Chapter Text
"Well, good morning to you, my dear."
"And to you, dear Canta."
"Mhm."
The silence that settles would have been comfortable, if not for the warm but dastardly hand that reaches over, creeping up her nape, satiating her morning hunger with a touch of warmth down her spine. Only for it to betray her, only for that hand to bundle her tresses in its grip, quicker than a bird taking flight, flicked over her shoulder onto her back without so much as a change to her smile, nor to her other hand balancing a cup of steaming tea by its handle.
"I take it that you've had quite the comforting night, last night?" Fingers tangling in her tresses, Changli all but laughs into her tea, drinking from it without any the intention of sampling what she's consuming. The Counsellor's amber gaze is instead affixed keenly upon the littlest mark she'd exposed, one that Cantarella had tried to hide. "Well, don't come to me, now, if something feels off, or awry, or whatever other whatnots…as per the advice we were solemnly given, and the advice I have tried my best to follow as a doctrine, certainly you've had your fun with a knight, no doubt, full of vitality and robust…loving?"
That laugh is purely nothing but teasing, mean as it is to leave from Changli's lips. As if her old friend had been half as innocent in the times where everyone else was busy. As if Changli had been, herself, the utmost picture of restraint, of abstinence and chastity and whatever she so declines having done, though Cantarella picks up the tea prepared for her and smiles through its sweet fragrance. A sip of the tea, she takes, knowing full well within her heart that there is plenty of room she'd filled with grousing about the teasing that Changli so enjoyed, leaving her more flustered than was much ever satiated. In the name of keeping her safe, but yet of course there would be no other who could play games of the mind as well as the former Secretary-General of Mingting.
"Do not be envious," says she, noting full well that within Changli's bright eyes and vibrant smile, there is not one bit of jealousy, not at all and never since, not one touch of animosity that begrudges her for the open nature of her affections. "The warmth of your embrace has too been dearly missed."
"Sugarcoating praises won't get you out of the nourishments, Canta." Changli clicks her tongue at her. Though perhaps it'd been some part of Cartethyia's recommendations — or that it'd all been Changli's damned idea to begin with — that her morning serving is now offered with a side of crystallised Viscum Berries, overpoweringly sweet with just a touch of sour tartness. "Drink up, now. At least I hope you've enjoyed the ast few days of service, but I daresay I am not quite as daring as that knight of yours to emulate her tactics."
"Despite the way that I know, fully well as a fact, dear Changli, how it was you who taught her that method, fresh out of popular Hero Plays?"
"She pulled it off more convincingly than I would have." Changli grins at her, and the hand in her tresses finally stops its restless toying, coming to a rest in her lap, lacing her fingers so naturally, just a touch adjacent to their second natures. "I, for one, would not really have exploited your drowsiness to satiate the pleasurable cravings you've been having — for that is she much braver than I am, having learnt only this much from sheer observation, not at all any less meticulous. But again, what is it about her that interests you? If you would share, of course, but I am intrigued."
"For one who plays with fire, you are yet too gentle, as though I may evaporate into nothing but steam." Cantarella only takes a sip of her tea. "Have you ever felt the determination of one who has stood between two gods and chose, instead, a path of greater good of her own, leading straight into the abysmal unknown?"
"I have already witnessed it firsthand, myself, time and again one's utmost determination to salvage everything of the people whom she can protect." Changli remarks lightly. Light as she replaces cup unto saucer, light as her gaze flicks to the door of Cantarella's bedroom. "And so do I think, Canta, that this has by far been, and will be, a wondrous construction of fate through you as its vessel, to unite more than meets the eye."
"Love is after all one of the largest human perplexities." The matriarch doesn't disagree with her sentiment, finishing her mixture in a final swill. "But, now, enough with the philosophical pondering, for now. Considering how absorbed you've been with the scriptures, Sebastian could fully have managed to make the nourishment under your instructions. For you to come forth this morning; what is it, now?"
"Maybe I've only missed you, or could I not have?" Changli sighs, all too wistful that they both chuckle over their intertwined hands, while she leans over the side of her chair at the table, leans into Changli's blanket-warm shoulders. "But alas, it is because our Lady Montelli has refused to contact you directly once more, and her communications and missives have found their way to my dear Pangu Terminal instead."
"Shouldn't they be done with their commitments, by now? Over a week has passed, and it's not as though there's been news of complications to their matter at hand."
"Well, as you've said, there's been no changes to their efficiency in handling the matter. That being said, however, I've news for you."
"If you keep holding onto your information like this, Changli, you may as well hold it in until the little one has come to join us." The matriarch titters, resting a hand on her stomach quite pointedly. "Then there shan't be any the confusion of how much time who gets to spend where, doing what and whatever for. Frankly, not that these three-or-few months have been a bore; only that it's felt quite…flurried, I would say, like a schedule crammed full, a poison of too many ingredients and tastes."
"Alas, while time passes us by faster than we often think it does, I think I might not be quite forgiven if I hold onto her message for that long." Changli joins her in her laughter, tapping on her Terminal enough for the WavesLine to appear before her. "Here it reads, after the formalities — it seems that Lady Carlotta has decided to busy herself with the Montelli businesses for quite the while. But in the meantime, for a little more than a fortnight; the Montellis have quite magnanimously given Miss Zani a vacation. Hence Lady Carlotta has written to inform of the high likelihood that we shall be receiving Miss Zani as a visitor soon."
"Zani, you say?"
"Miss Zani, indeed." Changli reaches over, swiping a half bitten Viscum Berry from her saucer, amber eyes furtive as though Changli had thought she would not notice, or had known she would not mind. "Did you not intend to repurpose a room for the nursery? Quite timely, I'd say, some help has arrived to aid our cause. I fear I may have not quite the artistic talent of Zhezhi, much as I fancy a few strokes myself."
"If it's taste we're talking about, you know as well as I do that Miss Zani is not the prime choice we should defer upon for this chore."
"Not that I do not think she will not perform finely, of course, but I know just as well that she may not come bearing only her own intents." Changli tucks away her Terminal. "The fact that as we speak, the message has come from one of the two whom we so speculate will have great interior taste, and it is not Miss Zani who sent the message our way…"
"We'll see," Cantarella pinches her lips together, just one simple motion. "It would be a novelty if you were not right in your prediction."
It is, however, not quite the day where Changli's calculations fall short of reality. Not quite, not yet, and not today.
After all, the first thing that they hear consists of two very familiar words, the moment tired red eyes flicker up at their descending figures down the central stairs.
"Lady Carlotta—"
The smile that Changli shoots her is just as immediate — a flame catching the air, bursting into combustion. Piquing her interest just as well that she covers a hand to her mouth, trying to hide the fact that she, too, had laughed along to Zani's opening.
"—had me bring these." Zani finishes her sentence anyway, her eyes locked on their movements down the stairs. "She also asked me to bring along a few statements and sentiments as she conveyed. Would you like to hear them first?"
"Not at the moment." Only with the certainty that there'd be nothing urgent to have been conveyed, or Carlotta would have rung up her Terminal first thing in the morning. "Have you had a good night's rest, Zani, or did you rush here from last night's overtime shift?"
"Both are about the same." Zani mutters, shy of covering the yawn that muffles her next words. "Have you had breakfast?"
"Have you anywhere in mind?"
"Margherita's." Crimson eyes survey her for just a short moment. "It's rare to be able to head there at an hour like this, when the crowds should be at their least."
"Well then, care for some company?" Cantarella's smile is candidly soft, but the hand that reaches to wrap around the crook of her arm angles her towards the double doors she'd only just entered moments ago. "I would fancy some little exercise, a walk to Ragunna City for some breakfast at Margherita's."
The peculiar thing about the Matriarch was her utter ability to phrase things as questions with impossible answers. Usually, the impossible answer was no. It was absurdly difficult to decline any invitation of hers, or at least so Zani has always thought, and still continues to resign quietly, remembering how it happened between them the very first time it had, too.
The first it had happened, it had been questionably unremarkable. A rainy night, an umbrella extended, no questions asked. No questions why she'd been alone, drenched, injured in an odd place to be deep in the night, only a hand outreached and an umbrella held firm. Zani had not asked her why she'd been there that night, and she'd never asked either, why Zani had been there at all. Then, as things often went, it'd been a blur of emotions subsequently, until she woke up in fresh sheets that didn't belong to her, and a pillow reduced to pitiable shreds without her horn covers.
The second had been marginally less spontaneous. Marginally. Again it had been a rainy night, after a function that panned so late into the evening that half of the affluent had already lost their manners in leaving hastily, shuffling down the cobbled lanes in their well-heeled ways and hoping their transportation could miraculously arrive one each earlier than the other's. She'd been there to accompany Carlotta upon Carlotta's request, but between the clients and the other Montelli members who had shown up, uninvited and undeclared within the family's allocations, there'd been little purpose in her returning together when Carlotta had business to settle with the group.
So, for the second time, a lavender umbrella had bloomed overhead like a blossom of the night, hovering above her, with a hand invitingly outstretched towards a Gondola Echo in the distance, chirping to its own melody merrily. A ride, a casual conversation, a hand that rested on her knee for too long, an inviting tap on her wrist, ironical as that was, before she fell anyway, and leaned in to close the distance.
Somewhere distantly within her mind, Zani had thought it absurd, to herself, that within two meetings she could be so openly pressing Cantarella Fisalia against the wall of her own room. Not any Fisalia, but their 36th Matriarch and present Head of the family. Certainly at the time she had thought Carlotta might have her beheaded should the relationship ever meet the light, when they'd all been neck and neck, knee deep into old murky feudal hatred. Needless to say, there'd been a passing lucidity that shouted the delusional state of the matter at hand, but lilac nails had coasted her jaw, and the thoughts dissipated as sea foam on waves.
And yet a handful of meetings later, a slight few years later, again unthinkable, she finds herself seated at Margherita's, with the Matriarch of the opposing family to the Montellis that she worked for, in working hours. Ordering Pizza Tropicale, and watching Cantarella's smile carefully to see if it would draw her blight even half as much as it drew the Blessed Maiden's disdain.
But Cantarella's smile only widens more, seemingly remembering just as well how Cartethyia's smile had dropped so swiftly at the celebratory feast in Septimont upon seeing the Pizza Tropicale. "If you were wondering, your choice of topping does not bother me quite as much as it does our dear Blessed Maiden."
"So…one for you as well?"
Cantarella blinks. "Were you…intending to polish off one entirely by your lonesome?"
Then, without missing a beat, the matriarch recovers with a smile. "Or that I should not have doubted; you have always had a unique array of capabilities, after all. Did your employment contract with the Montellis come with an obligatory pizza eating capacity?"
"I think even the Fisalias would find it absurd to have to include such a term, Signorina Cantarella."
Only now does Cantarella's smile drop.
"It's only us two, Zani."
"I…am aware."
"Would you not call me by my name?"
That, after all, had been the most complicating factor to her that came into play when she'd taken the risk months back, spiralling late to work, rushing to Porto Veno Castle. Crashing through the doors only to find her employer, amidst two others, gathered for the exact same reason that she came running.
It had always been about how she would tell Carlotta about the more-than-one nightstands she'd been having with Cantarella. When Leviathan fell with its ugly screeches and the post-crises management seemed like everything would be bridging into peace, she'd contemplated coming clean to Carlotta, considered setting things right for the record.
And yet.
And yet Carlotta Montelli just had to be there, right then, standing so full of stout anger and disbelief, glaring at her with anticipating annoyance and abrupt disbelief. That it'd been her to cross the threshold through the door.
"You've been avoiding contact with me one on one since then." Blue eyes seem to track her every thought. They always have; Cantarella almost always seemed to know quite keenly what she intended to do, even if she wasn't always the most certain. The first time they'd kissed had all been on her terms, on her initiative, but not entirely by her guidance. "And with the way that Carlotta is, and has been about this…"
But it wouldn't be fair to blame it all on Lady Carlotta.
She hasn't done anything at all.
"It's not about Lady Carlotta." Zani would be awfully too naïve if she thought the conversation could end here as she stands, sliding the order chit to Margherita, ordering another cup of coffee to-go despite the one half finished on their table.
"But certainly it is, remotely."
Remotely.
The world is often connected in bizarre ways, remotely.
"Your gratitude towards her — holds you back from accepting that you crave the same thing you've realised she so yearns for as well?"
Of course Cantarella would know, yet again, as always ever brilliant.
"And you don't know how to handle the anxious fear of wanting to have the same that she wants to have. You don't want to consider being the one who takes that from her."
Is that really it?
"Lady Carlotta lamented to me, once." The receipt crumples between her fingers, folding into uneven halves. Cantarella's eyes are hard to meet, soft as they are in tender blues. "That she's almost certain — though perhaps, I figured, in the heat of the moment, she'd forgotten I was involved in this at all."
"Or perhaps she was looking for someone who could understand?" prompts Cantarella, quietly. "Perhaps she was looking for someone she could confide it, who understood how she felt and would not judge that same desire?"
The laugh that makes it out of her is pathetic, Zani realises. Pathetically weak, with no strength behind it to drive the disbelief that comes along with it, with not quite the savagery to rebuke anything that Cantarella says, yet doesn't quite dare to oppose. Rights and wrongs, did the details really matter when things boiled down to their semantics? Did it matter if Carlotta had been ranting to her, or confiding? Does it really matter still, if it was at all because Carlotta believed her to be in the same blight?
Cantarella's blue eyes are harder to maintain than the Pizza Tropicale that slides before them, warm and unknowing of the politics beyond one's satiation.
And yet all of a sudden Zani isn't quite as hungry anymore, running her hands over her face with a sigh that dredges up all excitement she ought to have upon seeing fresh pizza from Margherita's.
Because, simply,
It matters.
At least, it matters to her in a way she cannot casually enough discard it as nothing. At least, it matters enough that Cantarella's soft gaze hurts like a hilt of leverage, knife pressing thin into her neck.
"Do you still remember the first time we met, properly?"
"I can think of multiple occasions one could classify as our first meeting, Zani."
"The first night you brought me back." Zani reaches forward, picking up a slice of pizza after some thought and many gulps of coffee. "The first night we slept together."
A faint quirk forms at the corner of rosier lips. "Then, of course, I do remember."
And the question Cantarella doesn't ask: where is this conversation headed?
"That night, where you found me — it was the Black Alley. Heard of it before?"
"Hard to miss." The way Cantarella flicks her chin makes the name seem almost harmless, combined with the lilac nails that glide between slices, picking up a slice of Pizza Tropicale as well. "Especially not when it's been quite a high profile organisation, in recent times."
"Did you know about it then?"
Cantarella's eyes avert her for one short moment, before the matriarch shakes her head with a small smile. "What kind of answer do you want from me, Zani?"
"I want a truthful conversation."
"Then you may prepare yourself that any romantic notion may be just about to be ruined." Cantarella sighs quietly. "I went only because I intercepted a Montelli communication headed for Carlotta."
"…I suspected that much."
"I thought you might have. Though you never questioned why Carlotta never sent you aid that night, nor was there any alarm at your disappearance following your self extraction from the Alley's premises. I went because I wanted to see how you were really like, under all the layers of uniformity that the Montellis had blanketed you in like armour, and sent you as a bodyguard to some of their most worthy possessions."
"And did what you see disappoint you?"
"I brought you to my home, Zani."
"You have always been more benevolent than the rumours—"
"I shared my bed with you in more ways than one."
That came out much sharper than either of them anticipated, judging by the bites of pizza they both take immediately after, dissolving into common praises for Margherita, and nothing more.
But, eventually, the conversation cycles back.
"I knew it was wrong." Red eyes bear a grief they should not so have, when there has been so little lost, and yet so much of it feels lost. "I knew, regardless of whether the rumours were true of your involvements with Lady Carlotta, that I should not have been with you, time and again. I did not always know how you found me in seemingly the most opportune moments, and yet still. There is nothing I can say that is remotely excusable."
"For the fact that you couldn't put it down?"
"For the fact that, for once, I felt the impulse to be selfish."
There it is.
"Selfish?"
"Selfish."
"I don't understand—"
"It's alright."
"It's not entirely about Carlotta now, is it?" Cantarella reaches for her hand, covering it with her cool touch. "This is something different."
This is something different, a different type of yearning, of wanting, of affection so undivided as mine to give and mine to feel.
She remembers being a child, alone, frightened, with blood on her knuckles, and fear in every other's eyes.
She remembers the second glances, every glance that hooks at her skin when people stare at her horns, her tail, her deep crimson eyes, and agree that she fits every the image of someone not to be trifled with.
She remembers the purple parasol that descended to shelter her, remembers that even despite her suspicion that there was an ulterior motive, there had never been a follow up that leveraged it against her. Not even in her most vulnerable, and not even in that room where Cantarella had had ultimate authority.
"I wanted the child to be mine."
Silence. A soft noise presses at the back of her throat, like there, there's that, but it never quite makes it out beyond a quashed exhale, heavier than others.
But damn those blue eyes anyway.
"…wanted," Cantarella hasn't let go of her hand yet. "Or want?"
Her jaw hurts from how she locks it, teeth against teeth.
"I—"
"Be true to yourself, Zani."
"I want it."
"To be yours."
"To be mine."
Cantarella blinks, once, slowly. Like she'd expected this answer without expecting this amount of forthright, even from her.
Then,
"Why?"
"I don't know."
Maybe it was just easier to say those words, but her jaws don't quite set right when the words have left her tongue, because that's just not it.
She does know why.
She has only known why since the moment she found out.
Since the moment she'd blanked out, quietly, applying for a late shift to swap and to rush over to Porto Veno Castle.
Since she decided to push open those doors, anyway, even when she'd already heard voices in the hall, and one too familiar over the others — Carlotta Montelli in all her glorious hurt.
"I grew up in the Black Alley alone." Zani says, after a quieter pause. Struggling, but her shoulders lift once in an abject shrug, a barked laugh. "I didn't want to doubt at all, because if I doubted, perhaps I would not be there. And maybe it doesn't matter whose it is, but I didn't want to tell myself I could walk away at the end of the day when the time was up and the shift was over. I had to believe it, myself, in some deep part of me like a grievance — hoping it will be mine. Hoping that it will not be yet another child who has to learn the way of the world before it learns how to be a child."
Maybe, just maybe, it had been why she'd said nothing, when Carlotta drunkenly confided in her, how desperately Carlotta had wanted the child too.
It will be in good hands.
It will not grow up abandoned.
And yet.
If it were really mine, would it be right to walk away even knowing there would be others filling my place?
The Counsellor from Jinzhou, adequate in almost every manner one could deliberate. The Blessed Maiden of Rinascita, free of obligations, and with a deep loyalty that could only belong to a knight who roamed certain to her beliefs of righteousness. The Executioner of the Montellis, a perfect match in every material need, and with such a deep responsibility that sometimes it made Zani fear.
Fear that even if she forced her way forward, it would not be enough.
Not enough to give, not enough to walk away as though nothing happened.
"I stay," The choker at her neck snaps tight when she breathes, when it exits her in shaking laughs of helplessness. "Because I care. Because being responsible regardless is what I must do because I care. And yet I look upon Lady Carlotta and find my own insecurities mirrored in her. That I do not know how to be responsible — how to share what should be shouldered individually, independently, responsibly, and yet how to manoeuvre the expectations of the others who so wish the same way as I do, to care. And because I do not know how to care, I fear to care. I fear that I will be the cook who spoils the broth — I fear that I cannot care in a way that is uniquely individualistic, nor contributive, to the situation at all. And yet, I cannot talk myself out of caring, nor can I talk myself into not caring at all. Yet I care — about you, about Lady Carlotta's feelings, about how adept Lady Changli is, how lively the Blessed Maiden carries herself around you."
The pizzas are gone, the coffee is cold, and Cantarella's eyes are oddly bright when the Matriarch looks caught between trying to keep her gaze, and trying to look everywhere else but at her.
And yet you wanted this, Zani. You wanted this truthful conversation.
And you want this all.
You want it.
"…that first night I caught wind of the news." Rubbing her eyes won't do her any good. They're already half bloodshot from all the sleepless work nights, dark eye bags full of accumulated exhaustion just waiting to flare. "I went home that night, and when I fell asleep, I dreamt of a child with your eyes."
A quiet girl in a hallway, while adults buzzed around her, in grandeur speeches and rising tones of escalating troubles.
White hair, blue eyes, and a smile already so tired, an inborn exhaustion.
With no one to take her away from all the adults who wouldn't spare more than a glance at her, talking over her head, arguing about one treaty, and negotiating another.
With no one to ask her, where is your mother? And no one to answer, shall I bring you to her?
With her mother who works tirelessly in the estate, elusive till the night, with her lilac parasol and her lullaby, humming down the corridor.
Like the first night again.
"…and you know, I don't dream." Zani sighs quietly, pinching her lips. "I haven't dreamt for a long while. Not without your draughts, and even then I barely dreamed a thing more than the following days' schedules."
"And yet you dreamt." A thin finger flicks sidewards — suspiciously like wiping away a tear or two, but the tear marks beneath her left eye obscure if she'd really cried at all, when Cantarella chuckles, in a wondrous softness. "And yet you want this, and yet you care. Dare I speculate that we can only be having this luncheon at the moment because you specifically asked Carlotta for time off?"
"You're not wrong." The napkin feels awkward in her hands, folded into a triangle, when she tucks it into Cantarella's palm. A peace offering for what, exactly? "Is now finally a good time to say what Lady Carlotta had me convey?"
"Oh, Zani." This time, the laugh comes genuine, and she doesn't realise until it's too late, when Cantarella's cool fingers brush against the back of her un-gloved pizza-hand, tucking between the gaps of her fingers. "There is nothing I believe Carlotta would impart upon you that I cannot already guess — insufferable she shall be, on my heels about every executive decision that goes into lavishly decorating a nursery, or do I stand to be corrected?"
"She wanted to ask if you preferred oak or mahogany, though she finds that Lady Changli may approve of a new stock of sandalwood she has recently managed to acquire."
"I'll let you decide, Zani."
"Me?"
"Surely you've thought about it. You seem like you would know better than I which would make for better crafting."
"Well…I mean, I thought oak would be more durable…"
"See?" The matriarch squeezes her hand lightly. "You've cared enough to spare it thought."
She opens her mouth to deny it, and yet.
"…yes."
Almost too candidly, Cantarella presses on. "You've had many more of those thoughts that you've barely opened up to me in our conversation, haven't you, Zani?"
"…yes."
"Then," Cantarella squeezes her hand once more. "Will you indulge me on our return journey to share with me, everything you have thought of for this child of ours? All of ours, but a child no less yours than mine."
A child of us all.
Maybe it'd been foolish to have been so hung up on figuring out whose it was, on deliberating what felt like it could deliver justice, to the contributions for the child.
"…promise me you won't laugh?"
"Laugh?" Cantarella blinks at her, amused but perplexed. "What for should I laugh, or not?"
"…Lady Carlotta also had me bring a whole stack of blueprints."
"Alright. And?"
"And I may or may not have tried to sketch the crib in five of those."
"Really?"
"Hey, I asked you not to laugh…"
"Well, I'm not," The slant of her lips say otherwise. "…laughing, per se."
"Cantarella."
The shift of mood between them arrives as suddenly as the silence.
"I just think," There's a waver in the matriarch's voice, when she lowers her free hand, resting it lightly on the swell of her stomach under her dress. "It's very endearing of all four of you, whether all of you realise it or not. And that, whether you all feel silly about what you've all rather coincidentally, and passionately, set out to do — it's far more moving than any of you realise."
"Well, I wouldn't…know." And yet, and yet, she doesn't let go of the hand in hers. "I just…"
"You just want to care." The hand in hers feels warmer, all of a sudden. "Don't you, Zani?"
"In whatever way I can." Even if it's clumsily, even if brusque, even if unpolished in the way she remembers, raising herself in that forsaken alley. "In whatever way that can matter, I want to."
"Then, by all means, be my guest." A soft kiss lands against the back of her entwined hand. Tugging on her arm, inviting her to begin the return journey, of no lesser transparency that lunch has transpired in. "Starting, perhaps, with those five cribs of yours?"
"Now you're simply teasing me, Cantarella…"
"Alas, no, I do not jest…!"