"Leonardo."

Leonardo had been smoking a cigarillo on the balcony. Upon being called, Leonardo turned to see Jean there with his usual stoic expression on his face. Leonardo was a slightly surprised—Jean rarely initiated a conversation with him. Or with anyone else in the mansion, for that matter, except for Mozart.

"Heya, Jean. You need something from me?"

"It's about the mademoiselle."

"Something's wrong with Imladris?"

"…I am unsure," Jean replied. "It's just that I had passed her cleaning a window when I was heading to la salle to practice with Napoleon."

"Cara mia always helps with chores around the house. Including cleaning."

"Yes, but when I was on my way back to my room after training over an hour later, she was still right there, wiping the exact same window pane. That is a bit strange, non?"

Leonardo's eyebrows furrowed. Yes, that was indeed strange. "I'll go check on her. Grazie for letting me know, Jean."

Sure enough, when Leonardo found Imladris, she was still wiping the window, though her eyes were dazed and didn't seem to be registering the spot that she was wiping, the movement of her hand mechanical.

"Cara mia?"

No response.

"Imladris?"

Again, no response.

"Imladris!" This time, Leonardo also placed a hand on her shoulder and gently shook her.

"H-Huh?" Imladris started. Then, her eyes finally focused on Leonardo. "Oh, Leonardo! Good morning!"

"…It's already past noon, cara mia."

Imladris' eyes widened. "Is it?!" She turned to look at the grandfather clock behind them. "Oh, it is! Huh."

"How long have you been standing there?" Leonardo asked with a slight frown. When she didn't answer, he said, sounding more concerned, "What's going on with you?"

An image of her bloodied hand from this morning flashed in Imladris' mind, unbidden and unwanted. She firmly pushed the image to the back of her mind. "N-Nothing. I'm fine."

"Cara mia—" Leonardo began in a disbelieving tone, but Imladris was already hurriedly gathering her cleaning supplies.

"Anyway, I got to go help Sebastian with the laundry now. See you later, Leonardo!"

And she was already gone before Leonardo could stop her.

Once Imladris had successfully made her escape, she stored away her cleaning supplies, and instead of going to find Sebastian like she had told Leonardo she would, she decided that she needed some fresh air and headed out to the garden. She sat at the gazebo, taking in a deep breath and trying to let the serene surroundings relax her.

She hated lying to Leonardo, but she didn't want to worry him, or any of the other residents in the mansion. She also didn't want to worry herself even more. She knew that she sometimes had the bad habit of overthinking things and expecting the worst. Perhaps this was just one of those instances? Coughing out blood could be an expected thing to happen when you cough so hard and strain your lungs, right?

Right.

She really needed to get a hold over herself (and her overthinking mind) before she further worried and troubled Leonardo. As well as the others. Especially le Comte, who could be a worrywart and was overprotective when it came to Imladris, seeing her as something of a mix between a daughter and a younger sister.

However, just as Imladris was finally starting to calm down, another round of cough tore through her. Worse, she tasted blood again in her mouth. She felt blood come out of the side of her lips and trickle down her chin. As the coughing finally subsided, she took out her handkerchief from her pocket and wiped off the blood.

She stared down at her now bloodstained handkerchief, her stomach churning uneasily. Maybe this wasn't just the typical kind of cough, after all. A visit to a physician really might be in order.

The next day, when out in town to restock their ingredients in the kitchen, Imladris also took the chance to see a doctor. As she sat waiting in the clinic's reception room, she felt quite nervous. Apart from worrying about her bloody cough, she was unused to being alone when going to the doctor. Back in the 21stcentury, she would always have someone accompany her whenever she had to see a doctor. A relative or perhaps a close friend... That wasn't to say that she didn't have anyone now who would have accompanied her, though. In fact, it was all too easy to imagineallof the mansion's residents accompanying her, flooding this reception area with their number, if they had known that she was going here.

A part of her felt guilty for not telling the others, especially her own boyfriend, that her coughing seemed to have worsened and that she was going to the doctor. On the other hand, she didn't want to the others to worry (as well as face the fact that she herself was more worried about the situation than she would like to admit).

Especially if it turned out in the end that it was just needless and unnecessary worrying over nothing.

She crossed her fingers, hoping against hope that this really was just nothing.

Hours later, she stumbled out of the clinic and onto the busy Parisian street, in a daze and not really noticing (nor caring) where she was going. She was trembling, breathing shallowly and rapidly. Despite her frequent breaths, though, she felt like she was going to suffocate.

Shock. Fear. Dread. Despair.

These feelings all seemed to wrap around her, making breathing difficult and causing her to feel as though she was being subjected to the extreme pressure at the depths of the ocean.

Bumping into other passerby occasionally as she traversed the street, her destination unknown and unimportant in the moment, her thoughts swirled chaotically in her mind.

How could this have happened?

Whydid this have to happen?

Why toher?

She was full of questions. Questions that she might never know the answers to. The unknown. The uncertainty. It made the whole situation all the more frightening.

When she finally had some headspace to process her surroundings, she found herself to be at the park. She was quite familiar with this place. A few times before, she accompanied Dazai here when he would tell stories to the local children. On other occasions, at Theo's insistence, she would model for Vincent's paintings here with the park scenery as her background. Most of the times she was here, though, she had been on dates with Leonardo.

Leonardo…

Tears started to blur her vision as she thought of her boyfriend and what this illness would mean for the two of them. Before she was completely overwhelmed by tears, she spotted a bench nearby and sat down. Thankfully, there weren't much people around at the park today, and no one noticed that she was trying to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks.

'Keep calm, Imladris,' she thought to herself. 'Crying isn't going to help. You need to think about what you're going to do'.

But what can she do?

She clearly remembered the moment when the doctor sat her down with a very grave look on his face, after she had been subjected to several tests. She instantly knew from his expression that what he was going to say wasn't going to be anything good. But whatever she had been expecting, her expectation still hadn't been that the doctor had given her the diagnosis and said the name of the disease that she had, it felt like her heart dropped down to her stomach.

For all her uncertainties regarding this situation that she had been hurled into, there was one thing that she knew for sure—There wasn't anything that she could do. There wasn't anything that anyone could do.

Even back in her original time period, the 21stcentury, there was still no known effective cure or treatment for this disease. As far as she knew, even with modern medicine, the most that patients with this disease could hope for was to manage the pain for as long as possible. Because while the only symptom that Imladris currently had was a bloody cough, there was pain to come eventually. Modern medicine in her time was only able to help with managing the pain so that patients could at least have some semblance of a normal life for a while. But even modern medicine couldn't stop the disease's progression… and eventual fatality. Worse still, after some time, even the medicine would become ineffective to the excruciating pain.

If modern medicine couldn't do anything about it, what more the medicine here in the past?

Imladris used the back of her hand to wipe her cheeks as yet more tears rolled down. She was afraid of the disease. She was afraid of the coming pain. She was afraid of dying. As was natural and expected, she was afraid of many things regarding this situation.

But the worst part of it all was that she would be leaving Leonardo behind.

She thought of Leonardo's amber eyes. How they always seemed to exude warmth and light. But she doubted that even the light in Leonardo's eyes could fight the darkness that was enveloping her now. The eternal darkness that death would soon envelope her with.

Leonardo was a pureblood vampire. Immortal. He was going to live and walk on this earth for all eternity.

Imladris, on the other hand, was a human. Your average human with a limited lifespan. Her time on earth was limited, and based on the diagnosis that she was given, her limited time was much more limited than she had anticipated, about to come to its end.

This was the very nature of her humanity. To be alive only for a limited period of time, and to eventually die. Something that Leonardo would never experience.

Yes, when they became a couple, she and Leonardo had agreed that she would remain human, spending her days with Leonardo until her life came to an end. She didn't like it, but she respected Leonardo's beliefs regarding life and immortality. Knowing that Leonardo was against turning her into a vampire when he himself struggled with his own immortality, she contented herself with simply having to enjoy and cherish the limited precious moments that she would have with Leonardo, until her death finally came.

But she think that didn't it would come this soon.

Given how unpredictable and fragile life could be, perhaps she was foolish to just assume that she would have decades with Leonardo, living to a ripe, old age before finally having to say goodbye to him. Having to part from him after decades of living when she was already old and frail would have been painful enough already. But now, she wouldn't even get those decades with the man she loved? She would already have to say goodbye to him so soon?

As selfish as it sounded, she didn't want for her time with Leonardo to end already.

She didn't want her time with the mansion's residents to end already.

And apart from being unwilling to leave her loved ones behind when she passed away, she also didn't want to live her life itself just yet. She had finally found the life for her when she time travelled to the past and stumbled upon the mysterious mansion and its residents. She enjoyed her simple yet peaceful and fun days of living in the mansion. She liked going out to see and enjoy the city of Paris. She liked seeing the recent revolutionary changes in France. She liked meeting her friends and acquaintances in town and getting to know Parisian culture and society.

Moreover, she still had plenty of things that she wanted to do. She wanted to continue some form of her travel blog when she and Leonardo would take trips and vacations to different places. She wanted to see more of Vincent's paintings and to hear more of Mozart's new compositions. She wanted to read the recent works of Arthur, Dazai, and Will. She wanted to help Napoleon and Isaac with their school. She wished to make a difference in the lives of young children in Paris. She wanted to do more to contribute to society and to contribute to the lives of her loved ones.

She and Leonardo had talked about the importance of cherishing human life, given its limited nature.

But Imladris felt that she had barely even been able to live life yet. It was too soon for her to go.

Fate was just so cruel.