Warning: Implied abuse/rape, sort of implied incest but not quite but sort of if you squint.

Author's Notes: So this is my first fic up here on FF! I hope you all like it. I noticed that Cesare/Lucrezia doesn't have that big of a fandom here, so I though I ought to contribute to it. c; Just a short little one shot... Hopefully there will be more in the future.

Reviews are love!


The first time that Lucrezia comes to see him, she is different. It's her first marriage, and he tries to console himself; that radiance that smoldered around her before is subdued and more demure now, and she tries to avoid meeting her gaze as best as she can. He is persistent, though, and takes her hands in his and forces her gaze to meet his own.

"What is it, sis?" Cesare asks her, searching that soft, powder-blue gaze for something to hint at what is bothering her. Lucrezia cannot avoid his gaze for forever, and eventually she focuses on him, offering him a lilting smile. It's genuine, at least, and it puts his heart to ease.

"What is what, dear brother?" she replies. Her words are flippant and light as butterflies, fluttering off her tongue, weightless. For a moment, Cesare believes that she is alright after all; it must have only been his imagination. But then her eyes dart away and her soft lashes flutter against her pale cheekbone, and he knows that she is only lying to him.

"Something is bothering you," he insists. "Won't you tell me what it is?"

For a moment, it looks as if she wants to; but when she looks at him she is all small-smiles and light eyes, and she has composed herself once more. "There is nothing bothering me," Lucrezia tells him, "except perhaps that you are fogging up our time with this nonsense. Come, take a walk with me in the gardens. I do miss them dearly, you know…"

And like that, it went on.

The evidence that her marital relationship with Giovanni Sforza was anything but blissful polluted her time with him. He could see, even if she thought he couldn't, the bruises on her skin; she had obviously tried to conceal them, and skillfully at that, with clever dresses, but it didn't always work. And whenever Cesare brought it up, she brushed it off. He kept forgetting that she was a married woman, she said. He didn't need to worry about her. She could handle herself.

One day, he touches his fingers to a particularly dark bruise that clots the fair skin on her collarbone. Lucrezia flinches away from his touch; "Your hands are cold, dear brother," she says, pulling her dress over the deepening mark. He presses closer to her.

"What aren't you telling us, Lucrezia?" he asks her, tired of this game they've invented; how long can Cesare keep guessing and she can keep the answer out of his grasp? She squirms.

"There is nothing," she tells him. "I'm figuring it out for myself. Please, Cesare, won't you drop this? Just love me while I'm here?"

He watches her face, the delicate bones framing soft eyes, the silk, blonde ringlets tumbling down from her head. With a sigh, he takes her hand and kisses her fingers. He leans close, bumps their noses together, rests their foreheads against one another; and he agrees to do just that - love her - until all of the evidence has faded away and they can both forget that Giovanni Sforza ever happened.