Chapter Text
“Giuseppe Geppetto was a father twice over: that of puppets, the mechanical marvels, and of a boy by the name of Carlo. Most of Krat assumed they’d remember him for the former, but it would be his parentage over the latter that defined the memory of the man… Yes, there were others of consequence. The alchemists and their leader, Simon Manus, the Monad family, folk heroes and talented artists– and yours truly, of course. But Geppetto left a mark—a wound—completely unique from the rest. He shared his shattered life with the rest of Krat, and in doing so incurred an enormous debt. Given his failure to settle it, some wondered if it should fall to his next of kin, the puppet son he left behind…”
— Lorenzini Venigni, “The Three Evils of Krat”
“I suppose we should see about restoring this place, shouldn’t we? The hotel is currently unsuitable for human guests.” Polendina’s voice was unusually deadpan, a characteristic compounded by his recent factory reset. The concierge puppet always possessed a limited capacity for expression, but it was clear to P that this version of Polendina was a shadow of his former self. His little vocal inflections, his twitchy body, his care—all of it was reduced to the rigid formality of his original programming. “Given the lack of proper services, I shall have to rely on your assistance, if you’ll offer it.”
P nodded in assent. Belle raised her hand, striding over and gesturing, “I wouldn’t want to leave this place without lending a proper hand first. I’ll gladly help too.”
“Excellent. I suggest you begin with removing debris and damaged objects. After that, we can see about restoration.”
Belle promptly gravitated to Eugenie’s workshop, perhaps the area with the trickiest damage. Undeterred by shattered display case glass and fallen weapons, the soldier began a systematic and attentive cleanup alongside the bright-eyed worksmith.
P, by contrast, was rather wandering in his efforts. Whether by unconscious choice or by coincidence, P first found himself in the library. Antonia’s wheelchair had been left upstairs, and with the tunnel hole in the wall, the room felt especially heartless. Like the rest of the hotel, the place was ransacked; tableware, notes, and books littered the ground, accompanied by emptied chests and overturned furniture. While shutting some drawers and picking up scattered items, P drew closer to the balcony overlooking the recessed area of the library. There, he took notice of a green book, illuminated by an electric lamp on one of the few upright tables. In a sea of white and brown litter, the book’s color and placement beckoned with intrigue.
Taking hold of it, the book revealed itself to be a record of sorts. Flipping through the pages, P’s eyes settled on a photo of a young woman standing in front of Hotel Krat. In no time at all, he recognized the young woman as none other than Antonia. Her appearance was very similar to the painting she once showed him. Holding giant scissors and flashing her signature wistful smile, she appeared to be cutting a ribbon hung between the large front doors. Beneath the photo, a short handwritten note read, ‘This hotel will put many things to rest, Risotto. I only wish you were not among them.’
From there, many more pictures of Antonia were tucked between the pages. Evidently, the lady of the hotel had gotten around to quite a few places during her life, and attracted a variety of company. Many photos were taken in bars, parties, and other large gatherings. Generally, the people who appeared alongside her in the photos appeared to be in good spirits, but there was always some… distance between Antonia and the others.
Eventually P’s attention was drawn to another photo, this time in color. In it, Antonia, now middle-aged, stood grinning with shining eyes in the lobby of the Estelle Opera House. In her company was Polendina, locked tightly in a one-arm embrace and facing the camera alongside her. If a puppet with no facial expressions could look embarrassed, Polendina would fit the bill. Another photo depicted Antonia with her arms around two boys, instruments proudly displayed beside them. All three were making silly expressions. P believed the shorter boy to be Carlo, and the tall blonde did seem vaguely familiar, though he wasn’t sure why. Was the feeling from Carlo’s memories, or his own? The words ‘So proud.’ were written below. His heart began to beat a little faster.
As Antonia got older, less and less photos appeared among the record, ultimately concluding in a photo of her stargazing on the roof of the hotel. While she was in her wheelchair, she did not appear to have the Petrification Disease at the time of the photo. There were still a few pages of notes afterwards, but her writing became increasingly impersonal and sparse.
Closing the book, P righted one of the nearby chairs and sat for a moment. Clearly the events recorded were significant to Antonia, but their nature and context was almost entirely lost on him. He would have liked to ask her about them; from even the short time he knew her, P had found her to be fascinating. She was likely the most storied person he knew, and those untold stories would remain as absent as she was.
It seemed odd to P that Antonia’s life could be reduced to slivers of memory in a book. No, that’s definitely wrong. Proof of her life is in the very walls they stand within, and in the people she affected. Polendina could have certainly testified to that—once. But what of the others he came across in his journey: those dying and dead?
There were so many– and he could remember them all.
Lives so erased that even with their bodies littering the streets, they seemed near-invisible, blending into the stone and dirt. After all the devastation, all the death, he found it hard to believe traces of each of them could survive.
P had hoarded all the documents and papers he came across, but it didn’t seem like enough. Whatever remained was a fraction of history, a fraction of Krat, a fraction of its people. Who among the living could preserve the memory of the dead?
P could not encapsulate the feeling these thoughts were creating, but he’d felt it before– with Sophia and Geppetto. Like the corrosive liquids around Venigni Works, it ate at P every second he lingered on it.
Amidst his rumination, P barely registered Belle’s presence as she entered the library, her eyes scanning him with curiosity. “Eugenie and I finished cleaning up the workshop, and the boys are almost done with the rest of the lobby…” She paused, noting the state of the room, “I see you’re still working through this place.”
P nodded in acknowledgment. He lifted up Antonia’s journal. “Got caught up thinking.”
Belle’s expression softened into a slight smile. “You picked a good place.” She paused for a moment, leaning with both arms against the railing. “Atkinson loved to read. Wherever we’d be sent, he’d keep a book in his coat pocket. I’d come back after a patrol or a scouting mission, only to find him steeped in some detective novel, the very picture of focus and bad posture. He said they kept his mind sharp, though I did catch him reading other sorts of things from time to time.” Belle chuckled to herself in reminiscence.
“So, what did you find?” she said, gesturing to the book P held.
“A record of Antonia’s life—the highlights she preserved. I never really got to talk with her about her life, who she was. I was focused on other things, and I guess I thought I’d have more time with her.”
“I only knew the woman briefly myself. She seemed intriguing, and her intel was valuable. Whatever your relationship with her was, I’m sorry it ended with regrets. There never seems to be enough time with good people.”
The two paused in thought. The silence between them only punctuated by the distant exclamations of Venigni and Pulcinella.
“Belle, how do you process death?”
Belle raised an eyebrow and shifted her weight on the railing. “I’m a little surprised at the question, but then again, I’m sure you’ve seen some awful stuff during this disaster. Yeah, I’ve seen plenty. Firsthand, and after the fact. It becomes easier to deal with over time, but… some deaths can blindside you no matter how prepared you think you are. The grief is part of being alive; it means we care, but sometimes I wish I could box it up and put it away for good.”
“You’d prefer to forget?”
“I wouldn’t want to forget that they lived, but I’ve wanted to forget how some of them suffered and died. Carry too many grim fates in your heart and it becomes hard to think about anything else. In circumstances like these, it’s easy to become immersed in tragedy, to have it color every experience you have in the world. A good soldier can shake off any grief, but empathy often goes with it– lose too much of either and you might as well be inhuman.”
“What was lost matters a great deal, but what remains may very well matter more,” Venigni opined, crossing the threshold of the library with Pulcinella in lockstep. He looked proud to present his thoughts, but seemed a little less certain after their attention settled on him. “At least, that’s how I’ve come to interpret the deaths in my own life. They’ll be in my heart for as long as it beats, but my focus remains on the living. There’s so much work to do, for the present and the future. Little work can be done for the dead.”
Belle leaned off the wall and gestured toward Venigni. “He’s right about that much– there’ll be plenty of work to keep us occupied for the foreseeable future. Don’t give it too much thought, all right?”
P simply nodded; he didn’t yet have words for all his thoughts.
Venigni squeezed P’s shoulder and offered a slight smile. The contact made him feel warm, though Venigni’s gloved hand couldn’t have actually transferred any heat to him. P put the book back on the table where he discovered it, and began picking up other books to return them to their shelves. Venigni joined him in this task, providing various anecdotes about which books he’d read, which he’d written, and which he’d commissioned… until Pulcinella caught sight of them and came over, striking up a commotion. Apparently the books were supposed to be ordered alphabetically and by genre, a system neither P nor Venigni had paid much thought to amidst the latter’s ramblings. They let the seasoned butler handle the books after that.
With everyone working in tandem, it didn’t take long to finish with the library. Hugo had rolled up all the carpets and put them aside for cleaning, while Polendina had begun hosing the floors with water. Certain elements of the hotel required more extensive restoration, like the downed light fixtures, damaged doors, broken vases, and so on, but that wasn’t something they could solve today. In an essential sense, the lobby was in good shape, at least compared to how it looked a few hours previously. With that, attention was turned to the second floor.
Obviously those meddlesome stalkers had made an active effort to make a mess, as the damage upstairs was both unnecessary and thorough. Wine bottles lay scattered and half-empty, more furniture was overturned, and paintings rested at odd angles. As destructive and cruel as they are, P doubted the Alchemists asked the stalkers to mess with and smash everything in sight, so perhaps the damage was vindictive; part of their payback for killing the Black Rabbit Brotherhood Elder. Thinking about them stirred up anger and confusion– maybe they had felt similarly about him.
The big sheet painted with the word ‘hypocrite’ certainly seemed to support this interpretation. Though P didn’t feel like a hypocrite. Maybe they were referring to Geppetto, or Antonia? Regardless of the reason, their outburst had again left a significant amount of work, just as on the first floor.
Fixing his eyes on the ropes that suspended the banner, P was somewhat perplexed by how high the ropes had been attached to the walls. Even by standing on the railing, P could not reach the source of the ropes. Maybe the tall brother had set these ropes, or the girl had, while atop his shoulders. Regardless, P could reach the rope just enough to cut it, and whatever rope nubs remained would just have to be someone else's problem. Down came the banner, trash to be boxed up and forgotten.
Aware of his underperformance in the library, P doubled his efforts in cleaning the upper floor, handling some of the trickier damaged decor and debris alongside Belle. P also pocketed sawtooth blades, metal parts, and other ‘useful’ items he uncovered while cleaning. Pulcinella and Venigni were left the venerable task of ensuring all the paintings were set right and even, a job that ended up taking longer than all the rest of the cleanup.
Just as they were sweeping up the last of the trash, Polendina ascended the stairs with trash sacks. “Thank you everyone. Your assistance has significantly reduced the time it will take to restore the hotel. For now, I will handle the remaining cleanup and repairs.”
In return, Venigni and Pulcinella offered a bow, Belle and P a nod. Relieved of their duties, the group dispersed to carry on with their own business. P drifted into Geppetto’s suite. He’d returned to it several times in the days since Geppetto’s death. Technically, the room was his now, but he hadn’t made any effort to establish himself in the space. The presence of the genius inventor lingered here, in his notes, in the machinery that maintains P’s body, and in P’s own mind. His demise resolved none of the confusion P had about the man. Neither his thoughts nor his emotions could be neatly understood.
P had gone where Geppetto asked him to go, killed whoever and whatever he was told to kill. He’d even lied to the old man’s face, just to tell him what he wanted to hear. He had appeased him to the fullest, save for his very last request.
He cared about Geppetto—he wanted to trust him. He was his creator, and maybe he could call him a father, too. That thin logic turned baseless feeling had propelled him blindly. Throughout the ordeal, P had felt something awful bubbling inside his chest, the feeling growing over time. He thought it was a reaction to things he was seeing, to the state of Krat. But maybe it had been a reaction to himself. Thankfully, that ignorance didn’t last, as both friend and foe had helped him to see the truth. Geppetto had his own interests at heart—a goal that cost an incalculable amount of lives, and nearly P’s own. All for that boy. P’s gaze settled on the portrait across the room. It must have been love.
That feeling mattered a great deal to so many… the Red Fox and the Black Cat, the weeping woman with the doll child, Belle and Atkinson, Julian and his puppet wife, Polendina, and even the members of the Black Rabbit Brotherhood—all these and more. It was more than just a potent feeling; it was proof of a bond, an essential string. They’d kill and cry and die for those they loved. It was motivation to act; perhaps it had been for P too, whether he knew it or not. Does anyone feel that way about me?
Taking in the portrait of Carlo from a closer angle, the boy almost appeared to be avoiding eye contact with him. Surely it wasn’t actually moving, but then again, he wasn’t sure what to expect from this painting. He certainly hadn’t expected wood to sprout from it. When he finally got around to plucking the strange growth from the canvas, it seemed to vibrate at his touch, rippling with light in a manner reminiscent of the gold coin tree. After claiming the wood, the painting produced nothing more. He had taken it to Eugenie for inspection shortly after.
“It’s… a stick? He recalled her eyes gleaming with amusement. “And you said you pulled it out of the painting—off the boy’s nose? Kinda reminds me of that fairytale; I’m sure you know the one I mean. I guess you could whack some puppets on the head with it, but I know you’ve got better tools for the job.” Eugenie ran her gloved hands along the golden growth emanating from the end of the stick, evidently trying to glean something from it.
“It’s too bad Giangio left; I bet he’d know what to make of this. Maybe… it’s a gift? The boy’s way of sending you a message? Maybe that’s too silly, we are talking about a painting after all.”
Today, the golden wood sat untouched in a wardrobe. Not forgotten, but infrequently remembered.
P’s relation to the boy existed without any frame of reference. Even more complicated than his thoughts about Geppetto, P’s feelings towards Carlo were a mix of happiness and sadness, attachment and detachment, and even stranger, pride. The feelings seemed to arise without any conscious source, and despite supposedly carrying his memories, the vast majority of what P knew about Carlo was secondhand information. The one feeling to brave the storm of ambiguity was that of curiosity. Of his own will, P wanted to know more about this fateful soul.
Scrutinizing the painting further, there was an obvious physical similarity between himself and the boy, though there were notable differences as well. It had to be deliberate; his appearance, like his course, had been shaped by Geppetto’s hand. Had he been made to look like Carlo, or instead how Geppetto had perceived him? How he wanted Carlo to be? If he had made an error, it couldn’t be from lack of skill. Perhaps it was a fault of his memory, his failing as a father. Or maybe… he was never intended to look like Carlo at all. He didn’t intend for me to live after all. It was a cold fact, true up until his father’s last moments.
P withdrew from the painting, averting his own eyes. A feeling was washing over him again, another he had yet to identify. P began to run his hands through his hair– Antonia had done it to him once, and it put him at ease at the time. The effect was not as potent this time, maybe because she wasn’t the one doing it, but it managed to provide some comfort. In the middle of his efforts and without his notice, a blue butterfly landed on his shoulder. Sophia! Her presence, even in this form, was enough to make him breathe a little easier.
“Are you alright?” Sophia’s voice was as soft and elegant as ever. Her words, carried over ergo, always left his head tingling.
“I’m—you knew Carlo, right, Sophia?” P offered his hand to the butterfly, so that they could speak face to face. Face to butterfly. Sophia accepted, maneuvering onto his palm.
There was a slight delay in her response. “Yes, you recall that memory, on the beach? We grew up together in the Rose Estate. Though, I didn’t see him much, and our time together was brief. If you have questions about him, I have someone in mind who could answer them.”
“Who?”
“You remember the King of Puppets don’t you? His name was Romeo. There’s no one who knew Carlo better than him; the two were inseparable. You still have his ergo.”
The name Romeo gave rise to another indescribable feeling in him. The implication of her words was clear. “But he doesn’t have a body ready like you did. And he nearly killed me...” P furrowed his brow.
“He can be restored, as long as his ergo is still intact. The circumstances under which you met were—deeply unfortunate. But I truly believe he would intend no harm to you, or anyone else for that matter.” A little more emotion than usual had slipped into her voice. With her even tone and composure reapplied, she continued.
“I must be honest with you. Romeo is not just a thread of the past. He was one of Krat’s greatest protectors, once. More than that, he was a wonderful soul. If you possess the power to revive him, to give him another chance at a life, I ask that you do the same for him, as you did for me. ”
P studied the butterfly before him, absorbing Sophia’s sentiment. She rarely asked things of him, and when she did, it was always about ‘good’ things: saving and helping people. Unlike Geppetto, she had yet to steer him wrong. But he can’t just go about his life doing everything he’s told, and P wasn’t sure he saw the wisdom in it. Many ambiguities and unknowns filled out the dilemma. What if Romeo doesn’t even want to be brought back? Again.
Noting P’s obvious hesitation, Sophia chose to chime in. “You don’t have to decide right away, clever one. Why don’t you bring his ergo to me tomorrow; I may be able to glean some answers for your questions.”
It wouldn’t hurt to talk more about it, and her Listener insight could certainly be helpful. P nodded in agreement.
“You haven't slept in a few days, and the hour draws late. If you keep changing, you may need to rest more regularly, like a real boy. I know you like to keep busy, but give sleep another try; I’ll be waiting for you at the Abbey in the morning.”
With that, her butterfly rose from his hand, fluttering out the door and down to the first floor. As much as P would prefer to carry on with things right away, he couldn’t deny the fatigue he’d begun to feel mounting. His parts had worn down before, but feeling tired was relatively new to him. Considering that the previous times he’d slept were just periods of falling unconscious, deliberately trying to sleep may be worth exploring. P exited the Geppetto’s suite, on a quest to find a comfortable bed.