Mafia Days

In many ways, the way Cadenza’s personality has grown, the face she approaches the world with, can be traced back to her twelve years serving in her late sister’s mafia. To be truthful and voice her genuine thoughts aloud was to earn herself a fiery whip to the face, or to compromise a mission, or to blow a cover, which could mean her death or the failure of her goal—often the same thing—so she learned to lie, and lie well. It became habitual, to the point where the falsehoods came easily, to the point where she could slither out of anything she needed to, could adapt to any unexpected changes in a mission, could adopt any new cover when she needed to, just with another expertly spun tale. She could sell it, could act it, could make her expressions and her body language and even her eyes tell the story she needed to—it was another survival skill.

She became stubborn, because to be stubborn meant to survive a fight, or endure torture, or to last through a particularly heinous assignment when nothing but your willpower could see you through that hell. She became tough, and hid her feelings behind layers of defense and prickliness, hardheadness and difficulty, because to show those weak spots, those vulnerabilities, was to show her enemy—or her sister—just where to strike home the hardest. And she became sarcastic, because in the most miserable times, humor became the only way she could keep her wits, keep her sanity, and keep going on. She learned to laugh at nearly anything, sometimes even the blackest things, and especially at herself. Sometimes it could be the only light in a situation that sorely needed some.

Cadenza learned to treasure innocence, as it is far more precious, and scarce, than she ever realized before—and even more, she has learned to cherish true friends, as those you can count on in this world are farther and fewer between than she ever could have imagined in her younger days. She has learned to be cautious, and slow to trust, to form quick impressions of people, and try to read and analyze as much as she can about them in that first glance. She is quick to size up a threat, to detect weapons, strength, posture, gait, and in some meetings, she’ll judge how you would be as an opponent before she’d guess how you might be like as a new friend or acquaintance. She’s found she comes across far more of the former than the latter. She also grew to be even more fiercely protective of family, because in some twisted way, her dysfunctional family was all she had for many years. She learned to become dispassionate when killing, when in combat, but she also grew to have an even worse temper than she ever had before, when provoked into it.

An uglier side in her grew, one enraged by all the horrors it had seen, all the horrors it had been a part of, all the ways she had suffered at various people’s hands, most of all her own sibling’s, and to survive that, with some piece of her still preserved that could maybe go on living a normal life, part of her had to be sacrificed to that dark, become like it, to protect the whole. She knows that side to be her “beast”—but most who have ever seen it have not lived to tell about it later. When it takes hold, it behaves much like a mother jaguar—and such times have led to her being likened to a “sand panther” in stories around Rubato. It is a hateful and savage part of her heart, ferocious, yet also fiercely protective of the few it considers its own, and its foremost concern as always is the gypsy’s survival. She has lived now for over five years with her beast and has learned to control it, to coexist with that darker part of herself, but there are still times when it comes to the fore, beyond her rock hard walls of mental defense and reserve—most often when the safety of children, particularly her own family nowadays, are concerned.

 Speaking of, her adopted daughter Kate has been hugely responsible for another turn in Cadenza’s life. Raising her has brought out parts of Cadenza’s personality she thought long dead. Her love of music has always been strong, but she finds herself listening these days with a lighter heart, dancing with a more cheerful step, and she laughs easier. She smiles almost like the woman she could have grown up to been, and in some ways, those smiles mean more for all she has been through otherwise. Her sense of humor has taken on a sillier side, as well, and although she rarely shows it away from her household, it finds its way into other moments, and steals into conversations with other friends as well. While her pessimism is still alive and well, she wants to be more hopeful for Kate’s sake, to believe that they can one day build a stable and loving family for the girl, and that she might find someone to be her partner, her husband again, the father of her children, despite how wrong things went in her marriage with Rain. This desire has taken a hit, yet only come back stronger now that she is pregnant with her twin babies, whom Rain fathered before their split.