Let me feel you (and your past)

I cannot love you (for I cannot love myself)

The air in the palace was frigid, as it always was. Her benevolence demanded perfection, a balanced scale that only she could command with her soft voice and empty husk of the heart she used to have. Perhaps this led Pierro to follow her, their vision misaligned and brutally messy with the past echoes of bloodshed.

Pierro had failed her, and Scaramouche was gone.

Gone.

A miscalculation. A mistake that blemished the clean record he held amongst the harbingers. The one meant to be their best, the closest to perfection after The Tsaritsa herself.

It was inevitable that he would be fairly chastised for this error, her kind words mocked his intellect, and as the hours went by, Pierro couldn't help but be reminded of the bitter memories he held against the sages. His gaze focused on the marble floor as Her Majesty spoke of his shortcomings, a pulsing numbness settled in his legs, whether the pesky manifestation of his curse, or the freezing Snezhnayan air. Pierro felt as if he deserved it.

"Pierro, do you truly believe you deserve salvation?-

After all, he was the one who assigned Scaramouche to the mission in Inazuma, he was meant to calculate that the other would eventually defect, from his position of disdain in the fatui itself, to the electro energy that clouded the halls when Scaramouche seemed a little more than ticked off.

Still, he couldn't open his mouth to object to her majesty's judgement.

From the shadows, Capitano stalked the silent punishment that continued to elude the First, the black inky void clouded his face. The hallways were meant to be a private meeting between the two most important members of the fatui, the cathedral, a secret admirer stalked the depths of the overcasting shadows.

It was no use to be worrying about others, not when he himself was designed to leave for Natlan after La Signora's funeral.

Selfishly, he turned back into the abyss, back to his room to forget about the events that preceded in the cathedral, only two needed to contain that sliver of memory within, he had no right to intrude on what the Tsaritsa thought was best.

If Capitano were a little more perceptive, he would've noticed an extra set of eyes that glared directly into his soul
-

Dinner was usually a chaotic event, the communal dining room was solemnly used, for each of the harbingers would rather dine in the comforts of their own room than to interact with the others, yet some still sat in the too-big room, only solidifying the emptiness of the palace. Guards were rare, for no organisation would dare to intrude in the motherland, where not even the most endurant of soldiers could make their way to the palace without a suitcase full of the official documentation, NDA's and other legal forms, carefully written and edited by Pantalone and Pulcinella themselves.

It was a surprise to see Pierro out of his room, considering how reserved the other presented himself to be. Capitano noticed the bowl of half-full borscht that was partially obscured from his view, whether the older male had finished half, or had simply made a small portion was unknown- Capitano hadn't seen the other much, other than the occasional bottle of high-quality fire water or some sweets that he could never be able to pronounce.

He should have taken the silence as an invitation to leave the living room to head to the scarcely decorated yet secure place of his bedroom, instead, he shuffled to the kitchen, beyond Pierro's looming form on the dining table.

The silence was uncomfortable, at least that was clear, he could feel Pierro's gaze against the back of his head, yet neither of them were sure how to exactly break said silence.

"I... take it that you heard." No context was necessary for Pierro's speech, it was Capitano's ignorance that the other didn't have constant alerts of each and every fatui member.

"I did."

"..."

"...."

"I didn't know that you cooked" Capitano spoke again after a considerable pause, his duty didn't include 'comforting the first harbinger', yet to dwell on subjects such as these were unwise, he could've least guessed that

"It's not much, there's still some left in the pot." Pierro looked down to his bowl, a hand clutching the gold-adorned spoon- Pantalone was careless with their funds... still, he appreciated how the lustre reminded him of something more. The borscht was his wife's recipe... it was a shame how she was now six feet under, in Kharenian grounds.

"....do you mind if I-?" Capitano was useless at cooking, he had managed to burn pasta so horribly wrong that even Scaramouche laughed at his efforts to 'fix' the poor pot. In the end, he owed Pantalone two million mora for shattering the iron cast plate in two

"Not at all, I miscalculated my appetite" He'd made enough to feed a whole family, a distraction from the scolding earlier today.

A minute or two passed, and Capitano stripped himself of his claymore and set it vertically against the table, he couldn't sit down comfortably with it strapped to his back. To be perfectly honest... creatures like him had no need for 'food' in the traditional sense, feeding off of the residing abyssal energy that Pierro bore as a 'curse' was more than enough to sustain him. Even as humanity's strongest warrior, he was anything but what one would describe a human as.

A sickening relationship was shared, Capitano the parasite and Pierro the host, Capitano had attempted to feed from the source, yet Pierro had found out about his plans and quickly banned him from ever visiting the abyss order. Capitano would like to believe that in a way, he was helping Pierro, yet the small winces and twitches that Pierro would respond with whenever Capitano fed... it was anything but.

He had attempted to stop this habit, and had asked for the doctor to inject the abyss in him so he could bear the gift. Yet Capitano's body had consumed of the abyssal remnants in his blood

A shame that he couldn't help Pierro, no matter what he tried.