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The first time he saw one, he assumed it had been used for cooking. There was nothing wrong with a wine demiglaze or a white sauce. It was just one bottle, no harm done.

That was week ago.

Elzo was by no means the most astute of men, but he was not ignorant of what was going on around him. The wine bottle from the one night hadn't been the last one, and he didn't mention how she'd taken more than her usual single glass at dinner. He picked up on the small cues that he remembered from his childhood. The shot glass set by the sink behind other glasses as if to hide it. The lingering smell of hard liquor on stemware. The stray empty bottle of something made not for flavor, but for the sole purpose of intoxication.
Maria's old habits. Little things he saw as a child, in reflection as an adult which signaled truths not wished to be exposed. But it was Jada's choice. He wouldn't pry. At least that had been his plan until he caught the faint scent of whiskey on her when he'd gone over to pick up the twins that morning.

Something has happened and the idea Jada might be seeking alcohol wasn't bad, but the idea she would be drinking in a manner that would perhaps influence the twins? His name might be on papers as their father, but he was also their brother. Daytime drinking was not great, but with the twin around, with it perhaps impairing her down the line? No- he'd be a poor friend, brother, and stand in father if he didn't at least find what was going on. Twins sent with Marlo to go to the movies, Elzo arrived back on the estate, debating how to approach the issue.

A deep breath, he figured he could only do it in the way he knew how.

"Jada!" He yelled, knocking loudly on the door, "Open up- we've got to talk."
His way- loud and direct.

Glaring at the help, if only because he was upset and needed an outlet he hissed his thanks before storming his way up the stairs. Very mindful to make each step loud as possible. Imposing, dramatic Elzo. Angry, upset, exceptionally worried and disappointed Elzo. Jada was stubborn and would try to say things were fine, that no doubt, it was him overreacting but no. Her puppy dog eyes might work on Marlo, but not on him. Not this time. He was going to get Jada talking about her problems damn it because...

She'd been driven to drinking. Drinking while taking care of the twins. The ones she'd spent years fighting Giovanni over. Jada wouldn't risk the twins. She wouldn't do anything to risk giving the man ammunittion. Elzo on paper work was a stop gap. Until Giovanni was dead-

Elzo stopped at the door "Jada," he began, "You best be decent." It was all the warning he gave before storming in, a cold fury in his eyes.

"We need to talk. Now."

She would ask about the kids right off. Of course she would.
"I- No. They're with Marlo. Off to see Beauty and the Beast. This is our conversation Jada. About them. About you and-" He motioned to the bottle. She wasn't trying to hide it right now. It might make things easier.

"We can talk about how you think you're failing at being a mother. We can talk about the fact that I'll apparently need to go talk to Leto and Remarque. Hell Jada, we can talk about the fact that you're being reckless like you before you ******** left after nearly dying." His nostrils flared as he exhaled. He was angry and it was obvious but his voice hadn't raised. He shut the door behind them and locked it. No matter what happened, he wasn't going to let her run away not from this conversation.

Walking over he grabbed the bottle and without hesitation, turned it upside down into the trash bin.

"You know what happened with Maria." A drink on occasion was fine but this?
"This was the same s**t she started doing back when we went to live with Giovanni. I may have been a stupid little s**t of a seven year old, but it's not hard to miss the smell of alcohol in the early morning as n adult."

"Good." Elzo said, grabbing a chair and sitting opposite from her. Legs cross, back straight. There was a firmness in his posture. A cold, impassive resolve in his face that Jada would have seen countless times on the expressions of two other men. Rich blue eyes bore into her, analyzing, calculating. Xanis blood ran thick in Elzo's veins after all.

"I will be speaking to Leto, regardless. Relative or not, I'm not going to risk senshi, any senshi, ******** up the fragile alliance we have, her's or mine." It was pointed, if abstract. He didn't know the situation, but he could only think the worst. Scylla had been, after all, one of the few of the Blood Moon and not been taken to chaos's side. But his threat, vague and veiled as it had been was also starkly clear. Scylla, as a senshi, would be held accountable for her actions if Castor found them a threat.

"But that's not why I'm sitting here, ready to storm down to your wine cellar and set it down the sinks. That's not why when I smelled alcohol on your breath as I picked up my ******** siblings I wanted to grab you and hit you. I don't like violence against women Jada. But for a second, I wanted to. Can you take a guess as to why?" His arms were crossed, and his voice remained as cold and even as ever.

"Because I'd have to be an idiot to think for even a second that Aidan and Giulia haven't already picked up on it. That it hasn't already started to hurt them. That your selfish, stupid and destructive actions aren't already effecting them."
Elzo wanted to tell her how Maria started like this. Hiding it. Drinking more than normal. Then in the day. Smelling like alcohol hidden behind perfumes. Glossy eyes and an absentee mind. Saying how she was fine, how things were just difficult. That he should run off, she'd be fine.

"No friends." Elzo started, staring at Jada, trying to bite back his anger. His fear. Fear clawed at his guy and wrapped around his heart. He'd sworn. He'd sworn he'd protect them. They wouldn't grow up like him and Marlo. They'd have a family. Unconventional, but loving. Warm. Supportive. He'd protect them.

And seeing Jada not even 2 months out drinking more and more heavily was dredging up nearly 20 year old memories he wanted to keep buried.
"No friends, no close family minus the twins, no lovers, no trusted allies outside of a handful. Yes, you are in a perfectly healthy place and the increase in your drinking and intoxication is clearly of no concern. Yes, I can tell, a little n** before you send Aidan and Giulia off first thing in the morning is a totally healthy and normal thing for a young woman to do." He shifted, popping his back.

"I was fine with it. I didn't think it could possibly be as bad as I thought. I was being paranoid. I was just projecting. But the second I smelled it on you as I picked them up? Jada, for ******** sake, I grew up with a woman who hid it so often I learned how its hidden. I planned to kept my temper. To just ask, but as I walked up you know what I remembered? I remembered my mother and how she stopped caring. How when it started she'd send us off. She'd do it when we were gone so we'd just see the aftermath. You- You-" He was staring at her, trying to figure her out like she was a puzzle.

"You didn't ask me to be their father so you could do this. You didn't tell me they were my siblings until Giovanni stepped up his game and was breaching the final defenses. And yes, I know he's still attacking. I get the missives and voicemails. Maria, for all her failings, still has some basic sense of human decency for her sons. Which include telling me that Giovanni is not giving up on them." Cold blue eyes, a firm stare and a fury in his bones.

"He hasn't given up on you." It was not a question. A statement. But as to how far? "What is he doing Jada? What in god's name is making you drink so much that Giulia mentioned how sad you are?" The anger in his voice faded slightly, but the tone was only mildly now tinged with concern. "What's changed?"

"Everything involving senshi is my personal business Jada. Or have you forgotten the purpose I serve?" He glared at her, daring her to challenge him. He was royal, who existed to fight chaos and restore and maintain balance. There was no getting around that.

"Now stop spewing pretty little bullshit lies at me Jada. I'm not in the mood for them, and if I have start documenting your lack of concern for your well being along that of my siblings?" He was not above it. He looked her directly in her eyes, his blue stone cold and filled with anger and distinct pain.

"I don't want to. I don't want to hold it over you like a threat, but if that will shake you hard enough to realize how serious I take your growing and clearly non-recovering alcoholism then I will. I won't put Giulia and Aidan through what me and Marlo suffered. I would have rather Maria been dead that drunk and dismissing of us. It would have been kinder, for everyone, but we both know the kindness my father allows don't we?" He spat the words, voice laced with loathing and hate.

"I can't stop you from fighting Jada. I don't mind being the fail safe. But you're wrong. This will kill you Jada. Slowly. It will eat away at you, make you weak and let people take advantage of you. Its a crutch and a curse. This will kill you slower, and more painful than any chaos corruption ever could. I'm well acquainted in just how it will kill you Jada. Or have you failed to get the memo?"
The pain in his gaze was amplified.

"Giovanni isn't just acting because my name is on the papers Jada, Maria is on her deathbed again, and this time no number of liver transplants are going to save her." The only thing that kept him bound to Italy, from seeking out her and the twins was soon no longer to exist.
He hissed. "I would have been fine if it were just little nips. I would be fine if it was just an extra glass. But smelling it first thing in the morning on your breath and coming up to find you near shitfaced is anything but fine."

He stood again.

"Now let me ask you again- What has changed?"

Fire and an iron will-Jada was the kind of woman Elzo easily saw the appeal of from a number of perspectives. As a senshi, she was stalwart in her duty, as a friend, loyal and unwilling to risk others even at her own expense.
Yet her resolve was not helping her today, not with Elzo.

"No one has killed him because of the legal mess he'd make." There was an admittance there in his posture, his voice. He'd do it himself it it would have solved more issues than create ones.

"But I am afraid you're wrong. Maria has in his view, served her purpose. She's worn, dying, and stopped fighting him after Marlo turned 18. There are no more games to play with her. Not even as a source of picking and me and Marlo's' pride.The woman has had two transplants already. Even if he wanted to, she'd likely not survive the third." He shifted, a brief flicker of sadness in his face as he told Jada what was happening in his life- what would happen with a forced disassociation. She was, despite all his regrets and anguish, his mother.

"Let me see though, on a scale of what is more important, seeing Beauty and the Beast, or making sure my friend and quasi sister doesn't decide to become oh wait I'm sorry, a returning alcoholic?" Elzo snorted.
"Right now Jada, you are my priority. Because the idea I'm going to have another woman in my life kill herself while I do nothing to stop it is not going to happen." He walked over to her, maintaining a comfortable distance until he chose to sit on the desk.

"I love you Jada. You're more than a friend to me, you're someone I admire. Hell, you're family now and I want to stop thinking that the next I see you, it will be to ID you. That I'm not going to have to explain to the twins why you've gone." Not from senshi power- but from her own demons.

Her question about his daughter shook him, his entire body freezing for a solid second before he lowered and adverted his gaze.
"I wish it were just dreams." He let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding before he explained.
"Yes. I dream about her. Her smile, her silver hair. The way she giggled when I let her play with my wings one night- But I also dream of what I did to her in the past. What I almost did to her again. Sometimes, at home, they're not just dreams."

He looked at her, trying to figure out why she'd ask about his daughter.
"What is keeping you from sleeping? Dreams?"

There was a visibly flash of pain as the name of his ex-wife was mentioned. Then it was covered by the mask that he and all other men of his family had perfected.
"A further testament to my noble failings." Impassive. Lina was gone now, far from his reach and his pain was only that. Pain. She'd chosen her path in many ways, and while he'd never forgive himself for his actions, it no longer could be a poor justification on why he could never harm her should it come to a head.
Lina had died long ago, and her prince still mourned.

Somehow, it did not surprise him that his beloved had been the cause of Jada's loss of family. She'd been vindictive, even before and after her purification.

Still, he watched her and listed for her answer. She was in pain from something, and the answer of memories rose a deep welling concern in him. She'd been an heiress, but by no means had had a proper or glamorous life. The scars she carried spoke of that well enough.

"Memories of what Jada?" He felt a dark coil in his gut. She'd taken risks and he knew damn well what could happen to women. "There's more than just memories and dreams driving you to this. You're not the same. Something-" He didn't know the right word it.
"It is not a change in time or age, it's in your eyes, in you. While you haven't spoken with Marlo, even he's told me that you're different. He told me a light is gone in your eyes." Elzo was frowning now, arms crossing in thought.
"I cannot help but notice that he's right."

Elzo reached out, closing the little space between them and grabbed Jada's chin roughly. He wasn't letting her run away from this. Whatever haunted her, whatever memory had dug itself into her was causing a pain he couldn't heal. A pain he didn't know how to properly help with. But watching her drink?
He was tired of watching slow deaths of souls.

"Really, because Marlo is pretty sure that whatever is hurting you is his fault. I sure as hell don't think that's the case, but you both acting like you can't even talk is pathetic." He hissed. Letting her face go, not wanting to look in her eyes. To see the woman he called his friend so... broken.

"You want a vice?" He breathed through his teeth, another sharp his as he turned to face away from her. Nothing was safe, that was the nature of a vice.
"Come with me to training. As is, I don't think I could trust you not to go out with a death wish, and drugs are right out."
He looked at her for a moment.

"You don't want a vice Jada, you want an escape. The problem is finding one that won't hurt you or the twins."