Archive of Our Own

It was a supremely difficult thing to picture fear on Lea Florence’s face. It simply did not belong there, foreign on features that were so much more suited to confidence and severity. At least, that was how Romeo thought about it.

To he and Carlo, she was the pinnacle of everything they’d hoped to achieve since they were mere fantasising children swinging wooden swords at each other in the Charity House gardens. Everyday Romeo counted his lucky stars that she had so willingly adopted he and Carlo to be her apprentices, uncharacteristically accepting them into her life after she showed no real desire to break her self imposed solitude beforehand.

Master Lea was everything; their mentor, their family. Immaculate in her confidence and her grace. Always unflinching in the face of even the sheerest of adversity.

Which is why it was more than a little bizarre for Romeo to watch her hide behind he and Carlo, making herself appear as small as physically possible as she stared furtively over their shoulders towards the crowded ballroom, wearing a terse expression that approached animal neuroticism.

“That cannot have been her over there.” She was muttering fretfully, brows furrowed so closely together they risked a collision course. “Surely not. Why on earth would she be here?”

The three of them were huddled together in some far flung corner of the main hall of Krat’s even decadent Estella Opera House, camped out not far from a long buffet table that’d been set up near the stage.

That night, the Opera House was host to a ball on the most folderol level. The entire circular breadth of the ever beautifully aureate room felt overwhelmed with people dressed in all manners of posh and ostentatious attire, knitted tightly together in almost airless groups.

Where their little family stood was a section mostly divorced from this mass congregation, with only a few stragglers here and there drifting to and from the buffet table nearby. This gave them the clemency they needed to breathe, and actually hear each other over the susurrus drone of the live music and hundreds of voices that stuffed almost all of the air between the marble floor and high vaulted ceiling.

They'd chosen some belaboured attendant’s abandoned serving cart as their home base, clustered into a jagged semicircle in front of it, shoulder to shoulder, each of them surveying the scene with varying degrees of distress, most of which radiated from Lea.

”I don't think it was her.” Said Carlo thoughtfully, peering out at the ever undulating crowd through narrowed eyes. “…Actually, maybe I’m wrong. What does she look like again? Blonde, right?”

From her place hidden behind him, Lea had at some point placed a hand on Romeo’s shoulder, espying the scene conspiratorially from over it, like a child peeking over a countertop. Somehow, the dark frown already on her face managed to get several degrees darker at Carlo’s clarifying question. ”Yes. Blonde and tall.” She said grimly. “With a hideous sneer that could make a baby cry. You can feel it from miles away, like being raked by claws.”

Romeo worried at the inside of his cheek with his teeth, unsettled, but trying his best to keep a calm and open mind about the whole thing, and more importantly, focus on soothing the roiling anxiety in his mentor. “I’m sure it’s fine. Even if she is here, there’s enough people here that I doubt we’ll be spotted. It’ll be okay.”

The subject of the trio’s hushed consortium was one Markiona, a high ranking Alchemist, and the woman whom Lea had truncated a romantic relationship with some several months before accepting Romeo and Carlo as her apprentices, a parting that had supposedly been far from amiable.

According to Lea, something in Markiona had…changed. Or perhaps that fiendish nature had always been there, festering beneath the surface, carefully obscured, unseen by Lea until it was far too late.

Either way, it had led to what sounded like a pretty cataclysmic break-up, at least in Romeo’s opinion. Lea didn’t often speak of it, and neither he nor Carlo felt very inclined to press at such an obvious wound and cause their mentor more unneeded distress.

But from what little she had shared, coupled by the deep and vacant horror that would linger behind her eyes whenever she recounted it, gave them both a clear enough picture of how it had likely played out.

And it was only supported in part by how Lea looked right at that moment too, tragically unreceptive to what Romeo had hoped would be reassuring words. She merely stared out at the crowd fervently from over his shoulder, looking deathly haunted.

It certainly didn’t help that Master Lea had already been particularly on edge even before the reported Markiona sighting. The three of them had been mostly keeping to themselves throughout the night to begin with, not too keen on socialising with all of the intimidatingly high society folk littering the marble and velveteen floor.

In reality, the fact that the three of them had even decided to attend such a thing was a miracle in itself— had they been able to leave sooner, they likely would have by that point.

In the spirit of frank honesty, large populated events like this were not something that particularly excited Lea or Carlo at all, Romeo knew this quite assuredly. He himself found such affairs generally fine, always able to comfortably assimilate to any situation via his enviable smile and prolific charisma (if you asked him, anyway), but the same could regrettably not be said for two people he’d chosen to so intimately link his entire life to.

The truth of the matter was that Romeo had more extroverted tendencies in his pinky finger alone than his constant companions had in their entire bodies. Which was in no way a bad thing; Romeo wasn't about to ridicule them for simply having a different temperament from him, but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make things just a little difficult when he was trying to talk to someone with the two of them acting like silent, glowering phantoms at his back.

But again, it was fine— it was just one of the many things Romeo found infinitely endearing about them, more than anything. He held no room for regret when it came to intertwining his life with theirs, because there was no regret to be had in the first place.

But the point of the matter was that Lea and Carlo clearly wanted to be literally anywhere else but there right now, Lea especially, what with the suddenly revealed threat of her dubious-natured ex-partner lingering nearby. Normally, Romeo would’ve been more than happy to have not attended too— if the two of them didn’t want to be somewhere, he didn’t want to be there either, simple as that.

Even with all his genial extrovertness, Romeo would much rather be in his family’s company than anyone else's, so what would even be the point of going to things like this on his lonesome, not accompanied by the people he truly wanted to spend time with? Romeo found the whole idea terribly unappealing.

But alas, their attendance had been something of a requirement, to put it in layman’s terms. The party was being hosted by the Venigni Company, organised by Krat’s Prince of High Society himself. He’d formally invited Lea to the occasion, even going so far as delivering the invite to the apartment she now shared with her two apprentices since their graduation in person.

He said it was to thank her, but for what specifically he did not elaborate. All Romeo knew was that a mutual shadow had momentarily passed across the faces of both his mentor and Mr. Venigni at that admission— dark, mournful looks that clearly originated from a memory the two of them intrinsically shared.

That alone gave Romeo a tentative impression as to what the significance was, or rather the specific event it related to, but he chose not to pursue it, reluctant to dredge up any more bad memories for his dear mentor.

Regardless, Mr. Venigni had very nearly begged Lea to attend, insisting that she bring Romeo and Carlo along as well should they both want.

Lea had not wanted to go, obviously, but Mr. Venigni’s unfathomable earnestness and enthusiasm had ultimately torn her into conceding. She’d told Romeo and Carlo that they didn’t need to come if they didn’t want to (she mostly aimed this at the latter, knowing very well herself of his own detestment towards social gatherings), but they’d outright refused to let her go alone, obviously.

It hadn’t been so bad to begin with— despite the ball’s attendance mainly consisting of sumptuous aristocrats and high ranking Workshop Technicians and the like, a genre of people that generally fell outside of the kinds of folk the trio typically interacted with, there’d been at least a handful of people they’d managed to achieve somewhat friendly conversation with, for a time.

(None of them drew attention to the fact that the threat of running into Carlo’s less than ideal father existed as well, given his direct involvement with Mr. Venigni’s work. But though encountering his father in any capacity was a subject of much abhorrence for Carlo, he wasn’t nearly as anxious about possibly running into Mr. Geppetto as he was about just being at the event in general.

This was solely because Carlo had already reassured himself about it long before the trio had even left their shared apartment to begin their pilgrimage to the Opera House, and Romeo recalled with clarity the scathing, resentful way in which he had translated his thoughts about it, aimed completely at the entire subject of his transient father. “That stupid old man is always too busy to do even bare minimum shit like visiting his son, so why the hell would he waste his oh so precious time going to a ball?”)

They’d initially retreated to that far reach of the main hall with the intention of picking at the buffet table as much as it was to give themselves a bit of a breather from the overwhelming crowd for a moment too. It had been a little much, even for Romeo.

They’d only made it about halfway to the lavishly laid out tables of food before Lea had gone suddenly rigid, staring wildly into a nearby assortment of attendees, like woodland prey that’d heard the ominous, telltale snapping of a twig somewhere deep inside the trees behind it.

She had then bundled up the long ends of her scarlet dress in her hands and hastily carried herself away from the buffet table without so much as a word or second thought, leaving her two perplexed apprentices to haplessly follow after her, immediately concerned about what had shaken her so suddenly and inexplicably.

Which all brought them to that exact moment, Romeo and Carlo now thoroughly enlightened on the causation of their mentor’s capricious change in behaviour. They kept themselves clustered in their covert little half circle in front of the abandoned serving trolley, aiming suspicious glances over their shoulders at different intervals in the pursuit of catching a glimpse of Lea’s sinister phantom.

“This is ridiculous,” said Lea abrasively through clenched teeth. “Why would she be here? Venigni would not have invited her, surely…then again I suppose she was a Workshop Technician before she was an Alchemist, but even still…” Lea’s murmurous contemplation faded into an unintelligible hum, made that much harder to parse by the way she’d started to bite furiously at her freshly painted nails.

”I don't think I even see her.” Carlo, who’d appeared to have finished his scrutinising survey of the congested room, pointed out. “Romeo’s right— there’s too many people to be sure, we can probably stay hidden if we keep our heads down...” He made a face, evidently as discomfited by the scenario as his compatriots despite his words, surely exacerbated by his own aversion to such a stuffy and heavily populated gathering. “Probably.”

When Lea didn't reply right away, her lips pulled bloodlessly tight and her brow furrowed in cogitation, Romeo took another swing at ameliorating his mentor’s worry himself.

”We could go out to one of the terraces in the lobby maybe.” He ventured helpfully, offering a warm and kindly smile to his ruffled mentor. “I figure it’ll be less cramped out there, anyhow. If anyone asks, we can just say we were returning this trolley to the kitchen staff. I think I saw them coming from somewhere in the left wing when we arrived.”

To Romeo’s great joy, it looked as though he and Carlo’s combined efforts had proven fruitful. The tightly strung, defensive tension that’d gripped Lea’s shoulders appeared to ease just a fraction as she pondered it, and the tenacious scowling unease on her face dispersed somewhat.

But in the immediate absence of that unease, Lea looked suddenly a mixture of abashed and irritated instead; a unique and rare expression that Romeo regretfully knew to be how she would look whenever she felt profoundly disappointed in herself specifically. The sight of it quickly swung a hammer at the knees of his short lived joy.

Lea looked off to the side, penitent. “Perhaps that would be best. I…apologise for being so craven about this, my apprentices…It is unbecoming of me. I fear that I am not setting a good example.”

She must’ve sensed the matching concerned frowns that’d simultaneously appeared on both of her apprentice’s faces, as she looked back over at them curiously moments before Romeo even began to speak.

“Nonsense. From what you've told us about her, I think you're fully justified.” He assured, his frown softening into something gentle and open. “You don't need to put a brave face on for us all the time, you know.”

This was inexorably true, every single word. Romeo cared more about Lea’s actual feelings than he did about her ‘setting an example’ for them, and he knew Carlo only agreed.

In the recent months, Lea had become more their family than their mentor. In the beginning, she was hardly forthcoming about her emotions, keeping the two of them at arms length. But Romeo knew that it’d never been out of any sort of disdain that she may have felt for them— it’d solely originated from her reticent reluctance to allow any sort of companionship into her previously deeply withdrawn and solitary life.

Lea feared a warm touch more than she did a cold blade, that much had been obvious from the get go. In synchronous tandem, Romeo and Carlo had made it their mission to break down her steep walls, to remind her that there was always a light in the darkness, that there was always love to be had.

And it worked. It so wonderfully worked. Lea was their family, and Romeo and Carlo were hers, and none of them would’ve had it any other way.

Which is why Romeo so earnestly wanted to at least help remove her from the looming threat of potentially encountering someone so unpleasant. Ideally, the most preferred option for all of them would’ve just been for them to leave the ball all together and dick around in the woods with their weapons for some late night training, or literally anything else. But as mentioned prior, they sort of had to stay for at least a little while, at least to show their appreciation and good graces to Mr. Venigni.

(Lea had even professed earlier that she could very easily imagine the hurt, kicked dog-like expression Venigni would’ve displayed if he’d learnt that they’d bailed on his party so soon, and her want to completely avoid that was making up quite a good deal of her resolve. Romeo couldn’t say he blamed her— despite his luxuriant social standing and the manifold achievements that’d earned him it, through the few times Romeo had encountered him, Mr. Venigni struck him as a man so perennially convivial and full-hearted that you’d feel absolutely awful about making him sad in any kind of way.)

But it was alright— so long as they stayed together, everything would be okay, and that night wouldn’t feel as long or arduous as they feared. It was always okay whenever they were together.

“Yeah, she sounds like a right cow. I wouldn’t want to run into her either, and I haven't even met her.” Carlo agreed emphatically, earning a surreptitious snort from Romeo at the candid guilelessness of it.

The two of them rejoiced internally as Lea managed a smile, one that crinkled the corners of her eyes, highlighting the fondness in which she regarded them both with. She hummed a single note laugh behind closed lips, clear and resplendent like the chime of a bell. “Well…that is reassuring, to be sure.”

Then Lea sighed, folding her arms across her chest in a way that may have doubled as a self-embrace. ”I…truly cannot bear the thought of talking to her right now, if I can be honest with you both. I’d rather throw myself off the top of Krat City Hall than have to listen to her wretched voice for even a second.

“I don't want to give her the satisfaction of getting a rise out of me, especially during an event like this.” Lea’s face darkened again as she looked out towards the crowd once more, deadly with a low and smouldering anger that must’ve festered from within some deep, Markiona-induced crack in her heart. “That is all she is after these days…if not worse.”

“Then we won’t let her.” Said Carlo astutely with a sharp and confident smile to match, clasping his hands together with a severe finality. “This event is foul enough without someone like her coming along to make it worse.”

Following his mentor’s gaze, Carlo once more eyed the horribly overcrowded Opera House floor with mild contempt, the edges of his smile curdling with wry. “And honestly? Any excuse to get out of this blasted hall for even a little while sounds excellent to me.”

Romeo snorted faintly, brushing his knuckles against Carlo’s shoulder in the world’s lightest and most affectionate punch. “Need I remind you that we’re doing this for Master Lea’s sake, not just because you don't want to be here either.”

In quick response, Carlo levelled Romeo with a glare that was distinctly more humour than disgust. “God forbid I show a little empathy.” He said curtly, but his eyes glittered with unmistakable mirth as he returned a playful ‘punch’ of his own to Romeo’s arm.

Romeo laughed a touch louder now, shaking his head with dramaticised resignation before saying; “I will admit, it is a little cluttered in here for my tastes, too.”

Lea had turned back towards the two of them during their little bout of fatuous ribbing, the momentarily benighted look that’d overtaken her features abruptly banished like lingering frost washed by morning sunlight the moment she turned back to her apprentice’s, her earlier smile retaking its rightful place.

After rolling her eyes in fond exasperation, Lea hid chastened snickers behind her knuckles as she watched them carry out one of their many routines of affectionately fake bickering, her countenance leagues brighter than it had been in the past little while. Romeo would’ve called it an overwhelming success, if it didn’t all fall apart with catastrophic violence a mere second later.

Lea opened her mouth to speak, and then stopped, her smile receding with alarming speed. She stood stock-still and pale, like she’d petrified into grey stone right before their eyes, the astounding rate in which Romeo watched the blood drain from her face only proved to bolster the effect wholesale.

She wasn't looking at he or Carlo anymore, but at something directly over Romeo’s shoulder, and she stared at it with the fraught apprehension and consternation of a soldier spotting an incoming missile.

That was all Romeo needed to see to ascertain what was currently beginning to unfold, and it similarly ground his mind to a brisk, mortified halt.

In fact, the rapidly dawning certainty of the situation was only thoroughly intensified by the sound of someone pointedly clearing their throat behind them, followed by a voice that was drawling and mellifluous in its intonation.

”Excuse me.”

A leaden ball of dread dropped heftily into Romeo’s stomach so fast that it nearly made him light headed. He felt the hairs on his neck rise beneath his neatly pressed suit collar, grasped by an instinct he only ever felt during battle or training; whenever he sensed an enemy trying to discreetly get him from behind at the last second.

And just as he would’ve done during a battle, Romeo whipped around automatically in response, tightly poised with his hands unconsciously gripping for a weapon that currently did not exist.

Standing before them, having parted from the ever shifting crowd to approach the far flung little corner of the stage their family was camped out in, was an extravagantly dressed woman with a wine glass filled with bright scarlet liquid poised elegantly in one hand, blonde and tall, with a hideous sneer that could make a baby cry.

She wore a sheer blue dress with a simply gaudy amount of furs draped across her bare shoulders and looped frivolously around her neck. Her sharp face was framed by pale blonde hair so tremendously glossy in its sheen that it probably made Romeo’s own resemble dry straw by comparison.

She was beautiful— this fact was ostensibly true, no matter who you were. But she was beautiful in almost a strange, almost haunting way, like a gorgeous marble statue of an angel you’d find in the depths of a drab, dark cemetery.

It was the type of beauty that was deceptive in its loveliness, unnerving, secretively concealing a much darker, malformed thing beneath its otherwise decadent surface. She was a beautifully carved letter opener that was marred with something dark and dried— something that could’ve been ink or blood, and you’d never be sure which it was.

She regarded Romeo and Carlo with a mild smile that was entirely pneumatic and superficial in its composition, one that belied any real friendliness. Her eyes were what gave away the hidden malice behind her makeup covered mask; they were like chips of ice; precise in their sharpness, deeply frigid in their scorn.

“Terribly sorry to trouble you two fine young gentlemen,” The woman said lightly, though Romeo got the distinct impression that she actually wasn’t sorry at all. “But could I possibly steal but a brief moment of your time?”

Said apprentices merely gawked at her, stupefied into paralysis. Romeo was duly aware of Carlo still standing shoulder to shoulder with him, likely having shared that same fight-or-flight instinct response Romeo had experienced, causing him to have spun around to face their unexpected company as fast as his friend had.

Romeo could just make out Carlo’s bloodless, horrified profile in his periphery, looking very much like he was on the verge of passing out, or throwing up, or perhaps both.

That was just about the only modicum of thought Romeo was presently allowed. His brain felt as though it had calcified into a heavy and non-functional brick inside of his skull, where trying to pry anything remotely intelligent out of it felt like trying to coax blood out of a rock.

Though fortunately at least one other impulse managed to bypass his sudden onset of cranial cement, one that prompted Romeo to fire a quick, discreet glance over his shoulder, towards where Lea should’ve still been standing.

Subsequently, he quickly discovered that she was just completely gone, so abrupt in her disappearance that it was almost as though she’d simply vanished into thin air.

It didn’t take Romeo long at all to determine where exactly she had disappeared to, however, mostly thanks to feeling a slight brush of something against his calf, something moving underneath the drape covered serving trolley still standing directly at his back, something that was trying to shuffle stealthily into place.

In a fortuitous turn of events, it appeared as though Lea had not been spotted by their new company during her approach at all, obscured as she had been behind Romeo and Carlo, though it was probably the product of the former’s significant height difference over his mentor most of all.

It was good to know that Romeo’s years of tedious growing pains had resulted in at least something constructive for once, even if it was just acting as an excellently tall and gangly barrier that hid his much smaller mentor from sight. All it’d done for him beforehand was make it exceedingly simple to clout his forehead on low doorframes when he wasn’t paying attention.

It was Carlo who threw the first brick at the thick glass cube of frozen idiocy he and Romeo had found themselves trapped within, only for it to absolutely fall flat, the brick bouncing harmlessly off the confining walls of their abject startlement when all he managed to muster was a deeply useless; “Um.”

Incredibly, it appeared to have at least some effect though, for better or for worse. The woman —Markiona, it just had to be; every bit of descriptor Lea had ever given them about her ex-partner’s malignance had been made suddenly real and tangible, standing placidly in front of them like a miasma of death— took Carlo’s stuttering as assent to her question, or rather, simply did not care whether they both approved or not for it to even matter to her.

Markiona swirled the indistinct, blood red liquid inside her wine glass absentmindedly as she spoke, low and sickly with false sweetness. "I was merely curious...you two wouldn’t happen to be, well…the Legendary Stalker’s little sidekic— ehm. Apprentices, would you?"

"Legendary Stalker?" Romeo echoed vaguely and just as uselessly. Some distant part of his mind was yelling at him to play it cool, don’t let her know that Lea’s here or even that you know her.

But alas, Romeo found himself still momentarily bereft of most intelligent thought, so instead of something with more calculated precision, his idea of deterring Markiona from investigating Lea’s whereabouts ended up coming out as a deeply inelegant; "Who's that?"

Now that managed to shatter the thick panes of moronic inaction beleaguering he and Carlo, efficiently jumpstarting their brains back to a state that was actually cognisant. It was just a shame that it'd been achieved in not the most ideal of ways.

From the second he felt Carlo stiffen beside him, Romeo knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that had his friend possessed the ability to kill people with his mind, Romeo would've been vaporised instantly on the spot as soon as those ridiculously witless words had exited his mouth.

Since that power was evidently not within Carlo's repertoire of skills, he instead compensated for it with a discreet yet harshly pointed kick to Romeo's ankle.

Concealing both his flush of instant regret and involuntary wince of pain through a stringent clearing of his throat, Romeo hastily began to back-pedal, only to halt his efforts when Carlo decidedly beat him to it.

“What he means to say is that we…we know her…personally,” Carlo faltered mid sentence despite the initial determination behind his interjection, imperceptibly scrunching up his face in a way that no one else but a lifelong friend such as Romeo would be able to clearly decipher.

The look housed evident regret and disdain over the idea of having just immediately revealed even slightly pertinent information about their relationship with Lea to the Alchemist that they were actively trying to dissuade away from her. Carefully covering up that momentary change in countenance with practised ease, Carlo went on. “So we don’t, uh, often think of her with that title, you could say.”

(Privately, Romeo allowed himself just a little bit of childish vindication over Carlo managing to fuck-up as fast as he had right after being so austere about Romeo’s own mistake. It made him feel just a little less foolish about it.

As though Carlo had a sixth sense specifically summoned to identifying instances of Romeo’s smugness (something Romeo was more and more inclined to believe was real with each passing day), he kicked reproachfully at his friend with his foot a second time, although with much less violence behind it now, aiming for the hard leather of his shoe rather than his ankle.)

Tilting her head minutely to the side, Markiona regarded the two of them with a form of dull interest typically reserved for decomposing roadkill on the side of the road, whether or not she was wise to their respective fumblings left distressingly unidentifiable.

“Ah. How delightful.” She replied with about as much enthusiasm as a brick wall. She kept anything more about her feelings impressively unreadable, but Romeo thought he could glean just the vaguest sense of impatience trickling through.

Romeo didn’t need to be a master technician to recognise that Markiona simply did not care about either of them at all— they were her means to get at information about Lea, and that was all that mattered to her.

It made Romeo nauseous and angry and determined all at once— he would not let Markiona get what she wanted, he would not let his mentor be subjected to whatever ill intent this wicked omen of a woman had in mind for her.

This resolve he’d chosen to strive only skyrocketed when Markiona spoke next, slowly tapping a ghoulishly sharp nail against her wine glass. “Well, in any case…I simply wanted to ask if she was, well…accompanying you both tonight. I thought I caught a glimpse of her earlier somewhere in the crowd, but I couldn’t be sure…”

A smile curled at her reddened lips, and it was a terribly insidious thing to behold. “You see, I would just so love to see her again. Alas, I wouldn’t imagine that she’s told you, but she and I have something of a history…oh, where are my manners, I forgot to introduce myself— I am Markiona, though I am confident that my reputation precedes me.”

That’s one way to describe it, thought Romeo ruefully, trying his best to not let the accompanying disdain show on his face.

It was hard for Romeo to conceptualise the idea that this woman and his mentor had ever been romantically involved, yet at the same time he could. There was a dreadful beguilement to Markiona’s entire disposition, something that compelled you to listen to her, to want to be by her. She had an air of manipulating malevolence about her, like a predator laying in wait for unsuspecting prey to fall directly into its carefully laid trap.

It had zero effect on Romeo, knowing what he knew about her, but he could see how it may have claimed even someone as sharp witted and cautious of other people as Lea in the past, lured into Markiona’s ghastly embrace through lovely promises and sweet words that all held no real meaning. Lea being manipulated like that…it made Romeo sick to even think about.

Now that his head wasn’t packed entirely with mud, he hurriedly cycled through all manner of possible replies to give her, like flipping frantically through an encyclopaedia for the fastest way to get someone to go the hell away.

"Er— Well, she was here with us,” He began slowly, methodical.

Romeo didn't need to turn and look at him to feel the sheer intensity of the incredulous stare Carlo was suddenly burning into the side of his head.

Relax, I have a plan, Romeo thought loudly, in some vain hope that if he mentally willed the words out into the astral plane strongly enough Carlo would recognise their shape.

Said plan consisted of a lot of mental gymnastics all carried out in a harried, strangled pace of about three seconds. The most fortunate thing about Romeo being the more socially inclined of their family was that picking up on even subtle shifts in tone was something of a skill to him now, hammered into him after dealing with all manner of people throughout his life, even people as carefully reticent as Markiona was proving to be.

The way Markiona had said ‘I thought I saw her’ had instinctively made Romeo’s skin crawl, and so he’d chased down the origins of that feeling doggedly, hunting for its exact cause. He determined that it was in the way she had intoned it; each word had been hemmed with a kind of feign innocence that implied to him that she had in fact spotted Lea at some point, and was being purposefully ignorant about it.

So if he told Markiona that Lea hadn’t come at all, she would’ve immediately clocked that he was lying to cover for his mentor. She wanted to trap them into giving Lea away, and Romeo could not allow that.

Stuck between the crosshairs of Carlo's murderous glower and Markiona's malignantly charged indifference, Romeo couldn’t help but feel just a little bit like a helpless fish lying in the middle of a vast and arid desert despite his meticulous mental calculations. He could only hope that Lea was faring much better than he was from her refuge under the serving trolley.

But in the face of it all, Romeo stayed his course. “But unfortunately she started feeling somewhat unwell in the past hour or so, so she headed home not long ago.” He explained decisively, concealing the lie with as much self-assured confidence that he could muster, which was a lot, thankfully. “I’m afraid you just missed her.”

Silent, Markiona studied him for a long time, like he was an irritatingly complex puzzle in need of solving. Romeo held her scrutiny staunchly, valiantly suppressing the bile creeping up his throat.

Mercifully, she didn’t appear to find any exploitable fault in his story that she’d obviously been looking for, for Markiona eventually clicked her tongue, indicatively resigned.

“Ah…how disappointing.” She huffed faintly, gazing languidly off to the side. “For someone of such a lofty moniker, she proves to be such a frustratingly elusive woman. I suppose she was never one for parties, either.”

The moment she averted her steely gaze away from him, Romeo released through his nose a thin and haggard breath that he didn’t realise he’d been holding, almost dizzy with relief.

That should’ve been it; Markiona should’ve just headed away after that and left them wonderfully alone. But things never deigned to be simple, at least in Romeo’s experience.

Markiona swirled her nasty wine in its glass thoughtfully, not even giving them the courtesy of a glance when she spoke next. “I’m sure she was delighted to be given an excuse to skive out of one. I’m astounded that she even came along in the first place.” She tutted, aggravatingly priggish. “What a waste.”

Romeo felt Carlo, who’d kept very quiet throughout the recent minutes, once again go rigid again beside him, and Romeo subsequently felt a terrible dread reintroduce itself into his system.

While Romeo had mustered at least some effort to hide his sudden stinging contempt at how the Alchemist had just talked about his mentor in order to save face, Carlo, as was often common when it came to who possessed the better self control between the two of them, had most certainly not.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Said Carlo sharply, a little too sharply for Romeo’s liking. It slipped through his teeth like a snarl, uncaring of the dubious air of friendly conversation they’d been trying to keep up (though friendly may have been far too generous a descriptor, in all honesty).

There was only so much vague belittlement towards their mentor either of them could handle, Romeo could definitely attest to feeling positively aggrieved about it, finding it harder to keep himself politely composed with each passing second. But unlike Romeo, Carlo did not possess that specific level of restraint or patience, much preferring to let his thoughts be openly known, no matter how barbed they might’ve been in nature.

Markiona however merely looked delighted by the prospect of open hostility from her company. She cooed at Carlo like he was a sick puppy she’d found on the side of the road who’d attempted to bite her hand, pursing her lips larkishly.

“Oooh, I didn’t expect such bite from such a little lad. How delectably cute. That’s so much like Lea; she must be thrilled to have an apprentice so much like herself.”

Carlo’s scowl deepened to a vicious, animal degree at her openly condescending tone, and scrambling to avert a new calamity, Romeo clasped a hand that was both in calming reassurance and nervous warning against Carlo’s shoulder.

“Terribly sorry, ma’am,” He interceded tersely. “But was there anything more you needed from us?”

The tightly wound tension in Carlo’s shoulder eased a fraction beneath Romeo’s palm. His best friend’s touch appeared to have successfully returned critical thought to his furious mind, and subsequently must’ve thought better about further provoking their unpleasant conversation partner (even if she had been the one to provoke them first— Romeo knew Carlo would be grousing about that fact later).

Carlo kept his frowning lips decidedly closed, but still did extremely little to cover up his naked antagonism regardless.

Still, this did not seem to bother Markiona in the slightest— in fact, she still appeared more riveted by this sudden antagonistic shift in the tone of their train wreck of a conversation than she had been by anything else they’d said to her so far. Romeo’s yearning for her to go away was now ineffable in its potency.

But she closed up the look quickly behind more pretences of formality, humming disinterestedly at Romeo’s query. “I suppose not. You’ve answered my question adequately enough. I shan’t keep you any longer.”

Rolling her shoulder impassively, she made to move away. But before Romeo could even begin to mentally rejoice, she paused mid turn, angling her defined side-profile back towards them imploringly.

"Actually, one last question, perhaps unrelated to Lea…”

Romeo heard Carlo exhale harshly through his teeth next to him, a sound that was lathered with a distinct notion of overwhelming violence. Romeo himself couldn't help but feel similarly.

Markiona’s eyes drifted past Romeo’s shoulder, conspicuously landing on the covered serving trolley at his back. At once, alarm bells began to flash in coruscating ferocity behind Romeo’s eyes, filling his chest with the imploding panic of a dying star.

“Where were you going with that trolley there, boys?” She asked, gesturing casually towards said trolley with her wine glass. “I didn’t think apprentices of the oh so esteemed Legendary Stalker would need a second job as Opera House scullions to scrabble together some extra coin, of all things!” She laughed haughtily, conspicuously trying to frame it as a joke more than the disparaging insult it most definitely was.

Trying not to let his dismay at Lea possibly being discovered nor the foul taste that obvious jab at his family left in Romeo’s mouth show contemptuously on his face, he once more forced himself to remain calm and amiable.

He couldn’t afford to break now— if he just gave her a sufficient answer, she would finally leave them alone. He hoped.

He focused in on that hope like it was the rope that would liberate him and his family from the confining walls of a deep and chthonically dark well, which was an apt descriptor for how this entire interaction had more or less felt like to navigate.

That, and the less interest Markiona showed in the serving trolley at their backs and the direly important nature of its hidden contents, the absolute better.

In any case, this whole ordeal needed to be ended right now. Carlo remained menacingly quiet at Romeo’s side even in the face of such a pointed insult, which was both a blessing and a deeply unnerving thing to recognise at the same time.

Carlo was only keeping it together for both Lea and Romeo’s sake, clearly just as eager for the encounter to end as Romeo was. But it was clear to Romeo through just his intimate familiarity with Carlo’s disposition alone that his tight vow of silence would not be able to last should the conversation be prolonged even a little bit.

In time, Carlo’s anger would inevitably smother all other rational thought, and Romeo couldn't be responsible for what happened if that reality came to pass.

And not only that, as Markiona had leveled her not so thinly veiled insult at them, Romeo had yet again felt a bump against his calf as the hidden body beneath the serving tray moved. It felt a bit like the sharp edge of an elbow that time, and now there was a violence behind it, like Lea had just instinctively jerked her arm to grab for a sword she didn’t have.

Romeo could sense her unbridled fury without even needing to see her— to speak ill of her apprentices was something of a death wish to those who knew her more closely. He knew if this kept up, and Markiona was allowed to speak more of her mind at their expense, his mentor wouldn’t be able to keep herself hidden for much longer.

In prevention of yet another steadily approaching catastrophe, Romeo realised that he needed to wrap up this good cop thing as soon as humanly possible, either before either of his two bad cops began enacting irrefutable violence, or he transformed into a bad cop himself.

“Oh, one of the servers left it by the buffet table, we were just about to return for them, is all." Romeo replied evenly, clasping his hands together in some attempt to mitigate his desire to clench them with white-knuckled ferocity at his sides.

Markiona’s eyebrows raised an inch, duly curious, and she tapped a claw-like nail against her wine glass with slow, deliberate thought.

Though he refused to falter under her pernicious inspection, Romeo swallowed a thick wad of dread forming in the back of his throat before it could void his lungs of all breathable air. Oh my god, please just leave.

After another long, terrible moment, made only more long and terrible by the thoughtful and purposefully lengthy drag she took from her wine glass in order to delay her reply even further, Markiona appeared to reach some long pondered conclusion, and her expression flattened, once more taking on an effect of mild apathy.

There was nothing more they could entertain her with, obviously, and in that moment Romeo had never felt more relieved about being considered boring by someone in his entire life.

"Oh, what good samaritans you two are.” She cooed mawkishly, the sound as skin-crawlingly condescending in its tone as it had been when she’d commented on Caro’s outburst prior. “How adorably quaint. Very well. I won’t keep you, then.”

With that, Markiona inclined her head towards them in what was likely meant to be a polite acknowledgement of farewell, though it lacked any and all pleasantries that would usually be associated with such a gesture. “Have a good night now, boys, and do send Lea my most dearest regards, if you would. I pray that her sickness does not claim her.”

Without awaiting a reply, Marikona turned on her heel, her pallid dress and all its egregious furs swirling around her like a baleful winter storm as she did so.

With one last glance over her shoulder, the expression Markiona offered the two of them was something Romeo dared not even begin to compare to a smile.

It was a dreadful thing to behold; a sinister curl to her lips that was so alien to anything that could ever be considered kindly. It was a bastardised simulacrum of kindness that spoke only of deep, indulgent malice.

“It would be terribly inconvenient if she were to die in such a miserable way…when I cannot be there to see it happen.”

Leaving those ominous, threatening words to hang darkly above their heads like flimsily strung up daggers just begging to drop, with a flourish, Markiona pivoted away, whisking back into the congregation commingling across the expansive opera hall, until she vanished from sight like a pale wraith amongst a sea of fancily dressed bodies.

For the following few moments, Romeo and Carlo did little else but stand there numbly, observing the spot where they’d watched her disappear, their minds —potentially their very souls— clogged with a sense of indescribable foreboding, like the type of feeling that came from bearing witness to a steadily approaching hurricane.

Insensate, almost wondering in his stunned disconnect, Romeo realised for not the first time that the way in which Lea and Markiona had parted must’ve been an astonishingly cataclysmic breakup to behold, indeed.

“I did not like her.” He heard Carlo say colourlessly from beside him, and Romeo knew innately that not only was his spoken sentiment a total understatement to how he truly felt, but an utterly astronomical understatement at that.

As Markiona disappeared into the crowd, even in his partially discombobulated state, Carlo had openly glared barbed daggers into her retreating back, his fists clenched bloodlessly at his sides and his eyes narrowed into furious slivers.

Romeo could not replicate the wholly justified look on his friend’s face himself, too preoccupied by the dizziness that’d suddenly beset him in the wake of Markiona’s threat (he was surprised to realise just how exhausted he suddenly felt too, as though all of his energy had been siphoned entirely into keeping a somewhat even control on the whole ordeal, and now that it was over, he felt not unlike a damp and raggedy towel that’d been wrung out one to many times), but he shared in Carlo’s feelings wholesale, that much was for absolute certain.

The anger in which Romeo felt on his mentor’s behalf was unspeakable in its breadth and intensity, stewing behind his chest like flames in a boiler.

It was nothing short of a miracle that he had managed to remain so civil during the tail end of that conversation. At one point, as she’d been speaking, Romeo had idly entertained the thought of slapping Markiona’s wine glass out of her hand and expelling its brackish contents directly onto her detestably smug face, and had to focus incredibly hard on suppressing the overwhelming want to do so.

But in the face of it all, Romeo's belated reply to his friend was just as much a tremendous understatement as Carlo’s been, intoned in a low, distant timbre. “No, I didn’t care much for her either.”

In the immediate minutes that ensued, after the two of them had unanimously agreed without need for words that removing their mentor (and by extension themselves) from the opera hall as fast as humanly possibly was now their number one priority, Romeo and Carlo worked together to roll the serving trolley out of the bustling hall and out into the lobby, under the guise of returning it to the kitchen as preemptively established.

Even in their haste to escape the horrific aura just being in Markiona’s general vicinity had since created in the already stifling environment of the ballroom, they were careful and methodical in their egress, making sure that each of their steps were timed with the third hidden pair of feet shuffling along in tandem with them beneath the trolley.

Encountering graciously minimal trouble along the way, Romeo and Carlo made it out into Opera Hall lobby with their precious cargo in tow, furtively skirting the curious looks of several handfuls of other partygoers also lingering out there among the speckled marble pillars as they went, until they came to a deserted alcove close to the left wing.

Only once Carlo had thoroughly scoped the nearby area for any more potentially unwelcome company did they address their hidden mentor, wanting to be completely sure that no one was going to chance upon them.

Perhaps they were being a touch over-cautious, but after an experience like that, could they really be blamed?

After dealing with Markiona and all her saccharine vileness first hand, Romeo would’ve sooner thrown bricks through every single stained glass window in the Saint Frangelico Cathedral until they burned him at the stake for treachery than allow his mentor to be subject to that loathsome woman more than she already had in the past.

Once Carlo had flashed Romeo a thumbs up in silent confirmation of their relative safety from any prying eyes, Romeo had dropped to a knee next to the cart and beckoned Lea out.

Their mentor, who was always so unflinching, so immaculate in confidence and grace, poised and stalwart and sharp, scrambled out from beneath the cloth covering the serving trolley in a way that distinctly did not adhere to such virtues.

Lea army rolled free from the white tablecloth with an ungainly inelegance not at all suited to one of her legendary moniker, partially tangling herself up in her dress as she writhed her weight back up onto her knees.

She took a beat to frantically look this way and that, further assuring Carlo’s assessment that they were alone with her own two eyes.

For having probably remained motionless for the most part of their earlier encounter, Lea looked positively disheveled, like she’d been dragged through a gorse bush backwards. Her hair that she had styled so neatly for that event was now loose and frizzy against her face, and her eyes were wild with a mixture of apprehension and distant anger, rage that Romeo knew to be entirely reserved for the things Markiona had said to them.

Romeo had thought as much earlier; but it was truly not like her to act so…fearful, if that even was the best descriptor for it.

Upon further inspection, it was more like reluctant animosity than true actual fear. It was the kind of affect one might’ve possessed when looking upon a particularly dilapidated building that they’d traversed through in the past and sustained a wicked injury from some splintered wooden beam or the like for their efforts, and were thus disdainfully disinclined to chance another expedition through it by any means.

But still, it was an unusual, foreign thing to observe from Lea. Lea who was so stalwart, Lea who was so unwavering. As much as she often refuted it, she had earned her title for inexorably good reason.

But, she was still human, and Romeo dared to believe that he and Carlo potentially knew that better than perhaps anyone in Krat. Lea held no fear in the face of danger and battle, but she more often than not shrunk from human connection in all its forms. It’d taken her some time to even open up the way she had to the two of them, after all.

More than ever now, Romeo was made aware of how deep a scar that Alchemist woman had presumably left in his mentor’s psyche, and now more than ever, was certain that were they misfortunate enough to cross paths with Markiona again, he wasn’t likely to be as civilised that time.

Lea appeared far too shaken to do so much as protest when her apprentices obsequiously closed in to help her to her feet. She grasped fervently to both of their arms as they diligently assisted her to a stand, creasing the fabric of their finely tailored suits with trembling fingers. She clung to them like she was drowning in some great black abyss and the two of them were the only things providing buoyancy for miles.

A rapid-fire collection of different emotions clattered from room across Lea’s features for a moment, heedless and unrestrained, flickering between that earlier apprehension and distant anger, among other things. It stopped when she raised her head to look her apprentices squarely in their faces, now with nothing but unfathomable remorse suffusing her expression.

“I am so, so sorry that you two had to endure that. Dealing with Markiona…it is an abject torture I would not wish upon anyone, least of all my own apprentices.”

Averting her eyes, Lea curled her lip to reveal gritted teeth, her countenance a dark, despondent mask of regret and self directed frustration.

“I’m ashamed to have behaved in such a way; I should’ve revealed myself, but I was…I was frozen. And yet I couldn’t bear hearing her aim such venom your way…her interrogating you both like that…I should’ve crawled out and jammed that wine glass down her blasted throat. I should’ve—“

Sensing a potential spiral coming on, Romeo clasped a conciliatory hand overtop of the one Lea had curled into his sleeve, squeezing it in gentle reassurance.

“It’s fine, Master Lea.” He told her affably, meeting her fretful gaze with a warm smile when his touch coaxed her to glance back their way, “You weren't kidding about how…unpleasant she is. I don't think I could’ve in any good conscience stood by and allowed her to say even a single word to you. I’m frankly more than happy to have shielded you from that, and I’m sure Carlo can agree.”

Carlo was already nodding eagerly before Romeo had even acknowledged it, having covered Lea’s other hand with his own at the exact same time Romeo had, conjoining the three of them in a jagged but faithful little circle.

He too looked at Lea with only beseeching compassion. ”Truly. It was an awful experience that would’ve been made even more awful if she’d gotten what she wanted and caught you. Honestly, if she really had managed to rope you into a conversation and said things like that to your face while we were standing right there, I probably would’ve thrown that entire damn serving trolley at her.”

Carlo paused, scrunching his face with conspicuous thought, like he was weighing several different outcomes in his head. He seemed to concede to whatever he was debating, which appeared to centre on whether or not he should reveal an added truth, for he candidly added; “Well— I was pretty close to just doing that regardless, actually. It was about five seconds away from going from hypothetical to practical before Romeo finally got her to leave.”

Lea barked a laugh, looking startled for a brief blip of a second as she did so, as though she’d surprised herself with it.

”Let’s not discuss all the ways in which we might get ourselves permanently banned from this venue, shall we?” She groused with a dramatic eye roll, though it was said with jocular lightness, completely without rancour. Her apprentices snickered in chorus.

Visibly relaxing, Lea carefully unhooked her grip from her apprentice’s sleeves and turned her hands palms up so that she could instead link her fingers with both of their own. She exhaled softly; calmed.

“I digress. I am…truly fortunate to have to have a pair of apprentices— a family, as thoughtful as you two. I won't forget what you've done for me tonight anytime soon, I assure you.”

Romeo interlocked his fingers securely with Lea’s without a second thought, his heart swelling with the now more than familiar feeling of tender devotion he experienced by just being in both Lea and Carlo’s presences. “A family looks out for each other, don't they?

He and Carlo beamed at her in simultaneous exultance, the latter expressing his clear agreement to Romeo’s words. Lea basked in the warmth of those grins like it was gentle sunlight against her face, effortlessly pulling her lips into a smile in turn, one that reached her eyes, making them shine with indescribable sentimentality.

”Yes…I suppose they do.”

Lea’s smile receded just a touch as a new thought briefly shadowed her gaze. “I…probably need to leave now; I’m far too overwrought to endure anymore of this pretentious nonsense. You two need not accompany me if you don't want to. I wouldn’t want to take you away from an enjoyable time because of my…” She hesitated, as though unsure on whether or not to freely admit the true, vulnerable nature of her recent distress.

After looking upon her apprentice’s mutually open sincerity again, Lea seemed to relent and let down whatever remaining mental walls were inhibiting her speech. Though she still averted her eyes from them again with some measure of shame, her face hence softened into a more unguarded openness. “Because of my cowardice.”

This did extremely little to sour their little emotional moment— in fact, it only proved to reassert Romeo’s growing want to expedite their departure from this whole dreadful night as much as possible, so that the three of them could go off and do some menial task or whatever else, something that would be ten thousand times more enjoyable irregardless because it would just be them, perfectly alone together, unrestrained in their own private happiness.

Romeo exchanged a weighty look with Carlo, seeing his exact feelings mutually reflected in his best friend’s face. When he turned back to Lea, he offered her a sheepish, sideways grin.

“I wouldn’t worry. I think I speak for both of us when I say that the idea of remaining in the same building as her after that frightens me to absolute death, to be honest.”

Lea snorted, looking briefly off to the side with a rueful smile. “Yes…Markiona does certainly have that effect on people, I’m afraid.”

Carlo looked between his mentor and best friend with hopeful entreaty. “Well? Shall we get the hell out of here?”

Releasing a long, ameliorating breath, like she’d just been liberated from carrying thousand pound weights, Lea acknowledged her youngest with a toothy grin, a perfect mirror of his own eagerness to depart that entire unfortunate night.

”Nothing would truly delight me more.”

Abandoning their faithful serving trolley, mentor and both apprentices circumvented a path through the sparsely populated Estella Opera House lobby, hand in hand. They left the muffled din of the main hall and the sinister knowledge of the woman who still occupied it flippantly behind, irrelevant now in the prospect of a much more enjoyable evening of frivolousness, spent together with those who meant the most to them above all. Romeo personally could hardly wait.

”Hopefully Mr. Venigni won't be too upset that we ditched so early.” He commented, aiming an apologetic glance back towards the hall they’d left behind.

”We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Said Lea, though she too threw a mildly guilty look back over her shoulders, clearly trying to reassure herself as much as she was Romeo. “Venigni is a kind and venerable fellow…I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“You’re right,” Then, more cheekily, Romeo added; “I’m sure someone as highbrow and audacious as Mr. Venigni has had his own share of love troubles, too.”

Not wanting to release his hand, Lea prodded Romeo ineffectively in the ribs with her elbow in a way that was wholly devoid of any real malice or want of harm, just light-hearted exasperation that was unfathomably affectionate. It did little else but prompt a beatific cackle from her apprentice.

Swinging their conjoined hands childishly, Carlo leant forward a little, pinning his mentor with a cloyingly mischievous smile of his own, coupled with an over exaggerated batting of his assistedly long lashes. “Does us helping you with this mean we can buy extra post-training dessert during our grocery run this week?”

Lea scoffed, squeezing Carlo and Romeo’s hands tightly in her own as they walked together towards the open front doors of the Opera House and the clear and welcoming night that lay beyond, that simple gesture alone illustrating the true and profound expanse of her affection for them both without need for a single word.

”I wouldn’t push your luck.”