The Plan

Posted on Fri Nov 3rd, 2023 @ 12:14am by Princess Royal Giana Orsini & Major Sacha Lavigne & Crown Prince Paolo Orsini
Edited on on Mon Mar 4th, 2024 @ 2:55am

Mission: Historiae Terrae Et Imperii
Location: The Pyramid
Timeline: Date 2371-09-02 at 1700
3340 words - 6.7 OF Standard Post Measure

ON

The stabbing of his father had shaken Paolo, but the event had also opened a wide crack in the politics of the capital city and he knew, by instinct, that it had to be filled. What he also knew, even more than that, was that he needed to make sure that the business with Giuseppe was taken care of by those who were capable of taking care of it. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he walked down the hallway of the Pyramid, his mind rushing with possible plans.

He paused in front of Giana’s suite and wrapped on the door quickly, the two guards trailing him stopping on either side. They had a lot to discuss.

Giana had remained in her room after her “talk” with Sacha. She’d showered and changed into a simple spaghetti strap maxi dress that while plain to the eye probably cost the yearly salary of the average worker. She hadn’t come back out and was currently half lying on her side reading something off a PADD. She heard the knock on the door but opted to ignore it.

Paolo frowned at the silence from within the apartment. He thought he’d finally tracked his sister down after she’d walked away from the meeting with the other regents. When no one came to the door, he knocked again even harder. He thought there would surely be servants inside, at least, or maybe even Sacha.

“Come one, Giana…we don’t have time for this.” he said under his breath, exhaling sharply.

After the second knock, the door cracked open and then opened wide suddenly, the maid standing there looked absolutely shocked and perhaps even a bit scared. “Y-your Highness!”

“Is the Princess Regent in? I’ve been looking all over the place for her and it’s very important.” Paolo said, his body controlled but his expression and his tone indicated that he was more frustrated than was typical. The pressure of the situation, the uncertainty, and the loss had all cut through his typical defenses.

“Um… y-yes.” The woman cleared her throat. “Yes, she is. She asked not to be disturbed but I can go get her for you…?”

She wouldn’t lose her job for that right?

Paolo blinked and gave a compressed sigh, then he walked forward, slipping quickly between the young woman and the door frame into the apartment. Where he would normally have been apologetic at least, he said nothing to the servant.

“Giana?!” he called out in a loud voice which cracked at the top with a squeak, a sign of his age. His voice was decisive and angry as he walked toward her kitchen “Giana, get out here!”

The servant looked quite alarmed and followed Paolo to the kitchen. She was definitely going to lose her job.

Giana finally looked up from what she was reading at hearing her brother’s irritating warble of a yell. He sounded angry, and that made her immediately angry. She got out of the bed, went to the door and opened it.

“What do you want?” She called out as she walked toward the kitchen. “I’m busy.”

“What could you possibly be busy doing?” he asked, turning to her and furrowing his brow. His anger subsided a bit upon seeing her as it so often did with people. He had a habit of natural charity which tended to get quite upset and judgemental about people in the abstract while often softening toward the person in particular. It was a trait he shared with his father, but he was seeing the errors it could cause through his father’s poor decisions. He willed himself to stay angry with relative success. “You’re the Princess Regent and you’re sitting out important conversations in here.”

Giana came into the kitchen, standing on the other side of the island from Paolo. For a long moment she just looked at him and then spoke with a surprisingly even tone. “Paolo, exactly by what right do you feel you have to come into my apartment and yell at me or make demands?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, feeling a certain lack of respect he felt he deserved by virtue of his position.

“By my responsibility to see the Empire prosper. Not only is there a crisis going on, piled up on top of ten other crises, but we have a very narrow window of time, perhaps, to do what needs to be done here. We don’t have time to argue or measure our status. We also don’t have time to lay about our apartments thinking about ourselves, our feelings, or our power. We need to act while we can, before we’re laying in a pool of our own blood as well.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure I did learn how to read if nothing else… I don’t remember your name being on the list of regents…” She tapped her lower lip as if she were trying to remember if she was wrong. “So I’m not particularly sure where all this ‘we’ nonsense is coming from.”

Lowering her hand she finally scowled at her brother. “I was the one who included you to begin with, Paolo. Even your beloved Ramsay would have left you out in the cold when we went and spoke with mother about the regent arrangements. How dare you come in here and act like you’re entitled to yell at me or be angry. You are trying to take advantage of me and I don’t fucking like it. I’ve had a brother do that to me already.”

“Take…” he trailed off, amazed by what she had accused him of. “Take advantage of you? What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, opening his hands in a questioning gesture. “What could I possibly want from you that isn’t for the good of the Empire?”

Sacha had made his way into the room behind Giana now and stood off listening to her. He would ordinarily feel some responsibility to defend her or to take part in the exchange, but he felt like things would be best left to develop on their own. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, his eyes on the two of them.

“Listen, Paolo. I get that your feelings were hurt because father - for whatever reason - decided to cut you out of the governmental process entirely. Really, I did understand that and I thought that was obvious when I immediately included you anyways. I thought you’d get the point that I wasn’t going to block you out of anything and would try to work with you.” She crossed her arms under her chest.

“So it is beyond me why you decided to try and corner me, to attempt to make it so I would have to involve you or sink by giving me the military which you just happen to have the ability to be very ‘helpful’ with since father included you in all the meetings and you get all that information in your box. Like I said earlier: very cunning, father would be proud of you. I’m less than thrilled by the position you put me in though and don’t even try to say it was my choice; mother and Ramsay couldn’t wait to jump on the bandwagon with you. Mother just wants to please everyone but you most of all and Ramsay is Ramsay. I think you knew what would happen on both counts.”

She looked away from him then, still not noticing Sacha was there. “People don’t give you enough credit, Paolo. They don’t think you’re capable of such maneuvers… I know better, I know you do have it in you. Unfortunately, I had a lapse in judgment and good on you for grabbing it, I guess.”

Paolo’s mouth opened as she spoke and the anger on his face slowly melted into confusion and then, quickly after, realization. He winced at the idea she was presenting and shook his head.

“Giana, come on. You think I’m trying to..” he said, and then stopped for a moment. He then leaned in, his eyes going wide. “Father might wake up in the next several hours and be capable of governing again a few days. We only have a limited time to take care of Giuseppe.”

He heard the words leave his mouth and felt a certain hollowness follow after them. Was he, Paolo Orsini, the golden boy, talking about killing someone? And on top of that, his own brother? Truth be told, he was numb to it at the moment.

“I thought that’s what you wanted to do.” Paolo said with a furrow of his brow. “I’m not trying to siphon your power off of you, I just answered your question about who I thought should be where, and I thought you should be over the military so you’d be acting Supreme Commander. If mother was there, it would never happen, and Ramsay is a wild card as far as that is concerned.”

It was Giana’s turn to stand there and process what was being said. Her scowl lessened from anger to confusion as she listened to her brother. She had at least grown better about that over the last nearly couple months instead of just dismissing people out of hand. Placing her hands on the island, she leaned forward and looked down at it a moment, then back up at Paolo.

“This whole thing… was to get to Giuseppe?”

Behind her, Sacha’s interest was piqued. He stood from his position on the wall and his mind started racing. He still stood back, however, wanting to see what was really going on.

“Yes.” Paolo said exasperatedly. “I thought you knew. I thought that’s why you agreed. I was just hoping Ramsay and mother didn’t object on grounds of experience. I’m still not sure why they didn’t.”

“Because mother is dealing with the fact her husband might die, she isn’t in the right space to think along any of those lines and we gave her something familiar. Ramsay… well, come on Paolo, you can’t be blind to his dislike of me - it’s mutual, to be fair. He’d be happy to see me sink and fail so he could say ‘I told you so’.” She shook her head and then stood up tall again.

“I don’t know, Paolo… I get why but…”

“I do.” Paolo said, shaking his head. “He can’t punish both of us. We just need to think of a way to green light a plan that includes it happening. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, even before all of this happened.”

He leaned on the counter, preparing to explain.

“Now that you have authority, you can claim to be leading the war directly from aboard Imperator. As long as we can sweet talk the other two into not vetoing it, it’ll give us the opportunity we need. From the Imperator, we would find Giuseppe’s location and plan some kind of infiltration.”

Giana started to say something but stopped herself, instead just gave a nod for him to continue his plan. She would at least do him the courtesy of not cutting him off right there.

“There’s already a plan on father’s desk to send a Task Force to lay siege to Axanar. If you approve it, then all we’d have to do is talk our way off the planet.”

Finally, Giana let out a long sigh and reached up to rub her face with her hands, leaving herself covered for just a moment then lowering them again. “Alright, the first problem here Paolo is there is absolutely no way in hell both of us would be going. You are the heir, I’m next in line. I can be convincing but I don’t think even I can be that convincing.”

“See, but that’s the thing.” Paolo said with a raising of his brow. “Who’s going to stop us? Sure, Ramsay or mother may veto your decision to lead from the front, but we can arrange things so that they won’t know until it’s too late.” Paolo said with a shrug before looking over at Sacha. “Don’t you two love running away?”

This was very unlike Paolo, but Giana also didn’t have reason to suspect anyone had whispered these things in his ear. When his eyes moved past her to Sacha, she finally turned to see him there and immediately frowned. This wasn’t the time to pay attention to him though. She looked back to Paolo, “We aren’t talking about Sacha and me though, Paolo. We are talking about you and me.”

Sighing, she lifted her hands to stay his protests and continued speaking. “You say father can’t punish us both. He absolutely could, but he wouldn’t. He will look to punish me because I would be the one responsible for this happening when push comes to shove and I would be the one responsible for Giuseppe’s death.”

Paolo looked at her and nodded slowly, seeming confused again with what she was saying.

“Maybe, but he would have no grounds to punish you. Giuseppe has been declared an enemy of the Senate and People by the Imperial Senate at Father’s urging. It says we actually have a duty to kill him. He won’t touch you. In fact, I think he might want someone to do this sort of thing, somehow.”

“Paolo, you know as well as I do that he rescinded his kill order and wants Giuseppe brought in alive.” Giana scoffed slightly, though it clearly wasn’t at her brother this time it was simply disgust at her father’s decision. “You are right though in the fact he wants someone to take care of this for him, I said as much to Sacha when we left. He wants someone else to kill Giuseppe and take care of the problem, but he also wants to be able to punish that person to the fullest degree so he can feel like he did nothing wrong and that he didn’t make the choice to kill his son.”

“Then so be it.” Sacha said. “Let’s find a patriot. Sometimes, we have to die for what we believe.”

Paolo looked over at Sacha with some surprise at hearing him say that. In his experience Sacha was incapable of being serious.

“Yes, let’s do that.” Paolo said with a nod, looking disturbed for the first time in their interaction.

A rueful smirk appeared on Giana’s face when Sacha spoke up behind her. She didn’t look at him - she didn’t want to. She had a feeling what was coming anyways. “He’ll take everything from me, you know.”

“I’ll give it back one day.” Paolo said with a shrug, either not understanding the gravity of what she was saying or, more likely, believing what they were doing was more important than that. “Blame it on me if it bothers you. Say I tricked you. It’ll be embarrassing, but this is important.”

Sacha came up beside her now, his hand falling on the small of her back. He looked between her and Paolo, though she was avoiding his gaze.

“I’m a Marine and I swore an oath. I’ll kill Giuseppe. To be honest, I’m one way or another, I’ve always hated that shit.”

Paolo’s flippant dismissal of what she would be sacrificing made her seethe and when Sacha touched her, she tensed like a board.

“Does my life mean so little to both of you?” She asked slowly, her voice even but it was starting to waver.

Paolo looked down at the counter, the irritation he had displayed earlier coming back. There was silence in the room as both he and Sacha said nothing to her. Only after he took a sharp inhale of air, did he respond to her.

“My culture and history tutor used to go on and on about the historic belief that a warrior had to sit the throne for the Empire to be strong and a philosopher for it to be great.” He started, his voice starting to rise. “This is not about you, Giana. It isn’t about me. Either help me to do what we both know needs to be done, or I’ll find a way on my own. Enough with books, art, and music. It’s time for a fight.”

“And you?” She asked, finally looking at Sacha.

“If Giuseppe is allowed to live, his spies will kill you. That’s obvious to me. So, I’m going to do what I need to do to prevent that from happening.” Sacha answered resolutely.

“Even though there’s a thousand other men who could do it and the result would be the same except you’d very much be alive?” She asked with a sad little smile.

“I’m not going around looking for another man to do my job for me.” Sacha said with a shake of his head. You’re directly threatened by this, Gigi.”

Sacha had seen Giana up close and the range of her emotions in full force. Angry, sad, joyful, worried, everything and anything. Even he couldn’t place what was there now, but it was definitely off and of course she was on the verge of tears. She reached up and touched his cheek, tracing his features and looking him over as if she were trying to commit him to memory. She then left him and moved around the island to Paolo. Her hands went to his cheeks and she leaned in to kiss his forehead.

“Be better.” She implored him and then pulled away.

“Give me an hour. I need to tie up loose ends. If he wakes up before then then it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Paolo nodded an ascent to what she had said, but didn’t look victorious. He was far more nervous about this than he had let on.

“It’s best we keep this silent. We beam out separately in an hour with a copy of the decree just in case anyone challenges your authority. We can call mother and Ramsay from Imperator en route to calm them down.” He said, his face turning sad then, feeling Giana’s emotions with her.

“I’ll get packed up.” Sacha said, looking into Giana’s eyes with a confident and determined expression. This wouldn’t be the first time he put himself in harm's way.

“Yeah, sure.” Giana nodded. “Paolo, is father actually out of surgery then? Do you know?”

He shook his head sadly at the question.

“When last I checked, they said he would be out within the hour.” He answered. “I can try and check on him before we leave, if you’d like.”

“No, that’s alright. I’ll do it.” Giana assured him. “If there’s nothing else…”

Paolo gave a shallow nod.

“I’ll see you soon.” He said, before walking past them and striding quickly toward the exit. Sacha released her and started for the bedroom.

Giana remained where she was for a long moment until her only company was silence. A few tears slid down her face and finally she let out a sighing breath. She brought her hands up together and twisted her engagement ring around her finger, taking it off and worrying it then sliding it back on. She wished he had been out of surgery, but it really couldn’t be helped, she supposed. Maybe it was for the best anyways.

END