#maybe they have one final face-to-face conversation and then they write a letter or smth that covers the 'why' part

[gnawednoble]

briefly saw a world in which the way lucanis leaves the crows was that vitale - who is not overly invested in staying or leaving - winds up with a little house dellamorte fledgling (like 4-6 years old) following them around everywhere around a year post-canon. they go "aww i used to do that with viago" and let the kid do what they want, which paints a target on the kid's back but like. do you want to piss off the god-killer that hangs around your house and your boss, who is also a god-killer? so there's a few months where no one does anything to the kid. during this time, vitale and the kid actually start bonding, which leads to vitale taking the kid with them while they bother lucanis, to the lighthouse to meet the others, and also to take care of business with their actual house.

vitale doesn't teach any of the fledglings in house de riva so they don't immediately think of this. the second lucanis figures out that vitale has psuedo-adopted this kid, therefore making the kid his as well, the kid has a place in the main family of the house as far as he's concerned. and that means the kid is In Danger. so he goes, 'alright. we have to train this kid to be able to handle that, like my grandmother trained illario and i.' he's unable to see vitale being able to handle doing that, so he would have to do it himself, and he's realizing that he can't do it either.

well. catarina is still alive, so that's an option. but he's suddenly very anxious and also angry (which is only partly spite) at the idea of any of that happening to his kid. so, no, catarina doing it is not an option. but there's not a lot of other ways to keep the kid safe from opportunists. except...

the way he brings this up to vitale is not graceful, nor is it subtle. but once it is pointed out to them that the kid is not safe (and, perhaps, that they've adopted the kid), they're ready to go. i think they join up with bellara down in arlathan forest first, bc that's the most isolated area, but they might just move into the lighthouse itself for awhile.