Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Puppet ignored the lookalikes prancing about on the stage and aimed a can of thermite directly at the roof. The little scrap of steel flew, sparked, and the ceiling crashed to the floor. He was face to face with the King of Puppets again. He smacked away the offered hand, yet again.

The giant mechanical suit was easy. He’d seen each and every individual trick it had to pull dozens of times by now. But the rote repetition was not without caveats. Puppet had an odd feeling he couldn’t seem to shake. 

It had persisted since the first time he saw the king’s true face. A brief flash, a brief glimpse of a face still whole. And in the brief moment before the King of Puppets exploded, something in his springs had stirred. Minutely and vaguely, but without question, they had. The face had been whole, and he couldn’t look at it now that it wasn’t without a glaring feeling of wrongness.

Then the mechanical suit had sparked and exploded, and the moment was gone. The reaper was coming to collect. 

Left, right. Guard at the last second to unbalance it. Circle it whenever it prepared for an axe kick. 

Most importantly, though, was that the source of the puppet frenzy had had a core, and he’d very nearly not known about it. Had the heart beneath the armor attempted to escape, it could’ve gotten away. He could’ve never known how badly he’d failed until it was far too late. 

Puppet should have expected it, really. When the king moved left, he went right, and briefly wedged his rapier into a gap he couldn’t see but knew where to find, hopefully severing a few wires as they passed one another. 

The king went low. Puppet matched it strike for strike. It moved with the grace and confidence of an experienced stalker, night and day next to the preprogrammed move list of the suit it piloted. His father must have modeled this puppet directly off of a stalker, perhaps in the event that martial skill would be required for its service as a security measure.

The king moved fast. It flew to the left and came in like a whirlwind, and he let their blades glance off one another as he began to charge Fulminis. It spun on its heel to come back in again, just as he knew it would, a fiery hurricane hellbent on leaving a trail of destruction. He dropped low, and seized a metal ankle, letting a deluge of electricity out into his opponent’s foot. His hand hissed from the sheer heat. A yelp he did his best to ignore sounded out over the sounds of fire. His opponent sparked and spasmed, and Puppet refused to let it retreat. He hurled a shot put and closed in.

"̶̝̪͓͛͗̿̌I̸̥̭͉̊́͝t̶̥͝'̸̘̜̒s̷̨̝͓͖̈́̚ ̶͈̤͛̈̊̈a̶̝͇̙͆͜l̶̦͇̬̄̃ḷ̵͔̲̬͆ ̶̳̙͎̅̕ͅg̵̛̝ö̸̬͙͙́i̸͚͚̭̔̀n̵̹̞̉͠͠g̸͔̾͆ ̷͚͋̽̆̋ȕ̴̧͙͓̼p̴͙̳͎̈́̀̏͠ ̷̩̪̺̽͠i̷̙͆́ͅn̶͎̈́ ̶͈̂̈̒̒f̸̘͕͒̊l̸̮̠̊̅̍͝a̴̧͠m̶̢̼͌̑͠ḙ̶̹̌̈́̈́s̵͈͈̱͐.̶͍͚̾̇.̷̨̤͓͉͗̒͆̌.̶͇̘̍͛̓̚b̴̢̌͜r̴̨̝̺͈̕ĭ̸̧̡g̸̻̀͠h̵̤̜̎̈́̉͘t̷͕͍̳̃̃̔̒,̵͖͍͋ ̷̻̃̕ͅw̸͍̉̎͒h̷̟̮̝̟̽í̷̢̇͝͠ť̷͇͜ę̶̹̹̝̾̔͌͒ ̶̖͕͌̌f̶̞͎̀l̷͙̗̆a̶̹̪̝͐̒m̴̢̲̰̹͐̌ę̶̣̋̌̈̈s̴̼͓̖̍͒͋̚.̵͙͝.̴̨̮̞̟̈́̒̍̕.̵̡̡̡̔"̶̙͐̆

Puppet didn’t respond. He didn’t know what he would be responding to. Fire crackled. The Estella Opera House was a funeral pyre. 

The puppet in front of him sparked into a fiery inferno, forcing him back whether he liked it or not. The face plate remained expressionless. 

He couldn't name the sensation. It permeated his systems like a flood. Once he saw the face beneath the armor, his systems refused to obey his silent commands to settle. 

When he died, and the massive outer suit was his reaper, it was simply death. Sensation faded, and he returned to the stargazer in between blinks. When the true king forced him to call on the stopwatch Sophia had given him, death was…strange. Not enough to be something, more than just nothing, a faint kaleidoscope impressed upon his synthetic soul for the briefest of seconds.

Another fully charged, well-timed shove with his arm of steel had his opponent stumbling, leaving its heart wide open. Puppet moved, and the feeling intensified from a hum to a screech. He jerked his wrist to the left hard. He pierced his opponent’s dominant arm at the shoulder as a result. The king gave him a look he’d seen a dozen times already, wide-eyed at the prospect of whatever his hesitation portended, and just like all the times before, it did not capitalize on the opportunity. Puppet scowled, and the king actually chuckled at it, despite its unmoving face plate. He would almost call it good-natured if not for the circumstances. Whatever stalker this king was modeled after must’ve had a morbid sense of humor.

"̵̨̛͕̽́̿W̵̦̻̣̌͂͂̎h̸͕̼̉á̵̘͖̝̀t̴̫̳̽̄'̸̮͍̿s̷̲̑̎͝ ̵̨̜͕̩͊̔ṱ̸̡̢̘̂h̵̳̲̒̄͂é̵͚ ̴̢̱͎̽̏͋͘m̸̼̺̊a̶̧̡̐̊̏t̷̩̺̰̯̿ṭ̸͕̆̀̚e̴̘̖̾̏̉̇r̵̡̠͇̍̏͝?̸͙̪̦̒ ̸̺̞̳͕̔Ḧ̶̠̲́̐͌e̶̡̯͗͂ś̷͖̱̚͝ȉ̵͓̞̝̰̎̈̈́ṭ̷͖̝͆͆̆̎a̴͙̰͉̓̈́̄͒ţ̷̐͊ỉ̷̗n̵̨͔̥̜̉͊g̷͔̲̙̀?̸̻̀͋̆̏"̸̠̪͚͕̍

Puppet opted for a headbutt. He had to shove it down. He had to focus. Sophia had rewound time itself for him almost forty times now in this opera house alone. Almost forty times he’d failed at what his father asked of him. Lives were on the line. The frenzy was decimating the city.

This was what Sophia woke him up for. This was why he was called to awaken, to do what no human had and save what remained of Krat. He remembered it clearly and without fog, her voice cutting through the endless foggy night like a shooting star, lifting him from his first, last, and longest dream.

He wove around and under his opponent’s strikes, waiting for his moment. And as soon as his target put its scythe to its grindstone, he struck, hurling a shot put and pouncing with Fulminis outstretched. The third and final momentary stun gave him enough time to aim for the heart, ignore the tidal wave in his chest ascending to its peak, and strike. Like a flash of lightning, it was suddenly as if someone had torn his own P-organ out instead. But no, he had skewered his opponent’s mechanical heart on his rapier in one clean move. And when he looked down, his chest was intact. His heart was more than safe.

It was over. 

So why did it hurt?

He tried to let the tension bleed from his shoulders as the scythe clanged to the floor. The opera house was unbearable all of a sudden. The king leaned in, and Puppet half-heartedly stepped back, but all that happened was a head dropping onto his shoulder and a cold metal hand gently coming up to brush against his cheek. An expressionless face nuzzling into the crook of his neck.

"̸͓̦͈̒̔͑̀M̷͔͖̉̐ȃ̷̡̤̑̊͐ÿ̵̰́̀̋b̷̧͙͈̿͂ḛ̸̹͐̾ ̶̡̝̎́ț̸̡͈̄́h̷̥͓̅͝ǐ̸͉ͅs̵̲̟͔̈́ ̸̧̬̗̓͂́i̸̛̯͓̇͛͝ś̸͔̰ ̵̝̠̹̃̅̈́w̷̢̼̣̅̓̂ḣ̷̪͛̌̂ȃ̷̪̬t̷͚͂̓͠ ̴̡͙̎̉̆͝r̸̤̈́͆͗͝ȩ̴̱̹̓̋͐͝a̴̺̯̝͛̎̈͂ĺ̶̀̀̚ͅ ̷͓̀͊̚f̷̨̛̖̿̌̀͜r̵͖̥̫̲͛͘e̵̲̰͔͐̾e̵̖̮͔̋͋̐̎d̷̖̏̈́̎͑ȯ̶̦̇̌m̸͓̦̻̄ ̵͖̠̄̽̕ͅf̷̰̩͋̀̽e̶͇͕͒̓̊e̸̩̫̗͙͗̾̃̀l̴̨͒͋̈́͘s̶̮̲̳̠͒͗͐͒ ̸̥͊̍͜ĺ̸̨͙̮͊̕͝ï̶̭̪̖̎̚k̸͚͋̽̍͜e̷̝̜̤̅.̴̢̢̲̩̉͝ ̶͖̪̫̆͌͝T̷̜̠́̎̍͝h̷͉̪̤̻̓̀ạ̶̛̾̑n̸̙̳̒k̷̫͔̃ ̴̛̱ỳ̴̲̮̍͑̎ȍ̶̧̳̫̭ų̸̝̼͋̈́͒͝.̴̞̽͌̂.̷̲̀͗̏.̶̯͍̥̰̅̂͘C̸̣̦̙̦͊̕̕ả̴̧̛͈̱̳̾ř̴̰͠ļ̵̭̩̌͊͑͠õ̷̢̜̹̿…̶̗̂̆͛"̴̙̉̓

He did not move to catch the puppet as it slipped off the rapier and fell backwards to the floor with a loud thud. He dimly recognized Gemini collecting the ergo as he began to look for a stargazer. 

“Uh, buddy?” the cricket chirped, interrupting his search. “Look at him.”

The king was smiling. Smiling, a puppet, as oil and ergo spilled out and stained the off-white tiles. Staring up at the ceiling with eyes no more or less empty than they were before, the King of Puppets was clutching something and wearing a fond smile. Little more than a heap of oil and steel with half a human face, but Puppet couldn’t look away.

He zeroed in on the necklace. 

He couldn’t leave it. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. The necklace, that necklace, it was too important, he had to take it. He had to. He leaned down to pry the man’s fingers open. 

To Romeo. From your friend, C.

He didn’t know who ‘C’ was supposed to be, but the necklace was warm in his hand, and looking at it was making his springs churn. Oil stained the knees of his trousers as he knelt, and he felt like it would discolor the skin beneath if he stayed there. The feeling stained every corner of his mechanical insides like it was what lubricated his joints and allowed them to move. Puppet rolled his shoulders to try and shake it off, to no avail. He had to get out of here. 

He stood up and stepped around the corpse to continue to look for the stargazer. He had to check, now, were the puppets still frenzying? He continued out through the backstage, intending to do a brief sweep of whatever lay beyond the opera house. He needed to return to the hotel soon, to talk to his father and inform him of the achievement. His father would praise him, tell him he was a good son, and then there’d be something new to do. The city had to be rebuilt, cleaned, reorganized. The work was not done yet, but it was a thing for later. 

“I’m glad you’re safe, son.”

His father was here, he realized. Waiting for him? He felt a surging sensation in the wires and springs around his heart, clawing its way out, full of quintessential something. His father’s gloves made rivets in the coat Puppet was wearing, but he could only barely feel the pressure.

It wasn’t safe here. His father should be back at the hotel. I died almost forty times on this street and in this opera house, he wanted to say. You shouldn’t be here. You’re not safe. But his face was not built with a mouth that opened, and so he was left staring ambiguously at his father’s smiling face.

But when the human man put his hands on his mechanical creation’s shoulders and said, “I was so scared I would lose my precious son,” the words shriveled up and died in his nonexistent throat, shrinking back to wherever puppets got their unspoken words from. Not that they would’ve mattered anyway, because the next words out of his father’s mouth were about the risk of him being out. These streets were dangerous. His father already knew the risks, and put his life on the line to come see his son.

“I’m so proud I got to see my son defeat the king,” his father praised. “Hopefully the lesser puppets will die down soon.”

He wondered what it would be like to truly revel in a father’s love. Humans supposedly enjoyed those sorts of things, but he didn’t have anything to reference it to. Cold nights and a warm fire and beloved company flickered through his mind, unbidden. A moment he hadn’t lived, but he was looking at it through the eyes of someone who had. He didn’t get hot or cold, though, and the drink was tasteless. The scene was flat, black and white, incorrect. Hollow. Whoever was next to him, he could not manage to convince himself they had his father’s face. His hair wasn’t that dark. His voice was deeper. His shoulders were wider. Puppet could feel a pounding sensation beginning right behind his eyes. 

He could only stare blankly into the face of the only person who loved him more than anything else. He had everything he could ever want right in front of him. No matter how loving the father, was it just not going to be enough for a son who wasn’t human? Who didn’t breathe or talk or think?

A strange and prickling feeling, like a million tiny needles, began just beneath his eyes and trickled down his neck. It settled in his shoulders, and made him want to slink away and hide.

When his father directed him to seek a cure for the Petrification Disease at the Grand Exhibition, he very deliberately ignored the tugging in his springs from the sight of puppets mourning in the street. 

His obedience went deeper than simply following orders, after all. The necklace in his pocket would be burning into his soul, if he had one, and it refused to let him forget. His head was still pounding nearly thirty minutes later, and by minute thirty on the dot, he was fed up. Looking at the necklace intensified it from a dither to an utter racket, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. 

He didn’t make it very far in the streets behind the opera house before he was returning to Hotel Krat, certain the sensation would disrupt his gears if he let it continue. It couldn’t be good. Pain was a human signifier of wrongness. And he was not human, but that did not make it go away. Something was wrong with him. 

He reappeared in the lobby and fully intended to march back upstairs to his father’s office, until Sophia cut him off on the stairs.

“I was worried when you marched off to fight the king and then didn’t return for some time. Geppetto seemed satisfied, though- oh? What’s that?”

She was pointing at the necklace in his hand. He held it out to her, hoping she’d take it from him, and free him of the pulsing behind his eyes.

Sophia did indeed take it from him, and her hands seemed to lose an ounce of their usual static as she held it, suddenly looking much more solid. He screwed his eyes shut to let the pounding fade, and when he opened them again, the look on her face filled him with regret. He couldn’t describe it, he didn’t know how, but it made him want to hide the necklace away from her forever, just to keep those feelings from haunting her. The pulsing returned, and now he felt it in his shoulders too.

“It’s a necklace from the Monad Charity House,” she explained softly. The longer he stared at it, the more off he felt, but at least now he knew what it was. Sophia kept talking, but the words registered like they were coming from far in the distance. Many of the children grew up at the Rose Estate, she said. Stalkers, alchemists, technicians. The Rose Estate. Rose. The word seemed to echo in his systems like a shout from the top of a canyon, and he was standing at the bottom, drowning in the rain. Sophia’s serene expression was an anchor and a lifeboat alike.

“I hope the king didn’t harm any of them to get this,” she mused quietly, gently turning it over in her hands. She read the text on the back, however, and her face paled several shades. Whatever she was going to say died in her throat, and she shut her mouth with an audible click. The storm on her face intensified into a maelstrom of things, and all of them seemed like weights tied to her heart, keeping her soul earthbound. His gears roiled and rioted. He had to get upstairs, now. He could apologize later.

“This is- this belonged to…are you okay?”

He…didn’t think so. He shook his head, leaning on the railing. This shouldn’t happen to a puppet, right? This shouldn’t be possible. 

“You look ill,” she stepped towards him and reached out a hand, looking unwell herself. It took a herculean effort for the puppet to keep his feet under him. “My heavens, you look-“

His ocular circuits shorted out. The painful pulsing was replaced with a soft, rhythmic thumping to the same tempo. Prickling warmth spread from his spine to his fingertips, soothing his aches.

“Carlo…”

His springs reacted like a cacophony of candles, lit up like a wildfire. He blinked, and Sophia was staring at him like he grew a second head, hand still outstretched. 

Puppet blinked again in surprise. He refused to blink. He had never needed to blink before, why now? But his eyes started to itch and water. He had to screw them shut, and it was when he opened them again that he noticed—Sophia was reaching for his hair. His jacket was tighter around the shoulders. His shoes were too small.

His hair had grown! He wove his fingers into it in surprise. His mouth fell open- he could open his mouth now?! And something was in it! He stuck a hand in to investigate, and pulled, only to wince and lose his grip. It was attached to him. Warm, kind of slimy. Wet? Why was it wet?

Sophia made a sound like a squeaking gear. “No, no, don’t pull on that!”

He shot her a look. She gave him a look of her own. 

“It’s a tongue. That’s your tongue. Please don’t pull on it.”

Tongue? He didn’t have a tongue. Only humans had tongues.

“Humans use them for eating and talking,” she explained it like she was trying not to startle a wild animal. Her tone was calm, but her white-knuckled grip on the necklace was a testament to her distress. 

He didn’t talk, but noise came out of his voice box when he tried. Just a small “ah,” but it startled him something fierce. He slapped a hand over his mouth, and Sophia seemed stunned. Their eyes met. He had never made noise before. 

(He had tried. Humans could make noise without opening their mouths, and he’d thought at first that maybe he could at least do that, but he couldn't do either.)

He looked up at her desperately, curiously, and she seemed to recognize what he wanted to know, because she shook her head. 

“No,” she said hollowly, retracting her hand. “I don’t know how. You’re…changing. Becoming something other than a puppet.” She sounded surprised. He didn’t blame her. “If this is what you want, just keep behaving, keep feeling, like a human does. You’ll be okay.”

Human. Was he becoming human? 

“Hum-an,” he sounded out. The sound of his own voice wasn’t as strange to him as he expected it to be, somehow. Human. He couldn’t wrap his consciousness around the concept the word represented. But what was undeniable was the rush that came with the idea. Running in his veins, a feeling that made his springs dance and cavort yet again. 

“Keep this safe,” Sophia hurriedly pressed the necklace back into his palm and looked him in the eyes. “Okay? Always keep this safe, no matter what. It was Romeo’s. It’s important.”

A name. Romeo. The name on the necklace was the King’s name. That shouldn’t matter to him, but the pounding in his head was gone, moved to somewhere in his chest and receding into his gears, and the knowledge wasn’t unaffiliated. So it was helpful. So he simply nodded and tucked it away in his pocket, making for his father’s office. He still wanted to be looked over. 

His creator looked up when he heard the footsteps, and for the briefest of moments, something flashed across his face. But as soon as it appeared, it was gone, and his brows furrowed into a frown. 

Gepetto beckoned him closer. “Oh my,” he muttered as he got a good look. “This is a change I didn’t expect. Did the King of Puppets get you? Or some other ruffian? I didn’t give you functioning hair follicles, how…?”

The boy shook his head. The portrait was glaring holes into his back again. He hated looking at it, and he got the distinct feeling that it would hate him if it could. The name he’d just learned was still echoing through his gears, overstaying its welcome and keeping his mouth shut. He tapped a hand against his forehead, and Geppetto understood.

“Your head hurts? Let me take a look at you,” Geppetto urged, motioning to the red chair and standing up from his seat. “It might’ve begun with the P-organ. Actually checking inside your head would be difficult, since there’s no seam…”

The boy did not care for that red chair. The buttons and seams poked into the sensors on his back like fingers. He laid back anyway, feeling the seams of his coat strain against the pressure, and his father began his work, searching for the seam at his sternum, and gradually opening him up. The lights above him were glaringly bright. With nothing else to do, he gave his best attempt at studying his father’s face, taking note of any details he could make out. And thus he could see the exact moment where something was gleaned. His father’s eyebrows rose, and his eyes widened. Human signs of recent shock or surprise. 

Then, his whole face seemed to narrow. Apprehension, now. His father was shocked, then apprehensive of whatever he’d found. The message was more or less clear. This was not his father’s design for him. He had not planned for these changes, but a new piece of quartz was inserted nonetheless.

“Hopefully, that slows the problems. I don’t think there’s any structural damage to the organ, so it may have more to do with the ergo. Again, I hesitate to open up your head because there’s no seam there. I’d have to make one. Just try not to lie, and let’s see how things fare for now.”

The boy again wondered why he even came up here. He didn’t stop to weigh the costs before he was already in too deep. And now his creator was staring at his insides with a wrinkled nose and furrowed brows. The light above him hurt his ocular sensors, the chair was too uncomfortable, and there was nowhere he could go. His chest was open, his heart was in his father’s hands. He forced his left hand’s grip on the armrest to loosen until his father at last began to hesitantly close him up. He wanted to shatter that fluorescent spotlight as he stood up, but looking away was the next best thing.

He caught sight of himself in the glass windows as he stood. He looked away, only to come face to face with the portrait, which was somehow even worse, and Geppetto’s Puppet was struck with a sudden notion of what must have been disgust. He didn’t look like himself at all. He needed to get rid of this hair. He didn’t like it. His father didn’t like it either.

“I couldn’t find anything significant. Just be wary of dangerous people,” his father warned him as he stood up. “Be a good boy.”

The boy kept his steps even until he was out of sight, and then he fled like a bat out of hell. Ten minutes later found him standing in front of a hallway mirror after procuring a pair of scissors for the first time in his very limited memory. He opened them, lifted, snapped them shut, and a chunk of hair fell to the ground. Something in his mind clicked into place, like when a split-second risky maneuver turned out successful.

He snipped again. And once more. The sides were looking…fine. But it wasn’t looking like his old hair, either. Too jagged. He’d cut paper with a pair of scissors before, he was sure. He might not remember it, but hair couldn’t be that different, surely. It wasn’t supposed to be cut in a straight line like paper was, it was supposed to be a little messier so that it looked natural. He could do messy. 

“Slow down there, buddy,” Gemini trilled shakily. “You’re flying a bit too close to the sun, here.” He didn’t know what that meant. He had bangs. Bangs were short, right? How short, though? 

“Ho-w sh-ort were my ba-ngs, Ge-mi-ni?” He grabbed his hair to straighten it, then gave his locks another aggressive snip. 

“I really think you should ask someone for help with this, bud.”

“It’s ju-st hair.”

“It’s your hair! Don’t you want it to look nice? Buddy, buddy- put the scissors down!”

He snapped off another chunk. Gemini made a truly pathetic sound, a cross between a whine and a wheeze. 

“I really think this is a bad idea. At least get help for the back?”

He could get the back himself. The boy reached around and above to try, only to slice his nape open when he snapped the scissors shut. He quietly yelped at the sudden shock, and slapped a hand over the cut. It came back stained a dark blue. That probably wasn’t good.

“Buddy, stop. Please, buddy—oh, you don’t have a name, do you—please. Go see Polendina. Don’t let that cut bleed.”

Fine. But he was bringing the scissors.

“Po-len-di-na,” he complained, trotting down the stairs. “He-lp.”

Polendina looked up and started sputtering. Actually sputtering. Twitching minutely and taking a step back. “Sir- what have you done?”

“I wa-nt m-y hair cu-t.” Obviously. What else could he be doing? “An-d c-ut my ne-ck in th-e ba-c-k.”

Why did he feel like someone was laughing at him?

“Sir, please allow me to bring you to Lady Antonia. She will be a much better hairdresser than you or I.” The man proceeded to actually exit the front desk, take the scissors, and escort him through the hotel, hands on his shoulders. They passed by Sophia‘s usual spot, but she wasn’t there. He couldn’t see her anywhere, actually.

“Lady Antonia,” he said, almost timidly, “I believe there is an issue which requires your attention.”

Antonia tore her gaze away from the portrait which always captivated her so, and her eyes opened wide as saucers. 

She then took one long, suffering look at him, up and down, and sighed a very deep sigh. He got the feeling that said suffering was distinctly on her part. 

“Go wash it, boy,” she ordered him. “Scrub every last bit of dirt and oil out, then come back to me before you have a chance to dry.”

“It’s no-t th-at dirty,” he protested, “I ha-ve a cu-t on the b-ack of my n-neck.”

“Clean that cut, too, then,” was his command. “Polendina, get him soap.“

Polendina dutifully found and provided a bar of soap, and the boy made his way to the garden. He swore he heard Eugénie snort as he walked by, but she was completely absorbed in her work when he looked. Venigni wasn’t looking at him either, instead staring at the floor, expression obscured by his glasses. Huh. Did something happen? 

He stepped out into the pouring rain and startled back inside. The rain was cold! It nipped into his skin. He paused for a moment to stare at it. It hadn’t been cold this morning. He hadn’t felt its temperature at all. 

He thought of the warm fire again. Of familiar faces he didn’t know. Of rich drinks and cozy blankets and of a feeling he was constructed to chase, but couldn’t quite grasp the concept of. That feeling that had him coming back to his father every time. It was the reason his obedience went deeper than that of a creation serving its maker.

He stepped out into the rain, and the warm thoughts were doused like a candle. He shivered and made for the benches. 

It was hard to describe it all, really. Did he even think? He used the word because the language he knew offered no better alternative. Did he compute? Process? Calculate? Was he somehow more or less human than he knew, simply by virtue of the words he thought of himself with?

He sat down and waited for the rain to soak his hair through. He lathered his hands with the soap as per Gemini’s instructions, and got to scrubbing. How he knew exactly what to do, he didn’t recall. But the soap was coming away brown. Antonia said to scrub everything out, and to scrub the cut too. It burned for some reason when he did, but she said he needed to.

He washed his hair two more times, until the soap came away white. Perfect. Exactly as Antonia asked. Maybe now she would fix the cut. He stood up and made for the door, soap in hand. 

As he reentered the hotel, he caught Eugénie red handed. She slapped a hand over her mouth and barked out a strangled laugh. He knew it!

“Wh-at?” he asked.

“Just coughing,” she said, hacking a couple of times, leaning over her desk. “It’s polite to cover your mouth when you do. I think I’m gonna get some water…” She ducked under the desk and out of sight.

“Oh,” he replied to the air. “Ok-ay.” She was clearly lying to him. 

Pulcinella was stiller than usual, he noted. And so was Venigni. The man was usually always moving around, doing something or other. But when Puppet opened his mouth to ask, he was silently waved away.

His footsteps made squeaky, smushing sounds as he walked up to the front desk to return the soap. What was their problem? It was polite to return things you’d borrowed.

Polendina wasn’t at the desk, which was fine. He’d just leave the soap on the counter. It was cold in the hotel, and he wanted to get dry.

He returned to Antonia, who turned and looked at him, shaking and dripping water, and hung her head.

“Polendina,” she called loudly, sounding tired. “Towel, please.”

“You sou-nd tire-d,” he tried to soothe. “Are you ok-ay?”

Somewhere off in the hotel, he heard two voices burst into raucous laughter, one booming deep and the other high-pitched and shrill. Curious.

Polendina came back with several towels and tossed one over his head. 

“Dry off, bud.”

“You’ve no room to talk, cricket,” the matron scolded. “You let this happen. He’s probably cold.”

“Co-ld?”

“You’re shivering.”

He was cold, he realized. Was that why he was shaking? To generate warmth through the motion? He used the towels to absorb as much water as he could. 

“Come sit,” she instructed, motioning to a stool that had been placed in front of her wheelchair. He sat. “Polendina, if you would.”

Polendina carefully placed his hands to act as support as the Lady leaned forward, scissors in hand. 

“Your blood is clotting,” she mused as she began to snip. She did not elaborate, simply kept making gentle snips, adjusting and readjusting his hair. He refrained from correcting her. It wasn’t blood, it was oil. And it shouldn’t be leaking, but the notion of going back up to his creator’s office, even to reassure the man that he’d cut his hair short again, made his feet feel like stones. He snuck his hand into his pocket to run his fingers over the edge of the necklace.

“Did you wash your hair in the rain?” she questioned him. He made to nod, but she gently gripped his head to keep it still. 

“Ye-s,” he offered, trying to be as still as a mouse. 

“You know you can use the amenities in any room in this hotel?” she scolded. “There was no need.”

He did not know until now. She trimmed the back, the sides, the front. Had him towel the rest of the moisture out, then snipped a little more. Cupped it in her hands and fluffed it up. Spun him around so she could touch up the front.

At last, she handed him a handheld mirror. 

He did look better. He looked a lot better! His hair was a bit shorter than it was before, a little too much like the painting for his liking, but it still looked good. The bangs were long enough to be exactly how he wanted them, at least. 

He wondered how humans thanked each other for kindnesses like this. Words?

“Tha-nk yo-u,” he said. “I li-ke it.”

“Of course,” Antonia hummed, running her hands through his hair, looking at him like he was something dear to her. “Don’t ever take a pair of scissors to your own hair again, you hear me?”

The corners of his lips quirked up.

He set about the hotel, taking care of business. He sharpened his weapons, visited the garden, and went to check the weapon vendor’s wares for anything new. Spring still hissed at him whenever he approached her. 

He could not bring himself to give away the king’s ergo. 

It rippled a brilliant blue-white, and Alidoro, their resident weapons trader, coveted it the way a magpie would a pretty stone. “I have something good I can give you for that one,” he offered.

The amulet was gorgeous—and useful. It interacted with legion arms specifically to enhance them. But it wasn’t a blazing blue-white, the color of the stars, and he couldn’t bring himself to want it more.

“No,” he said. “I’lll k-eep it.” 

“Suit yourself,” he huffed. “Anything else you like?”

He didn’t see anything, and bid the collector goodbye. Next on his list was the Grand Exhibition. He set out again with that single star burning a hole in his P-organ as if it were a true heart, holding onto a necklace that belonged to someone else.

Chapter Text

Exhibitions were to bring in tourists. The point was display. The point was hustle and bustle bringing in money for the city. People meant money, and money well spent kept a city healthy.

The arcade was just as sickly as the rest of Krat, but it was like a ghost town in a way Moonlight Town hadn’t been. Moonlight town at least had nature. He could hear cicadas and see birds now and again. Here all he found were hallways. Locked doors, quaint shop windows. Footsteps echoing off the tile and bouncing back. The only real noise came from dodging falling carcasses whenever he heard the telltale sound of shattering glass. The flickering lights caused an ache just behind his forehead that reminded him of the red chair. 

None of these things should be here, as they were. The air of profound wrongness that enveloped the shopping district shrouded it in an air of unease too piercing to ignore, despite the fact that he’d never seen this place as it should have been. Or maybe it was the lingering feeling from his freshly cut hair, the throbbing ache on the back of his neck that made everything more painful to turn his head and look at. 

And the smell was horrendous, if that’s what he was detecting. Humans registered scents in the nose, and that was where the absolutely foul odor in the air was making contact with his systems. He’d gained a sense of smell, too. Sophia was right, and he had no way of predicting what would change next.

His father thought the Grand Exhibition may hold a cure. Why, Puppet did not know, but his creator gave no orders without due reason, and every time Sophia’s watch rewound time back to when he was undamaged and alive, he was reminded why he was the one sent out on these missions. Why his father had him out here: he was repairable. He was made, not born, and thus could never be truly injured. The thought spurred him onwards. Never invincible, but unstoppable. 

Trinkets and bits and bobs decorated the decimated shops, and the flickering lamps overhead sparked something in him that made him want to shatter the bulbs. On a whim, Puppet indulged. He aimed his puppet string, and this time the sound of shattering glass was music to his auditory processors. A thrilling sensation shot up his spine. He huffed out a puff of air, reveling in a bout of what must’ve been satisfaction.

“Buddy, people are gonna need those eventually.” Gemini piped up, trying to ruin his fun.

He huffed again. “It wa-s an-noy-ing.”

“Just try not to shatter any more…?” Gemini pleaded. “People are gonna come back to this place…eventually. Eventually.”

Magnanimously, he complied. The light fixtures would simply have to go ignored.

Clothes, clocks, and paintings eventually gave way to carcasses, storage boxes, bloody tiles, and at last the door.

There was a hole in the wall. Blue and sickly viscera decorated the cavern—the Petrification Disease was here too, growing from the walls like the roots of a malicious plant, or like a thick spiderweb. The smell was horrendous, sharp like acid with the pungency of a particularly ferocious strain of mold. Rotting flesh, he recalled from somewhere. This was what it smelled like when human bodies rotted. 

He couldn’t smell it in Moonlight Town, or in the cathedral, despite the carcasses there. He couldn’t smell anything before he laid eyes on the necklace. 

In the wine cellar, the color was the first thing to hit him. Reddish liquid sloshed around the floor, and at first he thought it was blood. A large carcass awaited him, eyeless and malignant, and it wasn’t until he stepped into the actual wine cellar that his olfactory processors registered the new smell. It was…pleasant, almost. 

The creature was slow. He led it in circles around a pillar, wondering how the wine tasted. What was it made from? How did it smell? Was it that sweet scent he could vaguely make out, tuned by undertones of pungent corruption? It had to be. There was something warm on his tongue, he belatedly realized. His synthetic tongue was coated in some kind of thick liquid. He spat it out, but more just came to replace it. Where was his body even getting the water to make it from? Was he wasting it by spitting it out? What was it for?

The carcass bodily smacked him in his distraction, and he hit the ground. A small handful of his questions were promptly answered when the reddish liquid flooded his mouth. It was almost dry. How did a liquid feel dry?

He activated the puppet string from the floor. He hit his opponent feet first, rebalanced, and pushed off to get above it. Wine droplets flew in all directions as he spun back down, bringing his blade down on the creature’s head, killing it. 

Now he was sticky. And gross. Wine was in his hair, soaked into his clothes, and it was most certainly going to stain. He smelled like fruit. There was no keeping himself clean now, may as well try it again.  

Puppet sheathed his blade and reached down to cup more of it in his palms. When he brought it to his mouth, he found he couldn’t actually taste it. The dry feeling persisted, though, and when he instinctively tried to swallow it, he couldn’t. It refused to go down, and the back of his throat felt like it was about to burst. He coughed and spluttered and spat the wine out, heaving to his feet. He was done here.

Further exploring the cellar yielded nothing, but it did lead him to a bedroom of all things. It looked mildly lived in, but not like a permanent residence. What was interesting about it, though, were all the flyers. One in particular was advertising a concert held by the Monad Charity House. Sponsored by one Lady Isabelle and one Sophia M. Innocent children were supposed to be performing in this wretched place? 

What surprised him the most about the thought was that it felt correct. It clicked into place in a way the foul air and dim lights deliberately didn’t. This place was supposed to be lively. The idea of performing at a concert made his fingers twitch. 

Another flyer caught his eye. Introducing one puppet a caliber above the rest! To celebrate the Estella Opera House’s 30th anniversary, the King of Puppets joins the ensemble!

He tucked the paper away, not wanting to dwell on it. He didn’t feel very good. He did not want a repeat of the necklace incident.

Another locked door. He tried the first key, and huffed in frustration when it didn’t fit. He made his way through crumbling brick walls, past more big and slow creatures even more disgusting than before.

These creatures were even bigger than previously, and instead of sickly blue, they were a rotten white. All he could smell was pungency permeating the air, and he found himself longing for the wine cellar again. He turned corner after corner, feeling oddly optimistic. No news was good news, so far.

More shops, more carcasses, another blocked door. One busted-open shop sold paintings, it seemed, and he wandered inside. Honey oak wood, a lamp still burning on the desk somehow. People? It was an almost comforting place. Vestiges of what it had once been remained, he surmised. Through it was…a small greenhouse? And a locked door he’d seen earlier, now he was getting somewhere! There was a wandering merchant in the garden, too. 

“Do you ha-ve a key, by any chan-ce?” The merchant nodded. Finally, he was about to be out of this ghost town. He bought it. 

He stopped by the stargazer and backtracked to the locked door. A thick mist had settled in certain parts of the hall, and he didn’t need more than one look at it to know that someone would laugh at him if he actually did step in it. It looked like it would clog his gears in a heartbeat. But who?

He found a bar, low-lit and low-key, and with it came a feeling again. This time not unlike when he first entered Hotel Krat—he’d been here before, and he’d definitely lied to get in. He ignored it. He ignored it and kept going. He found another cellar, and watched a circus puppet fend off a swarm of carcasses while he fended off the swelling in his chest. He killed it once it won.

His eyes locked onto a bottle. La Bleiwies, he instantly knew. A favorite of someone he knew. What was her name again?

He yanked the bottle open and took a sniff.

Warm fire. Cold day. Spiced drinks and beloved company. Not his father’s face, no, his hair wasn’t that dark, it wasn’t—wine red?

He almost dropped the bottle. In a second, he snapped back to reality. He didn’t know any redheads! At least, not well. He’d only been alive for a day and a half. He shoved the wine into his pack and continued with, directing inward the fury settling into his bones. He couldn’t get distracted, the boy scolded himself as he pushed open the last heavy iron gate. Father was counting on him. Krat was counting on him. He didn’t have time for memories he never made.

“Hello? Is anyone there? Calling any and all stargazers in the vicinity. Please respond. Over.”

He knew that voice—Venigni. It was coming from the stargazer. 

“I’m he-re,” he sounded out, hurrying to place his hand on the mechanical lily.

“You can hear me? Really? Evviva, it actually worked!! This must have been how the King of Puppets did it, how he called to other puppets and controlled them. You can transmit your voice through ergo waves. What a brilliant discovery!”

It was a brilliant discovery. The King of Puppets had beaten Venigni to something monumental. He felt a surge in his chest again, and he shoved it down to listen.

“And you’ll never believe what signal I’ve picked up over the ergo—a cry for help from the Grand Exhibition. Somehow, someone survived!”

“Are you su-re?” He did his best to project doubt into his tone. And it must’ve worked.

“I know, I’m suspicious too, but you have to investigate. What if it’s some trapped innocent?”

“I’ll go.”

And with that, he cut the communication off. He now had two objectives: a cure and a survivor. The boy turned and stalked back the way he just came, searching for the way out. He skipped the stairs, and made his way down the street. No carcasses, oddly enough.

A shop to his right caught his attention. Jewelry shining in flickering light lured him in like a moth to a flame. He climbed in through the broken window and looked around. Barely anything remained, but what did was clearly well-made. Chains and amulets, rings and bracelets, all sorts of expensive things were strewn about. 

“Pal? Something caught your eye?” Gemini chirped as he picked one up. “That one does look nice!” 

It was beautiful. It was purplish-red stones on a dark bracelet cord. But it wasn't quite correct. It didn’t have enough…something. The boy put it on a shelf and kept looking.

He came across crescent shaped earrings that sparked racing circuits in his hands, and a rosebud necklace that had him wanting to find real rose flowers. And maybe give them to someone who liked them. He wove his way through shattered glass, moving broken shelves to look under and around and behind them. He found a butterfly ring in the wrong shade of blue. A rose-shaped hair ornament, clearly made for a child. A bronze pin, devoid of identification, but the way the edges felt against his synthetic fingertips somehow had him shivering. He heaved in a heavy breath, drawing the old and dirty bronze necklace out from his shirt. What was it about a simple pendant that belonged to someone else? What was it about dirty bronze and scorch marks and a chicken-scratch engraving on the back that made him even keep this thing? 

A carcass gurgled from behind him. He snapped out of his trance like lightning. What was he doing, wasting time in a jewelry shop?! There was an S.O.S. coming from the Grand Exhibition, and he was chasing smoke!

The boy bolted from the building. Tunnel vision, he reminded himself. Leave the arcade to rot, there’s nothing more you need here. There were still carcasses everywhere all across it, revenants dotting musty halls like a ghost town imperfectly come back to life.

When he pushed open the doors to the Grand Exhibition’s massive courtyard, he was greeted by pouring sheets of rain. Thunder rumbled in the distance. He had to be quick if he was going to avoid the lightning.

He wove his way around hostile puppets and through the maze of lifeless pathways, darting like a mouse towards the main building. Frenzied puppets and more carcasses decorated the streets as he wove his way through. His father had said there would be a cure here, and so the boy was going to see it through. He wondered, what kind of cure did his creator expect him to find here? It was a puppet display center, right? He’d expect a cure to be in someplace more…scientific. More chemicals and laboratories than electricity and ergo. 

He made it to the main doors, and let out an involuntary growl when he found them locked. A sudden burst of frustration hurtled up and out from his systems, his springs condensing in rage, and he kicked a nearby rock with a scowl and a huff. It soared and smacked a nearby puppet, who shrieked at him. He didn’t have time for this! He turned and ran, desperately searching for another way in. Some desperate lone survivor was in there somewhere, and a single locked door was forcing him to take the long way. This was what he got for wasting time. This was what he got. 

“It’s okay, bud, we’ll still make it in,” Gemini tried to comfort him.

“Fath-er would be ash-amed,” he growled in response. Gemini didn’t respond.

At last, he found a tram. He jammed the lever up with a sigh, and as he found out while stepping out of the train car, there was indeed a lot of science and experimentation related to the Petrification Disease happening there. The Exhibition was squeaky clean, for the most part, excluding the occasional spatter of blood or spill of something which almost looked to be liquid ergo. Not to mention the smell was back. But there were odd tanks everywhere, full of the blue substance that decorated the ground here and there. Almost like liquid ergo, but not quite. There was clearly a lot of ergo in the concoction, though. 

An odd location for a cure, he mused, briefly looting a fable catalyst to add to his endless collection of fable catalysts. Something told him this was not the typical environment in which biological science was conducted. He wove through hallways which must’ve once been pristine, and in another burst of frustration, he aimed his puppet string at a tanky puppet patrolling the rafters. He shot, and his father’s invention held true, rocketing him up to the highest floor in a burst of speed. It pulled the heavy puppet down from the rafters, sending it to the floor with a mighty crash, but gave him enough momentum to disconnect it and fling himself up. He aimed, shot, and flew again, this time with the unwitting help of a circus puppet. And beneath him, muttering and pacing, was at last the source of his signal, alive. Perhaps not well, but alive. He dropped down, startling the poor woman, who instinctively whipped her very sharp blade towards him. He caught it on his arm of steel with a clang just as the woman barked, “don’t come any closer!”

Then she gave him a good, long stare. “Oh…you’re not one of them. Are you here for me?”

“Yes,” he said. This was his survivor, all right. The woman was caked in dirt and oil, and looked like she had been through hell and back. “We go-t your sig-nal.” 

She breathed a heavy sigh. “I’m Belle. These jerks are not to be messed with, especially since they took that drug. Then there are those biological experiments, and now I’m stuck and on my own. Ugh, it’s horrid…” The woman looked faintly green for a few moments, but steeled herself. “I can’t reveal everything. But I can escape on my own if you clear the way and take out the big guy. Please, it’ll be easier to breathe once that horrid Victor is taken out. Once you’re done, I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

This woman knew about Hotel Krat? Well, everyone in the city probably did. But this woman knew it was safe. A little suspicious, but not unfeasible, and he wasn’t about to deny her safety. 

“Okay,” he agreed. “Is any-one else wi-th you?”

“No, my partner and I were separated,” she lamented. “I’m the only one here.”

He agreed to clear the way. He left Belle behind and continued leaping from foe to foe using the puppet string, flying through the rafters like a dragonfly. He lowered a bridge, and collected a flyer mentioning the “Victor” from earlier. He passed by curtained beds containing dead bodies, displayed out where anyone could see them. He passed by rows upon rows of his own kind put up for display.

It was almost awkward to walk the halls once he was actually looking around. It felt more like a specimen storehouse to him. Between the massive aqua-blue tanks of what must be ergo, to the alchemists, to the puppets up on display, it all threw him for a loop. Unbidden, he likened the puppet displays to how a zoo might put cases upon cases of dead butterflies up onto a wall for people to observe.

“Spe-ci-mens,” he complained while opening a chest to reveal a legion caliber. “Up on dis-play. Like butter-flies in a zoo.”

“Krat did have a zoo once,” Gemini said. “And they did hang up a lot of butterflies. Where’d you learn that from?"

“Ju-st knew.”

He solved another riddle, given from a voice that made his stomach churn. The name Arlecchino stuck around in his memory like a parasite. He couldn’t explain it. He did not trust that voice. He wished he would never hear it again. Every time they talked, his insides curled. He wanted this man to shut up. Every Trinity Key felt like a dirty secret.

His rummaging and scavenging unearthed documents about something called Kroud, an invitation to the Isle of Alchemists with Venigni’s name on it signed one Valentinus Monad, and other bits and pieces. Given that Venigni was still very much alive and un-petrified, he assumed the man had made the wise decision and turned it down. All that remained for him to do here was deal with the so-called champion behind the locked door in the main hall. He activated the shortcut ladder, and briefly revisited the stargazer to recharge his pulse cells. Likely would be a carcass of some kind, so he needed the fire grindstone. Weapon, check. Puppet string, check. Fire grindstone, thermite, fable catalysts, legion magazines. Check. The boy darted around the puppets in his way and shouldered the door open. 

The room was dim. Tanks upon tanks of that same blue elixir, a large circular light fixture, and the sound of rushing water from beneath his feet. It smelled like rotten carcasses, just like the rest of the building.  

“Welcome. To my ring.” Spotlights lit up a hulking, muscular figure standing in the opposite doorway. As he stepped forward like a series of thundering earthquakes, and the puppet got a better look at him, he was hit by a wave of disgust. The man wore tanks of the elixir on his back, and tubes upon tubes ran from them and disappeared beneath his pallid skin. Despite it, the man seemed assured and vivacious. 

“This is where evolution becomes real,” the man boasted. “Fear me! For I am Victor, the champion!”

Without further preamble, the brute dropped into a low stance and rushed him like a charging bull. The boy threw himself out of harm’s way in the nick of time. Big, but not slow. He put his weapon up to his grindstone and finished applying the fire effect just in time to weave beneath a splitting right hook. He aimed for his opponent’s ankle, felt a bone snap beneath his blade, and rolled away, only to be flattened by a second charge. He reappeared at the stargazer, and the time on his pocketwatch read to be a few minutes ago.

Gemini remembered the loops somehow, and was more than happy to offer him advice each time. It was becoming routine, by now. Every time he died, he silently thanked Sophia, heeded Gemini’s advice, and then gave it another shot. He died a dozen more times, got a little farther with every one, and pushed his opponent until the man could go no further without the aid of the elixirs on his back. At last, something in the loop was changed, and it rejuvenated his spirits. He died again, ten, fifteen more times after that.

“Why am I humble?! I am evolved, a better man-!”

The next significant change he encountered in the time loop was swiftly followed by another. Victor, the champion, the most successful of all the abominable experiments in the wretched place, was cut off mid sentence by a flying javelin. The boy darted around the falling body to get a good look at his next assailant, only for the figure to retreat. Footsteps echoed over the sound of rushing water, and as the armored figure dropped to a kneel, he realized he was about to meet someone important. And, indeed.

“I’m surprised you defeated Victor. Geppetto’s creations truly are marvelous.” A man in a top hat and tie placed a hand on the railing and peered down at him. A dark coat over a vest the color of fresh blood, a staff in hand, the man was applauding him for ruining a prized creation. “Ah, but! Where are my manners? My name is Simon Manus, a leader of the alchemists. I’ve known your father a very long time. We used to be colleagues, you know.”

This man was responsible for the alchemists, and this man knew his father. His father, who had told him just recently to never trust an alchemist. He filed that away for later, along with the name. For now, he wanted to let the man talk. 

“Geppetto didn’t understand that the Petrification Disease can be used to strengthen humankind. Locked into conventional thinking, I’m afraid. But even he can’t ignore such magnificent discoveries. You’ve seen this place with your own eyes, it's the door to a new world!” Manus spread his arms wide, sincere as if the notion he’d just presented wasn’t so disturbing.

Conventional. His father was by no means conventional. His father was calm and measured, certainly, but not conventional. He himself, one of a kind, was living proof. And he had come across nothing but mindless monsters and frenzied puppets on his way here, but this man had the nerve to call it all the door to a new world? As far as actual results went, he’d only seen Victor. 

If this were a reliable way to save people too far gone but not entirely lost, then perhaps it could hold water. But as it stood, one success and hundreds of failures was not a promising statistic. 

The man leaned forward over the balcony suddenly, fixing the boy with an intense stare.

“Tell me, puppet, what do you suppose our cure has created here?”

He wouldn’t be able to kill this man. Not with that guard present.

“It se-ems ho-peful,” he did his best to project his voice loudly enough to reach. “Vic-tor was a suc-cess.”

The man straightened up, reaching a hand to rest on the brim of his hat. “I have to admit some surprise. I didn’t expect you to be as rational as we are. I’m impressed—even if it’s a lie.”

Caught. Was he that obvious? Did he have tells, like humans did? So much for lying his way out of this one. And now this man knew he was unbound by the covenant. He did not like that.  

“I’m sorry,” the man apologized, and the puppet couldn’t tell if it was sincere. “I underestimated you for being a puppet. I think you’re open minded enough to hear the truth: that the disease does not signify death. It’s the purifying and distilling of a person’s essence. A purified human who overcomes the Petrification Disease will gain a strengthened body and a mind free of lies. And that essence, that essence is ergo.”

ergo…was human essence. The closest thing humans had to a soul, the rivers in their veins. A thousand tiny details suddenly made much more sense, provided that were true. So then, the ergo which powered his heart- the ergo from the boy in the painting, that his father had placed in him…

“Indeed, the ergo you use as your power was once a human being. Geppetto’s first son, I believe.”

His oil turned to ice in his synthetic veins. This man had just read his mind. Geppetto’s first son. His heart was damming the rivers of not just a dead human, but a dead brother. The name he heard in fuzzy memories, said by a familiar voice, the disgruntled portrait hanging on father’s wall: Carlo. 

They shared a soul. They were the same person.

…Was he supposed to be Carlo? 

He wasn’t. Was he?

It hit him like a meteorite then, that regardless of whether or not he was supposed to be Carlo, he didn’t really know who he was. He’d known it the entire time, that he had no memories to his name, but now it was really in stark emphasis. His ego was certainly awakened, though, because he wasn’t a mindless drone. So he was Carlo, as father had intended. Or at least he was becoming him. So those memories were his. Why did they feel so odd, then?

And the changes he’d undergone had displeased his father. His voice and hair and heart pain were all things that weren’t supposed to happen. But his father was trying to resurrect his son. And that son was him. So what was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to do about the returning memories and the feeling he couldn’t shake? If those things were forbidden, but came alongside the discovering of his own self, then how was he supposed to proceed? 

Just try not to lie.

He would have to lie. If he wanted to be himself, if he wanted his father to have his son back, he would have to lie. The changes were inevitable, he realized with a start. He was breathing. How long had he been breathing for? It wasn’t the necklace. He hadn’t even noticed it!

The leader of the Alchemists walked away. The conversation was done. He’d missed the end. The Stargazer was still behind him, unrepaired, but his feet were rooted to the floor. 

Was Carlo supposed to be here?

(Instead of whoever he could become?)

He was Carlo, wasn’t he? He was missing his memories, but the soul wasn’t a thing which could be overwritten. He was Carlo. He’d been Carlo from the start, simply bereft of memories. Memories and an ego were evidently not inherently linked. 

He was supposed to be a human. He slapped a hand over the back of his neck, and found the cut from that morning had hardened into something almost like a scab.

Red haired woman with a feather plume on what must’ve been her stalker mask. A graduation necklace. Blond hair, craning his neck to look up and meet his friend’s eye. Inseparable. He gave that necklace to Romeo, didn’t he? And Romeo had kept it ever since. Why…why was Romeo a puppet? Wasn’t he supposed to be human? 

Had they had a falling out at some point that he didn’t yet recall? If Romeo kept the necklace, if he gave him the necklace, then they must’ve been close at some point. If someone he loved had gone and started the Puppet Frenzy, then he supposed he would have no real choice but to cut his ties and grieve. There was too much blood on Romeo’s hands to be forgiven, and so Geppetto had sent his only son to do what was right, even if it hurt. He would’ve had to do it anyway. That was his friend once. His responsibility. 

He activated the Stargazer. The memories of dead bodies he knew to still be in the streets had its hands around his throat. Could he have mitigated the frenzy? Prevented it? He didn’t know. He had no way to know. His missing memories were a curse. A spark of something nasty twisted his face into a scowl. Why hadn’t his memories awakened with his ego? Wasn’t his father supposed to be a master of his craft? All the hours he spent on it over the years, and he couldn’t even do it correctly this one time? 

“That guy was familiar. Simon Manus…I can’t recall. He’s just…familiar! Ugh! I wish I knew.” Gemini’s frustration at undergoing the exact same plight snapped him from his spiteful ruminations, and all at once he wondered where that anger had come from. His father had only ever asked of him what was necessary to make the city safe again. He and his guide were two of the same, he supposed, as aquamarine butterflies whisked him back to the hotel. That was comforting, at least, in its own miserable way.

Sophia wasn’t in her usual spot, but instead was standing by the gramophone. He set a new record to play to busy his fingers, wondering all the while. He couldn’t string the correct words into the correct questions. Carlo was the ‘C’ engraved on Romeo’s necklace, and Sophia knew Romeo somehow. So would it stand to reason that she knew Carlo too? Would she know the details of how they parted? Whether or not it had been ugly? 

The look on her face had him pausing, though, because there was grief and sadness in between the lines. She had other plans.

“So-phia?” he asked. She exhaled a heavy sigh. Soft notes began to fill the room.

“You’ve met Simon?” she asked, not looking at him. “Leader of the Alchemists?”

He nodded. How did she know?

She sighed again. “I’ve been dreading this conversation…but you need to know, and I should’ve told you about him sooner.”

Now she had his attention. His own queries could wait.

Sophia looked him dead in the eye, and stated with the utmost seriousness, “he is the most dangerous man in Krat. He calls the mayhem and death enshrouding the city ‘evolution.’ The world he would make would be utter madness. It’s why I woke you up—if you can’t save Krat from him, no one can. Geppetto had given up hope that you’d awaken, but I…”

He could hear the thunder rumbling outside and the rain hammering down. This wasn’t the puppet frenzy. This wasn’t the task his creator had bestowed upon him, but it was for the sake of the same greater purpose. He could make it happen. 

“I’ll do it,” he replied. Sophia’s face melted into what he could only call relief. 

“Thank you…I’ll help in whatever way I can.”

“Th-is was why you ga-ve me the pock-et-watch,” he realizes.

“And it is yours forever,” she added. “It won’t work for anyone else.”

He couldn’t help himself. “...You ma-de it for Car-lo?”

Sophia stiffened. “Carlo is gone, Clever One. The necklace is for you.”

“Is h-e?” The boy pressed a hand flat to his chest, over his heart. “He’s he-re. You kn-ew him. He’s me.”

“I did know him,” she admitted. “And I think you’re both more different and alike than you realize.”

“Wh-at abo-ut Rom-eo? Did you kn-ow him?”

“Him too,” she nodded. “He and Carlo were very close.”

“Ho-w did i-t end?” he asked, praying that she’d know. “A fall-ing out? He star-ted the fren-zy, why?”

Sophia’s face fell into an imitation of the first time she saw the necklace. “I doubt he did, Clever One. I don’t think he would, he was always a kind soul.”

“Bu-t he did,” he argued. The lesser puppets had been no less active lately, but they acted without direction compared to before. His death had made a difference. He was controlling them somehow.

“I still don’t believe it,” Sophia refuted with an uncharacteristic sharpness. “And, for the record, the relationship never did sour. Carlo died a few years ago.”

“Some-thing mus-t’ve happ-ened,” he insisted. “The pup-pets ha-ve died do-wn.”

“It’s only been a few hours,” she countered. “They aren’t much different compared to a month ago.”

“His dea-th sti-ll made a diff-er-ence,” he countered back. “He was terr-or-izing the ci-ty. He was-n’t the pe-rson I kn-ew any-more!”

Sophia’s face contorted into something truly fed up. “Don’t pretend you know him,” was the acerbic finisher. “Or Carlo. How could you? You don’t remember.”

He let go of the necklace like it’d burned him, turned on his heel, and stalked away rather than allow his rage to grow any more. Who was she to tell him who he wasn’t? Was she trying to add to his confusion? 

He may as well make his usual rounds through the hotel. Belle had heaved open the massive double doors while he was talking to Sophia, and had crossed the lobby to check in at the desk. She was still disheveled, covered in dirt and grime despite the rain, but she was in one piece. Polendina had handed her a towel to dry off with, but it only succeeded in removing some of the grime.

“Hello again,” Belle greeted him tiredly when he approached her. “Thank you for the help, again. I’m afraid you saw my bad side. I’m a soldier from outside Krat, they sent us in pairs to investigate. I got trapped and separated from my partner thanks to the blockade, and now 

Ah, that made sense. She knew about the hotel from her employer, then. Likely somewhere from inside France proper, given her name. Krat was right on the border, so it made sense. He nodded his assent when she brought up staying, agreed to keep an eye out for her partner, and then the hard part blindsided him: she asked him for his name.

“Pup-pet,” he said without thinking, fingers on the necklace. The ergo in his chest began to bubble.

Belle made an almost incredulous face. “That’s not actually your name, is it?”

“It is,” he argued, irked at her blasé dismissal. The ergo was fluctuating now, rolling like gentle tides, trying to say something in its garbled, chaotic, dancing language.

“But it’s not a name,” Belle argued back. 

“The Pup-pet,” he elaborated, “Is wh-at I am call-ed in my fath-er’s notes,” which was true. The ergo began to still. 

“But it’s still not a name!”

“It is,” he insisted. The ergo in his systems surged in disobedient tides.

“There’s no way everyone here is just calling you ‘Puppet,’ though, right?”

“No one here ca-lls me an-y-thing,” he admitted. The ergo stilled, eyes watching from beneath the seafoam.

Belle stared at him for a moment, mouth slightly ajar. “What? So pick something!”

He was called by what he was. Puppet of Geppetto. And he told her as such, again. The ergo remained silent. 

“But it’s not unique to you. There are countless other puppets in this city, all made by Geppetto, and none of them are exactly like you, now are they?”

He didn’t need a name. If his father wanted him to have something different, he would have given it to him. “I don’t ne-ed a new name.”

His traitorous ergo roiled. It hissed and spit like a furious pot set to a voracious boil, trying to claw a hole in the barriers which kept its message from the world. It refused his commands to settle, to still, and so he added aloud: “I ha-ve one al-ready.”

That did not make it better. Not at all. The mutinous ergo in his chest felt now as if it wanted to burst through his internal fasteners. His heart hammered like an industrial machine. Why?! That was the truth! He hadn’t lied, his name was Carlo! There was no other name he could have!

The Puppet turned to address his next task, bidding Belle goodbye: Polendina. He commanded the ergo to settle, and gave it no choice. He shoved it down, bottled it, and made it listen. It was his, not someone else’s. It ought to be listening to him.

“Hello, good sir. Might I ask, was the cure at the Grand Exhibition viable?”

“No,” he shook his head. Lying would help no one here, least of all Lady Antonia.

“I suspected as such,” Polendina fretted. “Lady Antonia's condition is worsening. If she hears about this, she may spiral even further. I dread imagining what may come to pass if she loses hope.”

There was an untapped option remaining, though. “The Go-ld Coin Fru-it?”

“I’ve heard of its miracles,” Polendina agreed. “Though Lady Antonia cautions against it, I feel it may be our last hope. We would need an alchemist, and I’ve heard you invited a former one to stay for this very purpose.”

So Giango was an alchemist after all. Nice to know that his suspicions were shared without ever having to be brought up. Must’ve been the blue hair. But Poledina’s plea was obvious, and much more important than his own musings. “I’ll go che-ck.”

“My deepest gratitude,” Polendina waved him off.

He jogged upstairs and collected a few ripe fruits, before making his way to the side room.

“Gian-gio,” he called. “Prog-ress?”

The jittery chemist looked up from his notes and experiments, adjusting his hat as he grabbed his cane to stand. “You- you mean the cure? Well, well- it’s coming along great, thanks to your help! Sadly, it cannot cure everyone completely. It can’t- can’t restore lost organ function, but it can make the passing painless if someone is too far gone.”

“I ne-ed some.” The tone of his voice left no room for argument, but Giangio argued anyway.

“It- it’s likely a choice between a longer but painful life, or a quicker but painless end,” he warned, already turning back to his work. “Once the cure is taken, the disease should vanish, but all the effects it’s already had will be felt by the body in ways they weren’t before.”

A quick and painless death, or a longer but painful life? 

It wasn’t his choice. He handed over the fruit he picked, and Giangio got to work. Ten minutes later, he poured liquid amber from a crucible into a small bottle, corked it, and told him to administer it quickly, or it would lose efficacy. He couldn’t yet find any preservative measures that would work long-term, but they would come soon.

He returned to the front desk as quickly as he could.

“It feels like a dream,” Poledina uttered as he examined the cure. “She can be cured! The possibility of imminent death, though…this is not a choice I can make...” Despite his artificial voice box, the puppet sounded as human as could be, choked by his grief as he was. “What…what would you choose? What do you think is best for her?”

“Ask her,” he said, walking away. “And soo-n. It’s not stab-le.”

Polendina took his words to heart. The puppet moved along, knowing he’d hear word of the results soon. He needed to talk to Venigni. The man was the richest in Krat, and given the invitation he and Gemini had found, he might know how to reach the Isle of Alchemists. The man had been invited there at least once. 

“Ah, there you are! I hear we have a new guest at this hotel,” Venigni opened. “Our survivor. And that you had a little something to do with that.”

He nodded. “He-r name is Be-lle. She’s a sol-dier from Fr-an-ce. Shaken, but ok-ay.”

“France, so I’ve heard! It is good that she’s alright. I just find that helping people is its own reward, you know? Even strangers.” Venigni pulled the brim of his hat low. “Everyone needs some help now and then, and if we who live through times like these don’t do all we can, we dishonor those we’ve lost. Honoring the lost is why I do what I do.”

Honoring the lost. Doing all they could. Again, the indelible necklace did nothing more than exist, and yet it consumed his waking thoughts entirely. Was this how humans grieved? By making progress to honor people who’d never see it, because that progress was something those people would want to see?

He didn’t have any memories, not really. He had no idea what kind of progress he should make, but at the very least, his old friend had seemed satisfied to some degree, at the end of things. It caused a heaviness in his heart. Romeo had known who he was before he did. They were close, weren’t they? Really close. 

“In a way, I envy the dead. They don’t have to know what it’s like to remember that they’re gone. Ah, but here I go again, blah blah blah and who cares, eh? Now, on to business. Hand over that Legion Caliber, I’ll have you out of here in no time!” 

That would give him the opportunity to ask questions as the man worked, at least. ”Do yo-u kn-ow how to re-ach the Is-le of Al-chem-ists? It’s the sou-rce of the car-cass mon-sters.”

“The Isle of the Alchemists, you say? And…monsters. Che incubo. I’m living my own nightmare. Puppets and Alchemists? Forget it,” he groaned theatrically. “It is hidden from the world. It’s nowhere in the city, of that I’m certain…” he tweaked a spring, removed another panel, and slotted in the caliber, continuing to mutter. “Mm. What about…I don’t know if it even works anymore…but it would require fuel, needs must when the devil drives…there could be a way. A dangerous marvel of transportation, but it won’t work without Golden ergo.” The man finally ceased his muttering to address his companion directly, and he learned the Barren Swamp was where he needed to go. There was a chunk of the stuff there, as well as a truly staggering amount of monsters and rogue puppets. Venigni gave him the choice, but he decided to go. Sophia had asked him to help her, and he wouldn’t leave her hanging just because they argued.

“Wh-at is it?” he asked. “You sa-id it was dan-ger-ous.”

“I’m not going to say just yet,” the inventor closed up the last panel of his arm with a flourish. “Not until we have that Golden ergo. It’s not worth getting our hopes up, compagno.”

True to his word, the puppet string had been upgraded in just a few short minutes. The boy was given no time to ruminate on anything, but it quickly became clear as he was heading for the Stargazer that he didn’t need to.

“Hey, buddy. I have a name idea. What if you shortened it?”

“Wh-at?”

“To just one letter, maybe. That’s close enough to a name, right? But you don’t have to change yours.”

The human concept of a nickname. That was what Gemini was referring to. He ruminated on it silently as he went back to the exhibition. Gepetto’s Puppet. Puppet of Geppetto. It was what he was. It was an apt descriptor, but Belle was right to say it was also a calling card borne of mere necessity. It was a weight which made melding into what remained of society easier. It was part of what made people human, to have names. He had a name, though. It was Carlo, Carlo Geppetto. It was, but no matter how well he knew that, he couldn’t bring himself to actually use it. It must’ve been because he didn’t remember enough to truly be the boy from the portrait yet. Whereas that was a complete painting, he was the exact same colors still on a palette. He wanted to recover those memories, so that his father’s efforts to have his son back might not end in failure. 

“Well, look who it is.” Fox turned her pointed nose in his direction as he exited into the misty air. “Ciao, bello. What a coincidence, running into you here.”

“I said we should bounce, but she insisted. And she was right,” Cat sighed. “As usual.”

These two. From the Malum district. Who left him to fight the Black Rabbit Brotherhood by himself.

“Brother, don’t be rude,” Fox chided. “We were here to chat with the alchemists, but we’re in something of a bind.”

“You got that right, sister. We didn’t behave too badly at your last shindig. I hope.”

There was no way their names were simply Fox and Cat. Stalkers often went by mask-ordained aliases. He wondered what their names were.

“A moment, please?” There was something oddly pleading about her voice, despite it maintaining its usual lofty air. “My young brother here is slowly losing his sight—his windows to the very world!—to the Petrification Disease. I seek the Gold Coin Fruit, as it’s said to work miracles, and do we ever need one. The Alchemists give us just enough to keep him going, but never enough to cure. We can’t rely on those crucible-kissing wizards!” Fox snarled, then seemed to recognize it, and her sly composure reanimated itself as best it could. “Please, don’t make me beg. Can you spare any? As a personal favor. Name your price.”

Name your price. An idea struck him. “Wh-at are your na-mes?”

“Our…names?” Cat piped up. “…I’m Lucio. And my sister here’s Claudia.”

Lucio and Claudia. The Cat and the Fox. 

Stalkers often used aliases. P would do just fine for his.

He handed the fruit over before Lucio was even done talking. Three pieces of Listeners’ tears, whole and unblemished. “Eno-ugh?”

“Yes. That’s enough!” Fox laughed, though it was more of a low cackle. “And here, a little something more. From the heart.”

She handed him a music disk. Quixotic, it said.

“On that note, I hate to borrow and run, but we really ought to be going.” Fox pushed off from the pillar she’d been leaning on, and gave him a wave as she and her brother brushed past him. 

“Thank you!” the Cat called as they left.

Quixotic. Unreasonably idealistic, unworldly. Impractical, even. Impossible. 

P tucked the disk into his coat. 

Chapter Text

Everywhere he looked, there was another thing out of place. Another failsafe set by a dead king. Another lie. Another piece of what was starting to look suspiciously like a puzzle.

It hit him like a train he could see coming from a thousand kilometers away. Time ceased to exist, all but the train frozen in between the ticking seconds. Headlights moving ever closer, until—

“…Carlo. I hope you can hear me. The source of the frenzy is right under your nose.”

—impact.

He’d wanted to recover his memories. He had tried. He’d gone to the Barren Swamp, he’d gifted the recently-absconded Alidoro with the four-fingered glove Eugénie made. He’d told her the truth about what he said, bracing for tears, for anger, denial at the Hound rejecting her trauma and gratitude, only for her to hit the nail on the head and diagnose the situation exactly. That’s not him, she said. How many fingers does he have? He told her ten, and she told him the man was a filthy liar. She saw it coming hours before he did, and she was the one to usher everyone upstairs when the Rabbits attacked. He told her the truth again, a second time, hours later, and then a third time, when he handed her a decoded cryptic vessel containing a letter to her from the original. Then came the tears. The anger. The denial. She was utterly despondent at the loss of someone she didn’t know she had, and her little atelier had gone into temporary shutdown thanks to her absence from it. 

“The laws of the Grand Covenant still bind us. We’re his puppets.”

There had been an earthquake while he’d been picking through the swamp. He’d come back to the Hotel to check on everyone, but nothing was amiss. No one was hurt. Spring let him near her, but only briefly. Sophia avoided him. His father asked him to clear Krat Central Station of carcasses.

He found Belle’s partner. He lied to her about his fate. He avoided the train car he was born in. His heart was hammering again. He navigated the hallways he woke up in, stirring up memories from the dusty corners. He chased the recollections like a human man dying of thirst, overcome by his desire for knowledge.

He wondered how alive the station used to be. He wondered if he ever met with anyone he loved here. If they ever exited separate trains and met joyously in the middle of the platform, exiting the station together, or bidding quick and sweet goodbyes before running to separate platforms to catch trains departing in opposite directions. For some reason he knew but couldn’t place, he couldn’t help but picture one barely-recalled half-face in particular.

The hole in his heart felt like an abyss tangling its nebulous hands around his throat and threatening to squeeze, but he couldn’t tear himself away. He wanted to know more. To be more. His voice had improved. He was making progress. He yearned for what the boy in the painting must have had.

Another earthquake. He followed it to the source this time, and found himself climbing the now-ruined Workshop Union tower. He could taste the sheer amount of ergo in the air. It tasted like everything his systems could ever be capable of registering. It felt like it moved on his tongue. Life, literally life, absorbed into the air the people of Krat breathed. The irony of the fact that too much of it would kill someone did not escape him.

“Yeah,” the merchant had told him. “Someone killed the King of Puppets the other day on Rosa Isabelle street, and it sent the whole city into even more chaos, somehow. Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is just an oncoming train. Guess Krat’s time is here.”

“The-y’re wor-se?” he’d questioned nervously. 

“Yep,” the merchant sighed. “‘Specially down on Rosa Isabelle, I’ve heard. People have actually started leaving their houses to try and get to Elysion, or even the Hotel. Never heard of any of ‘em makin’ it, though, so take that with a grain of salt.”

The frenzy had gotten worse, somehow. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Addressing the problem at the source was supposed to fix it.

Then the hotel was attacked. Its safety violated, its haven forever compromised. Sophia had alerted him, and when he picked up on the gaps in her typical mask of unshakable calm, that was when he truly began booking it, trying to pepper her with questions. Only for their line to be interrupted by Manus’s calm baritone.

At the sound of that man’s voice, something sparked. He learned anger in that exact, singular moment. Rage. This was his doing. This was his fault. The corrupted parade master he’d already killed once stood no chance against his temper. He tore it to shreds like a hunting dog being given a live squirrel.

He opened the wide doors. He wanted to yell. He wanted to hurt something, and he knew why, but it still overwhelmed him. The hotel was ruined. A giant banner bearing the word ‘HYPOCRITE’ in thick, dark letters had been strung up over the deactivated Stargazer, and in an instant he knew who had been hired to do Manus’s dirty work. Sophia, pristine and untouched by the calamity, didn’t have to tell him. What did surprise him, though, were the Fox and the Cat. He didn’t know them well, but it still felt like a betrayal. His goodwill had been misplaced.

The only things keeping him from running out after them and hunting them down were that no one who was still in the hotel when he got there had been hurt, and the fact that the world was spinning like a kaleidoscope. 

“Breathe,” Sophia had told him. “Please, breathe.”

He didn’t need to breathe, he needed to find his father. He needed to give those rabbits the what-for. Puppets didn’t need to breathe.

But he did anyway, because Sophia was a wise soul, and his heart slowed its rapid tumbling.

His father was kidnapped. His father was gone.

P had just spoken to him not two hours prior. Nothing had been amiss. His father had been wary of his new quest to put down the leader of the Alchemists. Asked him how much he remembered about them. When P told him he knew nothing, his father had hesitated, then relayed to him a bone-chilling omen. They killed you once. He’d spoken to his child, but was staring over him, at the portrait. And your mother, twice. Won’t you please be careful, son?

He had shown his father the pocket watch Sophia gave him. The Alchemists could not kill him, not now that he had her help. His father had marveled at the little thing, inspected it earnestly, clearly wanting to keep and study it further, but he gave it back. The lines and shadows on his face had only seemed to deepen, for some inscrutable reason.

And now his father was gone. Hauled out of the hotel by ruffians who should’ve learned their goddamn lesson the first time he dealt with them.

“First Law: All puppets must obey their Creator’s commands.”

He had gone after them. He had descended below Hotel Krat using a secret elevator and found himself in an ergo mine. He found Alidoro, the traitor. Eugénie had been right, this was not the man that saved her from the Workshop Tower. That man was dead. Killed by someone who now wore his mask. A noble soul tarnished by a petty thief’s greed.

The man had held over him his incapability to harm anyone who hadn’t shown him aggression. It was dictated in his code. An echo of the Covenant. An absolute command. 

Something no human would ever be cowed by. 

“So shut up and buy something,” the impostor had contemptuously sneered.

The brain was Simon Manus, but this man was one of the hands. This man taught him fear. Anger. Anger, like nothing ever had before. Had rendered Krat’s last sanctuary compromised. All the people he knew and loved were in mortal danger not two hours ago because this thief wanted to up and go after all he’d done, and leave the consequences of his actions behind for the rest of them to clean up. An attack on the Hotel was more than enough to designate Parrot an enemy. He wound up his gears and let his springs go, and just as his blade began to close in, he had second thoughts.

He drove a knee into Parrot’s gut, then smacked him to the ground with a well-timed backhand from his legion arm. The thief hit the ground with a thud and a wheezing cough. 

“If I see you in this ci-ty again,” he hissed, “You wi-ll not be able to run from me. Lea-ve the ma-sk. Leave wh-at you st-ole. The only things you ta-ke are things th-at are yours.”

The Alchemists would probably finish the job anyway. If he had learned one thing about them, it was that they never just let people go. There was always a catch, always a price, and Alidoro hadn’t given them anything that actually mattered to him when he led them to Hotel Krat. It was a deal too good to be true, and P…hadn’t wanted that blood on his hands. He thought about the Fox and the Cat, Claudia and Lucio, siblings. What was it like, he wondered, to have someone you’d do anything for?

He hadn’t wanted to do the bloody work then, and he hadn’t wanted to do it when the Black Rabbit Brotherhood barred his path. But they were fighting to kill, and refused to let him through, and every time he thought he managed to knock one down and out of the fight, they would get back up. They would get back up until they died.

And die they did. One, two, three, and four, bones and ergo fated to assimilate with the rest found in the Relic of Trismegistus. How much blood was it now?

He went back to the Hotel to check on everyone. Everyone was still a bit shaken up, and there was no telling what help they might need at any given moment. And surely enough, Venigni called him over. The train was running, closing in, coming in hot, but he didn’t see it just yet. The ergo Wavelength Decoder was finished, and doing exactly as it was supposed to do. Exactly what Venigni had built it for. He’d asked for some upgrades to his legion arm, and they’d sat down to listen while the genius worked.

“Law Zero: The Creator’s name is Geppeto. Giuseppe Geppetto.”

The ending of the recording felt like plunging into the deepest abyssal nothingness. He stared at the decoder as if it would come back to life and say it was a joke, say it wasn’t real, say he was more than his wires and circuitry.

The Creator’s name…was Giuseppe Geppetto.

He wanted to shout out loud. He wanted to screw his eyes shut and pretend he didn’t know. His ergo roared thunderously, and he knew he would never be the same. He felt the changes settle in like raining needles, nailing him to his chair. He was a damned fool. He was a fool, and a pawn, and the perfect immortal soldier. If he wasn’t subject to the frenzy, then of course his father would’ve known what caused it, because he knew how to prevent it. No matter how his father denied it to the demanding faces remaining in the city, dwindling by the day, he knew. Denied it to Venigni, to Antonia, to everyone who ever had an ounce of faith that Giuseppe Geppetto was doing what he thought was best.

“That last part sounded important, but there was too much static!” Venigni grumbled, snapping him from his thoughts. “What was behind the frenzy? Could you tell?”

His gears stuttered and choked. His throat ached as if he’d halfway swallowed a ball of hot steel. He could lie. He could lie, and afford the people around him some semblance of peace. He could lie, and doom any puppet as awakened as he to a miserable death alongside their brethren. Two of those puppets were in this hotel. One was less than a few strides away. Venigni would never forgive him. Neither would Antonia. 

“Law Ze-ro,” he croaked. “The Cre-a-tor’s name is Giu-seppe Geppe-tto.”

Venigni’s face was suddenly entirely unreadable. “...Geppetto? Law Zero…Geppetto?! That was the cause of the frenzy?” Venigni suddenly looked exactly how P felt. But whereas P was frozen, drifting off into the cosmos of his mind, Venigni got up and began pacing holes into the carpet, leaving P’s legion arm half-dissected on the table. “Why would Geppetto, of all people..?! He’s killed- he’s killed so many! For what?!”

Venigni looked a little nauseous. He had helped Geppetto implement the Covenant. He looked like he was rethinking the hundreds of thousands of minute interactions he’d had over the course of a decade with a man he called his friend. 

And P knew the answer. He knew the truth.

“He ke-pt sending me out to coll-ect ergo,” he whispered. “He wouldn’t ha-ve had a rea-son without…” without the frenzy. He didn’t have a stomach, but his insides felt like they were churning.

“Why?” Venigni muttered, more to himself than anyone. Behind them, Eugénie was listening like a hawk while not even trying to pretend she wasn’t. Polendina had left the desk to wander over. Sophia had drifted over like a ghost. Pulcinella stood closest, steady as ever.

“More ergo has made you more human.” Sophia hummed. “Maybe…”

“More human.” Venigni’s eyes flickered, but their resident genius stayed quiet. He’d figured it out and didn’t want to say it. Had he known Carlo? P didn’t want to say it either.

“He’s trying to resurrect his son.” 

Pulcinella, the only father present in the room, was the one who voiced it. Solemnly, as if their little gathering was Carlo’s own funeral. All eyes quietly turned to P, and he suddenly felt like he had to say something. He had to clear the blockage in his throat and defend himself against the eyes measuring the worth of his existence against the corpses outside their doors.

“I don’t kn-ow,” was the first thing he said. “I re-member a cou-ple things. But..”

But he didn’t feel like he was that boy. He didn’t want to be that boy if it meant being used like a tool. If it meant being lied to, over and over. There was never a falling-out between him and Romeo, was there? 

“Not everything,” Eugénie surmised. 

“We won’t know anything for sure…” Venigni placed his hat on the table and took off his glasses to clean them. “If we don’t save him.”

With a heavy exhale, he sat back down to finish P’s half-upgraded legion arm. The tiny crowd began to disperse, and the whole hotel continued in silent, spiraling frustration, holding the exact same questions and all the answers an ocean away. Polendina and Sophia went right to climb the stairs, towards Lady Antonia. 

She was doing better, the cure seemed to have worked, but she was still an elderly woman in her twilight years. He wondered how people managed to find peace when death was an expected thing at last drawing too close to ignore. Antonia seemed to have done it, somehow. He only worried the news of her old friend’s betrayal would unbalance that careful, deliberate tranquillity. 

Without the hat and glasses, P almost didn’t recognize Venigni. He looked…smaller, almost. It occurred to him that the inventor had been larger than life until just then, and the curtains had finally dropped. He was no more or less human than he was a second ago, but it still felt like learning a secret. 

“There’s one more thing.” Venigni closed up his arm with a snap. “The King left you one more message. It’s in his black box.” 

He was handed the device and directed to the stargazer. Every step, his feet felt like lead. 

Numbly, he pressed the button.

“…Carlo. I hope you can hear me.”

He scrambled to hit pause. That voice. He knew that voice, but he didn’t. He knew the face it was supposed to be paired with. He’d seen half of it, and when he closed his eyes he could easily picture it whole and smiling. This was the feeling from the Opera House, the one that had him hesitating. He hesitated again before pressing the button.

“I’m Romeo. We grew up together in the Monad Charity House. Remember? We were never far apart. Where one of us went, the other followed.”

The Monad Charity House. He closed his eyes. Dark wood hallways and…green carpet? Blue? Little bit of red? 

Loneliness. What a lonely place it must’ve been, to have had a living father and then been sent to an orphanage anyway.

He wished he remembered. He wished he could know.

“I’m doing what I can to fend off both the Petrification Disease and the Alchemists. My puppets and I are taking a stand against death itself!”

He paused it again to absorb that. He’d seen puppets fighting carcasses on numerous occasions. This was why? This? One altruist turned scapegoat?

“That’s why I tried sending you messengers…but you got rid of them all.” The voice echoing out of the little tin box laughed. Not loudly, more of a chuckle, but there was real humor in it somehow, despite the circumstances, and it made him want to hear it louder. Romeo had recorded this message after he woke up, meaning his old companion had never let go of whatever scraps of hope he’d held on to. “You’re still an unstoppable fellow.”

Still. Romeo had just been trying to communicate with someone he loved. Trying to extend a hand even before they came face-to-face. The world around him sharpened and aimed right for his heart. He couldn’t move his finger. It rested right over the pause button, and he knew he should press it to think about and absorb what he’d just heard, but-

“I remember you. No need for us to fight, I suppose. I’m glad you came back to me. It’s all I wanted all this time, really.”

The uncaring hands of fate had scooped out the insides of his not-quite-heart with a spoon. He must have a soul, he thought, for surely this man was impressed upon it like a signet, so deep there was no removing it. So deep it had followed Carlo across the lines between life and death and life again. To say it was bone-deep wasn’t enough. To say it was a part of who he was wasn't enough. Inalienable, obvious, a part of him that could never die, no matter how many times he himself did.

“I’m Romeo! We grew up together in the Monad Charity Ho-use.” The recording began to skip and stutter. The boy’s heart sputtered in tandem. “Rem-ember? You kn-ow m-e!”

P wondered how Romeo felt while looking at a loved one that didn’t recognize him. He wondered how Romeo had had the strength of will to hold him so gently each time he killed him, knowing P wasn’t really who he wanted. He didn’t have the will to lift a finger and stop the recording. The feeling from the opera house was consuming him. Romeo sounded like he was about to cry, and it was contagious.

“I’m R-ome-o…I’m Car-lo’s b-es-t fr-i-en-d…”

He wondered what Romeo sounded like when he laughed.

He buried his face in his hands. A spectrum of pain, in his heart, in his head, radiating through his shoulders and into his fingertips. His eyes stung and his nose was stuffy. His face felt hot and his throat was tight. His shoulders were trembling. His head was trapped in a bubble that refused to pop, pressing in from all directions. He drew the burnt-white ergo out of safekeeping and clutched it to him like it was keeping him alive, silently begging to hear whatever voice it might have. 

He didn’t know what was happening to him. This was the feeling, though, he was sure. The very same one that shrieked in protest when he cut down one of the only altruists left in this godforsaken city. The message played again, and again, and again, and the ergo buzzed against his forehead like a dancing firefly gone too soon. 

There was a hand on his shoulder. Someone had come for him. He didn’t care.

He knew his heart had beat for this boy and this boy alone, once. He made the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. Countless fragmented memories made sheer, endless sense. Each a piece of the other’s soul. Utterly inseparable.

He would never be the same. He was so sure of it before, but now he knew there was no escaping it. How could he? This little piece of love would never leave him, no matter how hopeless the circumstances got. He’d remembered the whole time, and never known it. Even back at the opera house, he’d known, in his heart, exactly who he was fighting. His love had transcended the veil of death—for better and for worse. He’d taken his father at his word and never questioned it, because he loved his father. He’d denied himself his own memories because his father hadn’t approved. The feelings of rage and loneliness were of course going to be flukes to a child who didn’t know he’d been abandoned from the start. 

Dimly, he registered that someone was carrying him upstairs. The ergo was still in his hands.

In between laying down and waking up, he saw visions of wine-red hair and a feather plume. A red cape. Harsh words with love too deep to measure hidden just beneath the surface. Rose petals on the floor. Stone gray and aqua blue. A reception. A towering spider-like creature with a human face, and a fight lost before it began. She was not among his compatriots, though, and in his last seconds of life he understood with startling clarity dozens of different things: this was a warning to her. Her suspicions had been correct, and he would never get to tell her so. She and Romeo would see through whatever coverup appeared in the newspaper. They knew he loved them. His father would probably not miss him.

When he awoke, he felt no better. Contrary to what a human might feel, he just felt worse. The vision refused to slip through his fingers and dissipate like human dreams did. When he looked into the mirror, he was greeted by a face he almost didn’t recognize.

His skin was oily. There were dark circles under his eyes that he’d never seen before. A dull, constant pain had nestled in his heart like a ball of thorns. 

He really had been the perfect tool, hadn’t he? And for what? Did his father expect to hide this from him forever? Did he think that Carlo would see what became of Romeo and simply accept it? Did he somehow intend to remove Carlo’s most important people from the equation before fully resurrecting him?

It came to him like a smiting from an uncaring god: the only way he would’ve ever been his father’s perfect idea of a son was if he didn’t remember. And there was no feasible way his father didn’t know that. Thus, his father did not want him to remember. 

He washed the oil off of his face. He put Romeo’s necklace on beneath his protective layers. He wandered down into the silent lobby full of staring eyes, and let butterflies whisk him downstream without speaking to a single person.

“Okay, I think the battery goes there,” Gemini instructed once they were within the stolen submarine. “And then those wires connect- yes, you’ve got it. Look at that!”

The control panel lit up. All he had to do was press the right buttons. Thankfully it wasn’t incredibly complicated. He wasn’t sure what he’d do without Gemini, honestly. He could feel a deep excitement, somewhere in his soul, at the sight of the submarine’s internal workings. Carlo would be taking this thing apart and hotwiring it by now. 

This battery had better be enough. He directed the machine at the beach and set it to full throttle, and the creature beached itself upon the sand. He climbed out of the hatch into a monolithic sandstorm. A single lantern shone on the shoreline, and the woman next to it…

“Is that…”

“Sophia?” he called. She waved.

He slid down the side of the submarine to greet her. “I knew you we-ren’t really at the hot-el.” The flying sand passed right through her, and the hem of her skirt remained as pristine and undirtied as ever. She wasn’t affected by the attack, because she wasn’t physically there. 

“Indeed, you are clever,” she praised, but it was hollow. “My true self is in the upper echelons of the Abbey. My soul being split into pieces is how I reached you. It’s…painful. I became a tool what feels like so very long ago. In truth, I directed you here not to save Krat, but…to save me.”

He hadn’t known, but he wasn’t really surprised either. And he couldn’t be mad. After his belligerence, his reticence, his reluctance, it made sense. He may hold a soul he didn’t recognize, but if he were to only be half a soul, or less…that kind of pain would have a truly incomprehensible flavor. 

“I felt guilty about it, but you answered my call when no one else could. Perhaps in death, my spirit and body will find peace, if that is what’s destined to be. Please, please…”

In death? She wanted him to…end her suffering? Not save her?

“I’d mi-ss you. You’ve been no-thing but ki-nd to me,” he tried.

Sophia seemed momentarily taken aback by that. “Thank you. But you understand, don’t you?”

“...I do.” Not to say that he wanted to. “Ca-n I ask you a ques-tion?”

“Anything. My guidance ends here, so ask as many as you like.”

He clasped a hand over the necklace. “There was ne-ver a fall-ing out, was there? You we-re right. Romeo could ne-ver have been res-ponsible.”

“No,” she agreed. “Never. They were inseparable until the very end.”

“Mo-re than inseparable,” he corrected.

Sophia’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Much more. Maybe you carry more pieces of Carlo than I thought.”

That reminded him. “Would you wa-nt to be a pup-pet too?”

A moment of silence. The wind howled. “What?” 

“A pu-ppet,” he repeated. “I don’t…you would have be-tter luck re-mem-bering.”

“...A body was built for me already,” she revealed hesitantly. “I don’t know what its features entail, though. I’ve only seen it once. It’s…unsettling. I don’t trust it. Simon had it made specifically for me.”

“Give me your Er-go when we me-et,” he offered, “I’ll ha-ve Venigni take a look bef-ore you awa-ken. Please? If you do-n’t like it, he can build you a ne-w one. You know he’d wa-nt to.”

“Okay.” Sophia agreed without hesitation. He didn’t want to hope just yet, though.

“See you so-on,” he said. 

“Be careful,” she bid as she faded away. “Afterimages of memories dance on the seaside because of all the ergo here. Don’t be caught off guard.”

True to her word, there were figures sculpted from the wet sand, beacons visible through the storm, surrounded by ergo-blue light. Like sand castles left out to dry and weather, pieces were missing, but the shapes were obvious. They were of people, and when he brushed his right hand against the first one, it spoke.

“I want to go home! I don’t want to be here! How many sleeps ‘till Daddy’s back? Ten sleeps? Twenty?”

“Soon enough. You know he’s quite busy.” That was Sophia’s voice. And the boy was Carlo. It was a strange thing to look at him, even though he wasn’t really there. Too soon for him to begin to pick out finer details, the shapes began dissolving into the storm. “While you wait, why don’t you play with a new friend? His name is Romeo.”

P broke into a sprint. There he was again, Romeo. They’d met because Sophia had introduced them. In the distance, he could just barely make out the glow of another memory he didn’t have, and he ran for it hungrily. The sand slipped into his shoes, scratchy and uncomfortable against even synthetic skin. The next memory was of two young boys, one curled up on the ground and the other with his arms cheerfully open wide.

“Hi! Are you training to be a stalker too? Let’s practice together! You can call me Lampwick.”

Lampwick? He’d never heard that name before. Was this Romeo? Was Lampwick a nickname for him?

Sophia would know. Father might know. He could ask, but when he said the word aloud to nothing but the salty air, smooth and unbroken on his tongue, something clicked into place. Yes, that was Romeo. He earned the nickname because he was a gangly little bean sprout of a child. P tucked the knowledge from his soul into his mind and kept moving.

The next memory was the two of them again, this time older. He knelt, and brushed a hand against the figures, and they came to life once more.

“He didn’t even come to your graduation?”

Graduation? Who? 

“I don’t care if that old man kicks the bucket!” The shorter boy was crying. “Who cares!”

“Don’t say that,” the other boy tried to soothe, or perhaps scold. “It’s nice you got any family at all...”

His father. His father didn’t come to his graduation. Or to anything else, really. All of Carlo’s childhood milestones occurred out of sight and out of mind, and Romeo didn’t have any family to begin with. It must’ve just been the three of them. That red-haired woman with the feather plume, the centerpiece he didn’t know where to put amongst the shelves of his mind. Her, him, and Romeo.

“Let’s stop talking about this,” the smaller boy suddenly directed as the figures began to fade. “Look, she’s here! Grab her!”

Her? Who was Her?

The next memory answered that question and gave him several more. Because from the storm emerged the very same feather-plumed woman who haunted the dream a puppet shouldn’t have had. She held up a hand, trying to shoo away the young boys beseeching her. He carefully ghosted a hand over the feather once he was close enough to touch it, and it crumbled where his hand alighted.

“Please teach us how to be stalkers! You’re legendary!! Please?!”

“We’ll be the best students you’ve ever had!”

“Gah! So annoying…for the last time, no! Gemini, get them out of here! I’m off!”

“Is she talking about…me?” the cricket at his hip stammered. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Keep walking, P. Keep walking, just...”

He did with no further instruction, hoping beyond hope that she would appear again. He didn’t dare wish, wishes were for humans. But he wanted to see her again.

The beach was scattered with moonstones glimmering in the lunar light, and in the distance he could see another memory. This one was a fearful vermillion, though, as opposed to cool blue. And as he approached, he learned why. The boy was again older, but dead, clearly. On the ground, on his back, head turned to the side. The woman had a lamp that looked almost exactly like P’s own hanging from her belt. He still could not recall her name.

“My god…no…” the woman sounded like she was about to cry. “I’m sorry…I was too late…I wish I’d gotten here sooner…if I had known this would happen, I-” the memory returned to the seashore just as the woman broke off into a sob that took his heart in its hands and twisted it like it was wringing out a towel.

Unbidden, his eyes watered. His heart felt warm, and it spread all the way to his toes and his fingertips. She had come for him. She had come to find him after the ambush, and for some reason it made his knees nearly buckle. If only she could find him now. He didn’t know her name, but he knew everything would be okay if she were only here. The brisk sea air wasn’t so sharp anymore.

How could that have been one of Carlo’s memories, if Carlo was dead? Was it Gemini’s? Was it simply because P held Carlo’s ergo?

“Red hair,” he offered to the cricket, hoping it would be worth something. His voice thickened with every passing second, just loud enough to be heard over the howling winds, just loud enough to make its way past the lump in his throat. 

“LEA!” Gemini shouted suddenly, causing him to jump. “That’s Lea! The Legendary Stalker! She was the person I was made to guide!”

A guide cricket for the Legendary Stalker? That sounded a bit like an oxymoron, but clearly it was true. This memory was Gemini’s, then, or at least in part. That was Carlo, on the ground there.

“And clearly,” Gemini continued, “she was Carlo’s mentor. And probably Romeo’s too.”

She was too late when Carlo died, and something deep in his machinery told him she never forgave herself for it. His nose was stuffed full of something miserably thick, impeding his unnecessary breathing. His eyes were still watering, and he scrubbed at them to try and wipe the water away. He did not want mud forming on his face, he told himself. Best to prevent it now. 

There was one more memory up ahead.

Once again ergo blue, but this time almost…fuzzy, at the edges. As if not properly recalled. Lea, leaning one hand on a table, pointed her blade at what must’ve been an intruder, who was holding something out to her.

“Who’re you?” she breathed, heavy. “You look…you look familiar…wait. This is…this is Romeo’s locket. How…?”

The memory dissolved, faster than the rest. Now the only light on the beach came from the unrepaired stargazer up ahead.

“What happened to her?” Gemini growled. “I don’t know. No one knows. No one’s seen her in…I don’t know! Since before the frenzy! I don’t remember!”

“If she was al-ive, she wouldn’t have le-t Romeo be turned into a pu-ppet,” P surmised. “So…” he had a flyer somewhere. He stopped, dug through the papers folded in his bag, and at last pulled out the one he was looking for. Gaudy red and gold, it must’ve been vibrant once upon a time.

Introducing one puppet a caliber above the rest! To celebrate the Estella Opera House’s 30th anniversary, the King of Puppets joins the ensemble!

In tiny print at the bottom, it was dated to a year and a half ago.

“A while back,” he relayed aloud for his friend, tucking the flyer away again. “O-ver a year and a half a-go.”

“So the last time anyone saw her wasn’t super long ago, really. But long enough that she’s probably dead.” 

Gemini sounded sad. It tugged at something invisible within him that made him want to stop. P reached the stargazer, but before repairing it, he unhooked the lantern from his belt and brought it up to press his forehead to the glass. He tried to portray all the humanlike sincerity and kindness he could when he said: “You are a very good gui-de, Gemini. I don’t kn-ow what I would do with-out you.”

Gemini’s face was too tiny to make out an expression, and so he probably wasn’t even built with the ability to make them at all, but there was a smile in his voice when he said, “heh. Thanks, pal.”

He put away his grief on the steps towards heaven. He put away his sadness, and rage, and for the sake of people he cared for, became the one-man army he was made to be. 

Arche Abbey was a dismal yet majestic place. The stones were old and weathered, and the storm made it hard to dodge the artillery. It was a maze of a place, and he took his time with the lower levels. He wanted to make the lives of any surviving Alchemist as hard as possible. He hurled shot puts into the mouths of cannons with pinpoint accuracy, and destroyed as many carcasses as he could find. He killed their meagre door security and stole a badge in the pouch the thing was carrying. It bore the symbol of the Alchemists, and was molded from what looked and felt like solid gold. He stood on the platform that bore the same linework, raised it, and the door opened. Oh, he’d be keeping this thing, all right. 

He wove around yet more carcasses, darting behind them at opportune moments to trick the artillery into killing their own guard dogs faster than he could. He used the badge to urge bridges out of the water, playing a game of chicken on his way towards destroying the nearest ballista.

He forewent climbing and hurled a shot put at the alchemist manning the ballista, then shot his puppet string directly into the machine. He hit the stumbling man feet first, and his blade was soon to follow. He activated the ladder shortcut and kept going.

Wake up, evolve, ascend. Greet the God who will soon resurrect from the top of the abbey, he read. A god, so that was what Manus wanted. Not if he had anything to say about it.

Carcasses. The big scorpion ones, from the train station. He put his elbow to his fire grindstone and got to work.

Ascending higher, higher, towards a divinity’s birthplace at the top of the tower, as close to the heavens as an earthling could ever be. And as he ascended, his heart became louder. His ergo seemed to whisper in that way ergo did, like a thousand tiny voices creating something louder through their combined efforts.

He wasn’t sure why he stopped when he saw the name Camille on loose sheets of paper scattered about an office, but a cursory glance managed to kill his momentum almost entirely, and the rest of his ascent was marred by the same curiosity that he knew better than to let run free. And true to its nature, all it brought was more grief.

Her appearance and identity in living years were similar, so it was probably easier for her to manifest an ego.

Camille. A maid puppet with an ego. The same woman his father enshrined outside the opera house. His mother. No, Carlo’s mother! 

By interrogating and taking Camille apart, the order had opened the door to a new possibility.

They killed Carlo once. And Camille, twice. This was what his father had meant. Camille had come back to life for a brief, torturous minute, and had been killed again once her resurrection was known by the scientists around her. How she died the first time, he didn’t know.

Wake up, evolve, ascend. With this discovery, humankind will achieve immortality.

His father wanted his wife back. He put her in something that looked only a little bit like her. He did not want his son. P was afforded an exact replica to be within.

The sole differences were the freckles and eye color, as far as he could tell. Carlo died young. It should’ve been a perfect match. Awakening an ego should’ve been easy. But here he still was, destroying monsters and ascending a tower, an immortal soldier cursed to never truly know himself, no matter who he was. How could he become someone new, if he was already someone? How could he become who he was, if he didn’t remember?

The ergo’s whispers were getting louder. He was getting closer. The wind howled as it passed him by, heading to places unknown. There were carcasses around every corner.

Dimly, he registered that his father simply couldn’t have climbed all these stairs and elevators. He couldn’t have walked across all this unstable scaffolding. There had to be another way in, but P didn’t care. He was going up. That was all that mattered now. 

He felt like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff, and below him, a yawning abyss, was the hole in his heart. Hungry, waiting. And across from him stood what would hopefully be his nearly-final obstacle: the guard from the exhibition. The one who killed her master’s sole successful experiment. Her heavy armor made her footsteps thud and echo, and the chains around her waist clattered noisily whenever she moved.

She was brutal. A caged beast keeping its own key, she nearly drove him mad with her surprisingly quick footwork and precise blows. 

The armor she wore was complicated, though. A little splash of acid right at shoulder level, letting it drip down, did more to her than his blade ever could. The acid worked its way into the grooves like a plague, and once it reached the skin beneath there was no way to remove it without removing the armor. 

So remove the armor she did. Eventually, with a primal growl of frustration, the woman would shed her cage in favor of a test subject’s gauzy uniform and raise her blade to the skies. She was paper-white and corpse gray. It began to rain at her call, cold and unforgiving. 

Victor was not the sole success. She was. Victor was a champion, but what was a champion to a goddess? 

“Simon,” the woman spoke each time as if the very ground she so happened to be on would be his final resting place, simply because she was here. And so far, that was true. But he didn’t need to win every time. He only needed to win once. “Your blade, Laxasia, swears to protect this tower.”

The two greatest creations of the two most brilliant minds in Krat collided like stars.

Laxasia was fierce. Quick, loud, bold. She could outmaneuver him, and stun him, but her instincts could not keep up with those of a machine. All it took was a bit of acid at just the right times, same as before. Easier said than done, though, thanks to the rain washing it away. But the trade off was that his blade was much more effective now. A quick flurry with his rapier, right at all the vital points, was bound to hit something. 

One hundred and three deaths in all was what it took for his blade to strike as true as it needed to. They came face to face for a brief second, but the woman never looked at him. She looked up, lichtenberg figures around unnaturally blue eyes, to the skies she had been ripped from once by her armor, and again by his blade. The rain washed her away. Her last words were Simon Manus’ name.

The ergo began to get louder, and that wasn’t his ergo whispering, he realized, that was coming from above him. A million voices talking simultaneously, melding into an indiscernible stream of human life. There was a truly staggering conglomeration of it here. He understood then, better than he ever had before: it wasn’t to summon a god, but to make one. It would birth something incomprehensible and absolute if the dam ever gave way. 

Between him and the burgeoning god, though, was Sophia. 

Her cell was opulent. On one wall, butterflies, pinned. All around, finery. Medical tools. Red and gold and dashes of blue. He hated it. 

“You’re here…” her whisper drifted across the room.

“Oh, god…” Gemini breathed.

There was barely anything left of her. What remained was cradled in a cursed web of tumorous roots. 

The sickness had replaced everything from the waist down. Her skirt was in tatters, but there were no legs for it to cover. Her hair was thin and falling out, the tear tracks on her face were a sickly cerulean. Her lips were blue and her eyes were sunken. The mesh that had replaced her legs ensnared dozens of weakly twitching butterflies. Sophia wasn’t even in a bed, she was slouched over in a chair. That made him grind his teeth. Damn Manus didn’t even try to make her comfortable. 

“It hurts…” she puffed out an uneasy, shallow breath. “Please, please come…come closer…”

They had discussed this already. He promised her he would. P stepped closer, and softly reached out a hand to brush against her shoulder. “I’m here.”

Sophia leaned into the kind touch with a shudder. “Even…if it does not work…” she smiled up at him like a rose seeking the sun. “I will be with you…until the very end.”

He placed his right hand just above her heart. The blue butterflies took to the air and danced. They nestled on his face, in his hair, they came to life and settled wherever there was a kind space. Their relief at the loss they portended made him hurt, but he didn’t feel like their joy was mocking him. Their joy was not his to arbitrate. The little specks’ dance was the last thing he saw as he shut his eyes. The body beneath his fingers grew less and less tangible, until his fingers met no resistance at all. There was nothing there anymore. He was holding empty air. 

A single, quiet voice nestled somewhere in his heart.

He dared not open his eyes. He didn’t want to. The chair would be empty. Sophia would be gone. Sophia, who had brought him here to do exactly this. Sophia, who had introduced herself to him so that he might one day lose her. Sophia.

He gripped at his own heart, wishing it’d stop feeling like a burden. But the organ refused to settle. It was like a ferociously imploding star, a supernova threatening to tear his synthetic ribcage wide open. It was in his throat, trying to crawl out. He could not avoid it. He couldn’t run from this anymore. That spark had finally been taken from him, it seemed. 

He opened his eyes to long, silver hair, and felt nothing but spent. But his work was not done. There was a puppet body to find, and he turned to the side room. 

It was…a dining room. A dining room, for revelry and good food, while Sophia suffered next to them. And there, sitting at the table with a peaceful smile, was the wooden body he was here for.

The face was immaculate. It wore the sky-blue coat she was so fond of. He fastened it and gathered her up in his arms. The pocketwatch took him to Hotel Krat. 

“Venigni,” he called as he walked over. “Can you look at this? It’s for Sophia.”

Venigni startled. His hat was off again, and so was his fur-trimmed tuxedo. He was simply in his glasses and vest, and it made him look even less like the caricature of himself he tried to be.

“Ah, good to see you,” the inventor greeted, but there was no enthusiasm in it. “For Sophia, you say? For her…ergo?” 

Sharp as ever. “Yes. She didn’t have any say in its construction, and it was commissioned by someone she doesn’t trust. I’d like it if you could look at it, inside and out, before she uses it. And so would she.”

Venigni took the lifesize doll from him, and Pulcinella wordlessly opened a side door leading to a workshop. 

“Where is her ergo now?” Venigni asked.

“My heart,” came the reply. “Until she needs it back.”

“Guard it well,” came his directive. “And, before you go…speak to Polendina?”

Polendina? Had something come up? Had he missed something? Why did Venigni look sad?

The receptionist was not at the reception desk. Rather, he was outside, in the drizzling rain, standing where P had shown him the ring that once belonged to Melody.

“...Polendina?” A nervous, shaky feeling was beginning to climb into his throat.

“Ah, sir. Welcome back. It is with unsurpassed sorrow that I must inform you.”

No.

“Lady Antonia has passed away.”

Some integral part of him tipped over and toppled into the chasm in his heart. At this point, it may as well replace his heart entirely. He tried to breathe, and it didn’t help him. 

“When?!” he cried. “Just now?”

“About fifteen minutes ago,” Polendina relayed. “As she entered immortality, she seemed at peace. Her face was calm, and she wasn’t in any pain, thanks to the cure. I must thank you for that, again.”

Antonia had passed away peacefully. Calmly. Quietly slipped into tranquility and went wherever it was that humans go a mere fifteen minutes ago. Had he come back immediately after he won the fight, he would’ve been just on time. Instead, he was too late to say goodbye. Venigni would see her again. Eugénie would. Would he, made of metal and wires as he was? Would Polendina? 

“As for me, I am—bereft of emotion. My life, or…what passes for it, has lost all meaning. It feels like pain has swallowed me whole.” 

Didn’t he know the feeling. 

“Thus, I intend to erase my heart and become an ordinary puppet. This is the last time you will speak to me as Polendina.”

P wondered how Romeo felt while looking at a loved one that didn’t recognize him.

“Despite how it ended, I thank you. For the kindness, bravery, and beautiful moments you showed me.”

“She’ll never disappear as long as you remember her,” is the first thing out of his mouth. “No one knew her better than you.”

That seemed to give Polendina a moment of pause. “The pain…it is too great to bear. Others remember her as well.”

“But you won’t,” he argued, not exactly knowing where he was going with this. “All the good times you and her had together will die with you.”

Just like they died with Romeo. Died with Lea. Fragmented memories would never form the complete puzzle he yearned so deeply to find himself in.

But Venigni spoke about his parents, (the one time he did speak of them) with a reverence that spoke of old grief. Grief was a thing that aged, that conversation taught him. Even the deepest wounds would eventually scar, and even the deepest scars would eventually fade. That didn’t make the bleeding easier.

“Think about it,” he begged. “We would miss you. You’d be right in front of us, but forever out of reach. Give it time. Please, just give it time. Give it time and then decide. You won’t be alone. Don’t spend all day at the desk! Talk to people.”

Polendina let his head hang and his shoulders drop. “...I cannot refuse you. Not when you ask so earnestly. I suppose I’ll heed your advice and wait to make my choice.”

P almost couldn’t believe what he’d done. He’d convinced Polendina to stay. All the people he’d lost, but he had managed to save one. Just one, but it felt like the world. Despite it all, it put him in a good mood. 

When he returned to the abbey, and faced Lucio, he simply forked over a handful of Gold Coin Fruit and told him to never come back to the city. He responded that he was planning on it. All he needed now was to get his sister and go. This would be more than enough. He and Lucio ascended the tower towards his sister, and the whispers from above him shifted into chatter. They hadn’t harmed his father, Lucio swore, and that held true. The siblings made to split from the tower once they were reunited, planning to steal a submarine and never return to Krat. He, meanwhile, was given a key to his father’s cell in exchange.

His father looked up when the lock clicked open. Whatever spread across his face was joyful, but P couldn’t bring himself to share in it. All he could bring himself to do was wonder why.

“It saddens me to see my precious son in a place like this. I wanted you to grow up a good child, in a peaceful world, and yet…I fear that all I’ve taught you was blood and violence. This will be the last thing I ask of you, son, I promise.”

This was the last task? And then they could sit down and talk. Surely there was a misunderstanding somewhere down the line, because the love in his father’s eyes couldn’t be fake. And maybe there would turn out to be things P would never forgive him for, but it was his father. They’d figure it out, together.

“Simon has gone completely mad. He’s trying to become a god by using a truly tremendous amount of ergo.” His father took off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “I don’t know what he has planned for when he’s done, but he has to be stopped. You’re here to do it already, and I trust you. But, tell me…I’m not entirely sure what you think of me.”

“I love you.”

His father smiled. Crow’s feet crinkled around his eyes, and it was the most joyous he’d ever seen his father be. “But…was I trustworthy to you, son?”

The question blindsided him a little. Partly because the answer was so obvious, and it must’ve shown on his face, because the joy on his father’s faded into nothingness. “I see. I didn’t do enough to earn your trust. I gave you more loneliness than love. It’s my burden to bear, not yours. It wasn’t your fault, I just…wasn’t a very good father to you. But there’s still time. We can become a real family once all of this is over. You can become a real human. Would you come back to me, once you’re done?”

“Always,” was his reply, even though he knew it wasn’t true. His ergo, consistent as always, rebelled at the lie. He left his father with the key to his cell and carried on.

Simon Manus had become a monster. Maybe he was a monster already. Judging from the lock of blue hair enshrined within his cane, perhaps even multiple kinds of monster. If he was so willing to abandon his humanity in favor of mutated godhood, maybe he never deserved it in the first place.

Time and time again, the battles were the easy part. Sophia, nestled in his heart, lent him her calmness to complement his steady hands, and her gratitude to erase his mistakes. He died once, twice, and then a dozen more. Every time the hammer flattened him against the hard stones, it hurt more than the last. When he started feeling physical pain, he had no clue, but now he understood why humans were so reluctant to be injured. The promise of pain that Hammer offered had him dodging before even considering whether or not he could abuse an opening. 

Then Manus discarded his rope and tarp coverings to reveal a truly horrendous appendage on his back. It resembled a flower bud, almost, but the creature that crawled out was no miracle of nature. The cannon above them activated, and he scrambled back to get out of the way, only to be stopped in his tracks by an all-encompassing barrier that blocked out the sky.

The burgeoning Something reached up, up, and whatever it was that was within the cannon—ergo, his mind supplied, that was what a terrifying amount of ergo looked like when it was all in one place—reached back. A white-water river cascaded down, and it was too late to stop. The ocean poured over Simon Manus’s deformed head, and suddenly he was fighting a god.

He died again, and again, and every time he refused to give in. No matter how many times he had his life beaten out of him by that hammer, or by a thousand projectiles, or by a hand from the heavens, he only had to win once. And win he eventually did.

Sunlight began to poke through the barrier, and that was when he knew it was over. Manus’ legs could no longer hold up his massive bulk. 

“So, this is what it comes to. The blue fairy decides a winner…” he wheezed. “Truly, I envy you. The puppet my Sophia keeps turning back time to save. Is it her contempt for me, or her sense of duty? Does she simply care for you?”

He didn’t answer, and Manus kept talking.

“I gave up on predicting Sophia’s actions long ago, but I’d still like to hear your thoughts. She…what have you done to her?”

Hear his thoughts. This man could hear his thoughts. That explained what happened at the exhibition.

“I gave her peace,” he answered truthfully. 

“Yes, I suppose that was her wish…she was always wise beyond her years. Knowing the truth of people’s minds is a curse. She was a tonic for my pain, she was…but I couldn’t have her, in the end. I thought, perhaps, this power could hold her…even if these hands never could.”

“Don’t ask me for sympathy,” he sneered, Sophia adding fuel to his fire. “Not after everything you’ve done.”

“Be warned,” Manus ignored his mockery. “Watch out for Geppetto, puppet.” 

He vanished into ergo spores, save for a single one of his arms. P pocketed his prize, and stepped towards the creepy arm, only to step on a floor button. There was an elevator here? It was going down before he had the chance to stop it. 

“That guy was scary, huh?” Gemini trilled nervously. “A human becoming a god is a lot more intense than a puppet becoming a human.”

“You think I’m almost human?”

“I think you’re getting there. I do know one other thing for sure, though. You’re stuck with me. And I’m stuck with you, pal. Wouldn’t have it any other way.” 

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he agreed, heart warm. “But what do we do about the arm?”

It was just sitting on the floor with them, oddly menacing, and still glowing a little.

“I got no clue, but we should probably destroy it. Let’s just see where this thing leads first.”

They reached the bottom, and—

His creator was there. Staring up at the light of dawn coming in bluish through the stone.

There were signs of a fight. The stargazer was already repaired. And behind his creator stood a beaten-up abomination. Held in shackles by a single string, more rapidly joining. And P knew right away exactly what he was looking at, because it felt exactly like looking in a mirror. That was Carlo, standing there.

He stepped into the stomach of the whale. This was a trap.

“I knew you could do it! We have all the ingredients we need.” The jubilation in his creator’s voice did not soothe him in the slightest. It only made him more on edge. “I’ve been dreaming about this day. The day you finally come back to life. There’s just one more ingredient!”

But…he was already alive. Or at least getting there. He breathed, and his body used the oxygen. He was changing more and more by the hour. He thought about things in ways just like the people around him. Who was anyone other than himself, to tell him whether or not he was alive?

It was too late to go back to being a puppet now, he realized. When did it become too late? 

And at last, the walls came tumbling down.

“Give me your heart, son.”

He was born to die. 

It cascades over P like a freezing waterfall. He was born to die and nothing more, and now he is alive instead. He wasn’t meant to be alive. He wasn’t meant to be someone. He wasn’t the son his father wanted. The son his father wanted was behind them, an obedient sentinel, and was nestled comfortably in his chest, housed by the organ P was built around. In two places at once, but he managed to be neither.

This was the scene from the play. Romeo knew. Romeo warned him. And P didn't listen. The perfect soldier, until the end. The perfect container, the perfect vessel, the perfect nonexistent son. It was all crumbling down around him, and his father stood, expectant, hand outstretched in oblivious glee, standing atop a city’s worth of blood and corpses that P himself would not exist without. If this was what being human was like, he didn’t know if he wanted it anymore. It was too complicated and upsetting. When did he even start wanting it in the first place? 

“I’m already alive.”

“...What?”

“Father…haven’t you noticed?” 

His father simply stared at him. So, no, then. 

He once told himself that if Romeo were to be the cause of the frenzy, then he would have had no other choice but to cut his ties and grieve. And now he knew. Now he knew better than anything: easier said than done. 

He let the pain swallow him whole, knowing there was no going back. He stepped away from his Creator. “I won’t. I won’t give you my heart.”

“You can become a real boy again,” his father pleaded. “This vessel was never supposed to be permanent. You deserve to be alive again.”

P at last gave in to the gnawing, instinctive frustration in his heart and snapped back.

“I am real. I am alive! Why don’t you understand that?! Why don’t you care about what I want?! You can’t have my heart, it’s mine!”

His father’s face fell into shadow.

“I had thought you were a good child…but you insist on breaking my heart. Carlo always was…mischevious, I suppose.”

The corpse on strings moved.

Petrification blue. Mechanical limbs attached to a human torso. The head was bleeding. The face, his face, had been buffed out like scratches on a shiny new model. His father planned on putting his heart into that thing. That thing was his final draft in his plan to resurrect his son. He couldn’t lose to that thing, it would be an insult to Carlo. An insult to everyone who actually knew him. He had to cut those strings. He had to eat the words he gave to Polendina and let the grief wash over him. 

He readied his blade. This thing did not scare him. He had to cut those strings before more joined in, and then he could put his other self down to rest for good. 

Sophia’s presence steadied his head. Gemini’s steadied his heart. He steadied his hands and went in for the kill.

But the puppet gave as good as he got. Carlo must’ve been a truly fearsome stalker. And yet, despite that fearsomeness, P knew how to handle him. It was a distant sort of familiarity, looking at your own instincts through a foggy mirror, but he knew what the best way to handle those specific blades was. He could do this.

He cut the strings one by one, learning something with each death and living longer the next time around. He thought he knew all his tricks. Whatever Carlo had fought off just moments before had worn him out. Even once he bore no strings, he defaulted to the same moveset, randomly switching between a predetermined list of options. Every one had a counter. Every one had an opening or two, no matter how intimidating. P got a little closer every time, and finally, he could tell—one more blow would do it. He readied his blade, and his opponent did the same. This would decide it. 

Carlo struck first, leveling his blade for a stab and surging forward like an arrow. P surged to its left, towards its unprotected side.

It was a fake-out. The puppet disconnected his blades and transitioned seamlessly into a low slashing move P had only seen before in the opera house. It knocked P off his feet and took to the air in a swirling display, seamlessly merging its blades in midair.

Well, that was that. So much for this attempt. He’d certainly gotten close. Maybe next time would be better. He closed his eyes and braced for impact.

“Did you- did you try and destroy his- heart?!”

His father, in between him and his assailant, had been speared clean through.

Carlo had tried. It was in that exact moment that P understood what Carlo wanted. It was what he wanted, too.

“Go!” Gemini shrieked. He burst into motion like a firework at the command, and his opponent did not make it through the blast. The battle was done.

He won. He did it.

And it was a hollow victory. He caught his father as he collapsed, a thousand questions sizzling on his tongue and none of them escaping. His father looked at him, and must’ve seen something.

“I’m sorry, son.”

Because in the end, that very father looked him in the face, the face he made, sculpted painstakingly with his own two hands, and apologized. 

And, in the end, here he existed, frozen in time yet breathing as if he had always been alive, with the love he had so thoroughly hoped for cradled in his arms—and yet far out of reach. 

The feeling had surged back, so overwhelmingly that he couldn't contain it. The same feeling that had motivated him to comply, to rebel, to learn, to help, to seek, to hesitate, to want, and now he knew its name.

It was love. It always had been.

His father closed his eyes.

The dam finally broke. He couldn’t deny it anymore. He hunched over his father’s dead body and heaved a throat-wrenching sob. He wanted to shout that he had only been alive for three days, he wasn’t ready to leave the nest. He needed his father’s guidance, his father’s love. He loved his father, why wouldn’t his father love him? He made him, and he made Carlo too, so why did it have to be so different? The answer to that question had faded along with the life in his father’s eyes, only mere moments ago. And now he was sobbing atop a corpse.

Then and there, he wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole. He wished the tides would rise to impossible heights and crash over this cursed tower, collapsing it and burying it forevermore. Wash it away, wash him away, wipe the slate clean and let the city start over. Let the people back at the hotel spend their precious love on things less complicated than him. For that moment, he knew nothing but himself and his own grief. 

A dead man walking, a revenant, a nameless child shunned until it was too late. At least his father had loved his actual son enough to try and resurrect him. And P had denied him that son. Been blind to the fact that that love had not been for him.

Or had it been?

Who exactly was his father apologizing to?

He cried so hard he choked. He pressed his forehead to his father’s body and sobbed into that slate-grey vest he always wore. He had to have been expecting this, somewhere deep down, he had to have known. His father wanted his son, as any father would. He lifted his head to heave in a thick and haggard breath, choking on whatever blocked his throat. His head felt light. His vision swam and spiraled whenever he dared to open his eyes. He couldn’t think about anything. 

“Buddy! Hey!”

The breaths didn’t come, he was drowning in the sea, seeing splotches of darkness, losing feeling in his heavy limbs. What could he do? He was just a puppet, in the end. 

“P!”

The sharp shout of a name, his name, the short little one he picked for himself intending it to be an alias, jolted him from the water like a fishing hook. It deposited him on the cold, hard ground.

He swallowed. The pressure in his ears popped. Gemini was talking to him.

“Hey, hey, can you hear me? You gotta breathe, pal, I know, it’s difficult, but you have to. Come on. I can’t do CPR on you, I’m too small.”

The idea of a pin-sized cricket puppet attempting to give him mouth-to-mouth would’ve made him chuckle on any other day. He relaxed his arms, and his father slumped to the floor, now cold as ice.

He should leave. He should leave this place. He should go and never look back. He should, but he couldn’t leave behind the ergo.

It was his, wasn’t it? Or, it was Carlo’s. At least some of it had to be.

He stumbled closer. If he absorbed it into himself, who would he become? Would he be the person his father apologized to, whoever that was? Would he at last know the rest of the memories that had been drip-feeding into his mechanical soul? 

The second he put his hand on the core, he screamed.

It was a howling cacophony of grief and rage. It was loneliness and despair, a thousand voices yelling in ten thousand languages, making his springs screech and his wires spark. Something somewhere in his mind, in a sudden moment of high-pitched clarity, caused him to hurl the ergo as hard as he could across the room, and it was blessedly quiet.

“P! Can you hear me?” Gemini squeaked. “Don’t touch that thing!”

He didn’t want to hear much of anything right now. It wasn't alive, he couldn't absorb that. It brought another sob out of him, and his knees buckled. That piece of the person he was supposed to be turned out to be something he had to let go of, forever. He had to let it go. It would only hurt him to assimilate it in. 

Forever. Would he live forever? So long as he could access repair tools and spare parts, surely he would. He could be alive forever. His three days, multiplied by thousands upon thousands. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to do that. He wasn’t sure if he could.

“Please, listen to me,” his guide begged. “Breathe. Just breathe. Try and straighten your back.”

He lifted his forehead from the cold stone floor and tried to follow her instructions. He caught a glimpse of slate-gray stained red and screwed his messy eyes shut again. 

His breaths were labored, and thick, and he staggered over them again and again, but Sophia was her endlessly patient and kind self. He unhooked Gemini from his belt to hold his guide to his chest for a moment, and the cricket took that as his cue to start chirping, filling the air with idle chatter. It did make him feel better. 

“Once Sophia’s settled in the doll, we can come back here to set him free,” he said gently. “But we should go back to the hotel for now. Then she can.”

He was right. P forced his feet to move. He took off his coat and laid it over his father. He took the stained scissor-like blades and untied his cravat to collect the core. He left for Hotel Krat and made right for Venigni’s alcove. Eugénie had returned to her own atelier, but wasn’t in her work chair, instead relaxing in the back with Spring.

“Good to see you, compagno. Right on time.”

“She’s ready?”

“She is!” Venigni stepped to the side with a bit of a flourish, and behind him, in a comfy-looking armchair, was the doll. It wore the blue overcoat, but also a dress he didn’t recognize. “Took her apart and put her back together. No covenant, no nothing. Just an empty shell, now.”

Sophia stirred within his heart, and he could tell when she jumped to alertness, because it was like his own vision zeroed in on the awaiting shell with a startling intensity. 

He placed his hand over her heart, and felt the same sensation as before, in reverse. Her ergo rushed down the length of his arm like a massive waterfall, and for a second he wondered if his arm would snap from the strain. But before it could, his ocular circuits shorted out with the shock, and when he came to, he was in Sophia’s arms. His head was resting on her knees, and she was hunched over him, holding him tightly.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his hair. “Thank you. I almost can’t believe it.”

Wordlessly, he leaned into the embrace. The dress was soft beneath his cheek, and he was tempted to stay. But he wasn’t done. He couldn’t relax yet. He had saved a few, but still had bodies to bury and lost love to mourn. The hotel still needed to be cleaned. Being alive was already so exhausting. 

But here, with no one but her for company, it felt like he could breathe, just a little. 

For a brief moment, nothing existed outside the gentle barrier of Sophia’s arms.

But again, she woke him up, withdrawing from the embrace and giving in to her excitement. She shooed him off of her and vigorously tried to stand. But she swerved and swayed like a newborn foal, and would’ve toppled had it not been for Venigni, who gently guided her back to the armchair.

“I think I’m going to need a second,” she giggled. “I haven’t walked in…goodness, I don’t know how long. We can set off soon! Just give me a bit.”

Venigni’s face did something funny at her admission, but he didn’t mention it, instead urging her to take it slow.

“I’ll meet you at the stargazer,” he promised, leaving her with Venigni and Pulcinella. 

His hair was beginning to annoy him. Last time, he hadn’t had it getting in his eyes and obstructing his vision long enough to truly know its downsides. Now, he truly knew he did not like it. It was damp and oily, and right now, he wanted more than anything else to stop smelling the salt in it. He wanted it shorter, and he wanted his faint curls back. He fetched a pair of scissors and a brush, and found Polendina in the garden.

His friend said nothing. P wished it would rain just to fill the silence. The fading stars over the skyline were so beautiful it nearly made him angry.

“...Can you cut my hair back to how it was?” he asked quietly, offering the tools. “I know it's not very clean right now.”

“It is clean enough.” Polendina took the scissors, and P sat on the edge of the fountain, facing the water. The brush worked through his hair, detangling the knots.

Polendina began to trim, carefully starting with the back. Gentle hands ghosted over his nape, and clumps of silver hair began to fall to the ground. 

“The cut has scabbed,” he was informed. He hummed in response. Scabs were the result of blood clots. He didn’t bleed, he had learned that very well by the time he was finished with Manus.

He expected it to be brought up. He was eating the words he gave to Polendina not a few hours prior, and Polendina undoubtedly knew. But he simply kept trimming, brushing, and trimming some more. Distantly, P could hear someone turn the gramophone on.

“Sometimes,” Polendina began, “the future seems impossible to envision, simply because the people we love are not it. And yet, the future finds us with every passing second, or so Lady Antonia used to say when she was younger.”

Polendina handed the scissors and brush back gently. Scraps of silver decorated the ground.

“Give it time, sir. You will always have a home here in Hotel Krat—Lady Antonia ensured as much.”

P said nothing in response. Polendina understood, perhaps better than he, what was needed. It was awkward, being wrapped in a hug by arms made of painted wood, but the love was evident. He stepped closer, tucked his face in, and unabashedly wished that he could hide away somewhere while the grief aged into a scar. But he knew he would have no such opportunity. Still, he felt like someone new when he let go.

There was indeed music playing on the gramophone when he walked in. Sophia was practicing a waltz, sweeping across the floor with Venigni’s help. Her smile lit up the still-unkempt lobby as the pair swung over and around overturned flower pots and shattered glass. Eugénie had even emerged from her alcove to watch. The dance looked familiar, like he’d known how to do it once upon a time, but he didn’t have it in him right then to ask if he could try. He waited for them to finish, leaning on the stargazer and closing his eyes, getting lost in Fascination’s swaying tune. It was the version without a singer, and he let himself breathe in the sound of the strings and exhale in time with the tempo. The song was coming to a close, so he let it without a word. Only once the strings had died did he dare open his eyes and speak up.

“Are you ready to go?” 

Sophia grinned infectiously. “Yes! Let me get my coat on.”

She joined him at the stargazer after quickly pulling her sky-blue mink from a nearby chair and tossing it over her shoulders, graciously taking his elbow with a porcelain hand.

“Thank you,” she called behind her. 

“Of course!” Venigni had yet to put his own coat back on, but now he looked simply…human, instead of small. It seemed the dance had been good for him as well, even if there was a lingering sadness to him.

Blue butterflies deposited them on top of the world. Arche Abbey had a magnificent view of the city, and the ethereal mountains beyond. He drew the ergo from his pocket, still wrapped, and Sophia took it from its wrappings kindly, walking to the edge of the balcony.

Goodbye, he wanted to say. Goodbye, Carlo.

Sophia cupped the raging ball of light in her hands and took a deep breath, lifting it to her mouth. She whispered to it, paused, then whispered again. He meandered closer, unsure. But when she opened her hands, there was a tiny chrysalis in her palm. 

She held the nascent butterfly out to him. “It’s not his time yet,” she said simply. 

It wasn’t? He didn’t want to go to wherever Romeo and Lea were just yet?

He took the pod hesitantly, but all he heard from it this time was calm, lapping waves and shifting sands. A faint vision filled his peripheral as he held it. A golden, overgrown stargazer and a white butterfly. 

He’d seen that stargazer before, it was in a tiny graveyard in the Malum district. The butterfly, though…was it supposed to emerge from this chrysalis?

“Butterflies,” Sophia started, “are said to be human spirits, embodiments of wishes. When the time is right, he’ll emerge, and then he’ll go. Keep him safe until then.”

In his hand, the chrysalis looked so small. How could an entire human life be contained within something so tiny?

Carlo had a final wish that couldn’t be fulfilled until this chrysalis broke. It had something to do with that stargazer, and he wanted P to see it to its conclusion. He could assume nothing else. Once he emerged, P would make for the stargazer. There was nothing to do until then but wait.

Instead of dwelling on it any longer, he merely rewrapped the little gem in its cloth, tucked it away, and turned to Sophia. “Are you okay with staying here? I can stay with you.”

“I will be,” she admitted. “I won’t be alone, though. You don’t need to worry. I’ll come back to the hotel eventually.”

“I do anyway. It’s not easy.”

“I know, I know,” she laughed, and it livened his spirit to see. “Go on, I’ll be here.”

“One more thing, first.” From his pocket he drew Simon Manus’s ergo. “You should decide what happens to this.”

Sophia looked at it for only the briefest of moments. “Crush it.”

“Crush it?”

“Crush it.”

He dropped the ergo to the ground and shattered it beneath his heel. 

“Good enough?”

“More.”

He ground his heel into the remains, turning shattered glass into powder. 

“That’s enough.”

Sophia stepped in, and with her new shoes, she firmly swept the dust off the edge of the balcony, letting the wind carry it to places unknown and far away. She did not watch it go, instead turning to him.

“You go on. I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am.”

After a handful more reassurances, he left Sophia and took the elevator down, taking deep breaths and trying to hold onto the threads of hope keeping his heart afloat. There was a side passage out of the abyss, onto the beach. 

He buried his father on the sands, next to some rocky outcroppings. With any luck, the tides would eventually wash the flesh and then the bones away, and he himself would be none the wiser as to when all of it was finally gone. 

The other body, though, belonged at the Monad Charity House, most likely. Wherever it was. Where would Carlo want to be buried, he wondered. If he listened to his instincts and followed his heart to wherever it would lead him, where would it be? 

Hotel Krat felt like home. But to him, or to Carlo? Him, or the nameless puppet he’d put down? Which soul yearned for it? Him, he decided. But he had no idea where to find the Monad Charity House. It was obviously somewhere in Krat, but he’d never been. And Gemini didn’t remember. And he didn’t know much about the tragedy that occurred there, but it might not be a very beautiful place anymore. 

He tried to let his feet guide him. He started from countless points in the city countless times. He closed his eyes and tried his damndest to let what remained of Carlo guide his feet, to follow those vague feelings of interest and recognition. And every time, his feet led him back to Hotel Krat. 

Even the opera house would’ve been closer to what Carlo called home, surely, because someone he called home had been waiting there for him for a very long time. But Carlo hadn’t been the one who met Romeo in the opera house, had he? He got the feeling they’d snuck into a show here or there as kids, but Carlo never knew the King of Puppets, only Romeo. The human. Lampwick.

Again and again, he passed by places that surely Carlo must’ve loved, or at least frequented. But again and again, his feet led him back to Hotel Krat. Eventually, Gemini suggested the garden. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right. 

He buried Carlo by the gold coin tree anyway. Not directly under it, but off to the side. Dug the hole himself, and placed him atop a sheet he laid in. He folded the sheet over him and filled in the hole. He took the scissor-blade, and drove it into the ground in lieu of a headstone. He did not say goodbye. Instead, he wondered: was it his place? To drag Romeo back into life like Sophia, when he could only half-be the person Romeo would want? When he couldn’t bring back Lea? Even if the two of them had each other, would immortality become a curse without her to complete them? He had Gemini, just as eternal as he, but who would Romeo have throughout his own immortal life? 

“Hey, Gemini?”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Are he and I alike? Carlo?”

It felt like Gemini smiled at him. It was a sad thing. “You know I don’t know much.”

“I’m…just not sure who I am,” he confessed. “Or who I’m not. It feels like the more I learn, the less I know.”

Conflicting feelings roared. He was the person Romeo would want to see. But he wasn’t. If he went through with it, would Romeo think he’d at last seen the sun, only to have those hopes dashed?

And Gemini must’ve felt his distress, because then he said, quietly shattering a great deal of what the boy thought he knew about himself: “Well, eventually you’ll know enough to fill in the gaps. Those parts of Carlo have always been a part of you, bud. And regardless of who you are, you’ve been yourself all along.”

Ah. What would he do without Gemini? Gone mad, probably. Or spiraled into depression, if he ever became alive enough to do so in the first place. 

He was right. Gemini was absolutely right. The only difference is that now he knew the names of the puzzle pieces. Whoever he is, he’s been himself the entire time.

The concept left him reeling despite its straightforwardness. Maybe it wasn’t showing much at the beginning, and maybe it wasn’t showing much now. But despite his three day odyssey inspiring in him something immense, all it could do was bring out what was already there. At the end of it, he was alive in a way he hadn’t been a mere seventy-two hours before. Hell, he was alive now in a way he hadn’t been three hours before. Every ticking second added a sliver of life, and now he loved with all his soul what was just out of reach. The necklace against his chest and the ergo in his pouch felt like weights. He couldn’t hold on to them forever. He had to either mark a grave or get a move on. And Romeo hadn't deserved to die.

“Thanks, Gemini. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Heh. Anytime, pal.”

Chapter Text

It feels different to climb the steps of the Opera House, somehow. It’s only been a week or two since he was last here, though.

After burying Carlo beneath the gold coin tree’s sorrowful gaze, he hadn’t wanted to wait. He’d gone straight to Venigni to get the ergo Wavelength Decoder truly finished before the inventor left to return to his own home. And once it was done, and he could understand Romeo’s message, P played it for him. Venigni’s expression had become so somber even his glasses couldn’t disguise it. But there was more to it than sadness.

“So this was what you heard,” he lamented, barely above a whisper. A deep anger shimmered across his face, settling in his eyes. “This is who he was. No king, just a boy. Trapped by the Covenant.”

“Which is why I need your help.” P drew the shimmering ergo from his pocket, and Venigni instantly figured out his plan. 

“I’ll do it,” he said, utterly serious and with no preamble. “I’ll need components.”

“I’ll get you whatever parts you need. I want his ego to awaken without a hitch, and I want him to feel human. Can you do that?”

“I can try,” he promised. “A puppet who truly remembers being human is uncharted territory. If you could recall and compare your own sensations, I could use your systems as a reliable model. If not..”

“I don’t, really,” he admitted.

“I can still make it work. And, not to say I’ll need them, but I’d like to have your father’s notes on you, compagno. I looked up to him, as any young inventor would, but now I intend to surpass him—and I want to know exactly what I’m up against, preferably without taking you apart.” The man had passed him a key with fire in his eyes, and told him to take good care of it. It was to his personal workshop. He was leaving the hotel soon, but said his workshop had a great deal of the things they’d need.

If P could be physically without any visible difference from humans, then it was possible to do it again. Venigni of all people could do it.

So he had placed the precious key on the same chain as Romeo’s necklace and made for Central Station to scour the Blue Fairy. He didn’t find notes, per se, but he did find tools, and a hidden back to the workshop it felt sacrilegious to disturb. Puppet parts hung from the rafters, diagrams and books were strewn across the desks. One table, in the back, just large enough for a person about his height to lay on. He did not know humans typically felt about the places they were born, but his own birthplace made him feel creeped out, as Gemini would say. 

He went back to Hotel Krat next. It was a temporary residence for his father, and he didn’t expect much, but the office did belong to him specifically.

His father’s desk had begun to gather dust, which he refused to allow. He swept it clean with a rag, scoured the office, and then scoured it again, and never found anything he hadn’t already known about. 

If only the workshop tower had never collapsed. His father undoubtedly had kept his most robust workspace there, and it had collapsed after Carlo’s death, so it would’ve been a good spot to look for notes on his creation. But it was gone now, along with all the knowledge it held.

The portrait felt like it was looking right at him.

Out of options, he’d gone to Polendina and asked for Geppetto’s home address. He’d then found himself weaving through the recovery efforts taking place on Elysion Boulevard, standing in front of a town house no different from the rest. He’d passed it, he realized, probably dozens of times. It was out of the way, not visible from the main street, and oddly undisturbed. This was a private address belonging to a very wealthy citizen.

The door was locked. He broke a window.

He found the office, and began rifling through everything he could find. It took him hours to go through it all and sift out anything that looked like it could be relevant. Despite the complicated nature of the diagrams and his lack of technician experience, he could tell at a glance what several of the papers were about.

In the end it was a false bottom in the desk that yielded his desired reward. Top-right drawer, right within reaching distance of anyone sitting down. Diagrams, bullet points, measurements, every single detail on how his mechanical heart was constructed, all contained in a few small, leather-bound journals. There were no notes on the rest of him, but the sheer relief that flooded his systems still had his heart pounding. He could clean up everything else and go.

But fate had other plans. “Buddy? Look at that floorboard. I think it’s loose.”

There was indeed a loose floorboard beneath the desk. It must've been airtight once, but age and mildew had worked it loose. Inside were even more journals, damp and smelly.

He opened one to a random page, and was greeted by a diagram of a dissected human torso. He snapped the book shut, and opened another one. This time, his face, on that page there. No, Carlo’s face. These were notes on the process of making a puppet from a dead human body. 

And in the fifth book (newer than the others, judging by the state of the cover) was Romeo. It featured all the same diagrams and nauseating dissections, and was labeled inside the front cover. Just a single word.

Prototype.

He snapped the book shut as if it would erase what he just saw and scrambled to his feet, shoving all the journals into his bag. The smell of mold was making him ill. He clambered fervently out the door as a headache built, and built, and he had just enough time to recognize what was happening before his ocular processors shorted out halfway down the stairs.

“Carlo!” a familiar face stuck up a hand and waved from the middle of a distant crowd, and a sharp satisfaction set his heart alight. None of those people were of as much interest to Romeo as he was, even though Romeo was the star of the show.

When he came to, he was at the bottom of the stairs, and his head was pounding even worse than before. The memory was distant and foggy, and the area just above his right eye felt like it was on fire. He instinctively reached for his pulse cells and used one. As the world shifted back into focus, the bubble around his head popped, and suddenly it was far too bright.

“P? Are you awake?!”

“Mhh. Yeah,” he slurred, squinting. And then, “ow.”

“Yeah, ‘ow’! That was a nasty fall! Maybe pop another? You hit your forehead really bad. Like, really really bad. I heard something crack.”

Lifting a hand to check, there was indeed a gash in his forehead. He used another cell, and something in his head popped back into place with a brief yet blinding burst of white-hot pain. But the pain receded afterwards, and he could see again. One more yielded no difference, so he pushed himself up to a sitting position, then to standing, then went back out the window. He hated this house.

He’d taken the journals on his heart right to Venigni, who had looked mildly perturbed by some of the contents but otherwise was his usual enthusiastic self, and kept the rest. Venigni had a list of components ready, but first he had requested Romeo’s old faceplate. 

“What’d you see?” Gemini had asked, on the way.

“I’m…not entirely sure,” he answered. “It was too brief. But I knew he was the center of attention. He was always good under pressure.”

And now here he is, in the Estella Opera House once more, to collect the body of the man he’d killed.

The faceplate is necessary—he would recognize it if he saw it, but he doesn’t concretely know what Romeo looks like. So even though he’s sure the faceplate isn’t exactly correct itself, it’s still leagues better than nothing.

Problem is, there’s no body in the main theater. He scours the broken tables and chairs and even the massive outer shell. It’s burnt, dusty, and entirely hollow, and dried oil still stains the tiles right where their battle concluded. Curiously, there’s a second set of boot prints leading from the dried oil back out the door to the lobby, but he has no earthly clue what stalker could’ve been here. Clearly, though, the puppet body was taken somewhere. Trying to follow the footprints does nothing, and they fade before they even exit the room. 

The puppets of the opera house are not happy to see him. They’re following him into the theater, but they’re not attacking him. Just hovering in the doorway as he chats with Gemini about his options and scurrying away when he looks in their direction. 

It didn’t take him more than a second of observation and a drop of hindsight to figure out that nearly all of the opera house puppets possess awakened egos. If he asks, will they tell him what happened? Probably not, but it’s the only option he has left. If he shows them the ergo, maybe that would help? He needs to get that faceplate. Without a face that looks close enough to his own, Romeo’s ego won’t awaken. And he does not want to open those journals again.

So, cautiously, he approaches the only puppet that remains in the doorway: one of the regal spiderlike women who prowl the upper floors.

She glares intensely at him as he approaches, and the hot, prickling sensation he now knows to be embarrassment begins creeping from his face down to his shoulders.

“I’m trying to have him rebuilt,” he starts awkwardly. ”But the technician needs to know what his face looks like.”

She says nothing, and keeps glaring, but he can tell she’s paying attention. So he pulls out the ergo to show it to her, lowers his head, and begs. “Please. Please, all I need is his faceplate. I’ll return it to you without any new damage. I’ll trade you something of mine in return. Please?”

The woman is looking at the ergo with an unmatched intensity.. She holds up a single hand, palm flat and facing him. Wait here. She walks away. 

“Huh, I think she’s going to pitch the idea to the rest of the staff.” 

“What if it doesn’t work?” he frets, tucking the ergo away gently. “I’m not sure if I can recreate his face from memory. I don’t know if there’s any photographs of him anywhere.”

“We don’t know yet, pal. But be patient. We’ll cross that bridge if we get to it.”

Gemini is right, as always. P isn’t stupid, he understands why they’re angry with him. He’s returned to the scene of his crime, brazenly walking past them to find the corpse he’d made out of their respected leader, ignoring all the corpses he’d made out of anyone who tried to stop him from getting there. And when he couldn’t find what he wanted, he instead asked them for a truly tremendous show of trust. He hasn’t even brought anything to bargain with, so he’s entirely unsure how he’ll handle the situation if they want something in return. If they even let him have the faceplate in the first place, which he still doubts. Which is why it surprises him when the spider woman returns alongside a small battalion’s worth of show puppets, carrying something reverently wrapped in red cloth.

“This is it,” she speaks for the first time since his arrival, and points somewhere near his hips. “And in exchange, we’ve decided on the Monad Lamp.” 

She’s pointing at Gemini. His heart drops into his stomach like a cannonball. They want Gemini. She’s asking him to trade Gemini in for the face plate. 

He doesn’t know what to do. The puppets have moved the body somewhere to mourn properly, and he isn’t going to be allowed to disturb it. This is his only option. He isn’t willing to risk giving away the ergo. Cruel as it sounds, Gemini, as a puppet, can be repaired much more easily than a raw ergo crystal. If it were to be damaged, it couldn’t be repaired, and memories would be lost. It’s the logical choice. It’s the rational one. He doesn’t want to do it. 

“Bud, it’s okay,” the puppet in question pipes up just as P opens his mouth. “Just set your terms.”

He swallows dryly. Takes a breath. Looks up at the other party. Venigni is a technician, not an artist. If the requirements were purely mechanical, he would say an hour. But he doesn't know how artistically skilled Venigni is. “Six hours. I’ll meet you back in this exact spot in six hours. Is that agreeable?” 

Murmurs run through the small crowd. The leading lady surveys her followers briefly, before turning back to him with a curt, “it is.”

He unhooks Gemini from his belt. Is he really doing this? The lady steps forward. She places a hand on the lamp, and his grip tightens in a burst of panic. What if he never gets Gemini back? What if they damage him? What if they don’t believe him at all and this is just revenge?

“Pal, it’s okay,” Gemini chirps much too calmly. “I’ll see you in six hours.”

He delicately unwraps the cloth with a single hand, and sure enough, it is the face plate he asked for. Cold and lifeless, and without eyes, but exactly what he wants. 

He lets go of his guide and takes the parcel. He rewraps it, and pulls out his pocketwatch. His ergo feels warm, but he ignores it. Whatever change it brings, he doesn’t care.

“No damage,” he says as a promise and warning alike, before spiriting himself away to Hotel Krat. He jumps from there to Venigni works, and scales the rooftops rather than taking the hallways. He knocks on the window to the workshop the project is going on in, and it startles Venigni, but Pulcinella, unfazed, lets him in. There's a skeleton already in progress, items and tools strewn about every available surface. The notebooks he handed over are closed on the counter. He can see that Venigni’s been scribbling in them, red ink marring neat handwritten synopses. 

“Ay, compagno, there’s a door right there!” Venigni huffs. “Come in, come in. Do you have the faceplate?”

“Yes,” P extends the parcel. “Careful with it. I have to give it back in six hours, and they wanted Gemini in exchange.”

“Six hours? Do you know how many copies I can make in six entire hours?” Venigni assures. “In the meantime, I have that list of components for you. I’m sure you can find what I need. Your guide lamp will be just fine, don’t worry.”

The anger in Venigni’s eyes has gone from a wildfire to a controlled burn. He’s lighting in a bottle, with his barely contained enthusiasm and ambition.

P sinks into his given tasks like stones into a pond, both a blessing and a curse that he can’t disappear beneath the surface and get lost in them. Six hours, on the clock.

He’s back again in just an hour to drop off the first few items, carefully peeking at Venigni’s work. The face is coming together smoothly. He has the base laid out over a frame, and is deftly shaping the general structure. It’s an exact replica, certainly, but it’s still not quite right.

“His nose was a bit shorter. No, the bridge, not the point.”

He vanishes back out the window.

What if Romeo isn’t satisfied with someone who isn’t really Carlo, he wonders again. He’s going to wake up surrounded by well-meaning strangers in a city full of corpses he helped create. And P is going to be one of those well-meaning strangers, but worse, because he technically might not be a stranger at all in Romeo’s eyes. At least, at first. 

“The lips are too thin.” It’s a bit hard to tell when their only reference is scorched and half-destroyed, but when something isn’t right his instinct lets him know. Venigni begins asking him for feedback every time he visits. The hollow feeling in his stomach grows with every passing second.

P doesn’t want to witness the moment Romeo’s hope dies. He doesn’t want to be the cause of it. He doesn’t want to force Romeo to look at a living, breathing face identical to Carlo’s every single day only to be reminded that Carlo is dead. That Carlo is dead because P is here, that the two of them could never exist simultaneously. 

“Too round right here,” he points to the corner of the jaw. “But not by much.”

Gemini would know what to say. Maybe it wouldn’t be perfect or solve all his problems, but it would snap him from his uneventful misery. He’s only been alive for maybe two weeks. He maybe doesn’t know Gemini all that well. But he likes Gemini. He said they were stuck with each other, on their way down into the stomach of Arche Abbey, and that he wouldn’t have it any other way. And P wouldn’t either. 

Venigni’s finished with the face plate when he gets back, and it is indeed masterful. He’s moved on to the skeleton and muscular system, carefully merging the two atop a table. The King of Puppets was too tall compared to Romeo, he knows. Off the top of his head he couldn't recall a number, but he wasn’t using his head this time. He settled on telling Venigni around a hundred ninety centimeters, maybe a little more. Right-handed by preference, but ambidextrous. And a thousand other details too. 

The hollow feeling hasn't gone away. He’s starting to feel heavy in his arms and shoulders. When he describes the new feeling to Venigni, the man just smirks and instructs Pulcinella to pass him something round and orange, but refuses to tell him what to do with it. His cranky retorts don’t faze the man in the slightest, so he exits the office in a huff. On the road, he rotates it in his hands, scratching and squeezing at it, before at last accidentally digging a nail in and promptly discovering the smell to be divine. 

It’s fruit, he realizes! When he bites into it, it’s sweet and a little tart, and he remembers--it’s an orange. His favorite. He devours the entire thing, skin included, mindful to keep the juice away from his legion arm. It leaves his hand sticky, and he licks his fingers to clean it off. He wants another. 

He scours the barren swamp and finds what he needs. The seconds begin feeling like they’re actually ticking by. He brings back the final haul of parts in a significantly better mood. The six hours of distracting himself are nearly over. 

“Do you have another?” is the first thing out of his mouth, before he’s even all the way inside. Venigni laughs and produces two more. He pockets them greedily. 

“I don’t have any more, though,” Venigni warns, handing him the old faceplate. “We’re only just starting to get things like this back into the city, so don’t scarf them down all at once. You’ll have to come back when we’re done here so I can figure this out.”

He agrees. On the condition that Venigni gets him more fruit. 

He stops at Hotel Krat, and decides to hide the journals in his father’s desk due to its lockable drawers. He puts the small key on the chain, makes for the opera house, and he’s there with the faceplate a few hours after sunset. Right on time.

The lobby is empty when he gets there, but he decides to wait, keeping the parcel close. His blade is at his hip. Gemini is here somewhere, he has to be. He waits for the clock to strike ten-thirty, and just as he’s about to go looking, a familiar voice calls from down the hallway.

“Hey! Over here, buddy!”

He’s at attention before he even registers what's happening. There, safely in the arms of the woman P left him with, is Gemini, looking no worse for wear. He and the spider-woman are chatting almost amicably.

A flood of relief washes through his systems. He holds out the face plate as she approaches, and she takes it graciously. He secures his still-chattering friend, anxiously checking him over.

“Well, it’s been fun! Thanks again, Francesca!” The cricket is downright jovial compared to P’s anxious hovering. “I swear I’ll win next round. I swear!”

“Yes, I’m sure you will. Go on,” the woman, assumedly the Francesca in question, tells Gemini, almost fondly. “And you, Not-Carlo. Visit sometime, and bring our leader with you. And rest that head of yours. Even puppets need a break sometimes.”

He knew she would want to see Romeo, but she wanted him to visit? And to rest, of all things? Gemini had opened his big mouth, hadn’t he?

“Are you okay? You have fun?” he questions on the steps. The cricket is practically vibrating in his hand, and he can tell there’s a barely-contained rant in there.

“Francesca kept beating me at primero!” Gemini bursts out, and boy, did P ever miss the sound of it. “I know I saw her cheating! But the lady playing my cards wasn’t as good a cheater, so I kept losing! When I come back, I’m gonna get someone else. She wasn’t even subtle about it!”

“Keep dreaming, she was probably made to be good at cards. And you told her quite a bit about me, I assume?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah, she asked about the mark on your forehead,” Gemini chirps, heedless of P’s scowl.

“There’s a mark on my forehead from this morning?” He lifts his hand to check and finds nothing. The pain is gone. The wound isn’t open anymore, there’s just a faint imprint.

“It’s a scar,” Gemini chirps. “It just looks a little strange, is all. Your eyebrow’s not quite straight anymore.”

A scar. He absentmindedly lifts a hand to the back of his neck. “How noticeable is it?”

“Not very, you kind of have to look closely. Your bangs help hide it. And say, what’s on your hand? It smells funny.”

“Orange juice!” he said, reaching out to touch the stargazer and getting ready to jump. “Venigni gave me an orange.”

“You ate food?” Gemini asks as they land. “Seriously? What changed, was it the memory?”

“I think so,” he hums. “The fruit was really good. Better than the wine smelled.”

When they get back, Venigni has made noticeable progress. He gives P simple tasks to do, and p takes to them like a duck to water. His father was a technician, and Carlo may have been versed in the craft somewhat, because his hands know how to do this. His heart remembers what his mind does not, and he lets it guide him. He answers Venigni’s questions with relative certainty as the man works on a mechanical heart. 

“Legion arm?” Venigni asks.

“...No. But can the arms be made detachable in case he does want one?”

“That they can.”

P diligently inserts each individual hair follicle into the skin which’ll be on his skull. His legion arm can do it in a quarter of the time Venigni would spend on it. The hair they plan on using came from a real person, a poor soul who didn’t make it. It’s just the right shade, hopefully. It’s fairly long, too long, but it can be cut. The question is whether or not it’ll grow. P doesn’t know if his hair grows. He hasn’t been alive long enough to find out. 

Every synthetic nerve is painstakingly placed. For the sake of him feeling human again, they take every extra measure. He really was young when he died, P notes. And so was Carlo. He wants Romeo to be able to more or less pick up where he left off when he died, assuming he was healthy. If that means hours of painstakingly tedious labor, so be it. 

He attaches fingernails, tightens screws, and trims excess from the synthetic skin at Venigni’s instruction. They weave internal systems together and secure them. As it all starts really coming together, and the sun starts rising, they begin to put the finishing touches on. They realize at the exact same moment that they’re missing a very essential human thing: clothes. Thankfully, P has amassed a collection, and he’s back in mere minutes.

At last, it’s finished. He’s finished. The seams are invisible, save for the ones over his heart and around his shoulders. All that’s left are the final steps, and a messy workshop is no place to come back to life. P doesn’t want Romeo to have the experience he did, when he awakened in an uncomfortable chair and an empty train car. The bloody floors he trekked across, the bloody puddle he pulled Gemini from. The loneliness. The isolation. He wants this to be warm. Romeo deserves better than the red chair.

Venigni is covered in grease. His hair is unkempt, but he’s beaming. Below them, a sleeping magnum opus awaits its final touch. And it is a magnum opus. Every detail is masterful and precise. If not for the seams, he would be indistinguishable from a human. P looks at the sleeping face and just knows it’s right. He just does. He’s beautiful.

“This may just be the greatest thing I’ve ever made,” the genius breathes, leaning on the table. “Now for the final touch. You bring him back once he’s walking, you hear? I want to know how he’s functioning.”

P nods. This part has to be quick. He lets go of the ergo, and it seeps into the hungry mechanical heart. Venigni relatches the chest seam, they tug his shirt back down, and P gathers Romeo onto his back.

He bids Venigni a heartfelt goodbye. 

“Thank you,” he says with his best smile. “It wouldn't have been possible without you.”

“It was the least I could do,” Venigni’s cleaning his glasses tiredly, and his eyes are warm. “Bring him back in a few days, eh? Let me see how he’s doing.”

“Will do. And I’ll come visit again as soon as I can—if you’ll get me more oranges.”

Venigni tips his head back and laughs, at last shaking off some of the tension in his shoulders. P pulls out his watch and jumps to Hotel Krat. 

When he gets there, though, it’s hectic. All hell has broken loose in the lobby. He tries to avoid the chaos, all the noise and mayhem, but Eugénie flags him down and shoulders her way through the crowd. He tightens his hold on Romeo.

“The truth got out,” she hisses into his ear, “about what your father did. We’re clearing it up now, but we need Venigni's help.”

“How?!” he whisper-shouts.

“Awakened puppets,” she answers. “They all pointed at Geppetto once people realized they would answer questions. And when they all pointed to the same person, people started really thinking there was truth to it.”

“Are the puppets okay?”

“The ones in the hotel are, but I don’t know about outside. Where’s Venigni? Do you know?”

“Still in his workshop. Probably taking a nap. We just got done a few seconds ago.”

“Go get him. Please, we need an expert here. Tell him we’re sorry.”

“Okay, let me get Romeo upstairs first.”

“Oh, so that’s where you’ve been,” she smiles. “And that’s who that is. Well, hurry!”

He does. He deposits Romeo in his own bedroom, locks the door so no one can get in, jumps back to the lobby, and then back to Venigni works. 

“Venigni,” he puffs, out of breath, opening the window. “Situation. The truth got out, people are angry. Hotel Krat’s asking for you. Eugénie said to tell you they’re sorry.”

Venigni is pulling on his blazer and hat in an instant. “Nonsense, it was bound to happen eventually. Pull me with you. Pulcinella, you know what to do.”

“Indeed,” the butler bids them farewell and moves to lock the door and windows.

It’s known that stargazers can teleport humans, it’s what they were made for, but the stopwatch hasn’t been tested. It brings them both to Hotel Krat’s lobby nonetheless, much to P’s relief. Venigni takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. P watches the man disappear in favor of the caricature, and Krat’s home-grown genius strides into the mess like he already knows exactly how to fix it. 

P flies back up the stairs, hoping beyond hope that he can be there when Romeo wakes up, only to discover that the bedroom door is open. The lock is busted, and he doesn’t need to look to know that Romeo is gone.

He starts running. Romeo can’t have gone far, not with legs that’ve never been used before. He scours the immediate area, tearing through the halls like a man possessed. And sure enough, he sees a flash of color vanishing into the coin tree’s garden. One sprint and a sharp left into the portico, and P is desperately trying to put on the brakes before he trips and makes a fool of himself.

The puppet in the garden whirls to face him. He’s leaning on the gold coin tree like an unsteady fawn, staring at the scissor blades marking a grave. “Who’re you?”

“I go by P,” is the first thing out of his stupid mouth. Not it’s okay or even an explanation. Just the weird little name he picked for himself. “We’re in Hotel Krat.”

“P? Just a letter?” There’s an almost playful judgement in that assessment…he thinks.

“Yes, just a letter. Do you know your name?” 

His new face plate seems like it’s moving as it should. Sounds from the voice box come out entirely unbroken. The really long hair doesn’t suit him, but that’s an issue for later. Romeo is here, in the hotel. P really should get him back inside, but he could do that in a minute. Right now, he wants to stare. Beneath the gentle golden light of the coin tree, a slight frown on his face and a sharp edge to his jaw, P’s never seen anyone this beautiful in his life. He was beautiful in the workshop, but even more so now that he’s alive. Some sort of recognition clicks into place here that didn’t in the opera house. Yes, it whispered. That’s him. That’s how he’s supposed to look.

“I don’t have a name.” The adonis in the garden just stares back at him. Blank, unrecognizing. It’s like looking at the non-person he himself used to be. An unsettlingly ironic reversal of their first reunion. At least Romeo’s not trying to kill him.

He removes the chain from around his neck and carefully detaches the keys, handing them to Gemini and stepping onto the grass. At least this time, the key to becoming more than a puppet is already known. Hopefully, anyway. He’d have preferred it to be somewhere softer, and less hostile, but this isn’t a bad place to come to life. The survivors aren’t allowed in this part of the hotel, and Giangio’s door is firmly shut, so there’s no one in the garden except them. The light of the tree is soft and gentle as Romeo takes the necklace with one unsteady hand. It’s like lifting a boulder from his back.

As he suspects, the necklace is the trigger.

It’s like an old lightbulb flickering on. Slowly, and then all at once, he comes alive. And it’s like a part of P’s soul has returned. His face looks no more or less human than it did before, but the look in his eyes gains a sharpness and wit that wasn’t there a second ago. Romeo’s gaze abandons the necklace in his hand and begins searching P’s face, no doubt looking for familiarity.  

A thousand expressions cross Romeo’s face. It’s like all at once, he realizes his skin isn’t a cold steel coffin anymore. He looks at his hands. He looks at the offered necklace. He takes it, and his blank expression splits apart into one of pure, unadulterated emotion.

He wobbles and collapses onto his knees. P lunges to catch him, and gently lowers the two of them to the ground. Romeo is clutching the necklace like it’s a lifeline. His shoulders are trembling, but there’s no tears. He can’t make them yet. He leans in, and P lets him rest his head on his shoulder. As soon as it makes contact, it’s like Romeo stops trying to hold himself up. The trembling gives way to heavy sobs, and with his one free hand, Romeo clutches him unbelievably tightly, like he’ll disappear at any second.

“…Carlo,” he sobs, muffled. “You came- you came back…you found me, I…”

This is it. This is the moment he’s been dreading. He lets Romeo cry for a minute or two. Just holds on to him as if it’d soften the necessary letdown. Breathes in and out. Pretends the two of them are the only thing to exist in the world. Waits for the shaking to die down into quiet shivering. His shoulder stays completely dry. 

And then he says it. “Not quite.”

He feels it more than sees it as Romeo’s face falls, and his heart plummets with it. “…What do you mean, ‘not quite’?”

He doesn’t blame Romeo for seeing Carlo. His father wanted Carlo, too, so much so that P’s own burgeoning humanity slipped right under his nose for the most part. It seems like everyone who knew him saw right past P and into what—who—he was made of. But he couldn’t do it in the end, couldn’t be the person his father saw. Couldn’t be Carlo. And maybe he’d gain more memories in the future, but maybe not. It’s better to let Romeo down right away than to give him false hope. Across the garden, Carlo’s makeshift gravestone stares at him. 

“I mean I don’t remember. I don’t really know how to be him.” It’s true. He is himself, whoever that may be, and no one else gets to decide that for him. 

“You look like him. You sound like him.” Romeo lifts his head to look at him, but doesn’t let go of his shoulders. In fact, he holds them even tighter. “You look exactly like him!”

P grimaces. “I’m sorry. I have his ergo, but that’s all. I’m not sure if I’m him or not. You’ll probably see similarities.”

“You even apologize like him. Why do this for me, then?” 

Because it felt like a part of him had been lost forever. Because he couldn’t bear the thought of a future without him in it. Because the notebook with Romeo’s face in it had marked his birthday as being a mere twenty-one years ago. 

Because P loves him. 

“Because you didn’t deserve to die. And I…I missed you. I don’t really know how like him I am,” he says, standing and offering a hand. “There’s a room set aside for you, come on. Can you walk?”

“How does something like that even happen?” Romeo huffs, putting the necklace on. He takes the offered hand and wavers like a foal on the way up. P leans in to wrap an arm around his waist and take on more of the weight, and Romeo at last staggers to his feet. 

He knows. He does not want to think about his father. “I don’t know.”

His ergo reacts. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t. 

Romeo gives him a look. And just as P is beginning to feel a bit like a bug under a magnifying glass, Romeo speaks. 

“You’re making the exact face he would be making right now.”

P scowls as he begins to corral Romeo back into the building. “How do you know?” 

“You think this is going to hurt,” comes the easy response. “And that it would be worse than just lying about it, so it’s better to spare me the pain. Right? That’s the face Carlo made when he lied about something he didn’t want to talk about.”

And thus P realizes he’s been read like a book not two minutes into finally reuniting, because one of Carlo’s tells surreptitiously survived. Damn it. 

It made sense. When a person knows someone their entire life, they become fluent in the language their loved one’s thousands of little quirks combine to create. And, evidently, Romeo was entirely fluent in Carlo’s. More fluent than P was, anyway.

“It’s better than false hope,” he grumbles, in lieu of addressing it. The room set aside for Romeo is right next to his, thankfully it’s not far.  “Do you remember everything?”

“I think,” is the reply, as his free hand clasps the necklace and they shuffle along. His hair is falling in his eyes, and P can tell it annoys him. “I don’t…actually know if I’m missing anything yet.”

Amnesia is its own curse, that much he knows. They’ll find out eventually…maybe. It’s not like P is a good cross-reference. Or Gemini, for that matter.

“You should remember it all,” he says, pushing open the door. “More or less. There’s nothing in the way, but if your ergo was damaged at all, some things might just be irretrievable.” 

Which, being honest, isn’t unlikely. And is also, in fact, entirely his fault. But Romeo is far more perceptive than P is giving him credit for.

“So your ergo got damaged somehow? That’s why you don’t remember?”

“I don’t know? Maybe? I wasn’t even conscious until about two weeks ago,” he snarks, unceremoniously dropping his new companion into a sitting chair. His ergo roils again at the additional lie. Romeo gives him the look again, but thankfully he drops it in favor of the obvious.

“Two weeks, huh? It hasn’t been very long, then. Since-”

“No, it hasn’t.” Since the murder. “The key to this room is on the necklace. They’re all unique, so if you need a copy, go find Polendina at the front desk.”

“I’m not mad at you, you know. I’m mad at your worthless father.” Romeo turns to him with a face almost entirely devoid of anger, and it’s more than he deserves. 

P clenches his jaw. “Well, I’ve been mad since I heard your message,” he admits, leaning on the bedpost and refusing to make eye contact. “I couldn’t just let it be.”

“Well, that’s good, at least. You unraveled some of the lies you were told.” Romeo says it like it’s simple, and the frustration must show on P’s face. “Come here,” he says. “Stop sulking. It makes you look even more like Carlo.”

Did it? “I’m not sulking. Stop saying I look like him,” he sulks, meandering over. And right away, he can tell from the look on Romeo’s face that that’s something Carlo would’ve said. And that only frustrates him more.

“Carlo sulked about his father too. And just like him, you are way too hard on yourself. I am leagues better than I used to be.” Romeo grabs his shirt and pulls him down into the chair next to him so they’re squeezed in between the armrests. P squirms, huffing at the lack of space. “And it’s thanks to you.”

“I’m no technician. All I did was gather parts.” The chair is soft, but he can’t stay. He can’t rest, otherwise he won’t want to get back up, and the city’s not safe yet. The Malum district needs to be cleared. Some survivors might still be trapped with the carcasses. Elysion, too. It has the most living space, which makes it good for people without stable homes anymore.

Romeo’s silent for a second. Then another, and just as P is about to ask, he speaks again.

“I got used to not breathing, you know. To hands that couldn’t really feel anything. To a face that couldn’t move. Blinking is almost weird, now. Really, he made me into a machine.” He turns to P with a smile that lights up the room, and laughs. Honestly laughs. Buries his face in P’s shoulder affectionately. And it’s everything P imagined it would be. “This is the closest to a miracle I’ve ever gotten in my three short lives. Whoever you are, I don’t care. You did this for me.”

Well, when he puts the bar that low, P can’t help but feel a little accomplished. His face flushes at the compliment nonetheless, and he tries not to think about the hidden notebooks. It would be kinder for Romeo to never see them. It was all stuff he already knew, anyway. He was there.

Three short lives. Hopefully this one would outlast its predecessors. 

“So you don’t remember.” Romeo recaps, still leaning into him. “And you know why, but you don’t want to talk about it yet. That’s fine. Do any memories ever come back?”

P cautiously lets his head rest on top of Romeo’s. “A few. Not many. Most of the time it’s instinct pulling me towards things I don’t recognize instead of actual memories.” 

“Ah, I see. And what about Gemini? Do you fill him in, bud?” Romeo leans over and around P to address the cricket directly.

“I don't remember either. Sorry to disappoint,” Gemini chirps shyly. “Glad you’re back, though.”

Romeo smiles warmly. “Missed you too. I was so confused when I saw you in the opera house.” He retreats back to P’s shoulder. “Thanks, P. For keeping the necklace.”

P hums tiredly. Romeo said his name. His short little name. “I didn’t want to leave it, but I didn’t know why. And then a headache kept building until something came back. I don’t recall what exactly it was, but that was where it started, being less puppet and more human. It’s done all it can for me, now.”

He wishes he could stay like this. Pressed close, at ease. But, things to do. Can’t fall asleep. Romeo needs to be able to walk by himself before P can get going.

“We should get you used to walking,” he says, forcing himself into wakefulness and slowly standing from the chair. 

“Better idea, let’s dance. Do you have a gramophone?”

P winces. “Yes, but the lobby’s a bit chaotic right now. The truth got out when awakened puppets started talking. Venigni’s handling it, but we should give it at least a few hours.”

Romeo’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, but he doesn’t ask about it. “No problem, help me up. Do you know how to dance?”

“Vaguely.” P pulls him to his feet. “You’re really the first puppet who remembers very clearly what being human feels like. We tried to replicate it, but you’re the only one who will really know if there’s discrepancies. Try and catalogue any you can.”

At first, their dancing is more akin to stumbling. It’s slow and awkward. Between P’s inexperience and Romeo’s unsteadiness, they trip and fall once or twice. The lack of space doesn’t help matters. But he gets the steps down, and soon they’re slowly sweeping across the floor in a rough approximation of a waltz to the tune of Romeo’s gentle humming. P watches as he sinks more and more into his new limbs, and soon he’s trying to lead. P still has to provide balance, but the need for support falls away as they move. He can just twirl Romeo about as he learns the steps.

He wishes he could stay like this forever.

———

Dinner is a non-option. P asks him again and again if it’s fine that he goes alone, and Romeo tells him every time that he should. It’s not his fault that Romeo can’t eat yet, that becoming human again is a process he’s only just begun. The lobby has mostly cleared out by now, and Romeo doesn’t see anyone who might have the story from earlier. He occupies his time with the training grounds instead, filching a short poleaxe from the workshop-adjacent alcove. It’s not the weaponized gaff hook he’s used to, but he can make it work. It’s something to do, which is exactly what he needs right now. 

The first thing he notices is that his hands are a minutely different shape, and the way he holds his weapon feels off. He doesn’t need to change his technique, though, he just needs to get used to the feeling. It’ll once again be as easy as breathing, sooner or later.

He gives it a swing, and it goes. It’s not heavy, disappointingly, but it is long. The hook he had in the opera house wasn’t heavy either, though, despite its solid build. It’s just Romeo. His mechanical nature still means he’s capable of much more than an ordinary human. To anyone who’d never been human, or who didn’t care for their humanity, this would be nothing but a boon. And it is, but he can’t feel the temperature of the summer air. He doesn’t need to breathe or blink. 

Although, as far as the battlefield goes…

He backs up to the doorway and shuts the garden door. He doesn’t want any survivors peeking in and freaking out. He faces the far wall, and imagines putting his weapon to a grindstone. 

The combo goes off like an unstable firecracker. It’s powerful, and quick, but he loses his balance halfway through and lands flat on his back. He restarts. The next time, he manages seven swipes. An improvement, but after that it’s only four. His legs don’t have the same power in them as when he was the king. He’s not complaining, at least he gets to look human, but feeling human is still a long way off. He just needs to work for it.

After a handful more tries, he finally executes ten strikes in quick succession, only to run out of room and for his axe to clang loudly off the stone wall. He staggers a bit, ears ringing at the grating noise. His frustration is mounting. 

The grounds just aren’t very large. His style of fighting mostly revolves around big, sweeping motions suited to his tall build, and there just isn’t enough space here. 

He keeps at it, though, until well after the sun goes down. He settles into his new skin and bones over the course of the hours in a way he hasn’t managed yet, but somehow, all it does is make him even more restless. 

Lea used to work the two of them until they were about ready to pass out. Lea would make them run until their muscles burned and their throats ached, and then she’d be waiting at the end with as much water as they needed. Some days she’d take them home, and they’d just skip dinner in favor of sleep. Sometimes they wouldn’t even make it to their room, and simply pass out on the couch, never mind that it wasn’t wide enough for them both. Carlo would just lay on top of him. 

Now Carlo is right in front of him and yet still out of reach. Just like in the rose garden, he’s there and then gone. But this is almost worse, in a way, because now he knows that it might not’ve been Carlo that came and found him alongside Lea.

P is almost exactly like Carlo, though. The differences are obvious, and so are the similarities. In the end, though, P’s decision is P’s decision, and Romeo’s not about to tell him who he is and who he isn't. God knows his abusive bastard of a father probably did enough of that already. It doesn’t stop the longing, though. 

Now he doesn’t have muscles to feel as they burn. He doesn’t have breath to run out of. Doesn’t have real skin to bruise or sunburn. Sensation is different too, now. He knows he’s holding the axe, but it’s distant. Probably because, as P said, he’s really the first human-turned-puppet who remembers what being human is like, as much as he wants to scream that P knows too. Nearly everything about him is uncharted territory, and it makes sense that some things wouldn’t line up or be the same. But his hair falls in his eyes, tangled and windswept yet entirely free of sweat, and it’s still frustrating. 

He trains more, and more. He pushes his new gears to what he hopes will be the limit, but he falls short of it every time. He’s never out of breath. He knows he’s not getting a workout, let alone a good one. 

He’s not stupid. He knows it’s pointless to chase an inherently human experience, but he does anyway. He tries, and tries, and fails. Eventually, he does what he learned to do in the opera house and changes course. He trods back inside to return the axe. 

The weapons girl, done with dinner by now, takes one look at him and asks if he wants a hair tie. He nods, and she pulls a circle of stretchy elastic from her drawer. It’s been so long since he had or needed one of these. 

“Thank you,” he says. “What’s your name?”

“Eugénie,” she responds cheerfully. “If you need a weapon sharpened or upgraded, I’m the girl. Not right now, though, I’m going to bed. I heard your name is Romeo?”

“Romeo Florence. I’ll keep it in mind,” he says. He feels from head to toe as if nothing just happened. “Say, do you have a minute to fill me in on the commotion earlier?”

She does. It gives him a little bit of hope for the future, that puppets like the ones he knew in the opera house may not be turned into scrap after all.

When he showers, he looks in the mirror and the elation is instant. His body is no longer unbreathing metal plates held together by screws, and it makes him want to cry. He looks human. 

But when he lays down, flickering thoughts dance like fireflies across the back of his eyelids, and he cannot fall asleep. He tries to breathe deeply, and it brings no satisfaction. He tries to hold his breath, and he never feels like he’s about to suffocate. He tosses, turns, rolls over countless times. He knows what’s going on. He is not physically capable of falling asleep. 

He doesn’t know why he’s trying. He couldn’t sleep as the king, either. The last real rest he had was the one in Lea’s arms. Remembering the sheer peace of that moment makes him feel all the more alive, now, and he just wishes he could sleep again and wake up feeling rested. He lays in bed and stares at the ceiling, spiraling into the numbing loneliness that has subtly underlied every waking second so far. He gets sick of staring, gets out of bed, and paces holes into the carpet.

The hotel isn’t as he remembers. The city isn’t as he remembers. And he saw it all become this way. The city. Her people. Lea. Carlo. Himself. He probably knows more about Lea’s death than anyone else, but he still only knows a little. He’s been brought back from wherever the dead go by a familiar face that does not truly know him. Or maybe he was never there in the first place—he certainly doesn’t recall reuniting with the birth mother he barely remembers.

He tries to jolt himself from his thoughts. He does. But he can’t. The room is too dark, and too small. Turning a light on helps the fear, but not the loneliness. When he goes downstairs, it’s simply because he wants to start his day. He feels neither rested nor tired. He needs a distraction. 

He is not human. The notion reverberates throughout his ticking heart, the pendulum to his new life’s heavy bell. It’s been the truth of his life for much longer than a mere day, but the little things are starting to add up without steel skin and visible joints to monopolize his attention.

P later approaches Romeo in the library, perusing the books, trying to find something, anything to pass the time, and sits down at the piano. A few other people are already milling about. It’s saddening that Krat’s entire population might be small enough to fit everyone into the hotel, even if it is a massive place. 

“Could you sleep?” is the first thing he  says. Romeo shakes his head no.

“I thought that might be the case. Sorry I didn’t check on you, I can stay up with you tonight if you want.”

“Don’t you need to sleep?”

“I can, but I don’t tire easily. It’s no issue.” Gentle notes start drifting from the piano, and he recognizes the tune. Coppélia. 

“Well, in that case. I’d appreciate it. How’s the city doing?” he says, mostly to ward off silence. “Not that the hotel’s a bad place, but I’m itching to get out.”

“City hall was cleared first,” P relayed, running his fingers over the piano keys. “And so was central station. We’re hoping to get Malum cleared next, since we think it has the most survivors. There’s an elevator to it in the coin garden.”

He can help with that! Malum was where he grew up, back when the fishing industry was on its last legs but before it fully died. His mother’s buried there, in the backyard of their old house. 

For the sake of all he’s lost, he has to at least try to make something of this new life of his, and helping anyone who survived the alchemists’ schemes is a good place to start. 

Speaking of. “The truth got out, as you heard. The leader of the alchemists is also dead, and the plan is for people to know what he did, but for now we want to avoid any more shock.”

“Manus? Good riddance,” he scoffs. With any luck, the man’s grave is too deep for him to climb out of, but shallow enough he could still hear Romeo dancing on it if the mood so struck him.

“Lady Antonia passed away. The hotel went to Venigni, I believe. And I’ve heard we’re also working on a new orphanage, but it’s still only on paper. We’re also working on getting the train lines up and running, but that’s being saved for until after the disease is gone. But that’s looking like it’ll be sooner rather than later, because the chemist upstairs has created a cure.”

A new orphanage to replace the charity house. It’s a saddening yet understandable concept. 

And a cure! For the petrification disease!

What he would’ve done to have just a single dose just a few years ago. He’d probably have given it to Lea, but still. He had been sure he would succumb to the disease. Once he realized that the slow-progressing stiffness in his right shoulder was working its way up his neck and towards his brain, he knew he was done for. He’d done his best to never let either of them know, and it was the only real lie he ever told Carlo. But maybe if he hadn’t had it, he could’ve escaped the zoo. Maybe if Lea hadn’t had it, the battle at the Rose Estate wouldn’t have been her last.

And about that particular battle. He has to ask. “Say, I have a personal question.”

“Which is?”

Romeo takes a breath he doesn't need. “Have you ever been to the Rose Estate?”

The piano halts. “The Rose Estate?”

“Mhm,” he sighs. “…When master Lea came to save me, I swore there was another person with her. I thought it was Carlo, at the time, but later I chalked up his white hair to tricks from the snow and the blood loss. I thought it was so odd that I would hallucinate him with white hair, but then I saw you, and made the connection. But you haven’t mentioned it.”

“Well, that’s because I haven’t been to the estate.”

Romeo nearly drops his book. “You haven’t?”

“No, I haven’t. Sorry.” To his credit, P does look sorry about it, even though it’s not really his fault. 

“You’ve never fought- never fought Arlecchino? The Blood Artist?” Forcing that madman’s name out of his mouth makes his tongue sizzle.

“I’ve heard of him, but I‘ve never met him in person.”

“Gemini? Do you remember? Lea had you with her!”

“Sorry, but…no. I wish I could remember her.”

“That’s okay,” he says, walking away to peruse the other shelves. “That’s okay. It was worth a shot.”

It really must have been the snow and the blood loss playing tricks on his already-delirious mind, then. He had been comforted by the idea of seeing Carlo again, and so maybe that was why he didn’t question it at the time. Despite the fog and the pain and the cold, he had known he was going to die. May as well lean into what paltry comforts fate provided. 

He wondered how much of it was a hallucination, then. He heard Lea’s voice, and then he woke up softly in her lap, free of the worst of his pains. But he doesn’t think he ever heard Carlo’s. And the madman was decidedly not a hallucination, if the way his biceps ache just thinking about him is any indication. 

But the interloper, the faceless blue figure on puppet strings at the end. The thing that most likely killed Lea. What was that? Surely it wasn’t a mirage, because if Lea were alive, she would be here. 

Geppetto had told him she’d succumbed to disease and blood loss. He hadn’t asked and Geppetto hadn’t answered as he himself succumbed to his own disease. He’d agreed to become a puppet if it meant he could be rid of that wretched brain fog and take up arms against the alchemists, and even if he was sound of mind he knows he still would’ve done it. 

“Romeo.” the sound of his name snaps him from his thoughts as the piano halts again. “Are you okay? You’ve been staring at that page for a few minutes.”

“Yeah,” he hurries. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just thinking about the Rose Estate. Do you remember growing up there at all?”

“My guess would be green carpet and dark oak walls,” his companion snarks.

“Your guess would be correct,” he teases.

“Neat, but I’ve got nothing else for you. Other than that there were probably a lot of roses, but who knows. Maybe they were actually big into tulips.” P rolls his eyes and it looks exactly like Carlo.

“I mean, the Lady Monad loved roses. Us kids had to take turns caring for the gardens.” The memories are like gentle candlelight on an unbearably hot day. He misses the Estate he grew up in.

“Hm. I still don’t remember.”

“That’s okay,” he reassures with a shrug, hoping he looks casual. “If it comes back, it comes back.”

He hopes it will, to some degree. He wants to see Carlo again. But Carlo would despise resurfacing by killing whoever grew from his ashes, and it makes a deeply unpleasant feeling settle in Romeo's gut. He wishes he could’ve killed Giuseppe Geppetto himself. He wants to know more than he does, but there’s no way to find out. His only choice is to let it go, but he can’t. He needs to get out of this hotel and do something. He needs a blade and a mission.

Eugénie’s trade is improvement, not dealing. There’s a weapons dealer in another wing of the hotel, he’s heard. 

“Say,” he says. “There’s a weapons dealer in the hotel, I heard? Does he have other stalker gear?”

“Hugo, and yes. Through that hallway there.” P tosses him an ergo crystal, and points him down the hall to his left. Romeo tucks his book back on the shelf. He wasn’t reading it anyway. P watches him go but doesn’t follow him.

Stalkers are still Krat’s second-greatest industry. Most served as armed guards, but when there were general missions for rewards, city hall was where they were given. Sometimes clients reached out to specific stalkers, but his days of that are over. From Hugo, he buys a nondescript bird mask whose silhouette reminds him of Lea’s, and, shockingly, the exact hook he was given for his stint in the Estella Opera House. How Hugo got his hands on it, Romeo doesn’t know. But he sees one very familiar puppet ripper, and assumes it’s all stolen. 

Not that he minds. He grew up surviving on thievery, far be it from him to judge. And it brought back to him a weapon he’s more than familiar with. He wheedles and barters just for the hell of it, and he gets the hook for free once Hugo realizes that it actually is Romeo’s. 

At last, he escapes the gilded birdcage and makes for the undertakers' turf. There aren’t many stalkers left in the city. A bulldog sweeper near the entrance says the burn pile for carcasses is by the Red Lobster Inn, and asks him to set up or activate stargazers if he can, so that anybody who finds one can jump directly to Hotel Krat. Her gait is heavy, and she walks like she’s holding up the sky. He agrees. She’s the only other stalker he sees.

“There’s no survivors in the cathedral,” she tells him. “Don’t waste your time there.”

Most of Malum is abandoned. Most of the houses are full of dust and, if they were a little nicer, shattered glass. There’s so much dust that more doesn’t have anywhere to settle, and instead hangs lazily in the air. He doesn’t focus on the houses at first, he focuses on the carcasses. He puts down the monsters and sets up stargazers. Survivors will know what they’re for.

Mostly, it’s rote, tedious work. Put down anything that moves if it’s blue and can’t speak any coherent Italian. If they can hold a conversation, direct them to Hotel Krat for a cure or hospice care. Sometimes both.

There aren’t many survivors. Each one is a new relief, but the cobbled streets become a bloodbath. One by one by one, he puts people down. People with lives and feelings and families. He puts down a cat with a bulbous blue growth coming from its skull, and the poor thing tries to run away when it sees his blade, but the loud and shiny bell on its collar means it can’t hide. He puts down any rats he finds. Visibly infected or not, they’ll spread any disease like wildfire.

It is gruesome work, but people are still alive. Every now and then he’ll call out, and an emaciated face will peek out from a barricaded window. As he works his way towards Moonlight Town, he’s occasionally approached. A teenage pair of twins surviving off a barebones indoor garden. An elderly retired stalker who refuses to sheathe her blade despite his reassurances. A child asking him if he had any food to spare. As rations ran low, his mother had been giving him all the food they had, and they'd only survived by their now-missing father sneaking out to fish in the harbor, like Romeo’s own apparently used to. 

His mother said it was a shark. As an adult he knows they don’t come that close to shore. 

He climbs around the cathedral, with considerable effort. He takes the lift into Moonlight Town, and the bloodbath continues as the sun goes down and the moon begins its gentle ascent.

A little kid who looks no older than five is sheltering in the house his mother is buried behind. With turquoise scales all across one bare foot, he has to convince the scared little one to let himself be pulled out from under the bed Romeo used to share with her and carried to the nearest stargazer. He holds that boy very close before he lets him go, promising he’d keep an eye out for anyone who might be his parents.

That one leaves a mark on him. He probably killed that kid’s parents on his way here. It’s mercy, he has to remind himself as he drags the bodies to the pile. Not sadism. This isn’t a massacre, it’s mercy. But telling himself that doesn’t lessen his desire to scrub the blue blood out from under his nails. It being blue doesn’t make those people less alive than if it were red. He has killed a lot of people today.

It makes him think of the Rose Estate. 

Proper protocol isn’t burial. They’ll infect the ground. Thus, the bonfire.

The fire snaps and pops. The sky is dark. The stars are gorgeous. He wants to bottle one up and save it for a wish, but he doesn’t know what he’d wish for. Wishes can’t bring back the dead.

This was the work he signed up to do, almost twenty years ago. He wanted to protect the city, and the people in it. He wanted to make a name for himself, find his way into an inkling of the kind of wealth he and his parents never enjoyed from their fishing work. Food was always on the table—they ate a lot of fish—but money was always scarce.

And once his mother died, he had no family left and no way to live but to fish and to steal. And he was six. He couldn’t operate a boat or reel in a heavy line. 

For the money, for the approval of a woman as still as stone, he made up his mind to do bloody things because they paid well. And then, fifteen years later, a trial by fire that should’ve been no different from the rest had rendered him useless because of the fog in his brain. He lost the battle at the zoo, was dragged across the city, and then listened through a strangling metal mask as every inhabitant of his most beloved place was slaughtered.

He doesn’t have enough space. In a sudden burst of fear, he rips off his mask and throws it to the ground, gasping for air he doesn’t need. His biceps and shoulders are lit up with a thousand fiery needles. His hair is coming loose and getting in his eyes. He can hear, in the distant halls, muffled, the screaming of the people he may as well have murdered himself, for all the good he did in saving them. 

He swears he hears them chorusing his name. He swears his feet aren’t touching the ground.

He whirls around and finds nothing but empty darkness and rows of decrepit houses. The fire behind him feels like it’s spreading to his clothes now that he isn’t keeping an eye on it. He turns back to stare into its lifeless, hungry depths. Teachers, young adults, children just beginning their lives. The halls he grew up in and loved, forever sullied. He’s never going to go back there as long as he lives. He doesn’t have the strength. 

His own improvised funeral pyre had likely damaged the opera house itself beyond repair, too. The second he was without the outer suit, he started burning up. His funeral pyre began in his core and worked its way outward. It was only halfway through his last dance that he’d realized there was a ticking time bomb in his veins, and the fuse was nearly burnt down. The fog crept back in, and in his last few seconds, all he could think about was Carlo. He was born, loved, died, born again to die again, and now he’s alive a third time. 

But is he, really? When he can’t fall asleep, or eat food, or smell the smoke in the air? When he can’t feel the ash in the air settling onto his skin? When adding so immensely to the trail of bodies behind him inspires none of the horror it should?

He pulls the necklace Carlo gave him from its hiding place and presses it to his mouth. Closes his eyes and tries to let it soothe him.

He’s a soldier without a war instead of a hopeful boy wanting to make his city a better place, now. A place where no one would suffer as he had. Is he really his mother’s son anymore, if nothing of that boy still remains?

He doesn’t know. Who is he? Who has he become? He remembers, but he doesn’t really know. 

She would’ve wanted to watch him grow up. If she had, he might not’ve died younger than she did. 

The fire crackles and thuds as a log breaks, startling him from his thoughts. The blaze is starting to die down. The smell of burnt flesh and putrid chemicals is starting to fade, carried away by the breeze he can see but can’t feel. His hair is an ashen mess. He just knows he’s going to smell like smoke in the morning to everyone around him, and he won’t smell a thing. He nearly wishes it were cigarettes instead. They were nasty, but better than rotting away beneath unfairly gorgeous stars. And maybe not having lungs would be a bonus for once and keep him from choking on the smoke.

He’s a mess. He needs to return to the hotel and stop wallowing in memories. None of them will do him any good now.

He waits just long enough for the fire to go out. Another couple hours, but just before the sun rises, he’s finally able to return to the stargazer, fire fully snuffed out. With a deep breath, he bids the street goodbye and lets sky blue butterflies whisk him away to the steely castle at the heart of the city.

He retreats to the room set aside for him the second he arrives, kicks off his shoes, takes off his mask, and nearly lays down on top of the covers, until he realizes he won’t be able to sleep. And it’s not just because this room is far too dark and far too small. He nearly wishes that was the only reason. 

He puts his shoes back on. He storms out of his room and down the stairs before he changes his mind. He turns around and heads for the gold coin tree. The peace of the garden sounds exactly like what he needs right now. 

“Romeo?”

P is in the garden already. Dressed in stalker gear.

“Where are you off to?” he asks, sauntering towards the coin tree.

“I was going towards Malum. I couldn’t find you.”

“Oh, that’s right.” P had promised to stay awake with him. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize. You look like shit.”

He chuckles humorlessly at the familiar bluntness, sinking down to sit among the roots. “Yeah, well. I was just there, and it’s all starting to catch up to me. No mask? You know there’s a surplus of choices now.”

He left his mask in the dirt, he realizes. Damn it. Oh well.

P’s brows furrow. There’s a scar above his right eye that Romeo’s never noticed before. He sees right through all the things Romeo doesn’t say. Or, at least Romeo hopes he does.

“No,” he says. “No mask. Want me to sit with you?”

“...That would be nice.”

P nestles in next to him, a comforting weight against his side. The garden air is calm. The tree sap looks like honey. They sit in comfortable silence and stare at the stars. When the conversation starts, it’s hesitant to interrupt the peaceful quiet.

“...Did I overstep?” P speaks, not looking at him.

“Huh?” Overstep? how?

P stutters. “I mean, if any of this isn’t what you want, it’s up to you. I…always intended to give you the option regardless, but if you’d like peace, I can let you go. You can leave the city. Or Sophia can-“

“This is peace enough for me,” he interjects. And it’s true! All he’s ever wanted is for the city to have peace.

“But the people you love are waiting for you,” he says, as if he’s not sitting right next to Romeo, thighs touching, pressed comfortingly against his side. As if Gemini’s lamp isn't hanging from his hip. As if Romeo doesn’t want to kiss him right here and now. 

“Lea can keep waiting. I’ll find her eventually,” he says instead. “But I have the two of you now.”

P blushes a little. “I worry it’s more of a burden than a blessing, though. If you ever want me to let you go, just say so. I will, if it makes you happy.”

It makes Romeo’s heart hurt. Please, he wants to beg. Please don’t let me go. I don’t know what I’d do. This immortality would be a curse. Please love me the way I love you.

“I’m not the one you need to let go of,” is what comes out of his mouth next, sadder than he intends. “It’s not fair for you to do this to yourself. Holding on to someone who didn’t love you.”

P shifts away from him. Minutely, but for sure. Romeo leans in to make up the difference. They don’t speak again for a while. That’s okay. Romeo is an endless fuse, a candle for the cold nights, and he’ll never burn down to nothing if it makes the people he loves happy. He’s not afraid to get close to the issue, even if it singes a little. He correctly diagnosed the issue, and he knows P can’t run from it forever.

“I don’t think my father would want me to let him go,” at last comes the meek response. It’s stuffy, and a little muffled. “And I’m not sure how I’d go about it, anyway.”

When he looks over, there’s tears falling. P is crying.

Like being struck by lightning, that’s when Romeo realizes this scar goes deep. It went deep with Carlo, certainly, but P said he didn’t remember. And Romeo, like a fool, had assumed that meant the scar was shallower. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he apologizes, leaning in further to wrap P up in a hug. “I didn’t mean for that to hurt.”

“I want you to feel welcome.” P shivers. ”I…how can I..?” He sniffles. “I don’t know.”

Romeo thinks about the city he knows, and how it’s probably never going to be the same. P’s as close to bringing back Carlo as he can be, but he’s still not quite there. Lea is even further out of reach than that. 

“I don’t know.”

His springs react. The air smells like smoke.