Bargain Unstruck PV Gemelle Closed

Date: 26 August, 2023
Wendigo Household, Outskirts of London
The Witching Hour

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Nec Temere, Nec Timide. Durmstrang Institute's

Romeo Giovanni Marchonné [6'7.5" | 202lbs]

"English." "Italiano. Italian." "Russian."

| Faint Scar on Left Eye & Mangled Right Ear | \ Fingerless Glove on Right Hand, Bite Scar on Forearm / | Lichtenberg Figure on Right Arm and Down Back |

Valentin Schnell
@Aida Mòrsgor-Ama Ellwood

There was a sense of weightless cold, a chill that sank deep into bones that forced limbs to become as like lead. Location and place were unknown in this darkness, with flickers of what the eye thought was light producing the familiar hallucinations that one was apt to experience in a location of sheer and total darkness. A pressure in my head was threatening to burst through my skull, a ringing in my ears that sang a siren song of unknowable and maddening melody uninterpretable to any mortal ears. I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed, couldn't tell if the world was darkness or if it was just my eyes that were darkness themselves.

But in the midst of it there was a sensation, a prickling on the surface of my skin that seemed to indicate to me that there was something here unseen to the eye--a presence that was here lurking and observing. It was a presence that didn't take long for it to make itself known with a gentle and silken voice.

"Welcome, Romeo Giovanni Marchonné." It said softly. "I've been waiting a while to have an opportunity to speak with you. You've been wanting to speak with me for a while, I understand."

I tried to shake my head either to confirm or deny, but the bone-numbing cold seemed to prevent me from doing so. I couldn't even speak a word to confirm or deny. The voice, however, did not seem to mind that I was incapacitated in this way--frozen to the spot. "I don't think I shall have to speak with you for long. I already know why you're here, why you came here whether you realize it or not."

There was a bitter gust of wind but there was nothing to shiver about. The sensation of something lightly circling became apparent to me, but I continued to find myself unable to move. "You've come to me to ask about your unfortunate relationship with a certain love, am I correct?" A hum of amusement that seemed to scintillate in several simultaneous pitches mused to itself. "To the point that you're willing to make deals, to try to ask for a way to make it possible. This last summer was not an easy one for you, was it. You had a lot going on."

I realized that my eyes were opened for I saw something moving across from me ever so slightly, as if idly watching. "The incident with the potion, admonishing your brother for what he did in relation with that, that ugly sports game, an adorable little outburst during a game of spin the bottle, meeting your father... he's a piece of work, isn't he." It said with no amusement. "Has a nasty habit of rubbing people the wrong way on average. But that doesn't matter much to you: you can deal with most situations. It's the people you can't seem to grapple with--your position in relation to them, your inability to discern what relationships to keep, to tend to, to prune, to fertilize... and to burn. It's them that your torment yourself over, because you are so uncomfortable with trying to maintain them and keep them close to you. I can help you."

I didn't have much other choice but to listen, but the chill seemed to become only for a second to become less intense. "I can give you everything that you need to have, everything you could possibly need in order to achieve all of your dreams, to make the right choices when it comes to the ones that you love. The one that you love."

My heart rattled in me for a second, aching for a moment as a familiar memory, a familiar white-haired and amaranthine eyes glittered in my mind's eye. "Yes. Him."

My voice sounded as if it came from somewhere far away from me, as if it was from another body altogether. "What can you do? What are you offering?"

"A very simple proposition. I help you find the bravery and the pride in yourself to reciprocate the love that he gives you. I give you the ability to stand up against the retributions, the anger and the uncertainty. I give you blissful peace in your own mind concerning the loves of your own flesh, and nothing more that you should have to worry about when it comes to such uncomfortable thoughts. In other words, I can give you the strength to finally say 'yes'."

It was a very simple set of things, very calmly issued and very easily relayed. "I give you the ability, the permission, to let yourself find your happiness with him. I can cut you from your own chains of resistance and to give you exactly what you want the most. Consider it a gift. I give this to you freely, for it is mine to give to you."

There was a shift in the blackness, something like a hallucinatory thing manifesting itself to trick my eyes, but the thing spoke gently again. "Exactly what you want. But I do have to be a good deal more formal about this than simply giving it to you as a token or taking you at your word." There was a small hum. "I do like making a promise very very physical in nature. And I do have to verse it in a very particular way, as I do believe in the tenants of laying down the foundations of a flourishing relationship for further mutual benefit."

The shifting became more prominent, more pronounced. Something was indeed right there indeed. Something just out of my sights, something that my eyes could not see through the piercing darkness.

"So, Romeo Giovanni Marchonné," Came the soft intonation, the sound whispering between the liminal space between unknown distance and unseen sights; "do we have... a bargain?"

A misty facsimile of a hand presented itself from the borders of what little I could see, a foggy manifestation of something close to what could be likened to a hand being extended so as to close a bargain, to seal a contract or to make a deal. Blurring here and there in some places, seeming to somewhat shiver in and out of sight the longer it was fixed in my gaze, I observed it and how it reached for me; how it offered itself to me, yet seemed to demand a reciprocating response. Something about the way it extended, something about the way that it was half real and yet a total phantasm of what it was supposed to be, something was unnerving here; unnerving at how desperate its claims were. Desperate just as much as it was tempting, as much as it was sweetening its side of the bargain, the things that it offered to me that it knew that I wanted more than anything else in this world. Deals too good to be true, bargains so simple at the first glance that it would seem foolish to turn them down. All of this, all of this available to me--mine for the taking--with only an extension of my own hand and a taking of the wrist before me in a gentlemanly handshake.

I needed to think about this, didn't I? I needed to have a moment to turn away, to consider, to mull the propositions over. I had been given arguments to agree to the deal, I had been given reasons upon reasons to accept--many, if not all of them having been good ones--but I had not heard anything of what it was that I was giving away as well. I didn't know what I was handing away in exchange for everything that I wanted, that I so desperately wanted to have unashamedly and with all my heart. Unable to look away from the offering hand, I tried to turn my head, to force my body into movement and to turn even slightly away from the pressuring presence that loomed before and around and above and below, insidious and seeming to drip down from all sides all at once. When I spoke, the words did not sound entirely like my own. "What are you taking in return?" I asked, my voice almost completely gone. Almost as if the sound was being willed not to be spoken, as if it was not supposed to be spoken; as if it were being actively silenced by this realm, by this place. I tried to speak again, this time forcing myself to pipe even louder. "What am I giving to you for what you're offering to me?"

There was a slight curling of the hand, myself petrified as I was forced to observe the unfolding of the actions around me all at once. A light hum, or perhaps was it a small sigh of aggravation? There was the sparsest gleam from somewhere beyond the mist that I could see directly before me; something beyond what I could see, what I could move to see. Why wasn't I allowed to move? Why couldn't I move?

"I thought that this had been made obvious, Romeo Giovanni Marchonné; I'm not asking for anything. Consider this a gift, an act of goodwill." The fingers extended again, reaching for my own that were paralyzed at my side. Stopping just short, unable to seal a deal without consent of the other party. "I don't need anything from you. I am merely giving my kindnesses away, and all I ask is a small gratefulness for the things I offer; for the things you will receive from me. You need not give me anything. Your payment to me is the gratefulness you have for my gifted presents." I stared at it. "Nothing more; I need nothing more."

Though the hand was there, the offer to be sealed so close, for some reason I could not find a way to move my hand from where they lay; I was unable to extend back. Something held it there, something not from the world around me at this moment, something caused the air to seem as thick as molasses, unable to be moved through even if I had wanted to. I tore my eyes from the hand, and into the gleam of what could only possibly be the face, or at least the eyes of this being.

I knew so little, so very, very little as young as I was. So much still laid before me, so much still was left to be discovered, to be experienced, and to be observed, to learn and to teach; I scarcely knew my own path in life, I scarcely found myself able to control half of the emotions that I felt in this delicate stage of my life not yet fully formed. The highs were ecstasy, the lows were devastating; temperance between them were only as fine as the iron fresh from the forge, sometimes even being overcooked into slag or cracked down to its core. When the mallet struck them, they would break, or they would leave an imperfect indent of where the blow had sung true; irreversible markings, imperfect scars that would have to be thrown once more into the fire to remedy or become cause to throw out the weapon altogether. But, if there had been one thing that I had learned, if there was one thing that I had taken away from my short life of fifteen years that seemed to carry more experience within them than any child should have ever had to endure--trials, griefs, angers, strifes, sadnesses, fury and love all--there was one thing that I had learned the hard way, learned the hard way by trying (and failing) to understand the nature of man and the viciousness of certain individuals that I had had the misfortune to meet during my short tenure on in this world.

"Don't lie to me." The words once again seemed eerily hollow as they left my tongue and vanished into the oppressive atmosphere. Unable to move, unable to protect myself from the vengeance that my words would exact upon me if something went terribly, horribly wrong. Still, there was no other way for me to not come to this realization, to this knowledge that I had earned through blood, sweat, tears, and scars. "There's always a price."

A dry laugh like brittled leaves and rainfall came. "You think far too much for your own good, Romeo Giovanni. Far, far too much. If I didn't know you any better, I would call you a skeptic." The words had a leering edge to them. "But skeptics make for good company in my opinion; it's always amusing to see such individuals work so hard to deny what is right beneath their noses, to watch them perform endless feats of acrobatics to justify their ways and their beliefs. It makes one want to point out the obvious flaw in their reasonings to them... Almost." The hand withdrew to the shadows again, tired of presenting itself to me for the time being. "You live by your head and not by your heart, Romeo Giovanni. I can appreciate that." A musing tone rose and fell in the air between myself and it. "Logicians and philosophers are near and dear to me, of course; as are the romantics, the dreamers, and those who live only by their hearts. I hold very versatile and interesting company, Giovanni. You would fit right in. You would appreciate the engagements that you could have with any one of them; the things you could speak of in their company. Answers to your burning questions, solutions to life's problems and the way that those great thinkers say that you should act in your current circumstance; all these laid bare for you and placed at your feet."

I remained silent, letting those claims rush over me and disintegrate into the nothing. I did not speak for fear that perhaps my own words would be used against me. In such a case as this, silence in consideration was king; to hear my own thoughts and ensure that I was the only one to hear them in my own head. Did I not love Valentin more than life itself? More, most certainly, than I loved my own brother for some reason? The two of them intertwined in my mind, my brother and the one that I loved... both were the ones that I had sworn to defend, that I had promised to stand alongside no matter what happened... and both I wanted to stay with me for the rest of my life if I could help it. Both of them, both of them...

"Truthfully, it is with Valentin that your heart belongs in the end, is it not?" As if speaking what I turned about in my mind did these words spill. "Compared to him, your brother does fade into the background, doesn't he? You have spent so long being his protector, not realizing that he has finally outgrown your usefulness. He sheds you as a skin, and now you are nothing to him anymore. You are not what he needs anymore. He does not need a shield, he does not need a blade. He is his own blade, his own tongue; clever and quick. You hold him down, bind him up, weight him with your slowness and worrying. You hurt him now more than you ever 'protected' him in the past. And he suffers now for your follies." The glow faded a bit akin to that of a dying ember, in and out for only a second. There was a hum of consideration. "Would your place not be to find one that would appreciate your protections just as much as you appreciate the ability to give it to them? Would not Valentin, who has requested you for his own for so long, would he not be the one with whom you could be happy together with? Truly happy? Putting aside your superstitions and your self-imposed expectations, it is with him that you do feel that you should stay, isn't it." Another curl in the words. "Rejecting him for so long. I do hope that it isn't too late for the both of you even if you do decide that it is with him that your destiny lies. He's become... rather hopeless that you will ever reciprocate, indecisive Giovanni."

"Don't talk about either of them like that. I'm only doing what I can only hope to be the best for them." I strangled out, trying to soothe the internal reeling that I felt. "Piérre... I always did everything I could for him, to make sure that he was safe... I didn't... I chose to leave, yes, but I wanted to make sure afterwards that he was alright... I didn't think that..." To this day, the decision had always haunted me; the look on his face and the betrayal that he had felt for years afterwards. I had abandoned him, abandoned him when I had promised not to... and perhaps now, yes, he had outgrown me...

"You are thinking again, Giovanni, and not listening to what your heart tells you. How it weighs in your chest and twists when you feel something has gone wrong. Listen to it. What does it tell you? What regrets, what shortcomings have you fallen prey to?" A tutting voice. "You hurt everyone around you, and you aren't even capable of seeing it for yourself. Your 'protection' has done nothing but damage all who have gotten in your way, whether or not they have deserved it. Judge, jury, and executioner. I would have thought that one the likes of you can never judge what is not yours to judge. Your kind believes that that job is for a higher arbiter, one that you could never understand and one who doesn't even hold the same values as you. Shame on you for thinking yourself God."

A slash of emotion rippled through me as I felt my legs become weak beneath me. I wavered for a moment, as if stung by so much as the presence of the spoken name, feeling just the very same feeling as had been described to me by this being hardly moments earlier; a heart-wrenching feeling that made the world turn on its head as fire flashed through every cell of being. Like being weighted down by the heart with an unknowable heaviness; something that wouldn't just go away if you requested it to... It wasn't like that! It wasn't! I had only been trying to act in their best interests! That was all that I had ever done... and perhaps I had been flawed, perhaps I had been wrong, but I had been trying to protect them in the only way I was capable of... if I hadn't... then perhaps...

To do nothing would have been worse than doing something flawed. This was something that I had to cling to with all my strength; to be corrected was one thing, but to not have done anything when I had been called to help or had been stirred to act... I would have been no better than the one who was trying to hurt the ones that I loved. To love them... and while I believed that I was being loved for what I did for them... I could never be sure... and Valentin...

Dear Valentin... I've let you down so many times. I've hurt you so much... For that reason alone I shouldn't deserve you, as much as I've silenced myself because of the way I have imposed my beliefs upon myself, by merit of the things that I place everything I supported myself with... despite so much love from you, and how much I feel that love in turn... Your heart that falls so hard, your passions are so great. Once you fell for me, and now you pursued another; and I know it's because I've been so walled-off, so isolated and so seemingly ignorant of every signal and every sign you could have possibly ever given to me as a lover. How can I say such a thing to you? When I am so elated to be loved that I do not want to hurt you by rejecting you outright, an action that only causes festering and confusion and grief for you need to know how I felt about your actions. I'm so young... I know so little about these things, I don't know how to feel about many of these things and all I know is what I have learned and what I have been taught.

"So now that I have offered more persuasion towards you on my behalf, Giovanni, have we a bargain between us?" Came the request once more, a shifting in the unknown rippling once more before the enigmatic 'hand' presented itself again. "For cordiality purposes by now, I'm sure." A curl of pleasantness was on the edge of the words, able only to be likened in words to a slice of fine chocolate curled in upon itself when shaven off by a well-sharpened knife. Once again, I found myself eyeing the extension, consideration rippling through and throughout me. Such a simple bargain, such a simple choice. The answer should be obvious, it should have always been obvious for someone in the same place as me, with the same desires and wants as myself.

So why was this proving to be so difficult? Why was I not even so much as twitching my hand in a noncommittal gesture? Caught between resistance and acceptance, in a state between turning away and accepting; I was frozen with indecision. Something pulled me forward, and something deep was pulling me just as strongly backwards. Something was telling me to run, something was telling me to get out of here as quickly as possible. "Surely you would not be so rude as to keep me waiting in this way, Giovanni?" Its soft voice suddenly gained just the slightest inkling of an edge. A tone of warning just subtly beneath the surface. "We are both very busy people, as you know. Take my hand now, and you need not keep Valentin waiting any longer to hear exactly how you feel about him. I know how you have kept those words smothered, how much your heart swallows your feelings whole." I stared. "A symbol of your acceptance; a token of your approval. This is all I need."

There wasn't a reason to refuse now, was there? There was no reason to not accept what had been handed to me, what was ultimately going to bring me joy here--to bring joy to not only myself but to Valentin who had indeed waited for so long to just so much as hear the words that I had been keeping choked down and contained in my mind for as long as I had realized that it was indeed with him that my heart laid. Piérre's excursion and little gaffe with us had proven that much--regardless of the amount of Amortentia I had received from it. I personally, and to now, did not believe I had been dosed enough to have a full effect. I hadn't been totally enthralled by potion in the moment. No, what had happened on that day had also been in part a choice of my own--as wild and as amazingly strange as it would have seemed from my actions afterwards.

My brother, for all his flaws and strangeness, was an insightful mind--he saw things in me that I did not like to see, did not like to admit to. This was his strength, the gift he had been given for being my twin. He had known long before I had, and the action was merely his little push: just as he said it had been.

My hand moved--yes, I could move it now towards the ephemeral entity--slowly rising from my side and dancing in the air in the gap between the two of us. It hovered over the extended hand, wavering as if in hesitation one last time--my last thoughts running their courses and making themselves known somewhere deeper in my subconscious mind. 'Was I totally convinced?' it asked itself in a small voice somewhere. Did I believe everything that I was told? Everything that had been said had been true, in the least. Truth led to belief, it would be foolhardy to not realize the cause and effect in that way.

But I could not shake the feeling--that eerie feeling. The feeling that something was not right. I was missing something--that something was not being told to me. I wanted to bargain--I wanted so badly--but something was not right and I could not abide by the feeling of wrongness pervading and surrounding me on all sides like the incense of burning hair or leather. For whatever reason, for whatever cause, I did not like this hand. I did not like the deal. This was a bad bargain.

But oh God... it hurt. It hurt so terribly...

Shivering, trembling, my right hand shook as it slowly drew itself to the left side of my breast, over my heart where the stabbing and ebbing continued to pulse uncontrollably. As searing arcs continued to run down my spine from the base of my skull to the base of my spine, chills that were screaming for me to stop what I was doing, as my fingers slowly pressed into the skin over a heart enclosed within a cage of bone. Pressing into skin, and then no longer against thin skin but into flesh and muscle and bone itself. Sensing for the core of this ache that strained tight and taught just within, until the tips of fingers now sensed something smooth and physical, the source of this ache, the source, the very core... iron formed from the very elements of blood, steel forged from blazing crimson and the ore that had been created from the same for this purpose. The spherical pommel of a blade, planted deep and impossibly as it sank deep into my chest but somehow did not pierce through. Defying the laws of space, it was there, my fingers able to lightly curl about the hilt, the grip of the handle fitting into my palm as if it had been custom-tailored for myself... and with smaller grooves upon it intended for much thinner fingers: for a musician's fingers to grip...

"What do you think you are doing, Giovanni?" Growled the voice as I realized that which was beneath my fingers, which had welcomed my hand upon it. My hand froze there, unmoving, trying to comprehend what this could possibly mean. "What exactly do you think you are doing?" It repeated again, demanding and suddenly harsh. "Don't tell me that you're welching out after all of this. After I've been so polite towards you and you showing nothing but impudence to me."

A flash of heat ran through me as the blade shifted ever so slightly, the slicing sensation of slipping as I withdrew my hand ever so slightly with it enclosed in my fingers. The hand's fingers curled and the gleam of indistinguishable eyes dimmed into a glare. "Continue acting this way and there will be no further bargaining, Giovanni. You are testing my patience and I have little time for fools the likes of you who believe that they can string me along with their indecisiveness and wearying attempts to play at being the hero. You are not a hero." The words stung, flung from the voice with the coldness of breaking ice. "You are no better than anyone else. You are a miserable sinner, just like the rest of mankind, and you are not special compared to anyone else. There is nothing you can do to resist even a fraction of your own dark side, let alone me." The words petered off into a hiss. "All of this world and below it belong to me. Your life, by my rights, is my wage. Your life, just as much as his." The gleam intensified, as if swooping forward suddenly. "I hold them both, and to stand against me is nothing short of mortal foolishness."

There was a rush of wind, and in reflexive fashion I withdrew a long, sleek length of quicksilver steel that followed my hand as it came away from my chest just as a dark hand threw itself from the darkness and arced with extended curls to its fingers towards the same blade I had just unveiled. As naturally as taking breath, my wrist twisted and altered the arc of the blade, guided by intuition itself. An afterimage of white light slit through the darkness, colliding with the hand as its dark fingers curled about it in a corona of white light that blinded me and caused black spots to burn into my eyes when the darkness encircled once again. There was a hissing in the air, either the blood in my ears or the expressions of the creature that had been forced back into the shade, but I felt the vibration of the metal humming in my hand; a warbling of gleaming metal and light that cut the dark and radiated a halo of cool white. I was breathing heavily, startled perhaps by my own violence of action as the shadows moiled about, being sliced by the mere gleam of the implement I wielded in both hands. It was heavy, but comfortably so; seemingly made for my hand. A blade. A longsword.

"You've made your own choice then, Giovanni." Came the slithering voice that ended its words with a hiss of resentment. "A pity that it's the wrong one. I tried to give you your heart's desire... and now I will not permit you to even have that."

A shadow lashed out and with a reactionary duck and light command with my hand holding the illuminating blade it severed the darkness to the high shrieking rattle of the being. I adjusted the blade to both my hands, two-handedly handling it as my eyes roved the darkness. "Go away from me. Don't torment me here ever again."

There was a rattling laughter even through the hissing of pain. "You do not get to control where and to whom I come." The dark shifted and my hand tightened on the longsword. "But now that you have denied me once, I will never stop hounding you. You will break as all do, for you have your price and your head is worth a certain amount of blood and gold." The largest mass seemed to shift to my right. "Your torment now is to continue to live with my shadow over your shoulder. Because, Giovanni, as you well know, I never let a quarry escape unhounded. The more you struggle, the tighter and more ensnaring my traps shall become for you. How entangled can I make you, I wonder, before you come apart altogether--before you can no longer loose your own noose?"

I only readjusted my grip, not daring to advance or retreat as my heart beat wildly in my ears and the blade gleamed with a pure white light. I breathed through my teeth lightly as I continued to watch and to wait. "And Valentin will be taken by another. Taken from you, delivered to me. You'll no longer be able to protect him--you'll never see him again."

"I will never let that happen."

"You have no choice. You do not control him."

"I know. But that doesn't mean that I won't try anyways."

A sharp laugh. "To control him?!"

"To hope that we can find happiness."

"Your happiness, his happiness--you can have it here. Now. I can give it to you."

"Now isn't the time I'm planning for."

Another laugh.

"I want to be with Valentin when it counts the most. I will do anything for it. Anything that I can do. Because I love him."

"You love him by denying him what he desires most?"

"In some cases, denial is given out of love."

"You will never be with him."

"I pray that I will be. In the time and in the way and in the place that matters most."

The shadows lunged, and my hand moved of its own accord. The unsevered hand of the creature reached for the blade, and just as I directed the angle of the silver away from it, its hand sunk into my chest and my hands guided the longsword to its own. Mutually pierced, the light from the blade began to consume darkness even as something dark and seeded planted itself in me. Heart-wrenching pain as if my heart were tearing itself apart at the cardiac muscles--something splitting and dying. Something piercing and rending and squeezing all at once--as if my heart were being torn out. Perhaps it was, as the light behind my eyes seemed to take a familiar visage in my mind's eye--a vision that hurt me to look at, but that I loved anyways. A vision I wanted but kept so carefully at my arm's distance for the sake of the thing I tried so hard to fight with myself--with this thing over.

In the midst of it, as my vision blurred and the darkness became cross-hatched with light only from the sword that impaled the creature which had sunk its claws into my chest, my shaky reply to its offer trickled from lips coated in a thin sheen of darkness.

"No... Deal..."

I felt my eyes open to the sight of darkness in front of me. I was sweating in my pajamas, underneath the comforter of my bed in Mathilda's house. The faint silvery light of a moon increasing over the span of the month laid itself lightly on the ceiling of the room, shadows lightly ladled themselves across it from thin curtains that framed the windows. I felt my heart beating wildly, and I was breathing softly but deeply--roused from a dream that felt too real. My heart seemed to be sunk deep in my chest and slightly sore, my breast ached as if I had taken a heavy punch to the chest.

Sitting up suddenly and throwing the blankets off of me, I slipped on a pair of slippers under my bed and stumbled to the door, aware of the bump of Piérre's body on his own bed with his own silvery feline friend--that Hellcat...--before fumbling the doorknob and carefully opening it so as to make my way to the bathroom and turn on the light just to sit for a moment and figure out what in the world I had just experienced. I needed to stretch my legs, needed to walk around a bit. The pain in my chest...

My hair was a mess, but that wasn't new when it came to restlessly sleeping. Ruffling it ever so slightly, I snorted lightly at how similar my hair looked to Piérre's when he went about on a daily basis before shaking my head and then furrowing my brow as I massaged my chest over my heart lightly for a second. It felt tense, as if I had pulled something there.

On a whim, I took my shirt off to get a better look at it in the mirror...

And then marveled at the large purpling and yellow bruise that had formed there about the size of an impact one would get from a baseball or two hard slugs.