Part two – Everything Ends

After I and Brooklyn returned home to Norfolk, I did my best to keep in contact with Vittorio, but it wasn't easy due to the current relations between the Union and the Empire, but days became weeks and became months before the talks actually happened. When they happened Brooklyn was part of the team, leaving me to prod around the base on my own. To my surprise, she had only been away for a week during the talks, but when she came back, she seemed a little distant.

She'd been home for a week now, and I noticed that she was slightly less affectionate towards me. As I walk into my sitting room that overlooked the beach out behind my quarters, I see her in a heavy sweater, about what you'd expect for a cool autumn day in Virginia. The rain was coming down and she was reading a copy of a book called, 'Eat, Pray, Love'. She's even got her reading glasses on and is curled up in her favorite reading chair by the heater.

I smile at the sight, just to see her acting so normal today is a nice change. I kind of wonder if something really major went down at the talks that she just hasn't talked to me about, as I think on that I move to the kitchen and get a mug of her favorite tea going.

With her tea in hand I head back to the sitting room and put it down beside her and I don't even get acknowledgment from her. I know Brooklyn is way more observant than that, I sit down across from her and put out a hand to touch her right knee as I ask, "Is everything okay?"

She looks up from her book to me before going back to it and I sigh before leaving her be. I pull the clean laundry from the dryer and get it folded. As I'm doing that I notice less of her clothes in there than normal, my head tilts to the side and I go to the dresser, pulling open the drawers I see that she's got less in it than I remember there being. With a shrug, I put her clean clothes away, and my phone trills from the nightstand. I cross the room to pick it up and I see that I've gotten an e-mail from the personnel office, my head tilts sideways and I open it up.

As I read it, my jaw drops, I'm being reassigned to a new office being set up in Taranto, Italy to be the Union rep in the Empire. I sit down on the bed, reading the orders a few times just to make sure I really understand them. I had a month to get my affairs in order here before I had to report to NAS Oceana to fly out for Taranto.

My attention snaps up and to the dresser, as I hear it open, I see Brooklyn had come in at some point, but my eyes go wide as I see her starting to take out some clothes and putting them into a bag. I roll to my belly and I ask, "Brooklyn, is everything okay?"

I see her shake her head and her shoulders are trembling a little, so I ask, "What can I do?"

She takes a breath to center herself before she continues to take out her clothes as she says, "Understand one day."

"I don't get it?" I say to her my confusion all over my face.

She sighs and stops taking out her clothes to take off the ones she's wearing before coming over to straddle my hips and take off my top.

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We lay under the covers of my bed, but we weren't cuddling like we normally do after we make love. Something was off, she was laying with her back to me, so I roll to my side and place a hand across her waist and try to pull her close. But she takes my hand and arm off of her and scoots a little further away in the bed and says to me, "Can you not?"

I take my hand away and sit up in bed as I ask, "Can you tell me what's going on?"

She sighs and rolls out of bed and starts getting dressed before she says to me over her shoulder, "I'm breaking up with you Christian."

I saw it in her eyes, she looked so sad when she said that, but her words hit me like a ton of bricks and I ask her, "Why? Was it something I did? Something I didn't do?"

She shakes her head and continues getting dressed before she says, "No, this has just run its course."

I can feel my eyes starting to water and I grab her left hand as I say, "Bull shit, what happened at the talks Brooklyn? Did you meet someone else?"

She turns to face me; I can see the tears rolling down her cheeks before she pulls her wrist away from me as she says, "No, I didn't meet someone else! I just can't do this anymore Christian."

She turns away from me and takes her bag, as she stops at my bedroom door, she leans back in and says to me, "I'll have someone fill in for me for the rest of this month in the office and I'll try to get the rest of my things when you're not here."

And with that she was gone, I'm not sure how long I sat there really, I guess I was too stunned by what had just happened. But as I thought about it, I think she might have done what she did with me, to leave me with a good memory before she left me. Yet I had to go and call her out on what was going on and I tainted that memory. As I think about that last time, knowing what I know now, she wasn't into 'it' almost like she was just going through the motions so to speak, she didn't even tell me that she loved me after we both got off. Then again, she hadn't told me those three little words since she got back from the peace talks.

I got dressed and started to move around my quarters, that was when I started to notice that some of her things were gone. I guess she really meant it, she broke up with me. I move to my kitchen and look in the pantry, my eyes landing on a blue box of prepackaged pasta with a sauce that should be a cheese sauce, but well it's hard to be a cheese sauce when it starts as a neon orange powder. I get the water starting to boil and I look at my phone and for amusement, I check the time in Taranto, and I see it's getting late there. I move over to one of the drawers in my kitchen where I kept an address book. Pulling out that book, I went to the 'V' section, I had put my biological mother's number in there and with the peace agreement in place with the Empire, I should be able to make this phone call and not be damned if ONI is listening in to this one.

I chose to set my phone to video chat and waited after I punched in her number. I turn my attention to the water just as I hear her voice for the first time in months speak in Italian, "Good evening,Cristiano."

"Good evening to you too, ho-" I start to say, trying to keep the pain I'm feeling out of my voice when she cuts me off by saying in English, "Good god, you're not seriously going to eat pasta from a box are you!?"

I shake the box and sigh as I say, the pain seeping into my voice in the process, "I just kind of want something comfortable right now, I ate a lot of this growing up."

She blinks a couple of times and asks, "Cristiano, what's wrong?"

I sigh and look off to the side at the boiling water as I say to her, "Brooklyn broke up with me about an hour ago."

I dump the pasta into the boiling water and stir it as I continue talking, "And today was turning out to be really good, I had gotten some really good news."

"Like?" she asks me.

"I'll be in Taranto starting next month as the Eagle Union rep as per the peace treaty. It's a massive promotion for me, but right now, in this instant, it feels like ash." I say to her, a tear rolling down my cheek as I continue, "Why did she have to pick today to break up with me? It felt like it came out of nowhere. We were good before she went to the talks, then when she came back she was so distant."

I look back to the screen to see Vittorio look off to the side for a moment before she says, "I wonder if it had anything to do with my one demand."

"What do you mean?" I ask her as I stir the pasta.

"I was only immovable on one thing, I wanted you to be assigned to be the rep." she says to me as she picks up her phone and starts to walk through a gorgeous-looking apartment with it.

I shake my head before I respond, "Brooklyn isn't the type to just throw something away because of an assignment. There has to be more to it."

Vittorio sighs and puts her phone down in her kitchen as she reaches for some dried pasta like the ones I dumped in the pot before she says to me, "Sometimes Cristiano, things happen for a reason that we are not told why it is."

I sigh and lean against my counter as my microwave beeps at me letting me know the eight minutes have passed. As I get out the strainer to put it in the sink, Vittorio says to me, "Save some of the pasta water, it'll help your sauce."

I shrug and put some of it into a measuring cup before dumping the rest and tossing it back into the pot before I put in some butter and the 'cheese' powder. As I go for the milk, Vittorio says to me, "No! Use the pasta water."

With a shrug I pour in about the same amount of pasta water that I would've used for the milk and stir it around, mixing it all together. As I do it, I see that the sauce comes together in a much nicer-looking shine, it seems thicker too. Grabbing my fork I stick it into my meal and taste it, it has a much more luxurious feel on my tongue and a richer flavor too. Vittorio has a smile on her face as she asks, "So?"

I nod and bounce my fork a bit as I say to her in Italian, "You were right, it's much better."

She laughs and teases me a little with, "Once you get here, we'll work on your pronunciation. You have a very Eagle Union way of saying something so fluid." She pauses for a moment before adding, "And I'll make you some real pasta dishes."

I smile a little for the first time today since Brooklyn broke up with me as I say to Vittorio, "Thanks, I'll be looking forward to it."

After we had both eaten and made small talk for close to an hour I see her yawn and I say to her, "Oh! I forgot the time difference; I should go so you can get some rest."

She smiles at me as she says, "You don't have to. I've been enjoying this. Really talking to you Cristiano, about things that are not work-related."

I shake my head as I say, "We'll catch up, really catch up when I'm in Taranto. I'll be sure to let you know when my flight should be landing."

She nods and says to me, at the end, she switched to Italian, "Then I look forward to hearing from you then and seeing you when you're here, good night Cristiano."

"Good night Vittorio." I respond to her before turning off my phone.

With it now off, I lean back in my chair and smile to myself, talking to Vittorio had been easy, easier than it had ever been with the woman that raised me anyways. With a sigh, I get out of my chair and start the unpleasant task of cleaning up and gathering up a bunch of Brooklyn's things. I know she said that she'd try to get them when I wasn't here, but nothing is saying I can't at least gather them up for her.

XXXX

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It'd been a hard month, with lots of questions from the girls as to what happened between me and Brooklyn, but thankfully that was behind me and my plane was just coming into land in Taranto now. I looked out the window and saw that it was morning here, and I could see all the red and white stripes on the bows of the cruisers and battleships that were in port. I give a sad smile as I say to myself, "Brooklyn would've loved this."

Before I let that thought drag me down that rabbit hole again, I push it from my mind and wait for the plane to touch down.

Not long after it does, I get out of my seat and grab my kit bag, Vittorio had suggested that I only bring what I needed, she had insisted that anything else we would get there. So it was strange to leave my home with only a couple of uniforms, a few changes of clothes, and my toiletry bag. When the side hatch opened and I was able to breathe the harbor air of the Mediterranean, it was amazing. The sun was beating down, it was such a nice change from being stuck inside a plane for fifteen hours.

Once my feet hit the runway, I hear from near the arrival center, "Cristiano!"

I look over in the direction of where it came from to see Vittorio standing there, flanked by a pair of women in tight green and black dresses, one had red hair the other had purple, and both looked amazing. I make my way over and Vittorio opens her arms wide and welcomes me with a hug before she half turns to the woman, gesturing to the one with the purple hair first as she says, "Allow me to introduce Pola, and" she paused to gesture to the redhead, "Zara. Two of the heavy cruisers of the Empire."

The redhead steps forward and puts out her hand in such a way that she is expecting me to kiss it as she says in Italian, "Hello Captain, I am Zara, the lead ship of my class."

I give her a polite smile as I respond, "Thank you for the warm greeting, but if you don't mind, I'd like to get settled in, it's been a long flight."

Vittorio snaps a couple of fingers as she says, "Right, how I forgot you've been on that plane for half a day now come I'll take you to your apartment." She pauses to laugh a little before telling me, "Littorio took great pride and amusement in decorating it by the way."

XXXX

When we got to where the apartment was, Vittorio opened the door for me and placed the keys down on a wooden table. I started to walk deeper into the apartment and it looked like something out of a movie, you know the kind, the kind of movie where some wealthy European man would try to seduce some American that's traveling to Europe.

Vittorio placed a hand on my upper back as she says to me, "Welcome home Cristiano if you need anything my apartment is down the hall." She paused and I turned slightly to look at her biting her lower lip before saying, "I wanted to offer you a place to stay in my apartment, but I understand that it would be too much too soon. But I really do want to get to know you better, when you're ready for it."

I nod and smile before turning my attention back to my new apartment with a great view of the harbor as I say to her, "I'm looking forward to that too, Vittorio."

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A/N: A short chapter, but I needed to move him to a happier end after the brutality that was the open for this chapter.