lavolumnia:
Christmas.
It isn’t a holiday that’s held much meaning for Vivianne as of late. Because her son hasn’t been around to make it matter or to give it any special meaning in eight years. It’s the one holiday she’s cordially refused to spend with Cosimo and his daughter, despite the invitations that have come annually over the last three years or so. No matter her feelings for Juliana, no matter her investment in Cosimo the man and Cosimo the leader, the idea of watching father and daughter bond over the exchange of gifts and holiday cheer is one that only threatens to douse Vivianne in bittersweet misery that she’d rather do without.
“I didn’t mean ‘one of my lapdogs’,” She rebukes him in what would’ve been a sharp tone if her mouth didn’t feel like it was stuffed with cotton. “I meant-…” But she doesn’t know what she meant. Vivianne shakes her head, frustrated by her own inarticulation. “Careful, Cyrus.” She says instead, allowing her voice to cool a fraction as it washes over his ears. “The ones you refer to as ‘lapdogs’ are the same superiors to whom you’ve chosen to swear allegiance.” She’s picking at fluff on her bedsheet as she speaks, but looks up to meet his eyes when the last word falls. A point. A reminder.
‘Comment vous sentez-vous?’
How do you feel, he asks her and an involuntary shiver runs down her spine. She wonders why it matters to him, she wonders whether it truly does. Does her son want the truth out of her in order to mock her with it? Tear whatever’s left of her pride into ruby-red ribbons to gift to a laughing Bernadette or any other of his newly-dusted playthings? Does he want the truth in order to lambaste her with it? For throwing her life away for Juliet, the daughter of the man who’d bound her to the same life that she’d refused to allow for Cyrus?…
Better, now that you’re here, her heart wants to confess.
Scared, now that you’re here, her mind objects instead.
She admits neither truth as she blinks at her son and then looks away. “Tired. Sore.” Vivianne tells him plainly, extending a mere sliver of the truth he seeks - and yet a sliver larger than she’s offered to most of the guests who’ve come to visit at her bedside. Cyrus won’t know it, but it’s enough that she does. “Were you at the Theatre? Did anyone-…” Hurt you, she wants to ask but her tongue wraps itself around the safer choice of words, almost as if on automatic: “- Did you get in any trouble?”
“Careful, Cyrus.” Normally that tone makes him want to cock a brow but instead, he heaves a shallow sigh, a sound made up of a mix of an underlying temper and a restlessness not easily remedied. There were so many ways this scenario had played out in his mind but none of them equates to actually living it.
Despite the way he had been sundered from his childhood, the safety of a loving mother’s constant presence and the sheltered life she had had him lead... Despite the growing pains due to the rending of familiar ties, Cyrus had grown up strong and fearless to a fault. It is what drives him to goad Vivianne, seeing as she’s chosen to be la capo bastone before a mother. He asks as he starts to pour her a glass of water from the warm flask set on the side table, “Do I have to be careful around you, too?”
His gaze is pointed just as hers is and full of intent, hoping the full insinuation of his question translates across the short distance between mother and son. Do I have to be afraid of you, maman? To outright ask her that is to project some sort of vulnerability he does not care to display and to imply that he still needs, or worse, wants, her to protect him.
Cyrus does not need nor want it. Coriolanus, on the other hand, has use for it...
But he’s been careful as to whom to swear his allegiance to. They most definitely had not needed to install him as an emissary but they did it anyway and perhaps his mother’s curt reminder of the respect owed to the Capulet name and all it stands for acts to serve as more than that. A warning, maybe. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them unless, of course, you tell on me.” He knows a thing or two about those.
With that, he holds out the half filled glass of water to her. Parched as she sounds, she must want it more than she’s willing to say. “Tired. Sore.” He hadn’t thought she’d verbally admit that to him which makes him listen a slight bit more closely.
“I did. Some trouble with Cassian and a Montague I heard someone call Mercutio.” The truth comes forth without resistance. He chooses his words to manoeuvre her into spilling some of her own truths. Unknowingly even after all this time, Cyrus is still after that shred of evidence that her maternal instincts toward him hasn’t yet shriveled up despite himself. “After we knocked them down, I went looking for you.” A lie. Wanted to should have been the words to use.










