of stand-off, he relents. ❝ Fine. Downstairs. ❞ On a normal day he might have warned her, but this is nothing close to normal. Let her see what they do together, all at her father’s direction and for their own amusement. Let her see the filthy, violent parts of Rafaella, too, since she was so insistent on bearing witness to the broken and fragile pieces. He leads her to the basement without a word, using the keypad to let them inside before keying it shut on the inside as well. ❝ After you, ❞ he says in his normal volume, but there’s a hint of cruel laughter in his eyes. ❝ This room is sound-proofed by necessity. ❞
The serpent hisses to the rose—and, like thorns, the tiny hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. Juliana does not take her eyes off of him, not for a moment, but sees it fit to say no more, either – not yet, at least. No matter how vitriolically he goads: Are you satisfied? he asks, like a fool who does not know the first thing about her. For what else could he be for expecting satisfaction at the sight she’d turned away from? She’ll forgive you, of course, but you know she wouldn’t want you to see her like this. You just don’t care. As if he knew the first thing about her! As if he could ever know Rafaella as she did, as if he had loved her as long as Juliana had done: a whole lifetime’s worth.
Her clumsy mouth purse down into a thin, hard line.
Sternly, she forbids it leave to speak.
All that moves is her feet when Massetti relents, following the path he leads.
Fitting, comes a caustic thought, since he already believes he makes all the rules. Juliana supposes she cannot blame Orion for mistaking her for a fool; is that not exactly what she has played for the longest of times? Stood in the heart of his lair... in a nightdress and wearing her emotions, no less, she cannot blame him for his assumptions – and thus, she wastes no breath on it.
It had not been the same fog Vivianne’s near-loss had induced that submerged Juliana these past few weeks, worried sick over Rafaella’s fate. It seemed appropriate, too; her cousin would not have approved of her coming apart at the seams. Instead, Juliana sharpened. Orion Massetti does not know this—and he does not care, no matter his prior display of wishing to know their shared Rafaella’s beloved cousin. It does not take a genius to see through what he intends, does it? Soundproofed though it may be, the savage bemusement in the man’s eyes make it entirely too evident that it is a claim of possession that he means to make.
Hysteria sloshes, frothy, into the walls of her oesophagus. Unflinching, calculating, Juliana shakes her head at him. Is this all he thinks it will take? “Necessity being torturing people, yes,” she says, walking along the edge of the room, taking it in, curious. Her tone suggests that it is his sentence she is finishing, though she does no such thing. Yet a lifetime spent being reduced to the good little girl had its perks, surely? Sparse though they be in amount. And one of them was garnering an ability to know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, when someone attempted to press her underneath their thumb. None of them recognised that it had been her who had been kneeling, willing to be wilfully ignorant and to play the part of the damsel in distress desperate for defence, for so long.
They will recognise now, Juliana vows to herself.
“You are expecting a thanks, and I wish you would hold your breath to wait for it, truly. For this thanks that will not come.” Her fingers graze over the gleaming weaponry on display, her lips curling into an almost smile. “You see the night having gone one way: you see that you played the part of a lover coming to the rescue of the one woman who knows his entire soul, and my, oh my, Orion saves the day! Orion Massetti, the reckless buffoon. Orion Massetti, a Captain for the Capulets. You speak to me of caring, Massetti? Do you care of those who fell tonight because of your profound lack of intelligence? Mm,” She spits out a laugh at his feet. “Of course not.”
Krikor Jabotian | Spring/Summer 2019 Couture
ORION.
Orion isn’t sleeping.
Rafaella has long since passed out once more, but he finds himself unable. The dog hasn’t left her side since she returned, nose shoved underneath her leg, and the house is almost more desolate with her here than without. That shouldn’t be how it feels, but when she was gone, he could imagine that she was fighting back. Now that he can see how little fight is left, it’s something crushing to his spirit too — not that he would ever let her know that.
Sometimes, rarely, things have nothing to do with him.
The knock on the door is unsurprising. Orion’s already at his desk, so he flips on the camera to see who’s out there. There aren’t many people who would rush over in spite of what he texted, but he’s not surprised by the one that would. What is startling is the sight of Juliana on his doorstep in her nightgown in the middle of winter. ❝ Cazzo, ❞ he mutters under his breath.
He takes his phone with him as he navigates the house through to the entryway, unlocking the door and using the speaker to invite her inside. ❝ Get in before you get pnemonia or something, ❞ he hisses through the speaker, bounding downstairs and shoving his phone into his pocket just in time to meet her.
Principessa is certainly bedraggled, but he knows next to nothing of what happened at Hotel Emilia, too focused on what’s happening with Rafaella. ❝ She’s sleeping, ❞ he says immediately, leaving off the part where she probably wouldn’t want Juliana to see her like this. She hadn’t even liked to see Orion there after Odessa stabbed her, too worried about his reaction to the scar that would mar her skin.
As if he’d care about that.
Reading the expression on Juliana’s face, he slows about five feet ahead of her, arms crossed in front of him. ❝ Something to say ? ❞ He watches her hand twitch, and it’s a cruel smile that lights his face, born largely from next to no sleep and the twisted surge of possession he feels over Rafaella right now. ❝ Something to do ? Be my guest, but don’t disturb Raf. ❞
The weeks had fled past with malicious haste, and aged her lifetimes throughout their farewell. Quite like a bottle of her papa’s finest Scotch, the essence of her had darkened, strengthened to something unbearably potent over the passage of time lost. Time, as lost as the girl she’d known herself to be. One who would never arrive at a doorstep unannounced, nor unapologetic, as the woman does. One who would not cross over the threshold like a storm-cloud, devoid of the timid, tender grace great Verona revered her for emanating. Juliana walks in through the door that opens with all the invitation of the maw of a hungry beast – her glare withering, her mouth spiteful.
Don’t disturb Raf, the beast tells her—and the principessa’s hand twitches once more.
It is not how she has ever looked at Orion Massetti before. She has only ever regarded him with true fondness—though interchangeably stained by caution or amusement, or (most seldom) even both—for he is loved deeply by a Rafaella and it earned him a bed to sleep on in her personal Heart(break) Hotel, weathering tumultuous storms where it stands, erect beneath her breastbone. The woman who walks into his and her cousin’s home appears to have lost that fondness as well, for there remains not the faintest remnant of it when she turns to regard him, sharp as a dagger, before her feet cut a path to where she knows Rafaella will be.
“Not yet,” is all Juliana has to hiss, curling nefarious hands into the blanched-fist-formation they are so used to finding themselves in.
Turpentine and fresh paint are no strangers to her senses, no matter how the product of them has altered at Juliana’s hands as of late, and it permeates the air of their house. She can pay it no heed, cannot care for anything that is not the woman lying in a bed close-by, still miraculous alive, still breathing. Dark eyes skim over the display on the bedroom’s door, take in the thorns & roses his hands have anointed Rafaella’s laying-place with, yet her breath comes out harsh still, thornier than Orion’s ode.
Her hand turns the knob, and opens the door – gingerly, soundless. To her own disgust, not obeying the order he gave her is not an option, and the sting of the fact is hardly helped by her listening being entirely for Rafaella’s sake. The sight of her crumpled form swathed in bed clothes makes Juliana still... makes her hands shake as wretchedly as her bottom lip does, quivering. Rafaella breathes, yes—but it isn’t until her chest rises & falls & rises once more, and more, and more, that it strikes her that she never expected to see this sight. She is not the only unrecognisable thing in this house, is she? Rafaella has never known a Juliana stone-faced & cold, and Juliana has never witnessed a Rafaella rendered fragile, tender as only a bruise could be. She knows, at sight, that her Rafaella never made it back. Not really, not wholly, did she?
Juliana steps no closer, ventures no farther. She pulls the door shut, slowly, and lets her heart beat violently against her eardrums. She lets her hand curl around her gun, finally – and puts it atop the table, stepping away from it.
“Pick a room,” and it is her who issues the order this time.
HENRY.
He means to say nothing. He means to let her walk away without noting the catch on her expression at his words, means to leave her with nothing the way he’s been left so many times before. His design by coming here was to give her enough rope to hang her father if she wanted, to go her own way the way Roman seems more and more inclined to do. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yet that rueful twist in her mouth reminds him painfully, incredibly of himself, beneath his father’s stern gaze.
❝ It’s not a bad thing, ❞ he says before he can stop himself. ❝ It doesn’t make you weak, or kind. You can kill with integrity, punish with integrity, rule with integrity. In Verona, the definition of a moral compass becomes obsolete. Sometimes, not shooting someone in the back is the most honor anyone can afford. ❞
Henry turns to leave, makes it a few steps before calling over his shoulder. ❝ If you did, I would understand. ❞
FINITO.
It is foolish of her to even remotely expect Zhang to take his leave without any last words – but so much of Juliana’s choices as of late seem to be an exercise in that very thing, so is it truly any wonder that she is wrong? And like a fool, her heart trips over itself, leaps to her throat and wriggles, fiendishly, at what it is that he has to say to her, what he has to leave her alone with.
She’d done so well, she had thought; she had remained controlled, and impenetrable, had been human without it being detrimental. Had – yes, in past tense, for it was surely and thoroughly shot to hell when tears burned dark irises at the push of a button she had not meant to reveal to her opponent. It is her turn to come apart, and his to speak to her as if they are the dearest of friends... as if they are meant to be privy to one another’s sore spots, allowed to graze the tender underbelly where the blood pools most freely.
All Juliana can do is nod, and she only manages it once he is gone.
She supposes that is alright, though. It is to herself, anyway; it is a gesture of a girl trying badly to believe something she cannot, no matter how genuinely she searches for the ability to. Her head hits the back of the wall behind her, and Juliana breathes, hard, winded out of nowhere. Her heart races, each wet beat spilling blood from the cracks in its walls.
– LA FINE
Detail of Allegory of Spring, signed by R. RICCO. FECE. Italian, dated to the 19th century. Marble. Source: Sotheby’s.
HENRY.
The question seems to burst from Juliana like she’s held it under her tongue the whole time. Perhaps she has. She must’ve known the only reason he would meet with a Capulet would be Capulet involvement, else why would he need to involve anyone on the other side? Other than the obvious issues of his own implication, which are admittedly large.
A ploy to get him talking. Yes, that sounds much more like what he’d expect from Cosimo’s heir. He smiles ruefully, and wonders what, exactly, his childhood friend has admitted about their past together. Especially to someone that, by all reports, she dotes upon these days.
❝ I know, ❞ Henry explains, ❝ because it was left for me in a place only one person knows. That doesn’t mean she didn’t tell anyone, but it wouldn’t be a Montague she told. ❞ He pauses, forcing himself not to shift or lick his lips just because he’s nervous to hover over her name. In the end, he decides against directly implicating her. If Juliana knows her as well as she wants, she’ll know who he means without him having to tell her.
To speak her name directly would make scars on his face itch.
Henry runs a hand through his hair, his normally unruffled appearance alarmingly undone. ❝ That gun was left to torture me. I didn’t know what I’d done. I only thought I was losing my mind. ❞ Henry swallows with difficulty. ❝ Now, I feel that same sense, and I live with the fact that my hands killed someone I love. ❞ He tucks them into his pockets so that she can’t see how badly they shake. ❝ I don’t want them to have that power. I want someone else to know what Cosimo did. ❞ The unspoken message was clear: Henry may not be alive to tell anyone. ❝ There are few spoken of with more integrity than you when it comes to your famiglia, Signora. If I’m wrong, then I’ve been a dead man walking far too long for it to matter. If I’m not I… advise you to take care, and use the information well. ❞
Her spine may as well have been swiped out for a steel rod for how rigidly Juliana Capulet stands before the Montagues’ Captain. The nape of her neck throbs, strained by her stillness – and she pays it no heed. All of her cares latch onto the words from Henry Zhang’s mouth, and she never realises she did not expect a name until no modicum of surprise flares within her at the utter lack of one. He is a coward, after all, and doesn’t everything about him give that much away? All he grants her is pronouns and paltry elaboration, littering a smattering of dots at her feet for her to connect on her own.
He is all her senses hone in on. Is it any wonder that she does not miss the intelligence in Zhang’s eyes? The very same brand of it Juliana has witnessed in his mother’s dark irises time and time again. He watches her as intently as she watches him—and somehow, this comforts her, that he does not take her for a fool any more than she is softened by his prior unravelling. There is a challenge in his information, that much is impossible to miss. He gives her breadcrumbs as a feast, and Juliana merely closes her fist around his offering. His implications; the woman, the connection to Montagues, the connection to him in particular. There is only one Capulet that fits that bill. Cosimo, Zhang says without difficulty. Rafaella he cannot? Juliana stares, dauntless.
There is a reason he chose her, and he offers her that, too: There are few spoken of with more integrity than you when it comes to your famiglia, signora. Yet when Zhang says integrity, the kindness about the woman-girl’s mouth goes sour. Immediately, he is no different than the countless others underestimating her. He is no different from Rallis, using her tenderness as a weapon against herself.
“I see,” are the crumbs Juliana grants him in return, along with a single, firm nod of her head. “You may go now, signore, if that is all. I understand what it is you tell me, and I will not shoot you as you walk away.”
TOMAS.
‘They have Rafaella.’
He gapes at her wordlessly, lips parting in disbelief. He’s never met Rafaella, never exchanged a word with the fearsome Capulet adviser. He rather hoped to avoid such an introduction, if truth be told, because he’s afraid that the infamous sharpness of Rosaline’s eyes would not take kindly to his friendship with the Capulet heiress. And yet all this time he can’t help but envy her and wonder… What it must be like to be the Princess’ right hand, trusted above almost everyone else. How special Rafaella must feel, how inimitable; to know that there was a place in Juliana Capulet’s rose-garden heart that existed only for her…
And now she’s gone.
Worse than gone. Taken, captive - and the ‘they’ to which Juliana refers leaves not a single doubt as to the culprits behind the war crime. The Montagues. A chill runs through him; from his spine down to his fingertips and he blames it for the reflex which has him reaching out without question, without word, to pull the young woman into his arms. Warmth seeps from Tomas’ fingers and into her skin in small, concentric circles. He holds her. Because he doesn’t know what else to do. Because he doesn’t know how else to confess that he’s just as much her captive, bound to Juliana’s will, as Rafaella is bound to that of her enemies.
‘I need you to-…’
He feels something give in his chest. It aches like a warning; a hairline fracture on his heart that’s destined to rent the organ into two unequal halves. ‘I need you to…’ She tells him, and a wiser man would pretend not to hear it. A wiser man might play dumb to the implications of a sentence that Juliana Capulet cannot finish. But he is not a wiser man, and so even as the pressure builds in his chest, even as every red warning goes up in his mind, Tomas finds himself caving inwardly towards the broken creature in his arms.
“… What do you need me to do?”
It leaves his mouth softly, generating barely enough friction in the air to tease her mussed-up hair. It leaves him ruefully; the words of a man who’s making peace with the knowledge that he’ll suffer for having spoken them. It’s not a crossroad between right and wrong, between Capulet and Montague. It’s not even a choice between Juliana’s pain and his wife’s inevitable ire. Rather, it’s a requiem. A man saying goodbye to that holy part of himself that swore he would stay out of it all; out of the mob, out of the war, out of the horror.
His grip tightens around Juliana’s shoulder reflexively, and he doesn’t even notice the tremor that runs right through him before his lips part and he speaks again, more decisively this time. “Mia Gioia... Tell me what you need me to do.”
“Oh!” She does not mean to make the sound, but she means the sound with every fibre of her being. A quick sound; of surprise, in a harsh, strained breath in the millisecond before she meets his chest. Why is it that her mind reels, yet her body unravels? It unravels: like the wrong—or right, depending on how one looks at it—string of the tapestry being tugged upon, and Juliana comes undone in the bracket of Tomas’ arms with a whimper. And for a fractured, cruel instant, it is as if she truly is his Juliana. Juliana, not principessa Capulet or Juliet. For a moment, she forgets it all, and she is only a woman, cocooned in the arms of a man who emanates light. And he is only a man who holds her like heartbreak.
He is a man who has never held her so close – close enough to feel the strong beat of his heart settle beneath her thin skin, close enough for his warmth to make her tremble.
WHAT DO YOU NEED ME TO DO? A weighted question, then, and it makes Juliana the whisper-faint fool who thinks, Don’t let me go, please, please, please. The fool that forgets the place where they stand, who forgets herself, whose fists curl into the soft of his shirt like she will fight for him to never leave her. Juliana aches, soul-deep. She weeps, and she weeps like a woman who knows what it is to lose and grieve and hurt. And doesn’t she? She knows it better than she knows hand-to-hand combat, better than she knows how to lead. If you didn’t, her mind murmurs, treacherously tugging her back to thorny reality, perhaps Rafaella would be here, still. Here, while you hold a man who belongs to a Montague.
TELL ME WHAT YOU NEED ME TO DO. His words sound like a promise, and it does not matter, does it? Whether she is heiress to the Capulet mob, that she is their Juliet, that it is her duty to protect her own, that Tomas Sabello is bound to a Montague from whom her own need protection? I does not matter, because he calls her his joy, and she already knows—in her heart of hearts—that he is hers just as well. It does not matter, not to her heart, for it bleeds and bleeds and bleeds until mouth brims with it, until she cannot ask of him what she ought, what she would if she could. She cannot risk his life to save Rafaella, for losing him would break her the same. She only asks him this: “I need to know where she is –” When he holds her like this, how can she not be his? How? Her hands shake harder than her voice does. Juliana forgets Vivianne, and she begs: “I need to bring her home, I need her, she is my family. Please, Tomas. Please.”
Fingers fragile as a wishbone ram into the door of @dukemassetti & @rafaellacapulet’s residence—the rap of them against the wood as furious as the woman they are attached to. One more second, one more second, one more second, Juliana Capulet stays herself... and tries to remember the early hour of dawn that finds her stood at their doorstep without turning her cheek to appraise it, unable to. Her eyes wouldn’t see it, anyway, this much she knows; only Rafaella’s face swims in her mind. It is MARCH 17TH, 2019: a few weeks since a bullet had lodged in her shoulder for the first time, and only a few hours since the second had been extricated from the muscle tissue Pandora Phan had embedded in it the night before. Juliana can still feel the cold of the night beneath ashen flesh – and somehow, it is Orion Massetti who was about to experience a world of pain, if the Capulet woman had anything to say about it.
[RECEIVED] ORION MASSETTI: This is a mass text to let everyone know Rafaella is home. With me, that is. My home. She's pretty fucked up, so for the love of Santa Maria or whatever, do not rush all at once to see her. We can set something up individually.
The text message still lights up the screen of the cellphone clutched in her grip. The fist is the same that knocks at their front-door – because it has to be, with the appendage’s counterpart caught in a sling that restricts movement, the only part of her that remains steady when the cool air nips at her through the thin garment. Hazily, Juliana registers the quiver of blanched fist out of the corner of her eye. A hasty flick of gaze, and she cannot deny the gauze. Tucked away at the back of her mind, perhaps it might be able to bother her that two bullet-wounds in such close proximity of one another mostly meant debilitating implications... were it not for the face that loomed in front of it, just as it obstructed the view of herself as the very vision of a madwoman, stood in the middle of a Verona street in the blush lace silhouette of a nightdress accessorised with stark white bandage-dressing. But she cannot think of any of it. She cannot think of anything but...
R A F A E L L A –
Oh, there had been an image in Juliana’s mind a matter of hours ago: bronze planes and sharp features turned ashen, gone cold; a golden halo of curls dully aglow in a sea of black-adorned mourning. Her blood on the grimy floor, and chains no longer holding onto her corporeal form. Her Rafaella: gone. Until... until this brusque, cavalier text message she’d woken up to, the sedative-drugs still laced in her bloodstream and tugging on her eyelids. After the agonising nightmares she knew as the reality jolted her in the bed she’d insisted upon laying in, refusing on another trip to a hospital, fiercely, until the Capulets had no choice but to relent to her wish. She had not wasted another moment on trying to convince anyone else of anything else – for how could she, how could waste another breath? All Juliana had left on her bed was a piece of parchment with the only name she’d been able to think of in weeks scrawled upon it with haste:
RAFAELLA –
What more could she have offered her soldiers when they checked upon their once more-slain principessa nesting in bedclothes stained with her blood & failure? There was only that name. Her name; her beloved Rafaella, her heart’s fire & the only sister she’d ever truly known – it was all she’d had to offer, all she’d been capable of, before she’d crawled out of her window like thief into the night, running & running & running. Running, down the streets her feet had tracked over & over, over the weeks slumber dared not graze her throbbing mind, grey matter turning darker by the moment, by the possibilities, by the soul the night leeched from her. There isn’t much left of her to lose. No loss could matter if Rafaella was gone.
No –
Not gone –
She’s pretty fucked up, he wrote.
This is a mass text to let everyone know Rafaella is home, he said.
Her fingers twitch, and she tells herself it isn’t for her gun.
