Chapter Text
John was having the worst day possible.
So, nothing had changed, really.
He’d had a bad year – he’d turned back to his brother to grovel for forgiveness, fought in the most pointless bloody conflict imaginable, and they had won.
He’d had a bad week – his brother and the other self-righteous officers endlessly gloated their victory as if that could make angels descend from the heavens and fall at their leather-clad feet. They had partied and supped and drank their way through Italy to Messina, and John hadn’t felt this bone-weary since the first days of fighting.
He ached for soft music, calm shores, slight warm breezes and not one more bloody toast to some soldier’s prowess. If he heard one more “figure of a man the feats of a lion” speech, he was sure to go mad.
He’d had a bad day – the final stretch of riding to Messina had been long and tiresome, and even the prima dona Claudio was in a sour mood by mid-afternoon. It was only as they topped the final hill and the entire estate - a full vineyard - spread out before then that some of the men burst out in cheers.
John could see tiny pin-pricks of white amidst the dark green of the lush leaves, men and women of the household hurrying to greet them. All he could think about was a bath.
//
More boring introductions – re-introductions – as the soldiers had already met the family of Leonato, although his daughter had only recently become…taller, Don John noticed, half-interested. A proper young lady, no longer a girl –
“Have we met before?” her flustered voice broke through his reverie, and Don John realized half-a-second too late that he must have been staring.
“Apologies,” he tried to recover swiftly, mentally cursing himself. He’d hear about this later from his brother, no doubt. You’re always mucking it up, he mentally parodied in his brother’s ever-present voice. Before his gaze shifted from the brunette at Leonato’s side, he noticed she looked confused.
Odd. He moved away as his brother began speaking of staying for a whole month, and schooled his features so he wouldn’t outwardly groan.
It was going to be a long month.
//
John drank – he had never denied that fact – and many times in the last year he had drunk excessively. To forget his pain, forget his past, forget he still lived, forget his brother still lived. To forget the hate that was always ever-present, and sounded very much like his brother’s condescending voice. He couldn’t remember when he’d internalized so much hate; had it always existed in him? Had it been pounded in him by his father’s disciplining fists? Or from the swings he took from the bullies in the city?
His name made him a pariah; his temper made him enemies. Lots of them.
So yes, he drank, and he had imbibed quite liberally the night before at Leonato’s feast; he could feel everyone’s eyes on him, the whispers that swirled around him, half-formed words on everyone’s lips – bastard, bastard, bastard – but no one said anything. Not to him, just to each other. He was sure of it. He could sense the crowd around him hating him without knowing more than one thing about him.
If only they really knew.
In fact, the only noticeable attention he got was from Leonato’s daughter, who stared at him from across the table all night, as if trying to telepathically tell him something with her piercing gaze. She didn’t look displeased, merely…vexed, but he didn’t think he was the target of her vexation. But her eyes were constantly on him, scrutinizing everything, even as her jovial companion – one of his more annoying brothers-at-arms – kept trying to gain her attention in conversation.
His head was beginning to throb, and John decided he’d had enough socialization for one evening; he threw back the rest of his wine and pushed back his chair, vaguely making excuses and quickly exiting the room.
John didn’t notice when Hero, her eyes still on his retreating back, pushed her plate away with her napkin and got up as well, effectively cutting Claudio off mid-sentence.
Beatrice and Don Pedro exchanged curious glances but said nothing.
//
“Are you well, my lord?” he heard a voice behind him say; his teeth ground through glass at her untimely interruption. All he wanted to do was divest himself of his garments and fall into bed, but now he had to make more polite small talk with – he turned, and Hero stood against the wall in the corridor, her dark hair accentuated by the lantern behind her, halo-like in the dimness. John drew a pale, dry hand across his face and a small groan escaped his throat; he could feel the irritation in him reach a tipping point.
“Am I well?” he countered sharply, startling the young lady. “Are you well, lady Hero?” Her mouth, which had been open to respond, faltered shut again. “First, you stare at me all through dinner, for no purpose that I can ascertain, and then you decide to accost me in the hallway and interrogate me? I am tired, and I just wish to be done with this day. Goodnight.”
And he turned on his heel – incredibly ungentlemanly behavior, but wasn’t he a villain? – and stalked down the hallway to his room, slamming the door shut.
Hero frowned at his retreating form, winced when the door was slammed. “This has been, without a doubt, the most maddening day since, well…yesterday.” And she sighed and moved away from Don John’s door.
He had been tired, grumpy, furious and quite plastered, but the excruciating pain that woke him the next morning, when the sun was dulled behind clouds, was so completely numbing that when Conrade found him at half-eleven that morning, he still looked deathly pale and threatened the most magnificent bloodshed on any creature who even thought about opening the curtain. Conrade, knowing that John had his moods, slipped his master and friend some water and then shrank out of the room like a phantom.
//
[the previous night]
Hero, in her private room across the villa, sobbed into her pillow. “Maybe tomorrow,” she sniffled, glad to have the room to herself. “Maybe tomorrow he will listen to me…” and she groaned in frustration and sank into a fitful slumber.
//
It was nearly two in the afternoon when John ventured out of his room, his brain still singing off-key inside his skull a song he didn’t know, but at least now he didn’t feel quite like passing the contents of his stomach (none) in the chamber pot.
He asked Conrade to give him a massage – a mistake – as Conrade only wanted to argue about John not making so much of a scene against his brother.
“Let me be as I am,” he had warned, “and seek not to alter me.”
“Masters!” Borachio’s grinning ugly face blew open the door and clocked his two companions in their heated discussion, but he took no notice of it.
“Borachio,” Don John greeted with a sneer. “What news?”
“I hear the lady Hero is seeking you this afternoon, my master. And also this morning, if my fair Margaret is to be believed.”
“Why, she is a right March chick!” John almost cackled. What nerve! The impetuous young lady was seeking him out! Why couldn’t she just leave him alone? “What does she want? First last night, she stared at me at dinner, then followed me and attempted to engage me in conversation in the hallway to my room. Very odd behavior. Has her father not taught her better?”
Borachio just shrugged. “I think we can make mischief from this.”
John rubbed at his stubble, brightening at the idea of causing any trouble; his invisible chains were beginning to chafe, and he longed to be rid of them even by distraction. “How so?” then he snapped his fingers as an idea came to him. “There is a masquerade ball tonight – I could disguise myself and try to figure out her intentions without her knowing it was me.”
“What if she discovers your identity?” Conrade asked, wiping his hands on a towel as John reached for his shirt.
“No matter,” John snapped, the candlelight illuminating a wicked grin on his face. “I shall have the answers I seek either way.”
Borachio fiddled with the mask in his hands. “Her family protects her very well,” he warned, “her father may not permit her to dance with anyone but a gentleman.”
John strode toward him and snatched the mask from his hand, holding over his own face and speaking from beneath it. “Then a masquerade…” he drawled, “is the best place to be hidden in plain sight.”
//
Dressing quickly, John was determined to arrive at the festivities early, to get the best pick of the available masks. He had been impressed by the speed with which the household staff cleaned and pressed a white shirt and embroidered gold and burgundy jacket, taking care to have Conrade shine his boots and slick back his hair, trimming his beard. After his horrendous morning, he wanted this evening to go perfectly.
If he was truthful, the attention that Hero had been paying him piqued his curiosity.
She had looked at him last night as if she could peer into his very soul, and it had alternatively unnerved him and warmed him to his bones. No one – no one since his mother – had cared to look at him long enough to see him for who he was. It was one reason that he felt alone at every table he sat down to dine at, alone on every occasion, every party, alone at each skirmish of the ended war, even with an entire regiment at his side.
But Hero didn’t look at him as if she wished to know more – she looked at him like she already knew him.
As he, Conrade and Borachio stepped out into the corridor, they heard the music floating to them from the gardens and courtyard where the festivities were to take place. John was still half inside his own head when the object of his thoughts appeared ahead of him, as if brought to him from his own dreams. She was, predictably, surrounded by the cocoon of her family and waiting gentlewomen; still, as he passed, John took a single enormous risk.
He gently snatched her hand and pressed a warm kiss to her delicate knuckles.
As he did so, he heard Beatrice say, “look uncles, there is the prince beckoning us. Shall we greet him?” and before he could blink, Hero stood alone in front of him and his men.
John blinked in surprise as he straightened, still holding her hand, while the lady curtsied. “My Lord,” she said, then, much softer, “Il piccolo principe.”
His entire frame froze at her words – had he heard her correctly? – and his eyes widened when Hero straightened from her curtsey and looked him squarely in the eye. His skin went cold, and he dropped her hand as if it had transformed into a snake and took a half-step back, knees threatening to buckle underneath the weight of memory.
Il piccolo principe – his mother’s nickname for him as a child. The little prince.
His mouth twisted in partially-formed words, and Hero’s peaceful, knowing gaze reflected his own torment in an odd way. “Find me for a dance, my lord,” she whispered, and then was gone like the phantom of John’s childhood.