A/N: Sorry it's late, but it's worth it, I swear! Interlude time—eheheheheh.

You will never guess who. Except for the part where I tell you.

Interlude 3

Opéra—1

1975

"Don't worry, Cammie! You'll do fine. It's just a university production, si?"

"Si, Rosita, but that's just it! If I can't get a part here, how will I be able to sing once I graduate?"

"Always with the worrying! You're beginning to sound like Signora Elisabetta."

"I could wish! Mama could have gotten this part no problem!"

"Cammie, I swear to you, I'll be there. Right in the second row, behind those idiots you think won't like your singing, and I'll cheer for you so loudly all the others will go along no matter what they think!"

Rosita's persistence was rewarded with a laugh. "Grazi, Zita. I have to go. See you there?"

"Fifteen minutes. Tops. Ciao, Cammie."

"Ciao."

With that, Camilla Verdi hung up the pay phone and turned away from it with a sigh, rubbing her arms as if she was cold even in the early Italian autumn. Granted, there was a surprising amount of wind today—but blowing off of the Mediterranean, it was far from a chill wind. Another woman took her place at the phone; English, from the sound of it. Even this late in the season, Liguria was a popular tourist destination, and the city of Genoa was right at the heart of it.

Normally, Cammie loved the bustle. She liked noise, liked people, liked feeling connected and part of something yet special at the same time. It was part of the reasons she wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps. But right now the crowd felt a little too much like an audience. Right now it was pressing in on her and she felt as though she could hardly breathe.

(Stage fright,) she thought dimly. (I'm having stage fright already and I'm not even on stage.)

(Pull it together, Verdi.)

She took a deep breath and checked her watch, shifting her armful of composition homework awkwardly to do so. Rosita would arrive in thirteen minutes, assuming her estimate had been correct. Knowing Zita, that would probably translate into about twenty. The audition was in just over half an hour, which meant that if she really wanted time to warm up before she had to sing (in front of them, in front of everyone, oh God what was she going to do!?) she had to get going towards the music hall now.

Calling the building the music hall was a bit of a misnomer; it was an auditorium contained within one of the old school buildings near the scuola di giurisprudenza. Most of the faculty for the music and performing arts programs worked out of the Imperia campus, but the Verdis to which Cammie belonged were not those Verdis and despite Elisabetta Verdi's successful operatic career in days gone by, Camilla's family was not especially wealthy. True, Imperia was fairly nearby, but in the end it was still cheaper to occupy her family home in the city of her birth than to move and pay for housing down the coast.

Still, it was a hall, and music happened there, and now the building in question was even almost in sight, poking around the corner of the scuola di giurisprudenza, which had evidently just let out a class as there were many smartly-clothed young men and women parading about outside. Cammie let out a shaky sigh of dawning relief and darted onto a less-crowded path going around the side of the building, checking her watch—

And crying out in dismay as page after page of homework spilled from her less-than-secure grasp.

"No, no no no no no," Cammie muttered, the denials building to a slow wail as she scrabbled about on the ground, reaching for the pages. Almost all of them—but damn it, that one was getting away, blowing down the path—

A gleaming leather shoe came down lightly, trapping the empty corner of the sheet with unerring accuracy. Camilla stared as the shoe's owner bent down and lifted the sheet, examining it almost critically.

"You've marked out the intervals with admirable precision," he noted in a deep voice with an accent so faint Cammie couldn't identify it beyond foreign. French, maybe, or German.

"Grazi," she replied, taking the sheet when he proffered it. "Mille grazi. I—did you see any of the others, coming down the path? I mean, I hate to ask—I'm running really late and I can't stand being late, it's so—"

"—unprofessional?" the man suggested, raising an eyebrow.

"Exactly," Camilla agreed in a rush. "I know what they say about being a prima donna, but I don't want everyone to work around me—I just want to sing, but I need this homework and I…" She bit at her lip. "I'm sorry, I don't even know you—I have to get going."

She made to push past him, but he stopped her surprisingly gently and met her eyes. She liked his eyes, she thought abruptly; they were blue, and cold, and hard, but in a way that spoke more to her of diligence and dedication than anything—less unkind, maybe, than methodical.

"You are an opera singer?" he queried. "Then you are late to a rehearsal?" he asked when she nodded.

"Audition, actually," Camilla replied, giving another glance at her watch—just over ten minutes; she'd be lucky to get to the auditorium with time to catch her breath, let alone warm up, once she tracked her papers down…

The young man seemed to hesitate, but only for a moment—Cammie got the feeling he didn't falter like that often. Decisive, there was another good D-word for him.

"I am familiar with the location of the music hall," he informed her briskly. "Go there. I will find your remaining papers and bring them to you there."

"I—you—what?"

A flicker of impatience crossed his features. "I believe I spoke clearly."

Cammie was rather taken aback. "Well—yes, but—"

No sound came out, but her mouth formed the words anyway: We barely know each other.

"I know you are an opera singer named Camilla Verdi—" He nodded at her armload of papers, "that you are competent at composition, that you strive for perfection in your work, and that you are running exceedingly and uncharacteristically late for an occasion potentially crucial to your future career. And now you know that I am a law student who approaches his studies with a similar attitude to your own and therefore sympathises with you, and that my name is Manfred von Karma. I will find your papers," Manfred repeated, glaring at her—but almost fondly? "Go." He made a shooing gesture.

Camilla barely managed to bob her head in thanks and acknowledgement and duck around him, stunned, but in far too much of a hurry to question further.

The audition goes well. If she doesn't get a starring part, she figures, then at least she has a part. It's not a bit part, either; a nice, middle-of-the-road starting place for—fingers crossed—her career.

If Rosita gives her the smuggest smile ever when a certain German law student gives her every last one of her lost papers back, pristine as the day she'd composed them, and acts surprised that you expected anything else…well.

If Cammie finds it strangely adorable the way he blushes and looks startled when she suggests the three of them go find a café to celebrate, and accepts with an uncharacteristic stammer like he's not sure what he's supposed to do, then that's only to be expected, right? Especially since it's the three of them from then on. It's strange at first, but soon as natural as breathing. She gets the feeling Manfred isn't used to this 'friendship' thing, or whatever it is that happens when their eyes meet for minutes at a time until one of them gets embarrassed and looks away.

And if one day, when Rosita can't come and Manfred tells Cammie what her name means and she kisses him, that can't really be helped either. It's the only reasonable reaction to having a handsome perfectionist shyly, even awkwardly ask you if you know your name means perfection. Especially when he goes on to tell you that he thinks it suits you…

…well, perfectly.

A/N: Say it with me: Adorkable!Young!Sexy-Nerd!VonKarma.

Your head asplode.

So Cammie and Von Karma both seem a little 2D here, but this is mostly background and I'm not used to writing Von Karma without at least a shade of evil to him. Plus writing OCs freak me the hell out as a long time OFU fan and PPC wannabe.

Young!Camilla/Manfred doesn't have to end here, though-let me know in a review if I should consider using Cammie as an interlude character again, or let the past lie.