fourth bull ( memory )

[pontificus]

[Two women speak grandly before a mirror. One is the blond many Seelie have come to know as Lucrezia Borgia, standing in the very elegant dress she arrived in. It is not yet finished though, the older woman whose beauty nearly outshines Lucrezia's stands behind her with a her sleeve, fixing the gold ribbons and comparing their dresses. Despite it all, Lucrezia seems happy. She speaks of her wedding and she should be, though something lurks behind her eyes, something no one seems to address.]

My mother's favorite color is apricot. It would not do well to outshine her. [Lucrezia turns back to the woman, much like a child who is trying to gain power when someone already has it. She speaks well to Guilia, but this woman is not her mother. She has replaced her.

But Lucrezia's mood soon shifts. Guilia tells her that it is not possible, and Lucrezia frowns at the idea of more secrets.

This is no secret. Guilia does not speak about Lucrezia's mother, but there is more there, a tone that speaks of Guilia's nobility and Lucrezia's mother's lack of. Guilia is kind, but Lucrezia will not see to this. This is her wedding, and she cares little about anything save her mother's attendance. She has already voiced her opinion on this marriage and has lost a dear friend for what she suspects was money for her dowry.

So she barges into the room where her father and brother are. The pope is sitting in all white, adorned just as one would imagine the pope would be adorned with. Cesare is more simple, in black and across from the Holy Father. Rodrigo thinks she has come to show her beautiful town made of pearls and gold fabric, but Lucrezia is too distressed to placate him. She wants answers. He stands, and she approaches, frustration writ across her face.

He has hurt her already.]

You are the Pope of Rome, but surely the Pope of Rome would not bar my mother from my wedding day. [Her voice cracks, and Rodrigo looks sourly. He has the look he has given Lucrezia many times: it is for the family. But she cannot accept this, and her heart breaks as he looks to Cesare, trying for a way out. But Cesare does not stand with him. So Lucrezia follows her father, begging in her tone.]

I will gladly marry who you choose, what your politics demand, the Borgia family will be united with the Sforza's but-- [She moves around him, trying to pin him to one place so he must answer her. There are tears in her eyes, and she is pleading with him, and clearly by all that is said between the lines, it is not the first time.]

However noble their lineage is they cannot bar my mother from my wedding day.

[Rodrigo tries to patronize her, tell her these are not issues for her to dwell on. But she won't have it. She snaps back:]

But I am learning, Holy Father! She was once what they call a courtesan and you are the Pope of Rome, but you loved her once. As I do now, and I will have my mother at my wedding day.

[Rodrigo looks uncomfortable, while Cesare looks onto the scene mostly helpless. Her father turns to leave, to hear no more of this as her tears are already falling. Cesare tries to console her, bringing her away from the door, but she cries out.]

Please, Holy Father! I need you both there. My father and my mother.

[The door is closed in her face as she sobs, moving away from her brother to leave. Not even he can comfort her for he has done nothing to protect her from this as he has done nothing to protect her from this wedding.]

ooc: so I'm on hiatus but I really wanted to post this since people seeing this and addressing it's contents needed to happen. However Lucrezia isn't going to be answering the post, mostly heartbroken and shamed. If anyone wants to plot with me for running into her after pm me or plurk me at xdombillyx.

Comments

audio

[caditquaestio]

[ ...so, then. The man who would be monster, Chronus eating his cubs. And Rodrigo Borgia looks, through this - sister? Sweet sister's eyes, returned to hypocritical form.

He doesn't think to speak at first (shouldn't, bears his silence well, this isn't his moment, his hour), but - stupidly - does. ]

They... they speak of your mother across all of Italy. Of her beauty and her wit and her ways. She is a fine woman, donna Lucrezia. The finest of all.

audio; private

[pontificus]

[He is soothing in a way that aches at her bones. She longs for her brother, and feels only shame for keeping this from people. It is not that she thinks any less of her mother. Vanozza is goodly, graceful, and all things a good woman should be. But these are things she has been hiding, both her marriage and the fact that her nobility is not as pure as people think. She has power gained from her father's position, but she has spoken to others here on what bastardy means to them. It is not always a safe world.

It is her own guilt and shame that keeps her from the network, and while she would rather ignore it, the Italian man that has made her question everything as of late brings soft words that ease her.]

They called her whore at my wedding.

audio; private

[caditquaestio]

[ Blood-chilling, pricks of calculated irritation. This is what it feels, then, to want your hand on the dagger sheath.

His voice, somehow, stays measured. Warm. ]


Name me one man who does not first see the thorns on the rose outside his hand's reach. One.

audio; private

[pontificus]

[She sounds even sadder.] And what of my husband who would think so low of his new mother? Does he see my thorns? Do I prick him so easily?

[caditquaestio]

...let him lose the fingers.

[pontificus]

Then I am just a torture device? To make men bleed for the Borgia cause. [It's bitter in her mouth. She doesn't know why she asks this of someone from the Medici house. He can't help her. No one can. But she craves love and adoration, wanting to be fawned on, to be lovely and to be noticed for it.]

[caditquaestio]

You bleed, or you are bled. And the cause stays one and same.

omg this screams of s3 so bad ;; foreshadowing

[pontificus]

Why? Why do I have to bleed for his armies? [She snaps back, frustration dotting her eyes with tears again. She should not speak so ill of her father to a man she barely knows, aligned to Florence, but she is so pained and tired of this already. She has lost Djem, she is made to marry, and she fears his cruelty already.]

Why can I not be happy and blood free?

except I think The Borgias Cesare would be nicer about it

[caditquaestio]

Because you own the pretty velvets of a Borgia and the jewels of a Borgia and the land of a Borgia and the titles and the blood.

[ And then exasperation seeps. ]

Would you be happy and destitute, Lucrezia? Would you have the coarse hands of a washerwoman? Her teeth? Her commoner's beliefs in all that the Church provides and the good God gives to his chosen? Would you be ignorant? Ignored, but blood-free? Until next you are beaten and traded and raped?

video;

[chromosomes]

They'd keep your mother away?

video;

[pontificus]

My brother brought her-- later. [She still doesn't want to acknowledge the actual marriage. She keeps looking down, her eyes unable to look up at the locket, too distressed and ashamed of something she has been keeping to herself since she arrived.]

video;

[chromosomes]

After? [ After the wedding, after the ceremony -- he can tell she's trying to avoid the subject, so he does his best to pick around it as well. ]

video;

[pontificus]

My brother brought her after-- he married me. [She ducks her head.] I was so pleased to see her, and he danced with her, even when they tried to stop her. I thought the Holy Father would kick her out, but Guilia Farnese was beside him and talked to him for me.

It was the best moment of the day. To see her. [Not the actual marriage.]

video;

[chromosomes]

Good. [ Some of the tension in his voice eases away, knowing that Lucrezia was able to see her mother, that her brother looked after her. ]

You didn't see her much, I take it?

video;

[pontificus]

I lived with my mother. All of Rome knows of whom she is, who she was.

video;

[chromosomes]

But they wouldn't let her to your wedding. [ He shakes his head. ] Bullshit.

video;

[pontificus]

The Sforza's are too noble. And we need their noble armies.

[bullhorned]

[There's a lot of emotion to be taken there as he acts as some cruel observer of this dream. How pretty she seems at first. It's a familiar dress and he can see how happy she is in it. Just as happy as that day he first saw her wear it. All that promises to be a happy memory, until he begins to learn of her distress.

A bastard girl's mother, forbidden to attend a wedding. A common woman, no doubt, excluded and rejected just as his own mother had been. And yet, it's not that commonality that holds its attention. It's the realization of what that dress was and what it meant.]

... m'lady. I'm sorry.

[pontificus]

[If there is truly a God, she must call him cruel now. The shame that is weighed heavy on her shoulders worsens now. She wished to tell him in her own way. That it is not a marriage she wanted, that there was no choice. She carries the name Borgia and as the Medici currier has reminded her, she must pay for that in blood, her own or another.]

No, please. You must hate me.

[bullhorned]

[... hate? That doesn't even begin to enter into it. He can't even figure out why he would. Instead, it's him who thinks he's done wrong.]

I ain't got no reason to hate you. It's just, I ought not have acted the way I did. You being married and all... [He grimaces.] It ought to have been obvious.

[But he was too stupid and smitten to see it. A bloody fool is what he is.]

[pontificus]

No. [She shook her head.]

I wished for your affections, and I received them with kind smiles and flirtations. It was wrong of me, but I-- [She thought she could keep the two speedster. That this world was unaffected by her own. And then the Italian boy arrived. And now this.]

I never wish to return home, to him. He is cold man with dark eyes and no gentle words on his tongue for me or my mother. He says little, and in the morning we depart for his lands, and I pray each night to whatever gods are listening I do not wake up in my fair Rome. I would never leave here if I could. I would not leave you.

[bullhorned]

[He wonders who this man is. Was it the man from the dream who tried to hold her and wordlessly said nothing about her mother? Was it another? He didn't know, but he disliked the notion that she should be made to wed some strange man and to be taken away. He wanted her to be treated better.

Certainly he knew he would treat her better.]

Why would your father make you marry him?

[pontificus]

The simple answer is his armies. [The true version requires a very long history lesson of Italy.] His family is one of the Italian families, where I am from. Another country has claim on a kingdom within Italy, and they threaten to take it and with that threat comes the dethroning of my father.

I wed a man twice my age for men that will bleed for my father. [It is said emotionlessly, the true pain in the fact there is none in her words.]

For the family.

[bullhorned]

Bloody hell. [He doesn't know what to make of it. He was born on the streets. He doesn't know about politics or wars. He just knows that war means the common people get trampled on.

But apparently, so do other people. Women like Lucrezia.]

None of us should have to go back. Not for things like that.

[pontificus]

I am not yet his. In words, yes. But-- I could still have the marriage annulled. [Not that it is likely to happen back home. Her father is the only one that could do it, and this is a series of actions which have already started. He would not likely go back on it.]

I fell asleep at the table, and my brother brought me to my own bed. I woke up here, the night we met. [Her words are subtle, but she means to say that the marriage has yet to be legitimate. That in the eyes of her laws and her society, she is still technically an unclaimed woman. It is one of the few things that could get her out of this wedding. She fears it will not be long until even that does not matter.]

I had never meant to deceive you, Gendry. You and Lady Alayne are my closest companions here. [She means to bring Sansa up for a very good reason. While Sansa is physically running from people that would harm her, she still fears what Giovanni would do if he were here.] While lies of omission are still a sin, and I do ask for your forgiveness, perhaps I just wished to be...

[A pause.]

Happy.