Chapter Text
Resounding, as it were, the backhand Valencina had felled upon his red face. His arms, folded behind his back, shake. The last sputtering embers of a flinch, one his master had made sure to beat out of him first. He does not move. Almost. His hands settle for a tremble. Settle, if it weren't for his master's ever-sharp eye. A whirring cold, it pierces through him like the shards of glass that have made a home in his empty head. Her eyebrows knit together. She screams, of worth, of ungrateful service, of his apostasy, and he trains his eye upon the Old Parr soaked carpets of their corridor. Her words land on his ears with a thud. Hurt, to the point of boredom. Somewhere distant, his arm blossoms crimson, mixing with it, if ever there were at all, and she screams at him to clean it up.
He gasps, as he jerks awake. His entire body trembles with the burden of movement. A sweetness ghosts his swollen lip, the ending once again stolen. He recalls the memory, hidden somewhere deep, where the duty of Textbook has not yet etched itself. Their routine wasn't so unlike that of a dance, pretentious, the kind that only ever live in pristine, pearly-white halls in which artists lurk. Valencina drags him forward, he dutifully limps to the melody of her screaming, and nothing is ever right. Duty. He shudders to think about Callisto, and his fellow apprentice, Albina. Senseless violence, needless decadence, his master would rant, as he would place down a new set of bottles on a table he could not even afford to look at. In moments like that, he would bite his tongue and trace shapes into the wall with his eyes. The alcohol, maybe, will wash her edge away. It never does.
He feels the pull of his creaky muscles puppet him into somewhat of a sitting position, gritting his teeth. Routine. Just one more day. The thought fails to convince him out of bed, but the hammering of his chest pulls him forward anyway. In the living room, he hears his master snoring softly. A rarity, for her to do anything softly. Save for the alcohol that washes over her, and drifts her away into a lull. Without another thought, Lucio finds his feet carrying him. He finds routine, another one of his, to loom over her as she has in her waking, and stare at the rise and fall of her chest, her hand still wrapped around a bottle on the floor, fallen off the couch. A pile of blankets and pillows litter the floor. His hands itch, and he scans the room for another place to put them. Walking as silently as he can, he brings everything to an armchair hidden away in some corner. Then, he is left with a blanket. He picks it up, and his hands hover right above his master. His grip tightens.
His mind drifts into the small comfort he has allowed himself within the confines of his master's property. A waltz of his own, into his room where his life's work lay still. The weapon, in a grip his master has dutifully beaten into him, buried into her lungs, no longer able to berate him endlessly. Unable to fight back, her brilliant mind awash with alcohol. His weapon, bathed in her blood. His arms drip with the covenant, ceasing. It would be so easy now. He stands, breath bated. Eyes wide, freedom in hand. Waiting. The ending is stolen from him. His eyes glaze over with the thought of her again, screaming at him for being a useless pile of backstreets trash. She twitches.
Lucio takes a step back, silently, and limps to his room. He drops the blanket somewhere to the side, and curses himself for the morning to come. He stumbles into bed, almost too loud, and he winces. Routine, the way his bones ache. However, he knows better than to whine. He stays still, holding his breath, until he hears again the peace of his master, letting out a heavy sigh. He falls again, into the ending he stuffed deep into the back of his mind, where everything else goes.
The first time Valencina had broken his arm, she took him out for ice cream after. It was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted, and it numbed his tongue with the cold. Vanilla, he notes. Two cones for them. They ate together in silence. She did not smile. Only giving Lucio furtive glances, checking. For what, Lucio doesn't remember. The start and end fray into an ouroboros of the present, and he finds himself, the idea of it, eating again.
In the dead of night, he takes this memory out. Gently, so as not to shatter, and he turns it round and round in his head. Just one more day, and he could go out for ice cream again. Numb his senses, and float as if nothing ever happened at all. His ears ring, and somewhere along the way he finds himself passed out on the mattress.
…
It is early morning, and he is dragged along his morning routine by the strings of his Master's imminent ire. Routine, he sighs. He can feel his everything tug him back to bed. He does not. In the mirror of his bathroom, in which he doesn't remember walking into, he sees the image of a boy not quite himself. It is shakier. Thinner. Rougher at the edges. Scars adorn his face, and there are a couple of bruises and marks that blossom a warm buzzing feeling on his cheeks. It stings. The idea, and the creature before him. He peels his eyes away, not daring to linger a second more.
To the training grounds, arid, where he spends most of his day swinging away at wooden dummies. His master is away on another weekly meeting with the other nursefathers, and yet he still feels the ghost of a breath on his shoulder. The electric whirring into his every mistake. She never misses a single detail, her and that dreaded relic of hers. Carve a larger arc. Angle the foot a particular way. Hold your elbow to a certain degree. Breathe out on the down-swing. Fix your wrist. Walk with purpose. More power. Faster. Until he harshly swings at the wooden dummy, slicing it in half. The upper half tumbles to the ground in a series of muffled thuds and clatters. He resumes his lowered stance, before sheathing his blade with a sigh. Approaching the mangled dummy, he stares down at it. The same way Valencina would to him. The only way he deserves.
It gasps, lungs collapsing with each struggle. An arm reaches out to Lucio, pawing weakly at his ankle. A singular eye wide with fear, the other trained on him. Piercing into him a new way to survive. On the dusty tile pools that scarlet salvation. He points his sword down and stabs it into the relic until metal meets ground. He wastes no time to stab into the heart of the beast, to slash at its arms, to make his mother unrecognizable. Stigmata rendered its new truth, until it is no more. Until she is no more.
Until Lucio feels Valencina smack him in the back of his head, where a wound still rings monotone.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing, Textbook?” she mutters viciously. The slur of alcohol is evident in the way she holds onto her words, but it does nothing to soften the blow. Her gaze tightens, as if to tell him he's nothing but prey. Lucio inhales, his lungs like rags, hoping an answer comes to him.
Too slow. Valencina grabs hold of Lucio's hair and wrangles him like a rabid dog. She forces his gaze to hers. Her eye wide, “Answer me, Textbook. Don't you dare ignore me, lazy little shit. You think you can slack off just because I'm not here?”
Lucio shakes his head, his nerves on fire, “N-no master, I was about to clea-”
Valencina grumbles and kicks Lucio's stomach in, making him cough and sputter out blood. “I don't want your useless fucking excuses. You're supposed to be training, not standing there and daydreaming about your fucking boyfriend or whatever bullshit!” Lucio pants, all the wounds on his body screaming. He isn't even dating Ren, she would kill him, he isn't even-
Valencina stomps on his shoulder, and kicks his side once again. He didn't even do anything. She grabs at his scalp and kicks her knee into his face. The pressure makes something warm pop deep in his skull, and he can feel a trickle down his nostril. It doesn't matter. Lucio lets out a pained cry, falling to the ground as she laughs.
Her lips quiver, “That's all you got, little shit? After you made me.. made me beat you stupid from head to toe multiple times, you still can't handle shit?”
The air from his lungs is stolen, not a plea escapes his lips as Valencina lands a square punch to his face. Faint purple blossoming deep once again. He thinks of nothing. She kneels beside him on one knee and grabs his tie, choking him with the fabric. Blood streams down his nose, staining his shirt. Her fist shakes as her grip tightens. Efficient. The woman before him, with practiced viciousness. He is nothing. His head lulls back, uselessly. The slashed wound on his head bled anew, and he looked pleadingly to his mother. As if to beg her for help. She tosses him to the ground, almost disgusted, and dusts herself off.
She takes another puff from her cigar, her other hand in her pocket. She stares down at Lucio, coughing, his two hands planted to the ground, as a pool of his own blood soon surrounds him. He knew better than to stand back up. He doesn't cry. He can't. His master would appreciate his silence, after all. The last embers of fight leave his body, and his arms quiver. He falls, until consciousness slips from him quietly. He curls up on the ground in a fetal position, painting the training grounds with him. His master scoffs, and tosses her cigar to his stomach, stomping out the light.
…
Lucio wakes to his master's voice, and he makes damn sure he's sitting up in seconds. That same ache overtakes him, his arms shake, but he does his best to hide it. Peculiar, however, that he found himself under that same blanket from last night, propped up on some throw pillows. He notices his body creaks a little quieter now. And, for once, he can move his legs without feeling like they're about to snap.
“Oi, Lucio. Drink that,” she nods to the coffee table, “And eat up... Can't train if you're starving to shit,” she takes in another puff of her cigar, a glass of Old Parr in her other hand.
“Yes, master,” he notes the lack of bandages wrapped around the usual places on his body.
She turns away from Lucio, propping her elbow up on the arm of her chair to let out another puff of smoke. She burns a hole into the wall, deep in thought. Her grip on the glass tightens. Right, food. Lucio knows better than to disobey her. He takes the glass, and drinks all its contents in one go. Bitter, but the minty rush soon soothes over his body, and the last few whispers of pain. He's taken something like this before, when Valencina breaks him a little too much. Even for her. The House of Spiders always has an ample supply of K corp ampules in its coffers, for use after the rigorous training sessions and missions its residents usually find themselves in. However, his master never allowed him to depend on such luxuries. It would do well to learn how to take a little pain, after all. She only ever did it so Lucio could be stronger. Better. Better than the backstreets trash he once was.
His stomach grumbles, glass in his fragile walls. He stifles the noise, soothing the pain with a trembling hand over his belly. It is a delicate thing. His fingers trace over the scars and bruises Valencina left. A new, small spot of singed flesh, raw and thin, sits just above his belly button. A star to compliment the numerous other burns, slashes, and black-and-blue spots littered all across his abdomen. Food, he thinks again. He wills himself to eat, shooting a wary glance at Valencina, her back still turned. The room is almost hazy with her smoke now. His throat burns with the words lost at the tip of his tongue. He chokes it down with food.
Bacon and eggs, unevenly fried, the yolk broken, but cooked at the very least. Protein. That will be useful for his recovery. His brain prods into dangerous territory. Did Valencina.. cook this for him? No, that can't be. The mere prospect of her doing anything of that sort for him is laughable. Hilarious. He wouldn't kid himself with such nonsense. Yet, a pinprick of a tear forms in the corner of his eye. His breath goes shaky. Her? Cook? It's scary. It's new. It's.. never going to happen. He chokes down the last of this newfangled gesture, surprised it hasn't made him keel over and cough up blood.
“Thank you, master. For the meal.”
Valencina narrows her gaze, dangerously. “Clean up after yourself before I make you regret opening your mouth, Textbook,” she emphasizes her point by jabbing the cigar in his direction. She draws another puff.
He gathers the dishes on the table, bowing himself out of the living room. To the kitchen, where the delectable smell of food permeates. He tells himself it's just a hallucination. He pictures it, his master, his mother, stumbling on the expensive kitchen tile, throwing together the last few shreds of herself on a pan. Food, for him. For Lucio.
He runs the plate under water and grabs a sponge. As he scrubs the oil off the plate, his hands numb to the running water, he takes another deep whiff of the kitchen. He thinks back to Kira, a fellow apprentice. Bright-eyed, noisy Kira, who always gets what she wants. Her nursefather would give her everything she wanted, and yet.. He thinks back to a conversation of theirs. Everytime she would preach her love for her “papa,” he would see something. Her smile never reaches her eyes. For a split-second, Lucio would kid himself into thinking the other apprentices felt the same way. Even as devoted as they are. As he was.
Micro-expressions. The things people can say with a twitch of their lip, with their eyes, with the way they hold themselves. He's learned to watch for them. There is a certain way his master frowns and furrows her eyebrows. A certain way some syllables would roll off her sharp tongue. A certain way she would breathe out of her nose, quiet, controlled, but very clearly enraged. This was different. There was an uncertainty in the way she threatened him tonight. Almost like she was.. regretting. Usually, she would be upon him the moment he woke up, beating him up in every sense of the word for keeling over like that in the training grounds. But tonight, no, tonight she gave him medicine. Food. Silence.
A warmth pools in the bottom of his stomach, like pity's attempt at a second thought. Foreign, the way his body felt around him now. His head starts to spin. A sweetness ghosts his lip until it pops into iron. He quickly swipes his finger over the wound. He finds himself, the idea of it, eating again.
Thud. Something fell in the living room, dampened by the carpets. He, too, knows that sound. He walks out of the kitchen, as silently as he can, to see his master fast asleep on the armchair. Her glass has rolled away, spilling whisky all over. Her fingers barely graze the floor, her head thrown back on the chair. Her face is serene, no longer crumpled up in her usual anger or scrutiny. Lucio approaches, his breath bated.
Valencina. His master. His mother. His captor. Yet, he sees in front of him a broken woman. Born and raised in the Thumb, and sent into war. Climbed the ranks, only to fall so soon. Turned away by La Famiglia Bognatelli. Thrown into the House of Spiders, where Yoshihide will, too, dare to reject her love. Bloodshed is all she has ever known. Worth, to her, was always measured by how useful you can be. How dangerous you are. Then, it would only make sense why she pushes so hard for him to be those things. It's not her fault.
Something warm makes a home in his chest. He clenches his fist, his nails digging into his palms, before sighing softly. He takes the glass and sets it on the table, and reaches for the blanket he woke up in. He covers his master with it, and swipes away the few blonde streaks of hair from her face so she doesn’t choke on it in her sleep. She sighs, and mutters something in her sleep.
One more day.
…