Hey y'all, it's been some time since I've posted. Life happened, and it's been a hot minute.

Before you read this, please know this chapter is in first person. It's Silver. It's a rant. It's also kinda heavy. I will be posting some fluffy nonsense tonight as well; a double update!

Lyra.

You see me as someone who thinks, and thinks a lot. I like to see myself that way. I've always seen myself as logical. Growing up, you were fiery, passionate, ready to laugh and cry. I didn't do that. I was told it was above me. To this day, I hold that to be true. I feel better about who I am—who I've become, but logic. I value logic.

My logic—my morality—was fucked. You heard what I told you earlier. I became...oh, what's that bird in the states? The thieving one that laughs?

Magpie. Yeah. I became the magpie.

Leaf was such an easy target. Like I said, she came into work with two other English speakers: Blue and Red, who I'm sure were a couple that weren't about to out themselves in the middle of Italy. Yeah. Color names. Primary colors with the green on a tree, and there she'd be, bothering me, harassing me with questions. Blue couldn't do math, and she'd tip me higher if I would give him hints on his stupid math packets. I was a seventeen year old, helping some dumbass twenty-one year old on problems he should've been able to solve if he'd paid attention in basic algebra. Red never really spoke, but his looks were scathing. He always had it with me. I say that's pretty fair, in all honesty. I was some insufferable teenager, someone who—

Forgive me. Tangents. That's not the point. I'm nervous, you know? This part of me is so ugly, Lyra. I can say I've moved past it, that I haven't done this since, but it still happened. I have to live with that, and you can choose if you'll live with it.

Anyway, Leaf. She was good to . I didn't get that then. At the time, she was infuriating. She didn't ever leave me alone. She asked a million questions. Her eyes followed me everywhere, challenging me to tell her off for being a pain in the ass. Eventually, she started asking me to join her and and her friends for drinks. "My treat," she'd say. I turned her down. I didn't want to join them ever. I hated them for even asking, Lyra. I was making enough stealing to finally afford an apartment on my own. The shittiest apartment, mind you. It smelled like smoke. It looked like hell. But it was mine and I scrapped to afford it, and I thought she was looking down on me. Like, here I was with my pride, a magpie, and she thought I was some charity case.

So I sneered at her. I ignored her. I took the tips to help Blue muddle his way through polynomial factoring. Her money was as good as any. All money was good. It didn't matter where it came from. Then one day, she invited me out again. And I said yes. I can't even remember why. Was it that I didn't have any groceries at home? Was it that work had been slow? It had to be about money. All I ever thought about was money. Giovanni raised me to be that way and on my own it turned me into what I was.

I went out with them. It was a cheap, shitty cafe. Most traditional sectors of Italian cities don't have true bars or taverns. So we went to the next best thing, where there was standing room only, and she bought us all drinks. They didn't even card me. I wasn't eighteen yet. I was some baby-faced kid with hair still growing out from a terrible haircut, and they let me in with a bunch other barely-more-than-kids. She talked about her life and her studies. So did Blue. As though I listened; she'd left her purse on the table and it was open. Wads upon wads of euros. She had money I didn't have. I nodded my way through, laughed when it was necessary.

You can guess what I did that night. It was so easy, the minute they all looked away at some disturbance. Some dropped glass, a yell, hell if I remember. I was like a shark who'd smelled blood in the water, and it was all I could think of. It was a low roar in my head, and I needed.

Leaf trusted me. Why would she have trusted me, Lyra? I don't get it. I was shifty and shitty and talked down to her and her friends every time I saw them, and they kept inviting me places.

I let her take us out more after that. She seemed none the wiser. I loved that, but I also hated that. I hated that I was taking from her, just a few euros at a time, and she never fretted or worried. Yet she fretted about me. Just to illustrate, six weeks after we first went out, I was sick. I got a cut on my hand that became infected at work and I went into the hospital. I missed days of work. I lost precious money. When I came back, bandaged and pale and wincing through a shift, she shoved close to one hundred euros in the pocket of my apron and said, "Take care of yourself, Gianni."

I was so weak and tired. I just accepted. I just nodded. I said thank you. But I didn't feel grateful. Didn't she notice that I'd already stolen more than that from her? I hated that. I hated her for it.

My perspective was horrible. Here was this person who wanted me to live, who treated me like her little brother, and I just wanted to take as much as I could from her without her noticing.

And it didn't stop with money. Leaf had this ring. She didn't wear it on her finger. It was on a chain around her neck. It was too big for her own finger, unless she maybe wanted to shove it on her thumb. The magpie I was, I noticed. My eyes probably glowed at the sight of it. I asked her what it was. It was her late father's wedding ring. Her mother gave it to her when she turned eighteen, strung on a chain, and told her to carry her father's memory. "Looks nice," I said. It looked real. The inside was stained, from staying on a finger through thick and thin, and the outside was polished to a sheen.

Lyra. Don't...give me that look. Please. I know. We both know where this is going, and I can't change what happened.

I had been to her apartment before. It was late. Everyone had been drinking wine. I was on the couch. She was too. Her head was on my shoulder, and she was nodding off. Red was in the kitchen, making popcorn, and Blue...where was he? I don't even know. I can't remember. I feel like I only remember the wrong I committed in that time. I can't remember the details. Is that trauma? It's probably trauma.

The chain was long. I just lifted it over her head when she fell asleep. I pocketed it. Red came back with popcorn, pushed the bowl toward me. I had some. I walked home. The next day, at the restaurant, she came in in tears.

She asked me if she'd seen it. If I'd maybe stolen it, but so sorry to ask that of you, Gianni. What proof did she have? I told her she was drunk and probably lost it while out the night before. I'd never seen her angry before. She would get annoyed with Blue, bothered when Red wouldn't respond, huffy if I avoided her. But never angry. But telling her she'd been careless evoked something. She asked me to follow her outside. I went out with her, and she said that Red had remembered seeing her necklace around her neck in the apartment. She'd torn it apart. She'd pulled the whole thing apart to find a ring that was hiding in a drawer in my room in a different, shittier neighborhood, and in tears, she said that she hated to accuse me. But it had to be me.

She said she felt like she'd been looser with money since meeting me. But she wrote it off, smiled it off, because I was alone. I needed someone. "Just give me my ring back." She said.

Lyra. I doubled down. I told her she was insane. And to leave me alone.

To her credit, she did. They never came back. I didn't care. She didn't send cops after me. She didn't send anyone for me. She just disappeared. I took my victories. I sold the ring, got a little lump of cash off it.

I became irresponsible after that. Suddenly I had money to play with. Savings that hadn't grown had just expanded in a significant way. I was emboldened. A few dollars here and there became the contents of a person's wallet. If it had taken a theft of a ring for Leaf to think of me as irresponsible, imagine strangers who would never interact with me again. I was loaded with cash and spent it on the dumbest shit. I was drunk off my ass every weekend. I bought my cello with stolen money and goods. Through it all, I finished online schooling and graduated, but barely.

I just didn't care. I was a magpie. No, I was like a dragon with a hoard. And I was proud of it.

And then I ran into him.

I'd been in Florence for some time. It all blends together. I was walking out of a cafe, and I was pretty drunk. I'd blown money on everything possible that night, because there was nothing better to do. It was cold, the rain absolutely driving, and the streets were quiet. The only person there was him.

Standing under the streetlamp was my father. Giovanni. I thought I was so drunk I'd hallucinated him. But then he crossed the street and put a hand on my shoulder. He said, "Gianni, it's time to stop fooling around. Come home."

I just stared at him. He guided me under an awning. Come home, was all he said. Come home, this has gone on for too long. Look at you. You think you're part of an underbelly you wanted to escape. If you come home, you can try this in comfort, Gianni. You'll have a legacy. Out here, you're a petty thief with nothing to live for. You have no point, no purpose, a ship adrift.

Come home, Gianni.

I came to my senses and slapped his hand off me. I told him to fuck off. He didn't know a damned thing. He just stared at me. His eyes never showed anything. Just black, cold, set deep in his skull. He stared, and he said, "I have eyes everywhere. I know what you've become, and you're soiling our good name out here. You're a Bianchi."

Bianchi. Briccone. It was all the same. I was nothing, and nobody, and with him, I'd been nothing but a burden, an inconvenience, beholden to him—never myself. I shoved him away when he came toward me again. I told him to leave me alone and to crawl back wherever he came from.

I walked away. He called after me. Told me he loved me. It sickened me. I didn't say it back, and I walked away. I got home and vomited. Was it the alcohol? I don't know. I was sick that night, so horribly sick, and I called into work the next day.

Whole weeks passed in a blur. Thievery. Petty work. Sleeping. Drinking. Getting high—weed, Lyra. Nothing hard. Please don't look at me like that. I did horrible things, but I didn't do hard drugs. I was afraid to, the coward I am. Yet part of me wanted something horrible to happen to me, despite feeling no guilt at that time for my thieving. I saw no future, just a cycle of taking and taking and never finding satisfaction. A black hole, a magpie, a dragon, what was I?

A mess. There's no word more succinct for it. I was a mess, avoiding the truth that Giovanni was right, and I was just part of a cycle. In avoiding it and seeking material comforts, I was actually joining it, perpetuating it. I truly was Giovanni, the way he'd named me. I was truly his progeny.

He sent a letter to my house. There was money in it. I threw it out without reading it. Took the money. Got drunk, got high. Responded to his letter telling him as much. I never again got the letter.

Then Proton appeared one night. I knew him. Met him a few times as a kid; he was like Giovanni's protege then. I think once I got older, Giovanni utilized him less, and I saw him less frequently. Anyway, he just showed up at my house, let himself in, drank the beer in my fridge. When I came home, he said, "Giovanni's looking for you." I threatened to call the police, and he laughed. He said he had evidence of my own crimes, and we would go down together if I pulled such a stunt.

Proton told me he was thinking about leaving the industry and going clean. If I wanted to go clean, I could go to Venice with him. I laughed in his face and shoved him out the door, leaving his beer unfinished on my counter. I dumped it out, threw the bottle into the street, and laughed his presence off.

And then he showed up again. It was almost a year that I was in Florence at this point, maybe six weeks since he'd appeared, and he showed up, just knocking on my door. Almost polite. Almost gentle. I was about to shut the door in his face, but there was a look in his eyes that stopped me.

"Giovanni died, Silver." It was all he said. My stomach churned. He came in. He sat me down. He did that awkward pat on the back that men do, told me some equivalent of "there, there." I thought of his letter. The one that came a few months ago that I never read. That he told me he'd loved me, despite everything.

I cried.

I don't know how long I cried. Maybe I never stopped crying. Suddenly it was morning, when Proton had arrived in the evening, and there was a plate of toast on my stomach. "That money's gonna be yours, you know," he said. It was the clearest thing he'd told me. "How are you going to handle that? Throw it at vice? Buy a wife?"

And there was that. I had money. More money than I could dream of. All blood money, built on an empire of bones and blood and anguish. In the coming days, I finally asked. Giovanni didn't pay for his sins. No one came for him in the night. He simply lost control of his vehicle on a rainy road and slammed into a tree. Inhaling in one moment and wheezing his last breath in the next. And then there I was with his legacy, with his money, with his name. Alone.

There was just me. And there was Proton, who suddenly was the only person there for me. You were a world away, and I assumed you'd forgotten me. I didn't want you to know what I was. Giovanni was dead. Leaf hated me, and rightfully so.

So I came to Venice. I went to therapy. I purged myself of the booze, the drugs, the crime, the apathy. I worked every hour I could for Proton. And when I wasn't working, I played music. I gave all the money I stole to charity. I tried to send a letter to Leaf, apologizing for what I had done, telling her to do what she needed to get justice, and she never replied. Proton claims she was able to get the ring back that I sold off. I feel like he told me that so I could sleep at night. Joke's on him; it keeps me up all the time.

Thinking of my time in Florence, all I can think about is my greed and how it hurt another person. I came here and had to strip myself of all of this through work and effort. And I refuse to touch my father's money. It sits there, in banks and accounts I could access at any time, and I refuse to put it out there. Why should I spend it on myself? Why should anyone have money born from suffering? It was one thing to give away money I stole myself. It was righting my own wrong, but who was I to start righting his?

I hurt Leaf. I hurt myself. Florence was nothing but hurt, and me inflicting it. And just proof that, despite everything you tell me, I'm horrible at the core. I want to believe you, but I truly am my father's son, Lyra. I hurt everything I've ever touched, you included.

I'm not like you. I'm not easy to love. I'm not easy to smile at, to deal with. And you do, anyway, but I've been good to you, better than I've been to anyone. And if that's more than you can handle, I understand. I can barely handle myself most days. But you deserve to know what you're dealing with.

Unfortunately, it's me you're dealing with. And you now know who I am.

A/N: Now onto part two: fluff boogaloo.