Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Darkness. Distant sounds.

Somewhere along the line, not sure when, the nothingness had been replaced by a simple darkness... which didn't seem any different at first but upon closer inspection was, and the main difference was that, in the darkness, he at least existed. To him, it seemed like a pretty big difference.

In this bottomless pitch blackness, he realized that what he had mistaken for mere sounds were actually voices, coming from who knows how far. For an eternity, they remained too distant and unintelligible for him to understand a word of what they were saying. Then they became closer, and he heard one, a woman's voice, which sounded as if echoing from the other end of a long hallway:

“He's in such a bad shape. Look at this, and that...”

The darkness wavered around him, rippled like the small lake behind the Monad Charity House where he and Carlo used to skip stones, back when they were kids. Carlo always beat me. Somehow, he always did. The memory of fire resurfaced then. How the machine erupted in red and orange flames around him. He remembered trying to protect his head, driven by a human instinct he didn't think he still possessed, but he wasn't quick enough. It burns, he recalled thinking, it burns. But for puppets, there was no real pain. That was true then and it was still true now. As the veil of darkness kept thinning out, he felt the touch of something, most likely hands, on him. It didn't hurt. But...

His face.

His face felt strange.

And he heard a second voice, unmistakably masculine, and just as unmistakably Italian:

“...might as well replace the mask entirely. It would be easier than to repair this one.”

“I'm sorry, I don't know how to make a mask,” the first voice admitted. “I'm more of a machinery kind of girl. I can take care of the internal damage?”

“That's alright. I can make the new mask. He could use having half of his hair replaced too... Ah, it would be much easier if I could get the factory running again...”

Cautiously, Romeo opened his eyes.

He was in a workshop of some sort. He could tell by the absurd amount of tools lying around. The ceiling was mahogany-red, lavishly adorned with moldings and exposed beams, and there was a workbench he could see out of the corner of his right eye. Something that resembled a dental lamp was pointed right at his face. He was lying on his back on a table, like a surgery patient who was administered the weakest general anesthetic in the world and had woken up moments before the first incision. The owner of voice n°1 had her back turned to him as she rummaged through the contents of an old toolbox. Voice n°2, a man sporting a perfectly trimmed mustache, was examining his head, and noticed he was awake. They locked eyes. For a split second, neither of them moved. Then the man made a sound – a single one.

“Ah–”

That was all Romeo needed.

Moving with a suddenness and agility no human would be capable of, he sat up, grabbed the mustached man by the fur collar of his overcoat, and shoved him away hard. He immediately went backwards, lost his balance, bumped into the woman and nearly knocked her down. She emitted a small cry of surprise. Her toolbox fell with an ear-splitting crash and spilled bolts, nails, screws, wrenches and pliers everywhere. A yellow tape measure slid across the floor, uncoiling.

Romeo leapt off the table, the cable attached to his back describing in the air the arc of a circle. It hit the lamp and sent it flying against the workbench, against which the light bulb shattered. Pieces of glass clinked as they fell.

“Mr. Venigni!” the girl cried shrilly.

Wanting to keep them both in his field of vision, Romeo turned around and backed away backwards. His eyes went from the man who had fallen flat on his back to the mechanic-looking girl who was frantically trying to pull him up to his feet. Reaching behind him with a hand, he eventually touched a wall. To his left, he spotted a small display of weapons, most of which being swords.

“Easy now! No need to be afraid,” the man said in his thick accent. He sat up. He had hit his head against the leg of a desk and was rubbing it, wincing. “And, more importantly, no need to kill us. We were not planning to harm you.”

Romeo eyed him. Judging by his clothes alone, the man was obviously well-off, but his face looked familiar somehow. He thought he had seen him somewhere before. Where though? Then he remembered that stupid ad with a mustachioed man in a top hat giving a thumbs-up, the one that yelled 'A NEW ERA WITH VENIGNI' in huge black letters which jumped out at you. God Almighty, he always hated that ad.

“Oh really?” he asked.

It had not been his intention to sound as doubtful as he did, but oh well. Slowly and still cradling the bump on his head, Lorenzini Venigni stood up, and the girl turned to him, glasses crooked on her nose. She looked tense, possibly outright frightened. In spite of it, her gaze was steady. She straightened up her glasses and said:

“We were going to repair you. P asked us to. You are in pretty bad shape, so–”

“P?” he cut her off.

“Master Ge– Geppetto's puppet. He's the one who asked us to repair you.”

Carlo, he thought. That got his attention above all else. The memory of Carlo came to him spontaneously, making him clench his fists... unless that was from hearing Geppetto's name.

“See?” Venigni said. He was smoothing out the wrinkles his fall had caused to his overcoat. “There is no reason to fret.”

“Where is he?”

The two humans exchanged looks.

“I think he's here?” the girl hesitated.

“He is,” Venigni confirmed, then looked back at Romeo. He leaned forward, carefully, and picked up his top hat. “But I do not recommend wandering around the hotel in your state, my friend.”

“I'm not in that bad of a shape.”

That was wrong, of course. Carlo had not just given him the thrashing of the century; he had killed him. Romeo remembered that very clearly. He supposed he had these two to thank for fixing that. Still, they didn't need to make it sound like he was good for the trash.

He watched as they glanced at each other again. Then the girl raised her hand. She was holding...

She was holding his damn face.

Slowly, Romeo reached out with both hands and felt the front side of his head. No nose. No lips. No skin. Instead, his fingers hit the smooth and cold surface of metal ridged with tiny bolts. He knew it was there, of course, but the feeling he got from touching his exoskeleton was still very, very unpleasant. His body never felt more repulsive than it did right now.

He let his hands fall back to his sides.

“Don't let this ugly mug fool you,” he said, and hated the tremor in his voice. “I was human once.”

And I still feel human, he thought without saying it. Hell, he didn't feel that human even when he was human, mostly because back then he had no idea what life – or God, or fate, or whatever – had in store for him. He used to be so ungrateful to be alive. Not anymore.

Venigni put his hat back on.

“You seem human enough to me. Only a little differently.”

“Oh.”

That left him speechless, in a good way.

“Won't you let us fix you?” the girl asked tentatively. “Your face is badly burnt, so Mr. Venigni was going to make you a new one. You need some internal repair as well.”

This time, he considered the offer. He stopped pressing against the wall and eyed the bit of corridor he could see in the doorway, then looked at Venigni and the girl again. They looked like good people.

“Is Giuseppe Geppetto here?”

They shook their heads. It seemed to Romeo that the question had casted a chill of such suddenness that the entire room appeared to stand still around the three of them. Out of the blue, he found himself remembering one hot summer afternoon at the Monad Charity House, how Carlo and he played tennis until he was left squinting from the sun shining in his face and his undershirt was soaked with sweat, the muscles in his arm terribly sore and his heart pounding like a drum. The memory had nothing to do with anything, but it was a good one, one that had survived the passage from human to puppet. He thought all his memories had... He couldn't be sure though.

He waited for Venigni or the girl to explain where Geppetto was, took in their silence, then accepted that there would be no explanation. For now, at least. He walked back to the table, cable dragging behind him, his legs grating. He lied back on it.

“Fine. Fix me up. Don't mess up my face, blunderbuss.”

Venigni flashed a smile that was both kind and insufferably self-assured.

“I will make it better.”

After making sure Venigni understood he didn't want him to make any so-called improvement to his face, thank you very much, and after lying there for at least two hours, mildly grateful for the girl – Eugénie, he learnt – trying to make conversation while her hands were plunged between the cogs in his chest, Romeo was able to walk out of the workshop and into the rest of Hotel Krat. He'll be damned if he knew what Eugénie had done exactly, but his body moved better and his legs didn't make that scraping noise anymore. Venigni had done good too. When he checked in a mirror, his face looked exactly like his. Nothing out of place that he noticed. What a relief. Just because he could imagine what was hiding behind that replica of his face didn't mean he wanted to see it, ever.

Hotel Krat wasn't as grand as the Opera House but, in its defense, nothing was as grand as the Opera House – and that was the only hill Romeo would be willing to die on. Probably. He walked through hallways lavishly decorated with paintings and passed through wide, mahogany-red doors. Venigni and Eugénie had told him Carlo was currently in the hotel, but they hadn't told him where exactly. One teacher at the Monad Charity House used to say When there is searching, there is finding. He intended to do just that.

He passed by a room, empty and silent, with a fabulous set of sandalwood furniture, a strange pink chair and a heavy desk with a typewriter on it. In the distance, someone was playing the piano. The more he saw of the hotel, the more it became obvious that it had suffered some kind of attack; while making his way to where he thought the stairs were, he came across vandalized paintings, doors smashed open, statues that were toppled over and lied broken on the dirt-smeared marble floor, profanities written on the walls... Visible efforts were made to clean up the mess and, if the mop and wide array of cleaning products lying around were any indication, still ongoing.

Night had fallen while he was being repaired; the hotel had taken on a hushed, forlorn air that Romeo found both gloomy and comforting, the same way the sight of a childhood home where you no longer live can be both gloomy and comforting. The numerous suites were empty. With no idea of where to look, he ended up following the music, and found himself going down a grand flight of stairs that led him to what he assumed was the main lobby. Good thing Eugénie had cut off the cable hanging from his back, or he would be hearing it dragging and falling on every step right now.

He had barely reached the first floor that a voice hailed him.

“May I assist you, sir?”

The voice sounded so stilted that Romeo knew what to expect before he even turned his head. When he did, he saw a butler puppet standing behind the counter with his hands clasped in front of him in a professional yet very stiff manner. With the exception of his mouth, his face was completely static.

“You are not one of our residents,” he continued. “Are you Romeo, by any chance?”

“Yeah.”

There was something off with that puppet. He was coherent and non hostile, but everything about him was about as sentient as a cheese grater. Most puppets Romeo had interacted with after waking up as the King of Puppets exhibited at least some range of awareness, even if they did not understand it. This one was completely blank. Just a pile of metal put together into the shape of a man using screws and bolts.

“My name is Polendina,” it said, standing there, never moving at all. “I was informed you would awaken soon. Master P is right beyond this door. I recommend you go talk to him. If you have questions, he will surely answer them.”

“Carlo?” Romeo asked.

“There is no one by the name of Carlo residing at the hotel currently,” Polendina said.

“Right... Sure. Nevermind. This way, then?”

The idea of talking to him any longer was growing more unnerving by the minute. Without waiting for an answer, Romeo crossed the lobby and headed for the room the music was coming from. It was ajar. Behind him, Polendina recited:

“Here at Hotel Krat, comfort and calm walk hand in hand. Enjoy your stay, sir.”

“Sure,” Romeo said, and pushed the door open.

Carlo was inside, playing the piano.

Chapter Text

Romeo stepped into the room, feeling like the border between reality and dream was just blown to smithereens. Carlo was sitting at a piano – a grand one, the kind only great pianists and rich socialites could afford. His fingers danced briskly along the keys, and music poured out, filling the space between them silence would have otherwise occupied. Romeo could not look away. It did not feel real.

Not just because he was seeing Carlo again for the first time since their fight in the Opera House, but because Carlo, and he was certain of that, did not play the piano.

Sure, as a rich kid growing up in an era when the arts markedly flourished, music lessons had been forced on him. But it was not the piano he had learnt. Romeo remembered sitting on the stairs behind the school one afternoon, listening to Carlo telling him about that one time he had smashed his violin against the wall because he hated the lessons but could never convince his father to agree to stop them, and that his only regret was that he should have set the violin on fire instead. Carlo had never said anything about learning the piano. Seeing him playing it right now, so well, with such ease, filled Romeo with an unshakable feeling: something was wrong.

Without ever taking his eyes off Carlo, he bent his knee and pushed the door closed using his heel. The latch clicked as it lodged itself into place, and the music stopped. Carlo looked up.

The differences between then and now hit him all over again. The inexpressive blue eyes. The freckles dotting the cheeks and forehead. Somehow, the hair had grown and turned a silvery shade of gray. That's the thing that troubled him the most, because it was new. It wasn't there when they fought. Where did it come from? But the features. He saw Carlo, unchanged, in the features, from the unique curve of his mouth to the darkness of his eyelashes; his clearest memories could have hardly painted a more faithful portrait. It was Carlo alright. The realization sank in, and he felt intense relief mixed with even more intense love.

“Carlo,” he called softly.

Some emotion (annoyance? sadness?) flashed across Carlo's face. It lasted barely a second, then was gone.

“I am not Carlo,” he said.

His voice had a subtle but noticable irregularity to it. Just a tad halted. For the longest time, they stared at each other. The calm, almost indifferent way Geppetto's puppet looked at him sparked Romeo's temper in a way nothing had in years. He clenched his fist, made an effort to hold himself in, unclenched it.

“What are you saying? Of course you are.”

“I am not Carlo,” the puppet repeated. “I will never be Carlo.”

Romeo heard a thick growl exiting his mouth, coming out of the depths of his throat.

“That right? Who else could you be then?” He pointed at the puppet's chest, adding: “That's Carlo's heart.”

“I know,” the puppet said. “Carlo's heart. That is all you and Father ever cared about.”

Romeo's hand fell back as if an invisible man had slapped it away.

“Don't put me in the same basket as him.”

“Basket,” the puppet repeated, blinking.

“What?”

There was a chirping sound.

“It means considering someone equal to someone else, pal. He's saying he's not the same as Geppetto.”

Romeo looked around, at first having no idea what that was. His gaze fell on a lantern that stood on the piano and, inside, he could barely make out the silhouette of an insect of some sort. P, unfazed, nodded.

“I see. Thank you, Gemini.”

“You're welcome, pal,” the lantern cheerfully replied.

It chirped again, and Romeo realized it was a cricket in there. He almost made a remark, before deciding he didn't actually care. There were more important things at hand than whatever the hell that was.

“You are not the same as Geppetto,” P resumed. “You are Romeo. You are–”

“Your best friend,” Romeo finished.

“Carlo's best friend. I got your message. The one in your black box. You said you remember him.”

That Romeo did. God, he did.

“But I am not Carlo. You need to understand that. I was supposed to become Carlo, but I did not. It did not go as Father had hoped. Carlo lived his own life, which shaped him into who he was. My life so far has shaped me into someone else.” He paused, looked away for a moment, eyes boring into nothingness as if lost in thought, then added: “I am sorry.”

Sorry. Was that it? Sorry Carlo fucking died? Sorry I look like him and I'm not even him? Romeo looked at the puppet, unaware of the way his fists clenched at his sides. Sorry, he said sorry? That hurt more than anything else, hurt more than it had any right to. Pain and anger crashed over him in a raging, roaring wave. But he did not let his emotions get the better of him, nor did he raise his voice. The shock was too great. He was floating in cotton.

“Why did you tell these people to fix me? What is it you wanted me back for? What's the point of me being here at all?” he asked, his voice flat.

P looked at him briefly, then at the wall again.

“Carlo would want you to live,” he said. “I think.”

Somehow, that hurt even more. Hurt of loss, hurt of coming back and finding that the one person who mattered is gone. He hated the puppet as well as himself, as well as Geppetto, as well as this bloody city, for making him feel so dreadfully alone. In place of his heart, something like a black hole grew.

Maybe the expression on his face was telling, because P stood up. He stepped around the piano, stopped at his level and looked at him for a moment, before slipping a hand in his pocket and fishing out an item that caught the light like a glass prism. He handed it to him. Romeo froze.

It was Carlo's graduation necklace.

“I am sorry I lived,” P said, watching him attentively. “And I am sorry Carlo did not.”

Then he left him. Romeo did not turn around to see him leave, but he heard the door opening and closing again behind his back. In the silence that followed, he stared down at the necklace in his hand, faintly aware of a burning sensation right behind his eyes, rubbing his thumb against the inscription that had been roughly engraved on it, he remembered, with a pocket knife.

He would have cried, if puppets could. The pain was so tremendous he wondered how he wasn't screaming.

The cricket in the lantern chirped sympathetically:

“Well, that was rough, buddy.”

“Shut pan,” Romeo croaked. “Just... shut pan.”

“Alright.”

Minutes passed. A heavy silence hang in the air, only disturbed by the low buzzing of a nearby lamp, and the whole hotel seemed to be holding its breath. The impossible urge to cry passed slowly, but it did pass. Romeo leaned against the piano with his eyes squeezed shut, his fist clenched around the necklace. Grief came and went in slow, stormy waves, and he had a firm convinction that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Carlo was dead, dead for good. The puppet who walked around with his heart and face was a complete stranger. There would always be more grief left to be felt. He supposed he would do well to just shut up and accept it.

“Feeling better?” the cricket asked once Romeo opened his eyes again.

“No.”

“Right. Can't say I'm surprised.”

“What do you know? You're a cricket.”

“Well... Rude, first of all. I'm Gemini. And considering I've followed P around ever since he woke up, I would say I know a lot. All this talking about Carlo... Don't you think that's unfair to him?”

Romeo stared. Stared? No, that wasn't right. He glared daggers at the lantern. The cricket's words had granted him a fleeting glimpse beyond the haunting memory of Carlo, had shown him the gray emptiness of a future without him, nothing to look forward to but be trapped in a puppet body until time eats away at the very metal that made him up. He saw that horrid and lonely hereafter waiting for him, and it did not just scare him – it chilled him to his figurative bone. To think that this was what life had in store for him from now on, only this and nothing else, was horrible enough; understanding that Carlo would forever be someone from the past, growing more and more distant but never entirely disappearing, was unbearable.

“Everything that's happened up until now has been unfair to everyone,” he said through gritted teeth. “It's been unfair to me. It's been unfair to Carlo. He's not anything special.”

Chirp.

“You're mad. Okay, point taken. Just ask yourself if directing that anger at him is valid. You know, food for thought.”

“Point me in Geppetto's direction then. I'll be glad to direct my anger his way.”

“You're one hell-born babe, you know that?” Gemini sighed.

He quieted down then, as if hesitating. Romeo noticed it. He wouldn't have cared normally, but that lull in the conversation caught his attention.

“What? If you have something to say, spit it out.”

Chirp. Hesitating still, but less.

“Well, there's just one little problem with that, buddy.”

“What?” Romeo asked impatiently.

Hesitation again, which lasted several seconds. He stared at the lamp, waiting. Somewhere nearby, he thought he heard a cat meowing.

“Geppetto is dead,” Gemini trilled.

Chapter Text

Giuseppe Geppetto was laid to rest in the Lost Flower Garden of Hotel Krat, where Antonia had also been buried a few days prior. Venigni and Eugénie stood beside P while Sister Cecile gave a sermon about how there was a season to every thing, and a time to every purpose – a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which was once planted. It drizzled steadily, and a chilly wind pranced in the gilded branches of the Gold Coin Fruit tree. Pulcinella and Polendina were also here, the luster of their puppet bodies sparkling in the night. Polendina's face was blank. P wondered if he really wasn't feeling anything at all.

Eugénie's eyes brimmed with tears and rain, and she kept taking her glasses off to wipe them on some dry corner of her sleeve. Venigni was silent, his usually cheerful face set into an uncharacteristically grim, stony expression. P could not be certain of what he was thinking, but maybe it had something to do with the fact that Geppetto was a good friend of his. Or at least, that's what he believed. P was not about to tell him the truth. It would only hurt more, he thought. Both he and Eugénie held Geppetto in high regard; surely it was better they kept seeing him that way. A genius inventor and a good man, killed by the strongest puppet yet in an effort to save his son. No one had questioned P's lie. It was a simple lie, believable, and almost true. No doubt to have.

Sister Cecile fell silent, looked down at the coffin. P had dug the hole at the foot of the tree using one of the shovels stored in a small storeroom of the hotel, and Venigni had rolled up his sleeves and helped, as surprising as it sounded.

“Go ahead, step forward.”

“I'll show you what to do,” Eugénie whispered in his ear.

P watched her. She approached the hole, leaned forward, grabbed a handful of earth, straightened up, and tossed it into the grave. It splattered on the coffin.

“Rest in peace, Master Geppetto.”

It was Venigni's turn to step forward. He too took up a reasonable amount of dirt in his gloved hand. He looked down at the coffin for almost ten seconds. Behind him, P heard Pulcinella emitting a small sound, like a sigh. It brings back bad memories, he understood. It is difficult for him. He thought about maybe reaching for Venigni's free hand to give it a comforting squeeze, but then the moment passed before he could make up his mind, and Venigni threw the dirt into the hole.

“I will miss you, Giuseppe. It really isn't fair. None of this is.”

Eugénie gave P a little push, her hand resting gently on his shoulder. P did as they had done: he bent down, took a bit of loose soil in his right hand, and tossed it on Geppetto's final resting place. He opened his mouth to say something, and that's when his throat filled with the same salty taste of tears he had felt when cradling Geppetto's lifeless body in his arms. His shoulders trembled briefly. He said nothing and instead closed his mouth. Strange how emotions worked.

Sister Cecile invoked a minute of silence. P glanced at Venigni and Eugénie, saw them bow their heads, and did the same. He looked at the ground in front of his feet, trying in vain to get rid of that salty tightness deep in his throat. The moon lurked high above the rooftops of Krat. The wind howled.

He wondered what Carlo would have said in his place... if he would have said anything at all.

At some point, Venigni and Eugénie went back inside, followed by Pulcinella, Polendina and Sister Cecile. P stayed a while longer. He crouched before the makeshift tombs of Geppetto and Antonia, his arms crossed over his knees, thinking about where the dead go and allowing himself to feel the pain. Pain was peculiar, he had learnt. It demanded to be felt, left no escape route. That was okay. Pain was the price to pay for all the other feelings too. The salty taste in his throat came and went; every time he thought he had it under control, a tremor came up from the center of his chest and shook him all the way up to his head. Minutes passed, then he slipped onto his knees and joined his hands to pray. He asked God to please forgive Geppetto's actions, and to please let him be with Carlo again, not knowing if he was heard – not even knowing if there was anything out there to hear but choosing to believe there was. It helped a little.

He was still praying when Romeo joined him. No words were uttered, but he heard his footsteps. When he looked up, he was there, next to him, looking down back at him, in silence. The first thing P noticed was that he seemed to have calmed down. The second, that he was wearing the graduation necklace around his neck.

He asked:

“How would Carlo have felt?”

The question seemed to take Romeo by surprise; his face went slack, and he did not answer right away. Instead, he stared at the graves for a moment. After that, he threw his head back and gazed up at the starry sky, looking like he was grasping for the right words.

“Once, he told me he would not be sad if his father died,” he said slowly, “but I know he didn't really mean it. He was upset when he said that. Been crying. So I think he would have been sad. Probably mad about being sad, too, but sad still. He'd have cried.”

“I cried when Father died.”

Romeo looked at him.

“That... should be impossible.”

“I cried,” P repeated.

In his mind, the tears were important. More than important – they were precious. A painful proof of limits that were transcended.

“Gemini told me about Geppetto's death,” Romeo continued.

“Everything?”

“Yeah.”

He held the lantern in his hand. Gemini chirped sheepishly.

“Guilty as charged.”

P nodded. It was alright if Romeo knew the truth, he decided, because Romeo did not care enough about Geppetto for the truth to hurt him. He stood up, and when Romeo wordlessly handed him Monad's Lamp, he hooked it to the back of his belt again. Right where it belonged.

“So,” Romeo said. “No more Geppetto, no more frenzied puppets and, hopefully, no more Petrification Disease. What are you going to do now? Get adopted by Venigni?”

“Adopted.”

“He's asking if Venigni will take you in and take care of you in Geppetto's place,” Gemini chimed in.

“No.”

“What then? Staying in Krat would be a mistake. Now that the streets are safe, your friends will leave the city. Reach out to the outside world. And when they'll be asked what happened, they'll have to tell the truth. The puppets everyone envied Krat for massacred thousands of thousands. What do you think the general public's opinion of puppets like you and I will be after that?”

“He's got a point, pal... Once word gets out, people will want you destroyed, even if just as a precaution.”

“I know,” P said.

Boy, did he. Even if someone as influential as Venigni tried to speak up in his favor, he doubted that would be enough. Venigni would probably have enough on his plate keeping Pulcinella safe. Asking for his help might work, but it would put the man in a difficult position, and that was the last thing P wanted.

“What will you do?” he asked.

Romeo shrugged. If he was worried, he hid it well.

“Who knows. I'll leave Krat, I guess. The problem is, even with my face fixed, I look much more rudimentary than you.” Glancing down at his legs, he sighed. Clearly, Geppetto had not poured as much time or effort into him. “You can pass as a human, but I clearly look like a puppet. I'll have a hard time just walking around.”

“Maybe Venigni can do something about that?” Gemini suggested. “It's worth asking.”

In P's opinion, it was, indeed, worth a try. As he stole a glance at Romeo, it didn't seem like he thought the same. Ultimately though, he sighed. His arms creaked quietly as he crossed them.

“Maybe,” he relented.

“Go and ask him then. I am sure he will help, if he can.”

“Where are you going?”

He had turned around and was making his way back inside the hotel. Romeo's footsteps hurried after him.

“There is something I must give back to Sophia.”

“Sophia?” Romeo repeated, dumbfounded.

The way he said it, P guessed – correctly – that the name was familiar to him.

Romeo, maybe not so unexpectedly, tagged along. On their way to Sophia, P explained everything, as best he could and as well as he remembered. For the longest time, he only talked, and Romeo only listened. He told him about the experiments the Alchemists were conducting, away from the public eye, on their island, about their research to bring humanity to the next stage of evolution, and, above all else, he told him about what they had done to Sophia. How he had found her and how he had put an end to her suffering. He did his best to describe the state in which she was left, then asked if he had made the right choice. Romeo said he had. Relief flooded in, and with it came, at last, some much needed peace of mind.

“How do you know her?”

“She's the one who introduced me to Carlo,” Romeo replied. He kept his eyes on the floor and spoke quietly as the memories flooded in. “Back when he first arrived at the school. I know her, but not that well, I suppose. She was always just Lady Isabelle's daughter to me. Never really thought much of her past that.”

“She awakened me,” P said, as if that explained everything.

And in a way, it did. Life had once been gifted; life should be gifted back.

The rest of the way, they both kept quiet. When they finally reached their destination, Romeo did not know what to expect, but he sure would have never expected that.

What P had called 'Sophia' was not Sophia at all, but an inert puppet that looked nothing like the young girl from Romeo's memories. It sat there motionless, its head tilted to the side, its eyes closed. If Polendina was as sentient as a cheese grater, this thing had the awareness level of an empty space left in the wake of a dead star.

“Is that Sophia Monad?” he asked, observing the mechanical body cautiously. He half expected it to move, but had the impression it would not. Could not. “Looks like a puppet without Ergo to me.”

“Yes,” P said.

“Yes what?”

“Yes, for now.”

“Pal?” Gemini chirped.

Without another word, P approached the puppet. Romeo watched him as he knelt down before it, aware deep down that, while he did not have the faintest idea what P had in mind, he still had an inexplicable bad feeling about it, just like he had a bad feeling when, in the middle of the first wave of the Petrification Disease, Carlo had started coughing. Fear reared its ugly, familiar head.

“Wait,” he called. “What are you doing?”

The rest of his thought – Whatever it is, don't do it – hang unsaid in the air. P, either not hearing him or ignoring him, brought his hand to the puppet's chest. The blue light of Ergo winked in the daylight.

“Do not worry,” he said. “I am not Carlo, so Carlo can not be hurt.”

The words held no malice, but they stung all the same. Yes, nothing could hurt the dead, and Carlo was dead. Romeo had to get it into his head, would have all the time in the world a puppet can have to do that. Frozen in place, watching, he saw Carlo in P's features all over again... but, in that moment, he also began unseeing Carlo in them.

Yet the fear remained.

“I said wait!”

Too late.

Chapter Text

It went both exceedingly fast and terribly slowly. The sight of Carlo, no, not Carlo, P collapsing onto the puppet's lap got Romeo moving instantly. He bolted from where he was standing almost as if he had, on some subconscious level, expected this to happen. A chirp, as shrill as a bird's cry, arose from Monad's Lamp, saying: “Pal! Hey, pal! What's wrong? Hey!”

With dream-like slowness, Romeo grabbed P by the shoulder and was, at first, only aware of how relaxed he was – in fact, P was completely limp, like a doll. He called out his name and shook him, pulling him into his arms to see his face. No response. P's face, which was identical to Carlo's save for the freckles, had gone slack, his eyes were lightly shut, and his head lolled to the side.

“What's wrong?” Gemini fretted.

“This idiot just gave his Ergo away,” Romeo said, thinking about the blue light that had caught his eye. He was pretty sure that's what had just happened.

“What? But why would he do that?”

“You're asking me? I thought you knew him so well, since you've been following him around since he woke up and all!”

“Excuse me, blondie, I can't read his thoughts! I don't know what he was thinking!”

Gemini was chirping furiously, and the lantern kept flickering. It sounded like there were a dozen other crickets in there with him. His agitation told Romeo everything he needed to know about the gravity of the situation, and he felt the same sensation of blood turning to ice in his veins as he used to when he was human, even though he no longer had blood nor veins. He was not ready to lose Carlo a second time. This thought was followed by P's voice saying I am not Carlo, I will never be Carlo back in the piano room. And I am sorry I lived and I am sorry Carlo did not. He felt a crazy urge to wail. Carlo was gone, all right. Did God – or whatever it was that was in charge of the universe – really need to take away the one made after his image as well? An icy terror envelopped him.

“Don't worry,” said a voice. “He will be alright.”

Romeo's eyes darted to the puppet.

Like Galatea coming to life, she had moved. Her eyes were open and were looking at him. Dark blue eyes, the irises masterfully painted. She smiled, and Romeo was hit by a feeling of déjà vu so vivid he was rendered temporarily mute.

She said:

“It's been a long time, Romeo.”

He blurted:

“Miss Monad?”

He was aware that this was, given the circumstances, an absurd question, but Sophia, still smiling, merely nodded.

“Some time ago, your clever friend found what was left of me. The Ergo he gave me is the same one he had taken then.”

“So that means...”

She nodded. “It means that Carlo's Ergo is still within him, yes. He will come to soon, I'm sure.”

Romeo felt a sort of miserable relief. When he looked down at P's face, he saw him furrow his brow a little, then stir, and the sight made him relax. At the same time, he heard Gemini letting out a shaky sigh. He looked at Sophia again. At the puppet body that now housed Sophia's soul. His mouth opened... then closed... then opened again.

“Why is your hair blue?”

Of course, he had to carry P all the way back to the hotel. It was not much of a problem – Romeo had realized very quickly after accepting he was not human anymore that being a puppet came with some interesting perks, one of which being incredible strength – but he still wished P's Legion Arm weighed a little less. After Gemini's fourth complain about being swung around too much, Sophia unhooked the lantern from P's belt and carried it. Romeo found the cricket annoying, but he also understood that Gemini was worried, and that worry probably made him grouchy. He couldn't blame him. Sophia walked slowly, to the point that, every now and then, he had to stop and wait for her. His first assumption was that she needed to get used to her new puppet body (God knew that he had needed plenty of time to get used to his), but then, looking over his shoulder, he saw her struggling to keep her coat closed around her, holding Monad's Lamp in one hand while taking small steps on the road.

“Something the matter?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

“It doesn't look like it.”

She glanced away. He stopped and waited for her to catch up, P's limp body thrown over his shoulder. Why women always had to pretend like nothing was wrong when obviously something was, he had no clue.

“In case you have not noticed,” she said grimly, “this body is not wearing any clothes.”

“Oh.” He laughed. He shouldn't have but couldn't help it. “Miss Monad, I'm sorry, but you're a puppet now. There is nothing to see.”

“Could you be any more rude?” Gemini muttered.

If the look Sophia gave him was any indication, the feeling was mutual. Romeo promptly calmed down, although wiping the smirk off his face simply felt beyond him.

“Why don't you just button up that coat?”

Sophia made the most hopelessly miserable face he had ever seen.

“I can't. The buttons are just decoration.”

Back at the hotel, after promising Venigni and Eugénie that P did not require any repairing, Romeo dropped him on the bed of an empty suite. Sitting in an armchair as extravagant as the rest of Hotel Krat, he watched P's inert face. Gemini was put down on one of the night tables, his light dim. Sophia had excused herself almost thirty minutes ago, and although she had given no reason, Romeo was ninety percent sure she went looking for clothes. It amused him, but he could hardly blame her. Modesty, after all, was a very human thing, and human nature was all she had left now. She better hold on to it. From downstairs, he could hear a woman's singing, slightly muffled, coming out of the gramophone:

Someday, he recognized, Carlo would be a stranger to him, and the memories of him would feel as nebulous as the dreams everyone had in their childhood, unreal, long forgotten. Pain spread throughout his chest. God, please, don't let it happen. Let the memories stay clear and warm. It's all I have left.

The door opened behind his back, and Sophia came in, wearing an elegant but old-fashioned white dress that looked like it hadn't seen the light of day in twenty years. When he quirked his eyebrows at her, she looked down at the floor, uneasy.

“I found this in the wardrobe of the owner of the hotel,” she explained quietly. “I supposed she would not need it anymore.”

“Why not?”

“She passed away just recently. Petrification Disease.”

Romeo fell quiet. He remembered the two makeshift tombstones in the Lost Flower Garden, and pitied the woman for having been buried right next to Geppetto, that bastard.

A grandfather's clock, somewhere down the hallway, rang eleven o'clock. The hotel was asleep.

Sophia sat down on an ornate loveseat by the fireplace and Romeo, eyes still fixated on P, listened to the silence which surrounded them. The pain in his chest persisted, as if a living, beating heart was still nestled in there. Funny how humanity clung to senses, making ghosts out of body parts that no longer existed.

“So you were the King of Puppets,” Sophia said. “I thought Geppetto's puppet had destroyed you.”

“He had.”

“You know what I mean. How are you alive?”

“I wouldn't call myself alive, Miss Monad. But if you wish to know, I'm alive by the magic of the richest blunderbuss in Krat and some bespectacled grease monkey lady. That one,” he said, nodding his head towards P, “told me Carlo would want me to live. Not much of an explanation, but beggers can't be choosers. And now you're here as well. Look at us. Three little manikins.”

“We are, aren't we? Even so, it's good to see you again, Romeo.”

“Thanks. Glad you're back as well.”

Some part of him could not accept that Carlo was the only one who had not made it back – it was unfair, and more than unfair, it was atrocious. Some other part felt like P, who had fought tooth and nail to become his own person, deserved to live on outside of Carlo's shadow. He didn't know what to think of that.

“Miss Monad.”

“Yes?”

“How much do you remember of your life? Have you retained all your memories?”

Sophia furrowed her brow.

“I believe so, yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well,” she puzzled, “I remember you, and Carlo, as well as some of the other children of the school. I remember growing up. I remember my father, and my mother, and the house where I grew up. There are things that are hazy, but no one remembers everything that ever happened to them, right?”

Romeo found himself staring at her, the pain in the center of his chest throbbing like the aftermath of a bruise.

“I don't remember anything except Carlo,” he told her. “I know who I am, and what I was like, but my memories consist only of Carlo.”

Sophia stared back, speechless.

“Remembering Carlo is what woke me up,” he muttered. “I had the necklace, and I knew from who it was the moment I read the inscription on it. I recognized the face P's was modeled after. But he's not Carlo. I know that now.”

“Romeo...”

“And if I don't remember anything except Carlo, am I even really Romeo at all? Who am I?”

He didn't dare say more. His head was pounding with the absence of fundamental memories. He clamped his lips together tightly, and for the first time in his puppet life, he caught himself craving a cigarette. Or a drink.

After a few moments of bewildered silence, Sophia stood up from the loveseat, approached him, and laid a ball-jointed doll hand on his shoulder. He allowed it, feeling strung up like piano wire. Her voice was quiet, gentle, cautious.

“Of course you are Romeo. Who else would you be? Your body houses Romeo's Ergo.”

“And P's body houses Carlo's Ergo,” he said dryly. “He's not Carlo.”

They remained like this for half a minute, Sophia's hand light on his shoulder, watching P as he laid unconscious on the bed. Most of the suite was dark, but the fireplace casted a warm circle of light on the floor, and Gemini's green glow illuminated them.

“He is a special puppet,” Sophia argued, squeezing his shoulder gently. “Geppetto designed him to be different. It's unfair to hold yourself to the same standards. You are Romeo. Don't doubt it.”

How do you know? He wanted to ask. How can you be sure? But he swallowed the questions back, because he didn't actually want to know. Whether he was truly Romeo, dead and awakened in a new body, or a mere copy of someone who was pushing up daisies in a cemetary somewhere, it would make no difference. Yet another pill to swallow. He shook his head, as if to clear it. His gaze wandered over to a small table, on which he noticed a fancy-looking bottle of wine or whiskey, a pack of cigarettes and a silver ashtray. He frowned longingly.

“God, I'd do anything for a single drag.”

It was three in the morning.

P woke up to the sound of the grandfather's clock and, for a frightening instant, had no idea where he was. His sleep had been bottomless and uneasy, something similar but not identical to the pitch blackness from before he awoke on the train – that felt like it happened ages ago – and he was relieved when, opening his eyes, he saw the comforting light of Monad's Lamp. Outside, a strong wind blew.

“Finally, you've come to!” Gemini exclaimed, chirping. He sounded upset but relieved. “What were you thinking, pal? Don't ever do that again! Think of me sometimes! Do you have any idea how worried I was?”

“Sorry,” P whispered.

“You should be,” Romeo said.

P turned his gaze away from the lantern to the dimly lit silhouette next to him. Romeo was sitting in an armchair, his legs and arms crossed, and a cigarette dangled, unlit, between his lips. In the dark, P could barely make out his eyes. He looked at him, then around.

“Where is Sophia?”

Romeo made a noncommittal sound.

“Gone. Said she best leave and hide until the whole puppet hatred thing dies down.” He tilted his head towards the night table. “She left you a letter.”

The letter in question was carefully folded into a blue enveloppe, slipped under Gemini's lamp. P sat up on the bed, turned up the intensity of the light, and read it. Sophia's handwriting was small, neat and curvy.

Thank you for giving me a new life. The fact that an Ergo puppet can have a second life and become another kind of human requires more time for people to find out about it.

Until then, I won't return to the hotel but plan to stay at Arche Abbey.

The Krat Disaster has stopped. Still, there is the aftermath of the Petrification Disease and the puppets. Please heal the wounds for the people.

You're the reason we have our freedom. Thank you so much. I'm grateful you freed me... from my puppet strings.

“Good news?” Romeo asked. “You're smiling.”

P looked up from the letter. Romeo's eyes were on him, but they held no particular curiosity. They looked calm, tired.

“You did not read it?”

“Why would I have? She was here long enough while you were asleep. If there was anything she wanted me to know, I'm sure she had ample time to tell me. What's in that letter is between you and her.”

“How are you feeling?” Gemini asked.

P thought about it. How did he feel? He supposed he was feeling alright. He told Gemini as much, and Gemini let out a sigh of relief.

“Don't ever do that again, pal,” he repeated. “I'm serious.”

“I will not.”

There was no telling if this would eventually turn out to be a lie or not, but right now P thought it was the truth. The Ergo he had given Sophia was hers. He didn't know why it had that effect on him, but counted himself lucky that he was truly feeling normal. Patting Monad's Lamp comfortingly, he flicked a glance at Romeo.

“Are you still thinking about Carlo?”

It was a difficult question to ask and, not having much experience in tact, he fully expected Romeo to snap at him. Instead, Romeo made a long, quiet noise, similar to a sigh.

“Always,” he said, and his voice was dour. “Aren't I such a romantic? Goes well with my stupid name. Kids at school always bothered me about that.”

“Do you want me to act like him?”

Romeo's face stiffened. He looked at him for a long time without saying a word, the useless cigarette pinched in his mouth.

“Could you?” he asked, slowly.

“I think so. I do not remember much... Only a few of his memories are accessible to me. But I could learn. Would that make you happy?”

Romeo kept staring. Eventually, he looked away.

“I don't want you to act like him,” he said. “Hell, you don't want to act like him either. You're not Carlo. I'm over that now. You're you.”

“I hated him,” P admitted, thinking this would spark Romeo's temper.

It did not.

“That's okay if you did. Carlo this, Carlo that, all the time, from everyone... It's okay. I get it. For what it's worth, I won't bother you with Carlo anymore.”

P considered these unexpected words from all angles, tension tightening in his shoulders. He struggled with his throat, then said:

“Father did not want Carlo back. Not really Carlo. He wanted Carlo without all the things he did not like, or understand, or approve of about him. He did not understand that these things made Carlo... Carlo. If I had given my heart to Father... something else would have awakened.”

The wind howled against the windows. Romeo was looking at him fixedly.

“But it would not have been Carlo,” he guessed.

“A perfect Carlo. An obedient Carlo. No mischievousness, no lies, no resentment.”

“No cigarettes.”

“No feelings for you.”

He saw the hurt in Romeo's eyes, but Romeo smiled wryly to show he could take his lumps. In P's opinion, he looked like a porcelain vase that had been pushed to the very edge of the shelf by an uncaring cat. Romeo took the cigarette out of his mouth, looked at it, turned it between his fingers.

“If that's what Geppetto called bringing Carlo back to life, then I'm glad Carlo stayed dead,” he murmured.

Suddenly, with a swiftness that caused Gemini to cry out – “Woah!” – and P to shudder, Romeo turned and flung the cigarette at the wall, his arm drawning taut like a violin's bowstring about to snap, greased machinery whirling smoothly to life. The cigarette hit the painting of a still-life, then the floor. P followed it with his eyes until it rolled out of sight under a loveseat. He counted mentally to five before looking up at Romeo again.

Romeo seemed to try to take a breath in and, remembering that he could not, ran a shaky hand through his hair. His eyes were glum, but his outburst had passed already. With no idea where this absolute certainty came from, P thought this would be the last time in a long, long time his emotions would overwhelm him like this.

After all that, life could only get better.

Chapter Text

At the crack of dawn, P bid farewell to the friends he had made. He went to the Lost Flower Garden first, where the first brightening of the morning and the singing of birds made Antonia and Geppetto's gravestones look more peaceful than lonely. He knelt down and talked to them as if they could hear him – long enough for the sun to rise into the sky and the hotel's residents to get out of bed. Then, he stood back up and lingered another moment, looking at the crosses.

“Goodbye, Antonia. Goodbye, Father.”

He wondered if goodbyes always made your mouth taste this sour.

Venigni had packed his things already; the factory and train models were gone from their shelves, and Pulcinella stood waiting next to two large suitcases. Venigni's face lit up when P walked up to him, and he took him by the shoulders, squeezing them with affection. He called him my friend, told him that Polendina was leaving with him, and asked one more time if P was certain, a hundred percent certain he did not want to come with him, and P, one more time, said that yes, he was certain, thank you for offering. Venigni sighed sadly, but did not insist. He said to come find him if anything happened, and to keep in touch even if nothing happened. P said he would. When Venigni hugged him, he hugged back, his chest feeling as tight as a needle's eye as the P-Organ whirled and throbbed with joy and sadness both. On his way out, he hugged Pulcinella too.

In her workshop, Eugénie was almost done packing. The weapons on display were gone, her toolbox was locked and set aside, and her porcelain figurines had been carefully wrapped up in several layers of fabric, now waiting on the counter to be put away with the rest. Contrary to Venigni, everything she had fitted in a single suitcase. She said Venigni and she had gone to the factory the day prior and, the phones working again, had contacted the closest city. Help was on its way. She was bringing Spring with her and, like Venigni, she told him to stay in touch. P agreed to. She did not hug him, but she shook his hand and held it for a moment. After she let go, he said goodbye to Spring, watching as the orange furball bumped her head against the palm of his hand and purred. As he turned to leave, he caught a glimpse of Eugénie taking off her glasses to wipe her eyes with her sleeve.

The reception desk was strangely empty, but Polendina did not go far. P found him in the piano room, standing in front of the same portrait that Antonia herself had spent so much of what little time she had left, in the same spot she used to sit in her wheelchair. His footsteps echoed in the room as he approached, but Polendina didn't seem to hear. He was staring at the painting, his stiff face devoid of anything.

“How odd,” he said when P reached him. “This portrait reminds me of someone... Only I can not remember who.”

P looked at the picture. Do I still have a flicker of the beauty captured in that portrait? Antonia had asked him not so long ago. He wished she was still here, now that he was human enough and good enough with words to tell her that her kindness and dignity were such that no paint could ever capture them, and that these, in his eyes, were what was truly important.

“Do you really not?” he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

Polendina tilted his head. Even though his face was incapable of emoting, P thought he could feel him grasping for muddled emotions he no longer had the faculty to understand.

“A woman,” he said. His voice was slow, hesitant. “How curious. Was it this woman? She seems... kind.”

P looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but Polendina didn't see it; he was still staring at the portrait. Would he ever remember? Difficult to say, but P thought the answer was probably no. The memories were dormant, but the fear of suffering wasn't. Soon, he would leave the hotel, and he would never see Antonia's portrait again, which meant there would never be what Venigni called a light-bulb moment. Antonia was dead, and Polendina as P knew him had died with her.

“Yes,” he nodded, fighting off the salty taste of tears in the back of his throat. “She was very kind.”

He looked all over the hotel for Romeo next, but could not find him anywhere. Did he leave without a word? The thought, while it saddened him, hardly surprised him. Maybe sometimes it was easier – not better, easier – to skip the goodbyes and take your leave quietly, while no one was looking. With no one else to talk to one last time, he headed back to the Lost Flower Garden. Help was on its way, Eugénie had said; he better be out of sight before the help in question arrived. According to Gemini, when people would ask Venigni and Eugénie what in the world happened in Krat, he did not want to be there.

He decided to leave through the secret passage that led down to what had once been the city hall of the Malum District and the hideout of the Black Rabbit Brotherhood. From there, he thought while walking, he could make his way to the cathedral and Moonlight Town. Beyond that, the world was unknown to him. That was okay. Soon, it would not be unknown anymore. He was not worried. Gemini was with him, as he always had been.

As he was about to reach the elevator, he slowly came to a halt. Romeo was waiting for him by the lever, looking at him, not saying anything. He looked different. He wore clothes. When he raised a hand to wave at him, P noticed his fingers had no visible joints anymore and were covered by faux-skin that matched the shade of his face.

“Leaving without me?”

P blinked. He thought about all the times someone had said something so unexpected to him that he had been taken aback, but this one – how do you say it? – took the cake.

“You are coming.”

“You don't want me to?”

P considered the question in silence for a minute, Gemini's lantern glowing softly against his hip, Romeo waiting patiently for an answer, looking convincingly human. The morning breeze blew across the garden, gently rattling the branches of the Gold Coin Tree.

“I would like you to come,” P said.

Romeo nodded. Was that a smile on his face?

“Good. You got me worried for a second here. Where are we going exactly? Any idea?”

“I do not know what is out there.”

“That's alright. Your cricket is good at navigation, right?”

“Only for Krat,” Gemini protested readily. Chirp, chirp. “My database doesn't include anything about whatever is outside. Sorry, pal, but once we exit Moonlight Town, you're on your own.”

“Ah, well,” Romeo said, shrugging. “We'll see when we get there.”

P looked at him.

“Did you ask Venigni to upgrade your appearance? It looks good.”

“I did. Took him an ungodly long time, but if it means I can walk around fooling people into believing I'm as human as them, well... worth it, right? That guy is insufferable, but he is kind, I'll give him that.”

“We will have to lie a lot.”

“Yeah. Think you can do that?”

A smile tugged at P's lips. At a point in time that felt both like long ago and not so long ago, he would have said no, because Father had taught him that lying was bad, just like resentment and mischievousness were bad, but a lot had happened since then, and now lying came naturally to him. It was a real talent.

“I think I can,” he said.

“Then what are we waiting for? Come on, let's get out of here.”

Before following Romeo into the elevator, P looked over his shoulder one last time at the hotel and the city of Krat that spread out around it. I will never see it again, he realized, but that felt okay, that felt right. He only needed to let go of the place, not the memories of it, the same way Romeo was letting go of Carlo a little more every day. But not the memories. Never the memories.

With some difficulty, he averted his gaze and, resolutely, stepped into the elevator. Romeo pulled the lever, and down they went together, watching Hotel Krat as it slowly slid out of view.