a/n: i was inspired! i have pages upon pages of this fic written, just need to take the time to edit and arrange, but i'm so, so, SO excited for more of this story to be finalized and posted.
no spoilers or hints of who else is going to be part of the cast, but i love writing bianchi's relationship with herself and the various loves of/in her life.
...
okay, one spoiler? hint? confirmation?
romeo.
tw: mentions of suicide.
"elderberry wine ii"
.
she is a storm. he is the son.
THE RAINS OF THE SEASON are heavy with humidity. Bianchi slips from her rooms and runs to the garden. She dances in the rain; twirling, leaping as torrents of water soak her clothes, her hair heavy and slicked to her skin. She feels fuzzy around the edges, laid bare and stripped to her core beneath the sky.
A rumble of thunder is the only warning before streaks of lightning shoot through the dark clouds. The rain is cold and her teeth chatter, body wracked with shivers, but there is something like a smile on her face as she screams up to the heavens. The storm stirs in response, a grumble.
She is found in the morning, sprawled on the grass with chilled skin and a stiffly-dried nightgown. Even a steaming bath can't warm her fully.
...
[elderberry wine]
symptoms include: NAUSEA, vomiting, diarrhea, and COMA.
...
FINE TEA AND SUGARED CAKES taste like ash. Nothing sates her appetite for she has no hunger. She starves, wasting away under layers of silk and cashmere. The roses of her cheeks, in her hair, pale in the face of winter. They fade and wither as brittle bones break.
Her green eyes darken to the color of thorns and the marks bruised beneath them quickly follow. She doesn't smile anymore, not like she used to. It is a tremulous twist of her lips, a painful flash of teeth now.
The days are colorless, bland, the nights too, save for when there's a storm. Days turn to weeks, months, the seasons pass, then it is her birthday again.
She is gifted five dolls. All different. All beautiful. The dolls come with tiny-stitched clothing and bright hair-bows and little shoes and leather gloves that can be carefully slipped on to delicately-crafted china fingers. Wide, unblinking glass eyes observe the world. Each eyelash is exquisite. Every curl of hair is precise. The curve of their painted lips creates a pretty visage.
They are perfect.
She destroys all of them. Smashes the fragile heads against her wallpapered bedroom wall until they shatter. Stomps on the pieces, grinds them beneath her small foot and spits on the dust. It's a warning. A statement.
Papa takes it as a childish challenge, calls it a tantrum and turns back to his paperwork. Mamma is aghast for a second, mouths empty words about a stern talk regarding manners, but it slips from her mind soon enough. A maid quietly cleans the mess.
Bianchi feels a stab of guilt watching the maid wordlessly prick her hands picking up Bianchi's ruin. It feels wrong. Apologetically curling her fingers into the skirt of her dress, she dips her head and reaches for the broken bits. Her hand shakes.
"What's your name?"
.
The maid's name is Marta.
.
[flower]
.
"What's in a name?" a girl once asked.*
"Everything," Bianchi answers.
The girl died for love. Twice so.
She thought that sweet before. Romantic? Was it? Is it? Love?
"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," the girl sighs.*
The girl is right, but sweetness has nothing to do with it. The poison the girl drank was bitter, wasn't it? The dagger driven through her skin hurt, didn't it? Was it worse, she wonders, than the taste of death on her love's tongue?
Sweeten it as much as you please, but say it clearly, suicide. The girl, too young to have truly lived, laid in her grave and decided to sleep. She woke the first time. She didn't wake the second.
A rose is a rose is still a rose.
She is a rose even if that's not all she is.
What's in a name?
A name can become worn out. Rendered useless. Reduced to just a sound, a series of syllables and tongue clicks. But—
Names form attachment, create claim, hold meaning.
She is, always will be, Bianchi.
.
[fruit]
.
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene...*
Bianchi used to like fairy-tales and romantic stories. She giggled and blushed over the thought of love. (So did the healer.)
Now, she watches Mamma and Papa together and— two households, both alike in dignity*.
What is a household without love?
Divided, in the space between them and the way cool nods and colder eyes are exchanged. A house divided against itself cannot stand**, but Mamma and Papa still stand together. Even if endearments don't match the (lack of) emotion in their eyes.
After baths, she sits on a stool between Mamma's legs as a bristled brush is dragged through her waist-length hair. Mamma is reverent with Bianchi's hair, murmuring tender words, hidden under her breath and in the dark of night. She speaks also of famiglia and duty and how respect, not love, is what will support a marriage. Bianchi gazes in the golden- and silver-laden mirror at her Mamma and listens.
She understands.
Maybe once she would have protested. Declared it unfair and daydreamed of star-crossed princes and princesses and rival famiglia mafia couples, or the most impossible of all, a soft civilian love.
It is all so different now.
Now, she knows better.
Now she knows that love is poison.
To love is to fall and to fall is to be ruined, never the same, never whole.
.
She swears she will never love (again). Bianchi ignores the silent add-on.
She is Bianchi, only Bianchi.
.
[plant]
.
Hazy clouds of grey part when Papa brings home Hayato, a sweet, little silver-haired child.
(She can see glimpses of the sun.)
He cradles the baby in his arms and shines. With pride? He looks proud, but not smug. Just, a breathless sort of satisfaction that softens his face in a way that she has never seen before.
By contrast, Mamma's features have never been more similar to the sharp-faced stone statues in the garden. Her eyes freeze to frostbite.
Caught between the sun and moon, but unseen by both, Bianchi shivers.
[tbc in pt. 3]
notes:
*shakespeare's "romeo and juliet" references and quotes.
**abraham lincoln speech quote.