Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the creators of Ashita no Nadja.

When Masks Fall Off

Chapter 1.19: A Foggy Night in Venice

"Wait!" Nadja called after the Black Rose. "Please, wait!"



It was when he had bounded up the staircase and was half way across a bridge while Nadja was still just reaching the bottom of the staircase without the energy to run very much further, let alone bound up the staircase, that the girl finally stopped. But at the very least, there was one thing that she wanted him to hear: "Thank you for what you did for Mario."

The Black Rose stopped in his tracks. He didn't even turn to look at her, but nor did he move to continue running away. Nadja took the opportunity to resume closing in on him, though this time she did so at a normal, walking pace, and continued to speak to him desperately as she did so.



"But do you have to go about it this way? If you this up, you'll be hurt someday!"



"I can't save the people by fearing pain." The Black Rose still did not turn to her, and Nadja stopped approaching him when she reached the top of the bridge as well.



"But there must be another way! For example, I know a noble who collects donations and gives those to hospitals and orphanages, and saves all sorts of people!"



"That's nothing but a noble's hobby—it's all hipocrisy." The Black Rose spoke with a sort of condescending amusement.



"He does his best as a person, not as a noble, so that everyone can live on equal terms!"



"That's nothing but empty words."



"No!" Nadja insisted, her voice strong and firm. "It's noblesse oblige!" And the Black Rose spun around to face her, his cape billowing out, and his eyes wide with shock behind his mask. There was a moment of silence, and Nadja began to wonder if she had won—she knew that he was affected by her words, but his mask hid from her the extent of his surprise, and she did not think to wonder.



"The wealthy obtain their riches by stealing them from the poor," said the Black Rose. His voice was hard and cooly heated with suppressed anger as he closed the distance between himself and Nadja with long, brisque strides.

"I'm just returning them to their rightful owners. This is my way."



"Some nobles and wealthy people are good people." The Black Rose's wide eyes stared into Nadja's determined ones from behind his mask. After another moment of silence, however, he closed them.



"People can hide their true nature behind masks," said the Black Rose softly, the anger and hardness gone from his voice. Then bitterness began to creep into his voice, replacing the anger as he spat out his words. "The noble you know is just like the rest of them! Under his mask, he's laughing down at the commoners from his high and mighty perch above them!"



"Not Francis!" And Nadja's words had the Black Rose's eyes shooting wide open behind the mask once again. "Francis.... Francis is a genuinely honest, kind, wonderful person!"



The Black Rose stared down at the girl who stood before him. After a moment, he reached out and took her hand from where it had rested on the railing of the bridge. He pulled her right up to him.



"Aren't you afraid of me?" he asked in a voice that would have left a bystander wondering whether he was mocking the girl, or simply honestly curious. His wide eyes beneath the mask would have solved the mystery as Nadja replied with a defiant, "I'm not afraid."



Nadja's hard eyes stared into the Black Rose's wide ones for a moment before his mouth twitched. Nadja noticed the change in his demeanor a second before he stood up straight to tower over her, swinging a hand back in a billow of his cape. Nadja shut her eyes tightly with a flinch, just knowing that he was about to hit her. Her fear only intensified when she felt his hand catch her chin and pull her face slightly up and forward. She awaited the blow—

—and his lips touched hers.

Nadja's eyes flew open, and before she knew what she was doing, she had slapped him. She started as her hand met his cheek and recoiled in shock at her own actions, realizing that he would now strike her for sure. She looked up at him fearfully.

And she saw an unmasked Black Rose—she saw Francis.



"Francis?" Nadja squeaked. But that hadn't felt like Francis's kiss! Francis's kiss had been gentle; pleasant. This kiss...it had been brief, but there had been something in it that had seemed... Well, something had been different about it—but then again, she had been too busy being surprised, so that could have been the difference.



The Francis-clone straightened again, a rueful smile forming on his face. "No, I'm not Francis." Indeed, there was a certain sparkle—no, it was a glint, an evil glint, Nadja insisted to herself—that was distinctly un-Francis-like in those otherwise familiar blue eyes.



"Then who are you?" Nadja was horrified to find that her voice was a terrified whisper. That just would not do. She cleared her throat and tried again, this time pushing a world of outrage into her voice. "Who are you?"



The Black Rose grinned down at her, and a sparkle entered his eyes that made her heart skip a beat—something that she suppressed in less than a second with outrage at his apparent amusement in the face of her anger. Something about that sparkle in his eyes told her that he knew full well what was going through her head at that very moment, and the whole concept that he knew her that well—better than anyone in Troupe Dandelion or even Francis—infuriated her to no end. She had met him, what, twice before?

"How dare you presume to know me!" Nadja snapped. "We've only met twice and you-"

"Four times."

"-obviously seem to be under the impression that you could possibly- What?"

"This is the fourth occasion on which we have met, Nadja Applefield."

"And you know my name? How can you possibly know my name? And I don't remember meeting you four times! There was London, Paris, and now this. Have you been following me? You must be following me. Go away! I can't believe-"

"Applefield."

"-that you're- Yes, I know that's my name, thank you very- Wait, you were at Applefield? Liar; I don't remember you!"

"You don't? Shame. I wasn't aware that you were saved from evil men trying to steal your precious brooch so often that you can't even remember all the young men who've rushed to your rescue." The amused sparkle was still in his eyes, and Nadja was beginning to wish that Whoever-He-Was would just put it back on. Something about that mocking sparkle almost seemed...endearing, and she wasn't sure she could handle that. But then again, her brain seemed to have decided that it didn't particularly feel like functioning right then.

"What are you talking about? That only happened a few times. Wait, did you say at Applefield? But that only happened once. You didn't save me."

"Oh?" The sparkle vanished from his eyes into something more serious, and Nadja suddenly found herself able to tear her eyes away from his. Her eyes darted left and right, trying to find something to look at that wouldn't hypnotize her like his eyes. "And who did?"

"Who did what?" She finally decided to watch the water of the river. It was fascinating, really. It reflected the moon so wonderfully, and never stopped swaying.... Ah yes, this was more like it.

"Really, Nadja, do try to pay attention." A gloved hand caught her by the chin a second time, and her eyes automatically shot toward their owner. She didn't have the presence of mind to slap him away for fear of a repeat of what had happened earlier. In fact, she was feeling rather light-headed.

"No..." she protested weakly, scarcely aware of what she was protesting against.

"No what?" The Black Rose's voice was gentle.

"It couldn't have been you. It was Francis." Ah yes. They were talking about who had saved her at Applefield. Lucky for her that her mouth remembered when her brain didn't.

"Did he ever say so?"

"N- no, but..."

"But you would have preferred it to be him?" The mocking tone was back in his voice, and he released her. "Yes, of course you would. You know him as a person—as a friend, and as a lover I presume. You only know me as the thief that mocks you every time our paths cross. Why wouldn't you prefer him?"

"Well, you can't be much of a better person than the one that I know you as, can you? At least Francis never would have forced himself on me!"

"Really, let's not exaggerate now. It was just a kiss."

"Just? Just!" Nadja's voice had risen about an octave. "You- you make fun of me, you steal, you kiss me, you steal Francis's face-"

"Alright, you need to calm down now. All the other accusations I won't deny and we can discuss them over tea tomorrow, but once you start accusing me of stealing your precious boyfriend's face, things have gone a little too far for my taste."


"Why?" Nadja didn't think she'd ever heard her voice sound so...merciless. "Because you can't stand the truth? What, did you just do this to spook me? Take off that mask!"

His hands reached out, and Nadja flinched back but they caught her by the shoulders anyway. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew the truth—but she didn't want to hear it. It couldn't be true. This was the Black Rose, a thief without morals or conscience—he was evil. Pure evil. He didn't have normal human emotions, and he didn't save her because that had been Francis, even if Francis hadn't remembered the incident when she'd mentioned it, and she loved Francis, and nothing could change that-

"Nadja." Those eyes—oh, how she hated those captivating blue eyes that held a luster even when they were perfectly serious—were fixing her with a penetrating stare, and she stopped struggling for a moment. "This is my face. There was no stealing of any sort involved. And before you move on to the copying theory, I was born first, so if you must insist that there was any face-copying involved, you have my wholehearted permission to take it up with Francis."

That pretty much killed all hope that she had had left. Nadja halfheartedly reached up to feel the offending face, but knew that he was telling the truth even before her fingers met no seams that a mask would have left along the edges of his face.

It was merely spite that led her to scratch his cheek without warning. To his credit, the Black Rose didn't even flinch, though she saw a corner of his lips twitch in either amusement or annoyance. But all that scratching yielded were four red marks along his cheek, and one redder than the others as it began to bleed.

Nadja's legs finally decided that they'd had enough of supporting her for the day, and decided to give out just then. But the Black Rose, who seemed to be all-knowing, foresaw the event before it occurred, and a moment after she felt her legs give out she found herself embraced by a warm pair of arms that held her against a warmer body.

"Let me down," she murmured halfheartedly through her not-too-conscious mind, but the Black Rose, of course, did not comply.

"You're half a step away from fainting with shock," he said. For the first time, with the haze in her mind blocking all her betrayal and ire, she realized that he was actually quite gentle.

"What's your name?" Nadja asked sleepily. After she heard her own voice asking the question, some faraway, sane part of her mind noticed that, Oh yeah, I don't even know his name.

"Keith," replied the young man.

"Twins," Nadja whispered, a tear slipping out of the corner of her eye, and a second later, she was fast asleep. When she would awake a few hours later, she would be with the Troupe and the Black Rose nowhere to be seen. She would spend hours convincing herself that she had dreamed everything, determinedly forcing life to go on as if nothing had ever happened.