"Please?"

I hefted the crate of beer onto the counter and gave Rosa a look.  "No."

"Please please please please please?"

"No."

"Pretty please with a cherry on top of the hundred-foot-tall ice cream sundae that I will have my maid make for you by the end of this week?"

"An ice cream Sunday--? Still, no."

"Please, Filly, please! I have everything else in place, I only need you!"

"Just ask one of your maids!"

"They're already all part of the plan! Even the extra one I extorted out of the Duke!!"

"Well, sucks to be you, I have work that day."

"I said I'll cover the shift for you!"

"And I said you don't know how to poor beer properly!"

"I can learn."

I scoffed. "You've tried!"

There were three things Rosa was bad at. Acting, lying, and doing anything useful with her hands. She sucked at drawing, despite being Mother Lily's daughter. She for sure had bad handwriting, which I knew because Cook always used to complain about it. She couldn't sew a straight line, and heavens knew how her embroidery would be. And cooking? Chopping onions? Pouring beer so that it fizzed just right? Oh no, I wouldn't trust my littlest toe on that.

Rosa stomped her foot. "This is unfair," she announced, to nobody in particular. We were the only ones in the restaurant right now: since the whole staff were cleaning out the storage room, all the other staff plus Cook had just gone out to throw a bunch of stuff away at the local landfill. Ignoring how I was rolling my eyes at her, she continued huffily. "You said you'd help me."

"And you said it wouldn't be anything big!"

"This isn't anything big!"

I stopped organizing the crates just to give her another look. "Right, just like how meeting the Crown Prince of the Nation wouldn't be big to you."

"Um, meeting the Crown Prince really isn't that big of a deal, though."

"Mmhmm."

She hemmed and hawed for a while as I returned back to my beer before she groaned and slumped down on a stool near me. "Fine, so maybe it is a little. But hey, I promise it won't be dangerous!"

I snorted. "You were planning to go to a gambling ring with nothing but a fan and some insane trust in your womanly wiles and your acting skills. Do you think I would trust you on that?"

"Well--" Before she could make her probably completely illogical and forceful argument, the restaurant doors swung open slightly, and Rosa clammed up immediately.

I shifted my weight onto one foot as I glanced up. "Oh, hey Lindent!"

He nodded at me, then turned to Rosa (sulking, emitting something that I swore was black and murky into the air, and still slumped by the counter) with an inquiring look.

Sighing, I nudged her with my foot. "Ro, stop being dramatic and help me clean up."

"I don't even work here anymore," she mumbled, her voice all sullen.

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Is that the kind of attitude you take towards someone you're trying to convince?"

She didn't respond.

Dipping down to grab another crate of beer from the floor (we had a lot), I called up to her. "Consider this: you might find me more willing to help you if you helped me first. Thought about that?"

When I stood back up to hoist the crate on top of the other crate I'd placed on the counter, Rosa had perked right up, a hopeful spark in her eyes. Oh, now she was listening. I couldn't help but roll my eyes good-naturedly.

"Wouldn't hurt to try, would it?" I suggested dryly, dusting off my hands.

"Yes ma'am!" Rosa yelled, springing up immediately. She grabbed a rag as she rolled up her sleeves. Her golden eyes sparkled in determination. "Just you wait, I'm going to turn this entire place so clean you'll think you're in the royal throne room!"

She was off into the depths of the storage room in seconds, taking her sudden onset of sparkles with her.

I secretly stuck out my tongue at her direction. Ha! She could clean all she wanted-- I was still going say no. I'd only done that so she would stop spreading that negative-- thing-- she always oozed into the room whenever she was in a bad mood. Better the sparkles than that mucky atmosphere.

Turning back to Lindent, who'd just been standing by the doorway this entire time, I gave him a half-grimace, half-smile. "Sorry, Rosa just being Rosa."

He shrugged, as if to say that he understood, and then sort of gestured at the beer.

"Oh no, I'm just organizing stuff right now. You don't need to help, but thanks." I nodded towards a chair nearby. "Feel free to just sit and hang around, though. If you can help me move these back later, that would be nice."

Lindent nodded and headed to a nearby table. He swung his leg around the chair backwards, so that his head rested on the back of the chair as he watched me.

I was currently reorganizing these crates by date (I could read numbers, after all), since we got these delivered by the batch, all the while double-checking to make sure that each jug of beer was unopened and whole. I glanced at him in between sifting through the jugs of beer and spoke first. "So, what brings you here? It's rare to see you in here so early."

He straightened up, pride flashing through his face for a brief second before he replied. "Work."

"Of course it is," I scoffed, chuckling all the same. Then I stopped, tilting my head slightly to the right. "Wait, but if you're here for work, then why would you be here? Shouldn't you be off actually doing your work?"

I watched with amusement as he froze, eyes shifting around for a second. He sort of twitched, his shoulders hunched up ever so slightly, and then he mumbled something.

"What was that?"

He cleared his throat. "It's break time."

I burst out laughing at that, as his head ducked down and his shoulders hunched up ever so slightly. 

"Ahhh, that was a nice laugh," I moaned, wiping my forehead with the back of my wrist (since my hands were dirty-- some of these crates were dusty). "Sorry, Lindent. That's a good excuse," I said reassuringly, still chuckling.

Shrugging, Lindent slid off the chair and came over to my counter, hovering around the crates and peering at the jugs of beer curiously.

I regarded him silently for a moment before raising an eyebrow at him. "You can help me check if all the jugs are safe and sound, if you want."

He shrugged again, and we lapsed  into a comfortable silence, the dull rustle of the jars and the distant Rosa yells from the storage filling the air around us.

As I checked each crate for the date and inspected every jug methodically, my thoughts turned back to Rosa and her crazy ideas.

I sighed. You know, I'd been reflecting on my dread of dying for the few weeks since I'd recognized it inside of me. But the more I thought about it, I was sort of realizing how normal that was. I mean, who wouldn't be afraid of dying? We had it happen to us all the time-- both Rosa and I had lost a parent before, and we'd attended so many funerals of both friends' grandparents and even their siblings or parents that I wouldn't be able to count it.

Death was part of life. But that didn't mean I didn't want it to happen to me, and especially not in some gruesome and frankly terrifying way like being falsely accused of treason and being hanged in front of the entire nation and--

Another sigh built up in me and I breathed it out slowly. Yep, I'd been thinking about it a lot. Not obsessively, of course, since life was too busy for that, but in those small moments in between customers or before I succumbed to sleep at night, I couldn't stop thinking about all the ways Rosa's plans could go wrong. 

All the ways we could go wrong.

It was only after Lindent glanced up at me for the fourth time from across the counter that I realized I'd been sighing way too many times all along. I forced myself to smile at him lightly.

"Oh, sorry, I'm bringing the mood down, aren't I?"

He shook his head, but he didn't stop glancing at me in between jugs.

I shook my head in return, my forced smile turning smaller on my lips. "Sorry. It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

...which was apparently the wrong thing to say, because then Lindent just stopped going through the crates altogether, dropping his hands from above the jugs to his sides. When I couldn't stand his very loud silence and very heavy stare any longer and looked up, he was staring at me blankly, head tilted to one side.

And by blankly, I mean very, very blankly.

"...what?" I finally asked, baffled. Like, if he had looked worried, or disgruntled, or something, I could maybe understand what he wanted. but what did this mean? Why was he just, just staring at me like that? He was this close to boring holes into my head or something. Wait, was he even looking at me? Or was he looking through me?? I suppressed a sudden chill. "What is it?!"

We stared at each other, his eyes unblinking and mine confused) when a sudden light seemed to dawn on his face. (Please don't tell me how I knew. I don't know how I could tell myself-- his face pretty much remained the same-- but, I don't know, the air...? Or something like that changed around him, alright? It was the kind of thing anyone would be able to feel, but you would have needed to be there to know it.)

The very next second, Lindent began whipping his head around in a flurry of motion as I jerked back in surprise. A determination to... to... to do who-knows-what was now set into his mouth. 

I looked around with him, because that's what he seemed to be doing. "Are you, are you looking for something?" He didn't reply. Was he suddenly feeling thirsty? "Do you, uh, do you want some water?"

Just as suddenly as he had started moving, he stopped and locked eyes with me, giving me one emphatic nod to my question.

Giving him a shaky smile, I went into the kitchen, rinsed my hands, and poured water into a random cup from the closest kitchen rack. A hundred questions were running through my head, because literally, what in the world? Who does that?? Did he realize he was dying of thirst right this moment or something???

Well, he was dealing with someone who worked in customer service her entire life. Whatever the case was, and no matter how absolutely absurd this situation was, he was going to get his water at a speed previously unknown to mankind. Except maybe Rosa, since she used to always rave on and on about this great number that was apparently the fastest speed in the world. Speed of light or something? But anyways.

Before five seconds had even passed from the moment he'd nodded at me, I was back with a fresh cup of water. "I hope it's fine that it's lukewarm, our underground coolers are being--"

The moment I offered the cup over the counter, Lindent all but snatched it out of my hand and downed it in a flash. 

"--cleaned out," I finished, taking a step back. Um. O-kaaaay...? Maybe he really was dying of thirst? (Which?? Okay???) "Um, do you, uh, want a refill?"

He shook his head just as emphatically as he had given me his nod for water, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he offered the cup back to me, solemnity simmering in the brown of his eyes beneath the soft shade cast by his newsboy cap. 

I blinked at him rapidly, slowly taking the cup from him. "What...."

When he next blinked in the silence, the intensity disappeared from his eyes. The corners of his lips curved up into a tiny smile. He nodded at the cup in my hand and spoke.

"Cup of Secrecy."

---

A/N: For anyone who doesn't remember, please recall its brethren, the Pot of Secrecy, from chapter 73 and chapter 74. And was this an overly dramatic reveal for no good reason? Why, yes, yes it is, but I would argue this story wouldn't be the same without'em. :D

Anywho, I am not late!! It's currently less than 20 minutes away from midnight where I am, and I count Sunday as the last day of the week when it suits me, so it's still one update per week!!!! Ahaha and it was also finals week for me, so I definitely count this as a win. >:)

Also, baffled Filian is best Filian fightme