1998
It's a gnawing, winding, slow and halting kind of dying; the kind you sit around with for a while, get to know inside and out. You can get too comfortable in that kind of dying, start to think that death is never going to come at all - that dying is just the new way of living - but death will come, and despite the years of coughing, and wheezing, and disrupted sleep patterns, and weight falling off of her like petals from a wilting flower, it always comes as a surprise.
He had given up cigarettes years ago. She was the main reason - the secondhand smoke was bad for her condition - but him not smoking did just about nothing for her in the end, so what's the point in keeping that bullshit up? One of the first things he does after leaving the hospital is buy a pack in the convenience store down the street and light one up on the side of the road. A deep breath of freedom tempered by a heavy sob.
1753
Whatever it was that Lebreau had shown her father, he seems to cling to it obsessively. He invites him to dinner at the manor night after night, and Marina watches him listen intently as the other man weaves a tapestry of plans and ambitions.
"Why not return to the new world with me? We can look for him together."
The new world. He claims he has spent decades there, although he looks no older than Marina herself. He says Huey Laforet is there, still alive, free of any repercussions for his crimes. He had apparently shown her father some evidence of this, although Marina has not been privy to it, and since then he has been pacing around with an odd mix of rage and fervour.
He takes him up on the offer, of course. Arrangements are made, a date is set. Her brother and father begin to pack.
She understands why this is important to her father. For Louise, Monica is more than a faceless ancestor; she is the mother he never had, the missing piece that rendered him an orphan, the reason the town whispers rumours of him being the Count's bastard son. She represents an entire life and upbringing deprived of him. It's no wonder he is so taken with the first person who waltzes into his life with answers and solutions to the great, haunting problem of his lineage.
The Count does not speak about her much. At some point in his childhood, Louise had managed to wrangle his mother's name out of him, the fact that she had been his sister, and that she had died - beyond that, he avoids the subject. Everything else her father has gathered about her late grandmother he had learned through surreptitious study and hushed words with Dormentaire guards, with perhaps a few coins exchanging hands here and there.
To her father, the Count is a barrier separating him from his past and identity, but to Marina, so far removed from it all, he is just family. A grandfather, or as close as she has to one.
After dinner one night, her father takes her aside and presses a bundle of cloth into her hands. He tells her to unwrap it.
He tells her it is hers now, if she wants it.
"Lebreau took it from Laforet himself," he says, with admiration clear in his voice.
She spends a while staring at the stiletto, and in that time he seems to take her silence for acceptance.
She brings it with her when she goes to see the Count, tucked into the inner pocket of her skirts. She only means to inform him that they will be leaving, and when, but in the comfortable familiarity of his drawing room, she finds herself confiding more.
"Well, I'm no expert, Marina…" he tells her, turning the stiletto in his hand, brow furrowed. "It could well be hers. Though, I would prefer it if it wasn't."
She tilts her head in question.
"It's not the part of her that I would want to live on," he explains, setting it aside. "Your grandmother was many things. I don't like to remember her as a murderer.
"Nor would I want you to become one, even if your father thinks it is for the greater good."
"I would tend to agree, but…" she trails off, shaking her head. "It's all set in motion now."
The Count sighs, runs a hand through his grey hair. "It would do you well to remember that you are a Boroñal just as much as you are a Campanella," then, with some humour, he adds, "It's never too late to side with the cowardice in your blood."
He leans back in his chair then, musing, "Perhaps I've always been a bit selfish when it comes to things like this, but I can't help wondering what good it will do any of you - you or your brother, or your children, if you ever have any - to carry on like this."
1998
Lebreau lets himself into the office as soon as the mission is finished, blood still wet on his hair and skin. Gunpowder residue transfers from his sleeves onto the finished wood arms of his chair as he settles down.
"You're not going to offer me one?" he asks, gesturing to the cigarette between Adriano's fingers.
"Fuck you," Adriano mutters.
"What's the occasion?" he continues, and then, as if he knows, "Celebrating life?"
He says nothing. Lebreau smiles thinly and opens his satchel to retrieve a manila folder.
"If you want a distraction, I might have one," he says, passing it to him.
"What's this?"
"All of the information you could ever want on Huey Laforet," he pauses, expectant. When no praise or thanks spill forth, he continues, "Photographs, police records, witness testimonies…"
Adriano drops the file on the table and takes a drag. "I've got other shit to deal with right now."
"Yes, I'm aware," Lebreau says, putting a hand on his shoulder. "My condolences, by the way."
He shakes his hand off, stands to pace the room.
"But it may well be possible to kill two birds with one stone," says Lebreau. He begins flicking through the file himself. "Laforet's research has taken some fascinating turns - immortality, hiveminds, resurrection…"
Adriano stops to stare at him. "What's your point?"
"Well, if you find him," he carries on, leaning forward on the palms of his hands. "Perhaps he could be of some use to you, given your current misfortune."
He doesn't respond, other than to tell the other man to go get cleaned up.
As if sensing his quiet intrigue, Lebreau leaves the folder on his desk.
1753
The day the ship is set to depart, Marina returns the stiletto to her father as a parting gift. She can sense a cold disappointment from him, but they don't discuss the matter.
She sees them off. On the deck, her younger brother waves goodbye to her until her father takes him aside. As the ship disappears over the horizon, she thinks she sees the stiletto switch hands one last time.
1998
Luchino finds out about his father first, and only because of the chaos that unfolds when the Mask Makers wake the next morning to find their leader missing in action. There's some noise of concern, but a louder ruckus about pay, where's the money going to come from, is the mission still going ahead, do any of them still have jobs -
It isn't long before the stragglers realise that it isn't just the boss who has left. It's a good portion of their ranks, too - most of the best trained soldiers - save for one or two. When that dawns on them, all hell breaks loose, and there's a lot of shouting without any regard for what's being said, or the impact it might have.
From the back of the crowd, Lebreau watches Luchino find out about his mother through a slip of the tongue, watches his face harden the way he had seen his father's face harden so many times. But there is an unmistakable pallor to him, a confession of emotion in the tightening of his jaw and the stiffness with which he excuses himself, a transparency that his father never had.
"You don't look too worried," says one of the mask maker's beside him.
"What is there to worry about?" He shrugs, smiling thinly. "He'll either fall in line or he won't - either way, it should be quite a show."