Ut incepit fidelis sic permanet

It was a mistake. A big mistake. One of many in her life but this one stung. it more than stung, it burned. It itched. it made her want to hurl, set her body on fire and froze it. She was shaking from head to toe.

The knife dropped out of her hand from the quaking of her hands. Why?!

Cassia was frozen in place, mouth agape. Like this was her first kill.

The girl had come out of nowhere, her aching eyes only spotted a flash of golden blonde hair, so like Gaul’s as she went behind her, perhaps planning to surprise the Roman with a hug. Cassia’s mind was tired. it was old. In many ways, it may be classified as broken.

For the first time in a long time, she felt like a monster.

“More tea, Mama?” The girl asked in her usual sweet way which made the task at hand that much more difficult. That girl, or rather, young woman, was all sugar and smiles; sweetness with a trace of a cunning coquettish nature among the less fair sex that the elder fond immensely endearing. It would be a pity to end her. It would near be a crime to the world.

Cassia, quick to mask any sort of rueful expression or tone smiled at the other and declined. “Wine is more your to your Mama’s taste.” It was killing her but she needed to fulfill this deal. She had no choice. While the other was a near living doll, a joy to be around who could worm her way into near anyone’s heart, Miss Lilli was not her flesh and blood.

A title that the Roman would do anything to protect, even if a few sacrifices had to be made. Chancing to catch the other’s eye, another grin plastered itself upon Cassia’s features. “Mama adores you, you know that right?” She reached out to the other, effectively pulling the small framed young lady from her previous seat across from the other into the cushion of her lap, much to the other’s slight chagrin.

“Mama, you tell me that every day!” The blonde lightly protested, blushing in mild embarrassment. The Roman could be overly sentimental at times and she didn’t doubt that this was just one of them. As she looked up at the brunette, she caught a tear in the elder’s eye. “Mama, there’s no need to cr-,” she was cut off suddenly by the knife pressed into her back.

“Yes darling. Yes there is.”

She had come back too early. Too early and she had known far too little. There was a pounding in her head still, a blood all to easy to boil running through her veins and things inside her mind were off. Yet to recover from the years of bad emperors, lead in the wine, her starvation, burning and fall. The Empire in her was angry and the mother in her was full of resentment and a bit of betrayal.

What was happening? The people dressed strangely, her language had been eliminated from the vernacular and replaced with crude remains and her technological advancements were all but abandoned. Worst of all, her family; the one she had be yearning for so much, which she spent years upon years building and collecting was separated. The territories she could care less about but to discover the ones she considered her children not only missing from Rome but separated? She was livid.

They couldn’t be separated. They were all each other had-they were each other’s worlds as she remembered in her dreamlike or rather, nightmare-ish state. Whoever did this, whoever caused this tear in the Vargas family would pay.

Her ears perked. In the foggy state she was in Cassia had a moment of hearing perfect clarity. Her Lovino, her little Romano was nearby. The sleep like state in her limbs that had settled was forcibly shoved off and ignored as she sprinted as quick as her limbs could take her to the sound.

There. There with the eyes she had been already a few centuries without using she saw him. Her baby, her first real one anyway. Her Romano-named for that glorious, beautiful city. And he was not alone. One of the Iberian brats was there too. He had never liked her. Despite the gifts, the attempts at schooling, the extra attention he held her in a degree of resentment bordering on hatred. What was she supposed to let herself do all those years ago that he would have forgiven her? Lost in battle?

It was probably his idea to separate the two, she scowled as, with an amount of envy, her Lovino treated him like an older brother or even parent. that wouldn’t do. That was too good for him she thought in her slightly off kilter mind.

She was alive now, didn’t they see? She was alive and well-there was no need for him-that pseudo parent stealing her job. She would first get Lovino, than Feliciano and they could be a happy family again; just like before. However, this time dying was off the menu. For her anyway.

Waiting patiently for the duo to return indoors, that was the one thing death was good for-it taught you too wait, she thought it out. Skulking outside, she could find no weapon other than some broken pottery. Not nearly efficant. She needed something that wouldn’t alarm Romano, something that wouldn’t make any noise to wake her angel up as she got rid of the thing that separated them.

Cassia, with surprising grace, found her way through an open window. She noted that Lovino and the Iberian Devil had separate rooms. That made things simpler. Making her way past the house staff was easay as the lighting was poor and the rooms so richly (or gaudily depending on your perspective) carpeted. She only needed one thing and that she would find in the latter’s room.

Footsteps alerted her to someone else’s presence. Trying to slink off into the shadows, Cassia barely avoided being caught by none other than who she was trying to save. Lovino probably needed to use the chamber pot-she remembered he always did need to relieve himself at the most inconvenient times. Holding her breath until he was past, she, after far too long searching, found it. She found his room. She found him sleeping. And she found a very thick pillow.