' " . . . it is very painful for me to be forced to
speak the truth. It is the first time in my life
that I have ever been reduced to such a painful
position, and I am really quite inexperienced
in doing anything of the kind." '

- Oscar Wilde, 'The Importance of Being Earnest.'

Chapter Thirteen: Truth

The world was a blur of light, shadow and sound; a whirlwind with her trapped in the middle of it. The ground beneath her feet kept shifting, changing, rocking like a boat on a troubled sea and sending her staggering. Warm hands wrapped around her arms, keeping her steady, but when she turned to see who was supporting her she had only the vague impression of dark hair and a pale, indistinct face.

"She can't even walk straight," the face murmured, and now Doujima knew that it was Amon. His hair was dripping on her; he was soaked through. She was too, but she didn't feel it. Her skin felt hot and dry, stretched too thin over her bones. "This isn't right. She shouldn't be this bad from a dunk in the water."

A dunk in the water. They used to do that to witches, didn't they? To see if they would float. She wanted to tell him that a dunk in Venice's water probably would do this to a person, but she couldn't make the words come out. Her mouth was desert dry, her tongue thick and clumsy. "Poisoned," she tried to say, and wasn't even sure that she had made a sound.

Robin was there, and Doujima wasn't entirely sure where she had come from; if she had been there all along or if she had appeared, like magic, out of the whirlwind – no, the firestorm – that the world had become. She placed a gentle hand against Doujima's forehead. The pressure made her skin twinge, but it was also surprisingly comforting. "She was given something. I think she needs a doctor."

Had Robin heard? Or had she guessed? For once, the constant questions her mind supplied just didn't matter, and she sagged against Amon, barely registering it when he swayed before adjusting to her added weight. He muttered something, low and obscene, before swinging her up, up and into his arms. She felt like she was flying, and the blurred edges of the world were sliding into her, smearing her like the watercolors, pale and soft like the painting that hung on Alfonso's wall.

"Someone will be on duty, even now." A woman's voice, familiar but unrecognizable. "We are almost there. Try to keep her awake."

"Doujima..." Robin again, her hand, this time on Doujima's arm. It made her flinch, the feeling invasive now rather than comforting.

"Yurika." That was Nagira, and she found herself paying attention simply because this was the first time she had heard him speak since they had pulled her into the boat. The boat had been left behind, she recalled hazily, abandoned in favor of dry land, but that was okay because she didn't have to walk; Amon was playing at being the gallant, or whatever. "You stay awake, or I'm donating your clothes to charity."

She might have laughed, except it was just easier and less painful not to. Easier and less painful, too, to lean her head back against the damp arm of Amon's shirt and close her eyes. Just for a moment. Just long enough to make the world stop blurring and twisting, and allow time to blur and twist instead.

The noise decreased. The light increased.

There was a sharp, institutional smell, like the dentist's office. When she had been younger, Alfonso had dragged her to the dentist, and to the doctor. She had hated it; he had already taught her to read faces, and she had always known they didn't mean it when they told her something wasn't going to hurt.

Voices, clattering and shifting against each other, familiar and unfamiliar weaving together like threads in a tapestry. If Robin's voice was thread, it would have been something soft but unbelievably strong, something that gleamed when you turned it to the light. Amon was smooth and shining silk, a thin strand that was sharp enough to cut and kill. Nagira... Nagira, she decided, was wool. It looked soft, but it prickled when you touched it and was bound to rub you the wrong way if you wore it for too long. He was rubbing someone the wrong way now. She could tell, even if the details of what was being said were as indistinct as Amon's face had been earlier.

Light. Voices. Something solid, but neither warm nor wet enough to be Amon, beneath her. All of it fading, becoming as distant as a dream, only bits and snatches of it worming their way into her brain.

"...dilated pupils, increased heart rate..."

"I can hear her heartbeat from halfway across the freaking..."

The surface she was sitting on shifted, as if someone was leaning against it. Even with her eyes closed, it made her feel tilted and dizzy.

"...emetic?"

"I think it's better to...

"No..."

"...what the hell are...?"

Someone held something to her lips, and she drank it down without thinking. Almost immediately, it came back up, her stomach jerking unpleasantly as it tried to escape her body through her throat; her head, neck, and shoulders pounding and straining. God but it hurt. She was bent nearly in two, her eyes open but watering, still unable to make out the world around her except that her feet were bare and covered in something unpleasant. Oh, and she had probably just ruined these trousers, which was a pity because she had rather liked them. Someone touched her and she struck out at them blindly, feeling viciously pleased when her hand connected. She might have done more except that her guts were twitching and it was going to happen... it was happening, it had happened again... Until she could close her eyes and allow herself to drift again, allow the world to become distant, unseen, half-heard, dim.

The slant of the light was different when she opened her eyes, more natural, less florescent. She thought that she might be dreaming, except that it didn't have the quality of a dream. It felt a little bit like when she was sixteen, and she and a neighbor girl had crouched on the dock behind Alfonso's house and smoked themselves stupid; her thoughts were confused, illogical, but undeniably waking and real. Alfonso had lectured her afterwards until she had thought that her ears would fall off, because it was important that her mind remain sharp and, blah blah blah, being a spy was serious business...

It felt a little bit like that, but not much. Even so, she thought that she was probably wasn't dreaming.

Robin sat beside her, and she was beautiful and frightening. Her hair writhed around her face like a living thing, and her eyes glowed, the color of new leaves against the sun. Only the hideous yellow dress remained the same. Her mouth moved, as if she was speaking, but Doujima heard nothing.

She held up her hands, a piece of paper between them. It took Doujima a moment to recognize it as Alfonso's letter. Slowly, Robin pressed her face into the letter, forming a mask that hid lips, nose, and glowing eyes. When she let the letter fall away, the words had impressed themselves on her skin, burning black like tattoos against the pale skin of Robin's face.

Darkness.

She was on a bed, metal frame and crisply starched cotton sheets screaming 'hospital' to her mind. A hand closed over her breast, almost but not quite too hard for seduction, and she looked up into Sakaki's eyes, dark in the darkness of the room, and very close. That wasn't right, though. There had been a time or two, when he had walked her out or given her a ride, and she had thought, maybe, but they had never...

He pushed his face against hers, stubble sliding against her cheek. "Who do you trust?" It occurred to her that she should have been able to feel his breath on her skin, but she couldn't.

Darkness.

It was no longer dark, and Nagira was standing over her bed. He had a sock over one of his hands, black magic marker scribbled over it to give it the appearance of hair, and one broad line curved into a semicircle to suggest a frown. He pushed it into her face, and the black button eyes glittered at her strangely.

Darkness.

Morning, and Fiametta was sitting on the edge of the mattress, her red-gold hair falling to conceal her face, except for her eyes, which were as dark and shining as Nagira's puppet. She held up her hand, showing that there was something small and squirming in her fist. A toad.

The Witch Queen placed the toad on the bed, pinning it against the sheets with long, graceful fingers. She produced a knife, and held it up to the light, the edge of it gleaming silver and sharp. Without hesitation, she placed the blade between the toad's eyes, pushed deep and pulled down, slicing it open from nose to tailbone with ease and efficiency. A thin spray of blood turned the white fabric over Doujima's leg crimson. The toad was still moving, desperately trying to escape.

Fiametta put down the knife, and looked at Doujima. Without looking away, she slid deft fingers into the toad's skull, blood sliding over her skin as if the crimson polish on her long nails was eating its way up her hand. She pulled away, released the now-still toad, and between her fingertips was something wet and glistening, so covered in gore that it was impossible to tell what it was.

She reached forward, and slid the damp glob between Doujima's lips, covering her mouth and nose with bloodied fingers so that there was no choice but to swallow, swallow or suffocate.

"Stupid girl," she murmured, her old woman's voice scraping as Doujima tried not to gag at the coppery taste that filled her mouth, uncooked meat, sick and cloying. "Stupid... but very brave. The files you brought with you out the window were recovered. I wished to destroy them, but the Eve argued that they were yours to do with as you please. I bow to her judgment." The hand that was holding Doujima's face tightened painfully, nails biting into her skin. "Take care that you choose wisely."

She got up and left, taking the knife and the toad's mutilated corpse with her and, no matter how much Doujima wished that this had been a dream, she had the feeling that it wasn't.

Darkness.

And light.

"Buono. You are awake."

Doujima squinted against the harsh fluorescents above her, and rolled her head to look at the person who had addressed her, a woman with laugh lines around her mouth and dark hair slicked back into a severe bun, who did not look the least bit familiar. Her white lab coat and the stethoscope around her neck was enough to indicate why she was there, though, even if Doujima had the feeling that her super spy powers of observation weren't quite up to par.

She swallowed, and it made her throat hurt, but the horrible sandy dryness in her mouth was gone. "I feel like my insides are on the outside," she grumbled, and was a little appalled when her voice rasped and broke.

The woman smiled thinly. "That is probably fairly accurate. I had to give to an emetic, in order to make you vomit up whatever foul concoction you were given. You made quite a mess out of my waiting room."

If she hadn't felt so foul, Doujima might have apologized for making a mess, or thanked the woman for her efforts. As it so happened, her throat was raw, her stomach muscles were quivering with pain, and her head felt like it had been cracked open and inexpertly glued back together. She was in no mood to be courteous to anyone. "Where am I?"

"My practice," the woman said shortly, coming to stand near the edge of the bed and check the monitors there. "You may call me Dr. Moreno." Doujima wasn't feeling so slow that she didn't notice the woman's careful choice of words, and the clear message that this wasn't her real name, nor anything that she could be identified by. She looked at Doujima, and offered another tight-lipped smile. "Sometimes I do things for the Witch Queen." She held up her hand, and a twist of her fingers sent the stand for the IV hooked into Doujima's arm skidding over the clay tiles on the floor to thump soundly into her hand.

"You're a witch," Doujima murmured, unsurprised. It took a moment longer for her foggy memories to clear. "Fiametta. She was in my room. She gave me..."

Dr. Moreno grunted. "Did she? Well, I do not doubt that whatever she gave you was the equal to any of my medicines. Fiametta Ganza has been around for a very, very long time."

"I thought it might be a dream," Doujima said, more to herself than to the doctor. She received a shrug in response.

"It might have been," Dr. Moreno said. "It took me a while to realize that whatever you were poisoned with was also a hallucinogen. I gave you philocarpine, but I do not doubt that your dreams were interesting."

"You have no idea," Doujima muttered. "Belladonna," she added, since the woman seemed to be waiting for a further explanation.

Another strange, strained little smile. "You are lucky, then. There is an old wives' tale that says that belladonna is the Devil's plant, and that to eat it is to invite his wrath."

Doujima stared at her. "You don't believe that."

Dr. Moreno shrugged. "Perhaps not." She released the IV stand, and took Doujima's hand in her own, pulling the needle out of her arm with no warning and ignoring the protesting yelp she got in response. Calmly, she stepped away from the bed. "I will go and tell that great oaf you brought with you that you are awake. He has been making quite a commotion." The frown on her face said that she liked Nagira's commotion about as much as she did the mess in her waiting room. "My nurse is terrified of him, and I do not think that my office will ever be rid of the stink of his filthy cigarettes. Wait here."

"Like I'm going anywhere."

The doctor left the room, muttering under her breath. Most of it was so quiet as to be inaudible, but Doujima clearly heard the word magnaccia grumbled mid-tirade. She tried to sit up, and ended up slumping against the pillows again when her stomach and her head both protested the sudden movement.

"You think he's a pimp?"

No answer. The curtain covering the door swished shut.

"Do you think he's my pimp?" Doujima demanded of the now empty room. She let her head fall back against the pillow with an indignant huff, her mouth twisting into a scowl. Her expression didn't change when, a moment later, the curtain was pushed aside, and Nagira stepped into the room.

His white coat was now more of a dirty gray. It looked like it had taken another dunking, even though the clothes beneath were clean and dry, his light blue shirt folding crisply against the skin of his neck. A cigarette was nestled between his lips, sending up a slow spiral of smoke as he inhaled. There was a purple bruise under his left eye, and she wondered idly how he had gotten it. "Doujima."

Not 'Yurika.' That hurt more than she would have liked to admit, and she bit back anything she might have said. This time, when she tried to push herself up in the bed, she succeeded, resting her back against the wall behind her. "How long have I been out?"

"Night before last," he replied. "There're Hunters all over the city."

"Looking for me?" He nodded. She didn't really know how to take that. It was frightening, but at the same time... "Wow. I'm a celebrity," she said, after careful contemplation.

He laughed, almost unwillingly, but that was what she wanted. What she needed, right now. She closed her eyes, allowing herself to savor the sound. "Nagira?" She paused, and corrected herself. "Syunji?"

"Yeah?"

She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. It scraped against her throat, but it also cleared her thoughts and lessened the pounding in her head. This was hard, so much harder than she would have thought. "I'm so tired of you being angry at me. I'm tired of being angry at you. Please, can we just stop?"

Her eyes were still closed, but she heard him sigh. Felt the bed dip as he settled his weight on it, and smelled the tobacco of his cigarette for just a moment before he put it out, most likely by leaving a nice scorch mark on the tiles of the doctor's floor. "I'm not angry anymore. You had me worried, little lady."

"So worry trumps anger?" she asked, with a wry twist of her lips.

"Sure."

"I'll have to remember that. For future reference."

"The hell you will. You ever think of pulling a stunt like that again, and your clothes will be on their way to a charity bank before you can sneeze."

"Really, these constant threats against my wardrobe have got to stop." Doujima opened her eyes, and was a little disconcerted to find him sitting so close, close enough for her to reach out and touch him, if she wanted to. She did want to touch him, she realized, her fingertips aching with the desire for skin against skin and her arms stiff with the effort of holding herself back. As a distraction, she studied the bruise under his eye. "How did you get that? You look like a prizefighter."

Nagira reached up to touch the bruise, as if he had forgotten it, and his mouth tilted into a grin. "You. You gave me a good smack after the doc dosed you."

"Oh." She remembered hitting someone after throwing up, but those memories were generally overshadowed by a sense of ew, gross. "Sorry."

He snorted. "Lucky shot. Don't worry about it." He fell silent, and it wasn't long before the silence deepened and turned into something awkward. When Doujima didn't break it, Nagira sighed again, and ran a hand through his hair. It was getting long, she noted, shaggy and in need of a cut. "What are you going to do?" he asked.

"That's a good question," she replied. "Suddenly, I find my employment options sadly limited. Think anyone might have an opening for a spy, slightly used, but with limited wear and tear?"

In the old days, he might have suggested a few uses for her. Now he just looked at her with exasperation. She shrugged. "What do you want me to say? I'm not going back, if that's what you're wondering. I couldn't, even if I wanted to."

"Do you want to? Yurika—"

"No." Such an easy word to say, but it felt like she was ripping her teeth out one by one, just trying to get the words out of her mouth. "No, I don't want to go back. They killed Alfonso. They tried to kill me. I think they'd kill us all, if they could. You know?"

"Yeah, I know." Of course he knew. He had always known.

"So, no. I don't want to be a SOLOMON agent anymore. But you see, the problem with that..." She stopped to swallow, panic suddenly choking her. "The problem with that is, I don't think I know how to be anything else. An agent is what I am. I don't think I can... I don't know how to change that."

He reached out to slide a hand against her side, tentatively, and she wanted it, but it was almost worse than if he hadn't touched her at all, because one thing they had never been with each other was hesitant. Maybe he saw something in her face, because his touch suddenly firmed, his palm lying warm and flat against her ribcage to guide her closer to him. Doujima sighed, and let her head fall forward, pressing her nose against the curve of his neck.

"We'll figure something out," he said, and even if his jovial tone wasn't entirely convincing, she was almost absurdly grateful for his use of the word 'we.' "There's this law firm I know in Tokyo that might be hiring."

She laughed against his throat. "Oh, yeah? What would a law firm do with a spy?"

"The boss is a pretty sneaky guy," Nagira said, his voice smug. "I'm sure he'll be able to think of something." The hand that he smoothed down her back was a little too tender for the gesture to be called suggestive, but it still made Doujima smirk. It felt good, easy, like being with Nagira always had. Their situation had never been simple, but actually being with him, well, that had never been anything but pleasure.

That wouldn't be so bad, she thought, wistfully. She knew things about SOLOMON that very few other people did, and she could be pretty sneaky herself. There were probably a number of things that she could do to aid and abet Nagira with his 'Knight in Blinding Coat' complex. "Maybe," she said, because she didn't want to make it final, couldn't even think of doing so until this was all resolved. "There are some things I need to take care of, first."

She heard him draw a breath, and knew that he was about to protest; she didn't want that, didn't want another fight so soon after reconciliation, when all she could think about was the nice warmth of his shoulder through the coat and how unbelievably good he smelled. She shifted her head, pressed her mouth against his jaw near the ear, and felt the oncoming tirade pause. When her tongue flicked out to taste his skin, it rushed out of him in a sigh. The hand on her back stilled, and then moved up, his fingers tangling themselves in her hair.

Doujima pulled back, just far enough that she could see his face. The eye that she had bruised was faintly swollen, but the other one was heavy-lidded, studying her intently. "You should be resting," he said, the reproach carrying no force whatsoever.

"I've been asleep since, what, last night? The night before that?" she replied. "I think I'm pretty well rested." Actually, she felt a few steps to the left of half dead, her body aching like she was recovering from the flu and the worst hangover she had ever had in her life at the same time. She should have felt miserable, but instead she felt… lighter, better than she had in a long time, more free. Incredibly pleased with the heavy weight of Nagira's fingers against the back of her neck.

When she leaned forward to slide her mouth against his, he didn't protest, letting her hair skate through his fingers as he released his hold on her. He tilted his head to give her better access, deepening the kiss, and she pushed the cumbersome sheets out of her lap, shifting onto her knees. Cool air touched her back, and she was suddenly aware of her own state of dress; a hospital gown of thin, stiff cotton printed with bright pink flowers that rivaled even Robin's daisy dress for pure tackiness.

Nagira didn't seem to mind. One of his hands skimmed over her side and onto her back, finding the place where the gown gaped over her spine. Deft fingers dipped inside, tracing a pattern over the skin of her back as if he would count the bones, the barely-there contact teasing at her until she made a small, desperate noise against his mouth. She felt an answering chuckle spill from his lips into hers, and suddenly she found herself very nearly straddling his lap, his arms wrapped tight around her waist and his slacks brushing against the insides of her thighs.

How long since they had been like this? Their fight was new, but during the weeks before that, how many times had she returned to their hotel room after long nights working on Alfonso's puzzle to find him sleeping, or to collapse into an exhausted stupor of her own? When he broke the kiss, his breath coming short and shallow, she traced the line made on his cheek by one of his ridiculously enormous sideburns, and wanted to say something. That she had missed him, maybe, but those words wouldn't come, not yet. She had been right; she could stop working for SOLOMON, but it was harder, so much harder, to stop being a spy, to start saying something that even remotely resembled the truth. To say the things that mattered.

Instead of speaking, she leaned forward to kiss him again. His mouth opened beneath hers, hot and familiar, tongues sliding together. Her hands reached inside his jacket, and she toyed coyly with the topmost button on his shirt even as she settled herself fully into his lap. The arms around her waist loosened, and he ran his hands over her sides, down, gripping her hips and pulling her more firmly against him. Warmth pooled in her stomach, liquid desire that made her moan as she pushed herself against him.

A throat cleared behind her. Judging by the impatient note, it was not the first time.

Doujima was not capable of shame. She reminded herself of this fact as she pulled away from Nagira, and twisted around to look at Amon from her position in his brother's lap.

"I see you're feeling better," he said, as stoically as ever, with absolutely no indication that there was anything other that the utmost sincerity in his words. "When you have a moment, Robin and I would like to speak to you both." He turned and left the room, the curtain that stretched across the doorframe swishing closed behind him dramatically, even if the effect wasn't quite as impressive as that of the black coat he had worn as a Hunter.

Doujima turned back towards Nagira. She tried to keep the annoyance off her face, especially when she saw that he was smiling, even if it was the vaguely chagrined, mostly pleased smile of a boy caught doing something naughty. "The mood is ruined, huh?"

"I wouldn't say that," Doujima replied, "but I also wouldn't put it past Amon to come back and check on us if we don't show up." Personally, she thought that, because her former coworker wasn't getting any, he resented anyone who was. But that was just her pet theory. She gave it further consideration as she slid off of Nagira's legs.

"There's a door," he said, contemplatively. "I bet it has a lock."

It was so very, very tempting. Because she wanted him, badly enough that the juncture between her thighs was a sullen ache of frustration. And because it was funny to imagine the apoplexy that Amon would have when he found out. "Robin could probably burn the door down."

Nagira made a face, but the thought of Robin catching them in flagrante was apparently enough to convince him to choose the better part of valor. He pushed himself off the mattress, and walked over to a chair that had been hidden from her sight by the end of the bed, settling himself heavily into it. "Your suitcases are under the bed. Fiametta sent someone scurrying for them when we realized that it wouldn't be a good idea to go back to the hotel."

Noticing but ignoring that he was now calling the Witch Queen by her given name, Doujima followed his example, swinging her legs off the bed and letting them drop to the floor. She winced as the contact between her feet and the tiles reverberated up her body in a dull throb, sliding limply into a crouch and fumbling under the bed to pull out the first bag that her groping fingers encountered. The dress she pulled out had a short hem and a high neckline. The cloth was soft and tight-fitting, but it was also a severe black that would probably make her look like a three-day-old corpse, considering the way she felt right now and the fact that she hadn't been able to give the Italian sun nearly the appreciation it deserved during this trip. She replaced it in the suitcase, and thought that Nagira relaxed a little in his chair when he realized that she was actually fussing over what she wanted to wear.

Because of this, she chose and discarded several more perfectly good outfits before she pulled on the plum-colored dress that she had worn to her first meeting with Julianno. She hadn't worn it since that day, but it was sexy and a little bit sassy, and she needed that right now to face whatever was waiting for her outside of Dr. Moreno's carefully tidy room.

Nagira stood, and crossed the room to pull the curtain open, allowing her to step through. His hand rested lightly against her back as they walked down a hallway painted pale green and hung with small, vivid oil paintings, but her mind was already elsewhere.

Robin and Amon. Fiametta. Charlie and Marco. Julianno and Alfonso.

She had all the pieces now, and had even succeeded in putting together the edges of the puzzle. All she needed to do was complete it.

Disclaimer: Not it.

Notes: Ya'll have no idea how lucky you are to have WiccanMethuselah around to beta read this sucker, for every time I reach for the dramatic impact (cough, yeah right, cough) that a run-on sentence would provide, she slaps my greedy little fingers away from the keyboard. Metaphorically. For my own good.

The next chapter has already been written and beta read, and will be posted as soon as I get a chance to go through an make corrections. I am pleased to announce that, after the following chapter, this story only has two (or three, if I revise my outline again, as I am wont to do) more chapters in it.

For the moment, I have a request to make of those of you – the few, the patient, the exceptionally tenacious – who are still reading A Death in Venice, in spite of my long delays between chapters. This story was nominated for the WIP category of the dotmoon . net ' s UFO awards, and voting should open up fairly soon. If any of you feel like heading over there when that happens and voting, I would be most appreciative.