'I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles.'
- Lord Byron, 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.'
Chapter Five: In Venice
The magazine that Nagira had found abandoned on the room's nightstand might have been more entertaining if it hadn't been Italian. He thought that it had probably been left by whoever had occupied the room before them, since he was reasonably certain that Doujima had not started reading bridal periodicals. Or, maybe she had, and he had some serious worrying to do.
The note that had been lying discarded on top of the magazine had been a little more interesting, simply because of the mystery that it provided. However, there was only so much time he could spend wondering about who Doujima had gone running out to meet, and why she was going to meet them. After finally witnessing them up close, he was starting to find his girlfriend's spy-games a little bit amusing. When one of his contacts wanted to see him, they called his phone or sent him a text message, rather than mailing him vague and ominous notes. With electronics becoming easier to tap, there were some advantages to such archaic methods, and they did have a certain sort of style to them, but it all seemed awfully inefficient to him. He knew that SOLOMON had more modern ways of communicating; all of his brother's high-tech toys were a testament to that... in spite of that, though, there were times when the organization seemed almost frighteningly old-fashioned about things.
Nagira glanced up from the glossy pages of his magazine when the door to the room swung open. After casting a lingering, appreciative stare at the long expanse of leg left bare by the short hem of Doujima's dress, he rose to meet her at the door.
There was a strange, shadowed look to her eyes... tired, and obviously unhappy. It puzzled him because, while he had seen her serious, he couldn't remember ever seeing Doujima sad. He wondered whether it would be wise to ask what had gone wrong but, before he got a chance, she noticed that he was watching her. The weariness on her face melted away immediately, to be replaced by a small, impish smile that might have seemed sincere, if only he hadn't seen how raw she had looked when she first entered.
While he was well aware of the fact that Doujima was a talented liar, and exceptionally good at hiding what was going on in that little blond head of hers, it was rare for her to bother with such obvious deception when they were together. For this reason, Nagira always found it faintly disturbing when she did try to hide from him. He was used to emotional distance from those nearest and dearest to him but, unlike Amon's cold implacability and mile-high walls, Doujima seemed to be able to conjure up a whole new persona at will. A colorful, delicate mask of sentiments that was almost impossible to tell apart from the real thing, but a mask all the same.
He knew that, if he asked now, she would simply pretend confusion and refuse to answer the question. It would frustrate him and make an even bigger liar out of her, so he instead reached out to hook an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her forward until he could place a light kiss against her forehead. Doujima seemed to appreciate the gesture, leaning into his embrace and, when she finally pulled back, the smile on her face seemed a little more genuine. Although they had been lovers for some time now, it felt strange to him. There had been very few really tender moments between them, and Nagira had to admit that he was probably more comfortable with the pure physical attraction and witty banter.
"How'd your super-secret spying activities go?" he asked dryly.
Doujima flashed him a playful smirk. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."
He watched as she cast a restless glance around the room, the door still open behind her. "You want to go out?" she asked, with a suddenness that made him instantly suspicious. "You should get to see Venice."
Nagira was skeptical. "Get to see the inside of the shops of Venice, you mean?" He knew her well enough to know that 'see Venice' probably meant something along the lines of 'see Venice's finest boutiques, and carry my purchases while you're at it.'
"No shopping, I promise," she replied. The shocked look he gave her was only half-feigned. Yurika Doujima didn't want to shop?
Something really was wrong.
She rolled her eyes at him, and reached out to catch the front of his shirt, giving him an insistent little tug towards the door. Nagira shook his head, but relented, letting her yank him out of the room. "Fine, just don't drag me all over the city like you did last night. My poor smoker's lungs won't survive it."
"Well, I wouldn't want to wear you out," she said coyly, and gave him an almost ridiculously sultry glance from beneath lowered lashes. She walked down the stairs backwards so that she could continue to speak to him. "We'll only walk a little while. Then we can catch the ferry the rest of the way."
"The rest of the way where?"
"You'll see."
Her deliberately evasive answer made him laugh but, beneath her glib exterior, she still seemed distant and distracted. As they made their way through the narrow Venetian streets, she would point out landmarks, or rattle off a word or a phrase in Italian, but he couldn't help but feel that her mind was focused on something other than the tangle of roads and waterways before them.
The walk was short, as she had promised. They drew to a halt when they came to the edge of the water; not just a small little canal, but one wide enough for the buildings on the opposite side to seem distant. There was a handful of tables scattered near the canal's bank and, at the end of the street, he saw what he could now recognize as a ferry stop. Doujima came to a halt near one of the tables. "Wait here," she commanded, half-pushing him into a seat.
He cast her a wounded look. "You're getting as bossy as Hanamura."
"I've been taking lessons," was her retort.
"It's kind of sexy."
"I hope you're talking about me, and not Hanamura."
When Nagira's only response was to grin, she poked him in the chest and sauntered off into a nearby building. According to the words written on its blue-striped awning, it was the 'Gelateria Nico,' but that didn't tell him much. Whatever it was, it was certainly crowded, with people spilling out the door and onto the sidewalk, and packing themselves tightly into the surrounding tables. He might have worried about how long Doujima would take inside, but the woman had an eerie way of making her way to the front of a line without anyone being the wiser. He had seen it when she was shopping, time and again, and it was almost to the point where he would call it magic.
Sure enough, she was back within five minutes, while the rest of the people waiting hadn't even moved. In her hands was a paper cup, containing what appeared to be ice-cream. Except ice-cream didn't stick to the spoon so thickly that it seemed like it was going to overrun the utensil at any given moment. Really, it looked more like a cup of chocolate-flavored wet cement than anything else.
"Gelato," Doujima explained smugly. When she pulled the spoon out of the cup, the gelato made a gentle wet sucking sound, as though it was reluctant to relinquish its plastic prize. Nagira eyed the spoon dubiously as she held it out to him, but leaned forward gamely to take a bite.
It was indeed some kind of ice-cream, although he had never tasted anything quite like it, cold and thick where the spoon rested against his tongue. It was almost unbearably rich, so heavy with flavor that he didn't think that he'd be able to manage more than a few mouthfuls, much less a cup full of the stuff. He closed his eyes as it slowly melted away, and sucked in his cheeks, making a show out of savoring it.
When he opened his eyes again, he found Doujima watching him with a little smile that contained a lot of mischief, and just a touch of something else... regret, perhaps, which made absolutely no sense to him. "You know," she said speculatively, "The gelateria sells chocolate sauce, too."
He choked back a laugh, his hands moving to rest at her waist, right above the gentle swell of her hips. "Huh. Really? But if you buy a bottle of chocolate sauce, I don't think I'll get to see much of more of Venice outside of the hotel room."
"You're probably right," Doujima agreed, and leaned in to kiss him. Her mouth tasted like gelato.
The easily recognizable chug-and-grind of one of the public ferries reached him, and he reluctantly released her. She heard it too, and stepped back away from his chair so that he could stand. He felt a little thrill at the sight of her, her lips kiss-swollen and her feathery blond hair rumpled by the slight breeze coming off the canal. There really was something undeniably arousing about a woman who was both self-assured and potentially dangerous.
"That's our boat," she informed him teasingly, "Unless you're reconsidering the chocolate sauce."
Nagira snorted, and hustled her towards the ferry landing. "Maybe later." He snagged the gelato cup out of her hands and, although she shot him a scandalized look at the theft of her desert, she didn't argue. "Since when are you into the whole tourist thing, anyway?"
The vague, cagey look that she gave him was enough to make him want to check and make sure that his wallet was still resting within his pocket. "I'm not, really," she replied. "Like I said, I thought that you should have a chance to see Venice."
"You're up to something."
Her grin felt half-hearted at best. "Always." Nagira frowned at her as they stepped onto the boat, but she refused to elaborate. Secretive, as always. There were times when dating a spy became a real pain in the ass. Of course, the perks involved were considerable enough that he usually didn't mind that she was a pain in the ass.
The boat whirred to life again and glided out onto the canal, cutting a sharp path through the water.
"What's with the lion with wings?" he asked, in part simply so that he could draw a response out of her, and have an answer to a question, even if it wasn't an important one. Besides, he was curious. The lion design seemed to be everywhere, adorning street corners and public buildings, and any other place that tourists were supposed to frequent.
"Pax tibi, Marce, Evangelista meus," Doujima murmured laughingly, "That's St. Mark's lion, and those are supposedly the words that an angel spoke to him when he was shipwrecked outside of Venice. Or, at least, that's the story that the Venetians used to justify stealing his cadaver from Alexandria."
"Huh?"
She transferred her amused gaze to him. "Renaissance Venice had some sort of ghoulish mania for stealing the bodies of saints from other cities. If I remember, they smuggled Mark's body past Egyptian customs in a barrel of pickled pork."
Nagira shook his head. "Nicecity you've got here, Yurika. Any other little tidbits to share, now that you've told me about the sanctified jerky?"
"Tastes just like chicken," she said lightly, and he tried not to grimace at the image that her words invoked. He looked down at the gelato in his hand, and passed it back to her, suddenly not hungry. She accepted the paper cup triumphantly, scooping up a spoonful of the melting delicacy and plopping it into her mouth.
The boat rounded the triangular tip of the peninsula that made up the sestiere of Dorsoduro, and floated into the vaporetto landing. Doujima guided him off of the ferryboat, and waved her hand in a grandiose gesture to indicate that they had arrived at their destination. A gracefully domed building loomed over the landing, its steps nearly touching the water. The stone walls were so pale that they almost appeared white, especially with the summer sunshine reflecting off of them; Grecian columns framed a set of enormous black doors. There were statues depicting angels and saints in alcoves near the doors, as well as bordering the roof, so Nagira thought that it might be a church. The statuary aside, it didn't look like any church he had ever seen. It was too lushly rounded and elaborately decorated, in spite of the stark color of the walls.
"Santa Maria della Salute," Doujima explained, her blue eyes lingering on the delicate curves and lines of the church. "Built as a thanks to the Madonna for saving Venice from the plague." She glanced sideways at him, one brow cocked. "Do you want to go in?"
He shrugged, and dipped a hand into the pocket of his slacks to remove his pack of cigarettes and lighter. He ran a thumb over the wax-paper surface of the pack, inhaling the sweet scent of unlit tobacco, then used the tip of his finger to fish out a cigarette. "I'm not too big on churches."
To his surprise, she reached out and took his lighter with the hand that wasn't holding the gelato, flicking it open and holding it so that he could light his cigarette. "Me neither. I always thought that Salute was a little creepy, actually. There's this arch inside, above the altar... It's supposed to be the Madonna expelling the plague and saving Venezia, but she always just looked pissed off to me."
Nagira lit his cigarette and took his lighter back, pocketing it and the pack once again. He took a deep drag, then smirked at her. "Guilty conscience, Yurika?" he suggested jokingly.
"Maybe," she agreed, followed by a very indelicate snort. She tossed the now-liquefied remains of the gelato into a nearby trash bin, then motioned to one side of the church. "Are you ready to move on, then?"
He thought about asking 'move on to where?' but thought it unlikely that he'd get a straight answer. Doujima hooked her arm through one of his, and he allowed her to pull him around the side of the church, always a step ahead of him, like an insistent child. For a moment, he was reminded of just how young she really was; not even twenty yet. Just as Robin had always acted older than her fifteen years, Doujima had never seemed like a teenager to him, even when she was playing at being an idiot.
There didn't seem to be much time for childhood among SOLOMON's operatives. Yet another thing to dislike about the syndicate.
They crossed a narrow plaza, or campo, passing by a closed-up art museum. The building that she led him towards was blockier than Santa Maria della Salute had been, but had the same pale walls and general feeling of age to it. It was neatly wedged onto the very tip of the Dorsoduro peninsula, held above the water by some architectural miracle. Like many of Venice's older buildings, the roof was made of red tile and, at the far end, he could make out some sort of sculpture hanging above the canal... A large golden ball, with what looked like a statue of a naked woman standing on top of it. The figure at the top shifted suddenly in the breeze, and he realized that it was a weather vane.
"What on earth is that?" Nagira asked, both because he wanted to know and because he knew that Doujima expected the question.
"The Dogana di Mare, or Sea Customs Post," she explained, as they walked through the entrance. "Where cargo ships were inspected before being allowed entrance to the city. Not really exciting, I know, but it has the best view."
He turned a little to look at her, surprised that she knew about all this – he appreciated, by now, that Doujima was a lot smarter than she pretended to be, but his little clotheshorse girlfriend hardly seemed like the sort to have any interest in the history of a place, much less remember that history after being gone for years. "You're better than a tour guide. You really love this place, don't you?"
Doujima seemed startled by his question. Perhaps she hadn't intended to show that much of herself. "Venice? Sure. It has... personality." He watched as she considered, then decided to elaborate. "There are so many myths about it, so many illusions. Smoke and mirrors. I always had fun when I was younger, trying to figure out what the truth of it was, behind the facade." She sighed softly, her eyes running over the interior of the Dogana di Mare. "It really is a beautiful facade."
It was sad, when he thought about it, that she could fall in love with a place because of its lies. A beautiful facade, she called it... Maybe she felt that she and the city had something in common with each other.
Of course, her canals didn't stink. The somewhat vulgar thought made him grin a little and, although he didn't speak it aloud, he doubted that Yurika would have been offended if he had. God knew that she had said worse to him since they had begun seeing eachother. However, it didn't really seem like the time, and even he wasn't tactless enough to go making rude jokes when she had just shared a rare piece of personal information.
Instead, he walked with her to one of the Dogana's many windows. Even though the place was as packed with sightseers as everywhere else in Venice, they were left in relative isolation to gaze across the Grand Canal, which he thought might have had something to do with a few well-planted elbows on Doujima's part.
Across the canal lay a truly magnificent view of the very heart of Venice, the Piazza San Marco. One by one, Doujima named the buildings there: St. Mark's Basilica, with its exotic spires and arches just barely visible over the rooftops; the gravity-defying Palazzo Ducale, the very picture of elegance in white Istrian stone and red Verona marble; the towering height of the Campanile...
"...and that's the Ponte della Paglia," she murmured, pointing at a bridge. "Beyond it is the Bridge of Sighs – the Ponte dei Sospiri, in Italian – where prisoners were led between the Doge's Palace and the prisons. It was also Mickey Mouse's stronghold when he attempted to take over Italy in the name of EuroDisney..."
He cast her a droll look. "I was listening."
The smile on her face was a blend of baiting and flirtatious. Nagira had long ago begun to suspect that banter was what amounted to foreplay between them. "Just checking."
Despite the reassurance that he was paying attention, Doujima didn't seem to want to continue her narrative. She stared across the canal, her face closed-off and thoughtful. He was reminded again of what he had seen when she had entered the hotel room earlier, that eerie loss of confidence and vibrancy that seemed so unlike her. In the sudden flurry of activity, he had almost forgotten about it, and he wondered if that had been her intention from the start. "You alright, little lady? You seem a bit quiet."
She turned her head and flashed him a smile. "I only seem quiet because I've been talking non-stop since we left the hotel," she teased.
Once again, he realized that she was trying to evade him. He sighed and used one of the Dogana's ancient stone walls to grind out his cigarette. He was sorely tempted to light another one once it was gone; he had the feeling that he was going to need it. "That's not an answer, Yurika."
A grimace stole across her features briefly, before she turned her face away again, presenting him with a view of her profile. She seemed to be struggling with something, her brows drawn downwards in a very slight frown. "Something's come up," she said, finally. "I think that it might be best if you left Italy."
Silence greeted her pronouncement, before a low chuckle escaped his throat. She dragged her startled gaze back to him at the unexpected sound. "So, that's what today was. A nice way of telling me to kiss off. Better than a 'Dear John', I guess." He shifted so that he could lean a shoulder against the wall near the window, and arched a brow. "What happened? Your superiors at SOLOMON tell you to get rid of me before I cause any trouble?"
The little frown on her face now appeared more annoyed than troubled. All the same, she kept her voice blithe and careless, so patently false that even the most trusting of souls would have spotted the lie in her demeanor. "It's for your own good, really. I don't want to involve you in SOLOMON business." She gave him a very pointed stare. "You don't want to be involved in SOLOMON business."
That made him shrug; he couldn't deny the truth of what she said. He never liked to get tied up with SOLOMON, but he also hadn't let it stop him from getting involved in the past. Nor would he let it prevent his involvement now, if it came to that. "Yeah. The Factory was SOLOMON business too. What is it this time?"
"Someone died." It was a flat response, and in that moment she sounded eerily like his brother. Nagira wondered if the STN really did brainwash them.
Probably.
"Someone you knew?" he guessed.
Her expression softened marginally. "Yes. My mentor, Alfonso. He was in charge of SOLOMON's intelligence agency."
That comment raised mixed feelings in Nagira. While he regretted that someone close to her had died, he really couldn't bring himself to feel sorry that it had been someone high up in the syndicate. For a moment he was conflicted, wavering between his own differing opinions, but in the end, sympathy for the woman in front of him won out.
He was starting to think that Doujima unknowingly had him completely wrapped around her little finger, even if he wouldn't acknowledge it.
Rather than indulge in the long-suffering sigh that was trying escape his lips, Nagira fished out another cigarette and placed it in his mouth. He didn't light it right away; instead, he continued to scrutinize her. "I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not leaving, though."
His voice was a study in nonchalance, and he stifled a smile when a tiny, disbelieving noise escaped her throat. She might have him wrapped around her finger, but it sure as hell didn't mean that he was going to do as she said. Nor did it mean that he couldn't get a certain amount of pleasure out of goading her, sometimes.
"You don't even like SOLOMON," she said, as if this was supposed to change things. Actually, he suspected that she, herself, wasn't too fond of the organization that she worked for. However, since he also suspected that she was in rather heavy denial about her own dislike, he knew better than to mention it.
"I told you, it's not the first time I've had to get my hands dirty digging around in SOLOMON's problems. Last time, I got drawn in because of Amon; this time it's because of you." He gave another no-big-deal shrug, then smirked. "Besides, I said it then, and I'll say it again now: I just can't bear to stand by and watch."
Doujima eyed him narrowly. "And what makes you think that I'm going to let you stay?"
It was his turn to give her a pointed stare. "How do you plan to stop me?" He tried to ask the question in a calm, rational tone, but had the feeling that he ended up sounding smug.
She huffed indignantly, her eyes narrowing even further. "There are ways."
When he didn't respond, she let out another soft, irritated huff. Then she shook her head, and threw up her hands in defeat. "Fine. You're staying?"
The smile on his face was definitely smug now. "I'm staying."
Doujima was silent for a moment. "I'm glad," she said finally, quietly.
The matter-of-fact comment floored him, but he did his best not to show it. He removed the still-unlit cigarette from his mouth, and tapped it back into the pack in his pocket before slinging a friendly arm around her shoulders. She remained tense for a moment, as if to show him that, in spite of her words, she still wasn't entirely happy with the situation. Then she curled into his side, her hip resting lightly against his own and her fingers hooking comfortably through one of his belt loops. "Now there, wasn't that easy? C'mon, you didn't think that I'd let you run around and cause trouble all on your own, did you? I've seen some of the shit that you guys get into." He clucked his tongue disapprovingly, something that he had learned from Mika. "You kids and your wild escapades."
She scowled, but he got the feeling that she was more amused than offended. "Don't push your luck, Syunji."
"Yeah, yeah," he replied, and waved off her warning with his free hand. "Let's go back to the hotel. All this sunshine and fresh air is bad for my health."
"I hear that it can cause cancer," she agreed readily. The trip back to the hotel passed in silence, but it was a strangely comfortable silence, more comfortable than her forced conversation on Venice had been earlier. Even though she had protested, he couldn't help but feel that Doujima had been telling the truth when she had said that she was glad, and was relieved that he had decided to stick around. Something in her seemed to have relaxed, and the strained quality she had possessed when she had returned from her lunch had all but disappeared. When he reached up a hand to absently stroke her hair as they walked, she practically purred, her arm tightening around his waist.
It confirmed a long-held suspicion of his: that, for a man who was used to keeping his love affairs short and relatively superficial, he was in way over his head.
Nagira considered the notion, then shrugged philosophically. He would worry about that when it became an issue. For now, with Doujima very nearly draped across his side, he was more concerned with contemplating the alternate uses of chocolate sauce than with how attached he was becoming to the woman.
The lawyer was surprised to find that Marco was standing on the sidewalk outside of the Hotel Pausania, wearing his black leather jacket in spite of the heat, and glowering at anyone who came near him. Doujima didn't seem to expect him either, and she disentangled herself from Nagira to confront the other spy.
"Marco," she said carefully, as if she thought that he might bite. "You could've been a bit more specific about the 'changes' in Venice."
The man grunted dismissively, seemingly unfazed by her accusation. "No, I couldn't have, and you know it. I was given strict instructions, and they would have handed me my ass on a silver platter if I disobeyed them. This isn't Alfonso we're getting orders from now, where we were allowed a bit of leeway... This is SOLOMON Headquarters. Do you know what that means?"
"Probably better than most," Doujima murmured.
Marco gave her a sharp glance out of canny dark eyes. "That's right, you would."
Nagira was confused at first by what the other man meant by that, but he had not successfully worked against SOLOMON-Japan for so many years without becoming pretty canny himself. He remembered what Doujima had said the previous night. 'My father more or less lives in Rome... when I said that my parents were high up in SOLOMON? It wasn't one of my lies.' Even he knew that SOLOMON Headquarters called Rome its home-base... So, he had to wonder, exactly how high up in the brotherhood was her father?
Something in Marco's comment obviously bothered her and, although she was trying to hide it, the older spy seemed to have realized his mistake as well, because he quickly shifted the subject. "You-know-who sent me," he said, his eyes flicking towards Nagira, in a way that told him that the obvious subterfuge was for his benefit alone. "He said that your Mr. Nagira might be wanting a flight back to Japan, and that I should arrange it."
"How kind of Juliano," she replied wryly, "but unnecessary. Syunji isn't going back to Japan. You don't need to keep using euphemisms, either. I'm going to tell him everything as soon as we get back up to the hotel room." Nagira was a bit skeptical about that, although he kept his mouth shut. He was pretty sure that Doujima's definition of 'tell him everything' would include considerable editing on her part but, at the moment, he was almost willing to settle for 'tell him anything'. He felt a moment's longing for Japan, where he could have used his network of informants to check whatever information she gave him, and to find out more.
A soft hiss escaped through Marco's teeth. "This isn't wise, Yurika. Like I said, HQ is in charge now, and we're going to have to start toeing the line. Bringing an outsider into our affairs isn't the way to do that, and it's going to get you – and him – into a whole lot of trouble."
"No it won't," Doujima said, wryly, and with a sardonic twist of the lips. "Like you pointed out, I'm special. I'll have to do a lot worse before I get into any real trouble." She shrugged. "Juliano said that I could draw on whatever resources I needed to complete this mission. Well, I'm choosing to draw on a resource outside of SOLOMON."
That startled a laugh out of Marco. "You're purposely misinterpreting his orders, and you know it. But go right ahead, that's your mistake to make. Just as long as you don't drag the rest of us down with you." He hesitated, then blew out a breath, sounding much like a frustrated horse. "I didn't mean anything by what I said before, you know."
"I know," she replied, the corners of her mouth turning upwards. "Mi famiglia just isn't one of my favorite subjects. Had I been an orphan, I'd be happier today."
Nagira thought that the other man might balk at the comment, but he just laughed again. "From what I know of your father, I believe it. I should take you home with me to Sicily sometime; my wife, Lucia, she'd love to feed you up." His voice rose to a clipped falsetto that was undoubtedly supposed to be an imitation of his wife. "'You too skinny! How we going to find you a husband, passerotta, if you so skinny?'" He glanced at Nagira again, and chuckled. "Although you might have that covered all on your own. Mr. Nagira, how did a nice man like you get mixed up with this little trouble-maker?"
"She knocked me over the head and locked me in a hotel room with her for a day."
Marco snorted. "I'm somehow not surprised. Maybe I shouldn't take you home, Yurika. You'd probably be a bad influence on my daughters." He flipped up the collar of his jacket, and turned to go. "I'll leave you two lovebirds alone. Give me a call when you actually intend to get some work done."
The response that Doujima made to him was less than polite, and included an accompanying gesture. Marco waved pleasantly before trotting off down the street. Even though he whistled under his breath as he went, Nagira noticed that there was a hunched quality to his shoulders, and his steps were hurried.
"He's scared of something," Nagira said. He looked at Doujima, whose good mood seemed to have evaporated with Marco's visit.
"A lot of things scare Marco," she replied thoughtlessly as they entered the lobby. "One of these days, I expect to find him running around outside, screaming, 'The sky is falling! The sky is falling!'"
"You're sure he doesn't have good reason to be scared? SOLOMON Headquarters sounds pretty fearsome."
Doujima frowned at him, as if to say, 'don't you go starting on that again.' "You're still welcome to leave, if you want to. You don't have to—"
One of his hands rose to forestall her protest, and she fell silent. "That wasn't what I was saying." He sighed softly; it really was no use arguing with her about SOLOMON. Nor did he think that it would do him any good to remind her that Juliano was the name of the man whom she, herself, had told him had ordered Robin's hunt. He could ask her about that later, when she wasn't feeling quite so defensive about her precious confraria.
He placed his hands on her shoulders, and guided her up the stairs. "Come on. I think it's time for you to do some explaining."
Doujima stood on the Ponte della Paglia, and stared down the narrow corridor between the Doge's Palace and the crumbling gray walls of the prisons. The Bridge of Sighs was before her, a clean white arch reflected in the murky waters of the canal below. Beside her stood Alfonso, who was feeding a flock of pigeons from a platter full of so-called Venetian delicacies – kranz, pan di Dogi and, of course, zaletti.
They were probably put to better use feeding the pigeons than feeding people, she thought.
"Come stai?"
She blinked at the old man's question, and shifted so that one of her hips was resting against the stone rail of the bridge. "I'm fine."
Alfonso shooed the pigeons away, and they took off in a flurry of wildly beating gray wings. He balanced the platter on the edge of the railing, then turned towards her. He looked much as she remembered him; dressed in an oversized white linen suit and shiny black loafers, with a cigar and a watch hanging out of the pocket of his jacket, and his hair slicked back behind his ears.
"You're dead," Doujima added, her tone conversational. She felt that peculiar distance that came only in dreams, a kind of hazy numbness that made it so that even the irrational made sense. Alfonso could have been sitting on a unicycle and wearing a clown nose, and she probably would have greeted him with the same calm composure.
"No I'm not," he replied, quite cheerfully. "Alfonso is dead. I'm a delusion produced by your grief-fevered psyche. But let's not split hairs."
He didn't wait for her to respond, raising his chin to look at her. "You're in too deep, my girl. You know that, right?"
"I would, except I'm not," she relied, as snootily as she could, and he let out a cackle in response.
"Yes, well, you always were a confident one."
"Why are you here?"
Alfonso tilted his head to one side, a wicked smile on his thin lips. "Beats me."
"Oh, well, that helps," Doujima muttered. "When you dream about your dead mentor, isn't he supposed to impart esoteric wisdom, or something?
He shrugged. "I wasn't aware that there was a code of conduct for this sort of thing." He scooped the dish with the pastries up again, and presented them to her with a grin that said that he knew exactly how she felt about Venetian deserts. "Pick your poison?"
"Even in my dreams, you're an evil old bastard," she informed him. All the same, she plucked a piece of zaletti off the plate. Holding it delicately between her thumb and forefinger, she took a bite, and grimaced as the taste of maize filled her mouth.
"As in life, so also in death," he replied, and selected a morsel for himself before setting down the platter again. He turned his gaze to the heavy stone curve of the Bridge of Sighs. His expression became thoughtful, the many lines on his face deepening with concentration. "La Serenissima. I loved it here."
"I know," Doujima said quietly. "You're the one who showed it to me."
"It's strange, isn't it, to grow so attached to mortar and clay?" The elbows of his white suit caught on the rough stone of the bridge's railing as he leaned forward. She thought that she caught the faint scent of cigar smoke coming from him, a smell strongly tied to her memories of the old man. "I suppose that's the charm of home."
"'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in'?"
The sound that he made was strange, somewhere between a grunt and a chuckle. "It's a nice sentiment. I don't think that's it, though. Maybe it's that we see a reflection of ourselves in it." He jerked his chin towards the Bridge of Sighs. "Take this place for instance. According to popular myth, it was used to walk criminals between the prisons and the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace. And that's us, isn't it? Prisoners. Prisoners on a bridge of straw. Paglia. Straw. The Ponte della Paglia." He chortled at his own play on words, then took a big bite out of the piece of kranz in his hand.
Doujima nibbled at her own pastry absently, not even noticing the unpleasant flavor this time. "I've never been too good at the whole metaphorical thing. You're going to have to explain it better than that."
"Oh, you know what I mean. But I don't think you're ready to accept it, not yet." Alfonso saw her giving him a dirty look, and grinned. "What? You're the one who asked for esoteric."
"I should have known better."
He didn't respond.
"Who killed you, maestro?" she asked suddenly.
Alfonso laughed, arching one thin white brow at her. "Damned if I know. I'm just a figment of your imagination, remember?"
Her silence was answer enough. She hadn't remembered.
The world around them seemed to have grown blurry, white around the edges like an over-exposed photograph. Doujima looked down off the bridge, surprised to find that she couldn't even see the water of the canal through the haze.
"Who do you trust?"
The abrupt question startled her. "What?"
"Who do you trust?"
She turned. There was no longer anyone standing beside her. The end of the bridge, the wall of the Doge's Palace... It was all indistinct, as though a thick layer of fog had suddenly descended on the area.
"Who do you trust?"
Doujima woke suddenly. The sun was just setting outside the window, and a quick glance around the room told her that Nagira wasn't there. She thought that she recalled him saying something about having run out of cigarettes, but she couldn't remember when he had left to buy more. For that matter, she couldn't remember falling asleep, curled up on top of the blankets on the still neatly-made bed.
The taste of maize still lingered heavily on her tongue.
Disclaimer: Of the many things which do not belong to me, Witch Hunter Robin is one.
Notes: ...I told you that I was lying about the zaletti.Once again, most of the locations depicted in this chapter are actual places, and I've represented them as accurately as possible. 'Pax tibi, Marce, Evangelista meus' is Latin, and means something along the lines of 'peace to you, Mark, my Evangelist.' Mi famiglia means 'my family' in Italian, and passerotta is a term of endearment which means 'little sparrow.' The question come stai? translates to 'how are you?' Many thanks to WiccanMethuselah for continuing to beta read this. Coming up next, Into My Head. The investigation into Alfonso's death begins, and Charlie once again enters the picture. Edit: Quote from Doujima is out of "Death of a Hired Man," by Robert Frost. It seems that I was mad crazy for the quoting in these first few chapters.