milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Veronan."

He smiles a little.

"A cradle song."

"A pleasant memory?" Giovanni asks, mostly to make conversation.

"Not especially so."

He shrugs.

"Shot through with unpleasantness. Life generally is."

"...in some ways, I suppose you're right."

His life isn't overly bad, but not exactly perfect.

"I am not right. I am melodramatic and melancholy. And other words beginning with 'm'."

He sheathes the dagger and flops onto his back.

"From whence dost thou hail?"

Giovanni eyes him.

"You're a very odd man, did you know that? I'm from Venice."

"I am not odd, only out of step."

He grins.

"Ah, Venice. Pretty boys always come from Venice."

"And the pretty girls, too", Giovanni feels obliged to point out. This, of course, sets him off thinking about Victoria again. He may need prodding.

He shrugs.

"I find that Rome has the prettier girls."

Sadness, he had hoped for at least a blush. Giovanni looks like he might blush.

"Mercutio of Verona, by the by, at thine service."

He would have blushed if he'd noticed. It would have helped if Mercutio was female, perhaps.

"Giovanni Bruni", he returns. "Pleased to meet you."

Oh, one of those. Mercutio knows those.

"So, pretty boy, what year dost thou believe it to be?"

Most definitely. He currently has eyes only for a demure little pretty blonde thing across the canal from him. She doesn't know he exists.

"1753", Giovanni tells him. "And you?"

"1661."

Oh, this is quite interesting.

"What has happened to Verona dince I died, dost know?"

"We don't travel much", Giovanni says apologetically. "But the city's still thriving, as far as I've heard."

"And the feud?"

Of course Giovanni knows the feud. Its echoes reverberated from one side of Europe to the other, when Mercutio was alive.

In the interests of... things, the mun decides not yet to pin down whether Giovanni knows it as fiction or history. He thinks for a moment, putting things together, then remembers.

"The feud... the feud was brought to a peace. The leading families both lost their children, and settled it in their grief."

"Aye, I knew that. I have read the play. I am glad it did not reawaken."

He looks at the fire.

"It was poised to tear my city apart."

"If it ever did", Giovanni says quietly, "it was much less important. Boys throwing words, at most, I imagine."

"Boys can sometimes throw words very hard. Hard enough to break things."

He rolls onto his stomach.

"Words are important."

"They are, of course. But not enough to tear up a city, until other things start being thrown as well."

"I would not bet on that."

He smiles slightly.

"How else is a city to be broken bu through words? Nothing can be official until it is spoken and written."

"If you mean decrees, those are different. It's not just boys involved in that. Anyway, the authorities are supposed to stop their city being broken."

"I do not, I mean words. In any form. In the beginning, or at the end, or in the middle."

He looks at the fire.

Giovanni watches him, not sure what to say next.

He pulls the dagger out again and starts to clean under his fingernails.

"So, art dead?"