Work Text:
They’d all gone to bed. Belle, Eugénie. Even Hugo had left his corner, yawning hugely under his mask and tripping up the stairs in search of his bed. Venigni and Pulcinella were up, though. Pulcinella because, well, puppet, and Venigni because, well. Sleep didn’t always come easy for lots of reasons. He’d tried it, and the pillow had refused him as fiercely as Lady Autumn had refused his advances, and so he’d come downstairs again.
Sleep should have come more easily. It had been a long day. He’d been working hard on restoration plans with the others, formulating ideas for how to reach out to survivors, where to congregate them (in a safe place that wouldn’t put Polendina, Pulcinella, or Pinocchio in peril as puppets and therefore perhaps not the most popular people in Krat at the moment).
Venigni's brain was still buzzing through ideas, as heady as any alcohol (to say nothing of the wine he’d commandeered from the hotel storerooms tonight, toasting Lady Antonia’s fine taste and memory with it). So, sleep rejected him. And he couldn’t exactly go walking in the dangerous streets at night. Pinocchio might be keeping the area directly around the hotel as clear as he could, but there were still squishy, horrible things sneaking in dark alleys that Venigni thought he’d rather not meet.
He chose to reassemble his factory model, then. Several buildings had clearly defined footprints in them—the bunnies had jumped on the pieces during the attack on the hotel. Alas.
He was scraping glue across a chimney so he could reapply the little bricks when he heard a gentle cough behind him. Not that puppets had throats to clear, but Gemini was making a valiant effort all the same.
“Ah! Welcome to Venigni Works, my friends!” He waved a hand across the crumpled model as a tour guide. “She looks a little ragged, but I work to improve her. Would you like a glue pot? The windows are a little cracked, but surely you could—you seem to be on a mission?”
Pinocchio held a stack of papers. Crumpled in his human-skinned hand. He held the fist of papers out to Venigni, silently, glaring at his shoes like they’d insulted him. Everything was very quiet for a moment, as everyone considered this strange offering. Venigni did not reach out. Suddenly it felt very important that he held the miniature chimney and nothing else.
“Use your words, pal,” Gemini prompted.
“I...I lied,” Pinocchio said, softly. “T-to you.”
“Mm? Oh, I tell lies all the time,” Venigni said, trying to get the puppet to smile back at him. He ignored the papers. “It is no harm, these little lies. I have told the Lady Autumn her dress—ah, but perhaps something else?”
The crumpled papers in a desperate fist. Insistent. Pinocchio's grip was not steady. It twitched and bounced, and he couldn’t read any of the text. Felt something in his very core whispering that he didn’t want to read the papers at all. Or maybe that was the wine suddenly curdling in his stomach.
Pinocchio kept staring at his shoes.
“Brave words, buddy,” Gemini said. “Like we planned.”
“These are. Yours.”
“Are they? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before. That doesn’t look like my handwriting,” Venigni said, angling slightly to try to read the topmost sheet. It was very old looking, torn on the edges and stained and softened by time and— “No, those...hmm. Master Geppetto’s handwriting?” He was aware of Pulcinella standing at his shoulder, pressing closer.
Venigni glanced up at Pinocchio. The puppet’s face was blank as always, but there was a crinkle around the eyes, the delicate articulations pulling something. Grief. “Oh, compagno, I’m so sorry. I know you worked so hard to save Master Geppetto, and—”
Pinocchio interrupted, and it seemed to take a mountain’s worth of effort to do so. “Before. I said. The static. I couldn’t hear what started the puppet frenzy?” It sounded like a question.
“Yes, that’s true.”
“That. Was the lie.”
“Oh!” Venigni dropped the chimney. Little bricks in half-dried glue scattered across the floor, pinging into the shadows. “You heard? Truly? You know what caused it? If you know, you must tell me! I must be sure the frenzy can never happen again!” He leaned forward, clasping Pinocchio’s hand in his. The papers spilled out of the puppet’s fingers, fallen leaves drifting at their feet.
“It won’t happen again.”
“How can you be sure?” There was desperation scraping in his voice. So many people lost to his puppets, his mechanics. Venigni swallowed hard, trying to compose himself. He pulled his smile back up, gentle, gentle. His shield, his smile. “Pinocchio? What did you hear?”
Pinocchio looked at the papers again.
“Come on, pal, I know you can do it. We practiced, remember?” Gemini glittered green. Pinocchio glanced pleadingly at the lantern, like he was hoping Gemini would take over from here. But the cricket just chirped, “You said this was important to you, to tell him. We practiced. You can do this.”
“Geppetto,” he whispered. “My...father.”
Silence unfurled, crystallizing in the corners. There was surely more to the sentence? But Pinocchio looked about as certain as a deer caught out in the high streets of Rosa Isabelle.
Finally, Venigni couldn’t bear the stillness. “I don’t understand.” He sat back. “Did he find something? Did he learn the secret? Did he take it with him to the stars?”
Pinocchio picked up a paper, offered it to Venigni. “He was the secret.”
“I don’t...” Venigni glanced at the sheet. His name leapt out at him, sharp and slashed on old paper. He snatched at it, stared. Mumbled through the line: “’When I learned of Venigni’s brilliant work, I didn’t...want to acknowledge him? How dare he try to outdo me?’”
His breath caught. There was anger in the very way the words had been written, pen pressed too hard into paper, nearly tearing it in the author’s irritation. “But. But this?” He looked up, searching for an answer in reflective blue glass.
Geppetto’s handwriting. His signature at the bottom of the page. But. What?
“I’m sorry, Gemini, I can’t,” Pinocchio was whispering to the little lantern on his belt. “I can’t say it.”
“That’s okay, buddy. You tried. That’s what’s important. We can try again, whenever you want. Hey, uh, Mister Venigni?”
“Yes?” The smile was automatic, now, while his head spun. He felt like he was leaning sideways off his chair, like he was going to fall off and slide along the floor, even though he was pretty sure his shoes were firmly planted on the marble. Pulcinella’s hand was on his shoulder. When had he done that? Venigni kept reading the same line again. “How dare.” But that had never been his intention, he—
“You should read those papers. All of them. Um. Maybe. In like, the office or something. Alone. It’s, um. A lot.” And Pinocchio left, leaving papers and letters behind, crumpled and smeared and torn at Venigni’s feet, a blizzard of words from Geppetto across years and years and years.