Like my other recent story, The Ineffable Things, this one was written around a year ago. Male!Uni, I found, wasn't really like female!Uni all that much in terms of being strong, but I adored him anyway.

Mirror

Uni has a special ability. It's quite similar to Byakuran's: the ability to transcend time and space to the lives of the same person named Uni or something else, as long it's a being that she was supposed to, is supposed to be – as long as it's her. It has nothing to do with actually going to those other worlds, but rather, sharing the memories. So in a way, Uni has experiences of lives she's never lived, has met people she's never seen, and loves people she's never known. It was very startling at first, but Aria had been alive long enough to help her through accepting it as a gift instead of a nightmare, so Uni can manage and still does.

Uni picks up the pieces of a life that's not hers and was never wanted. She's an illegitimate child. Born of lust and rape, a horrible combination, and not one generally accepted by the populace as successor. Nobody wants a bastard's blood, and nobody respects one. It's not pure enough – it's not good enough – it'll never good enough. She knows her mother didn't want her when she was in the womb, but she also knows that the moment Aria saw her, Aria loved her more than anything else in the world. So it is with this knowledge that she knows how easy it is for humans to hate before knowing and then go on to love so much it makes no sense. She hides in her heart, while her ears turn red and her eyes squeeze shut, before she opens them again with a smile.

When Aria passed away, Uni was at a loss. Her mother had been her link to the world. Her mother had been smiles and warm hugs, kisses to the forehead, and someone Uni could always talk to. There was no need to converse – a hug was just as sufficient for expressing emotional balance. It was hard for her to make herself understand – realize – that her mother wasn't coming back. It hadn't come to slap her in the face until after Uncle Reborn took her aside and told her in clear tones that she was going to go to the Giglio Nero and take over. He didn't sugar coat it, but his voice had been surprisingly gentle, hinged with worry and other things.

She thinks maybe she'd been in shock. Uni doesn't know if it was how she probably kept on thinking this was like a sleepover, if it was how she probably kept on thinking she'd go home when it was over. But now that it's over, her mother is dead, and she's Donna of a family she barely even knows, Uni is left on her own. There are no more Arcobaleno to help raise her. They have taught her, in her six short years of a life, how to live. They have taught her all they could, and they have loved her when she needed to be loved. Still, she doesn't really-really realize the fact that everything she does is now up to her until she sees her mother's body in the bed, and the tears just start coming and don't stop.

She would've pretended that her mother was still asleep. But Gamma had stormed in, and Uni recognized him from Aria's stories. Gamma, who yelled only because he felt strongly about something, Gamma, who was Aria's support and pillar, Gamma, who Aria loved so, so much – Gamma, who Uni soon learned to love. Gamma was too nice, far too nice to follow through with his stereotype. It was hard not to, and a little voice in Uni thought it was nice that mother was dead.

She hated it. She hated herself. Mortified – she'd betrayed her own mother.

But despite all this, it was through this train of thought that she'd decided to run back into her room and never come out. She couldn't go into her mother's room anymore – she'd defile it. Uni had been petrified, shaking and trembling, and had begun to cry.

Then, somewhere in the distance, a small boy's voice whispered, "Don't cry."

She looks up, but it's not like she's actually heard it. Perhaps in memory – but Uni's never encountered a small boy. Arcobaleno don't count, because their voices, while reflective of their physical ages, also reflect their mental ages. This is the voice a small little boy, equally petrified, and Uni wonders if all the lessons she's been taught about men hiding emotions from the surface may not be exactly true.

He sounds like he's going to cry, or that he's already crying. She can't really understand why she can tell – she can just feel it, just like how she's crying herself, and how she's rubbing her cheeks raw and her eyes red because she just wants to stop crying. The last time she'd cried had been a long time ago, and Uni can't remember that, even now, so it both hurts and scares her.

"Hello?" she calls out, hesitantly, voice small.

In the enclosed room, she can only hear her own voice. There is no echo. She glances around, but sees nothing and no one. A crawl upon the bed bids her to bury her face into the pillow, and pull the blankets close around her. Once under, blankets over her head, she turns on her side, curling up into a small ball.

She can feel it. The trepidation that lingers around the corners of her heart makes her uneasy, but it is the fact that she can feel her heart pounding in her fingers that she worries about. It is not pounding because she is scared, but it is pounding because an unnatural calmness flows through her, like a river through a valley, guided by the natural landscape.

"Are you going to disappear?" she wonders softly. What she breathes in comes out, only to be breathed in again in this small place between the blankets and the mattress. It can't be good for her, but it quickly warms her up, and she feels slightly drowsy. She knows the other boy is sleeping in his bed the same way because he finds comfort in small places, and she knows his name is Uni just as she knows how hers is Uni as well.

His emotions come welling through. If she had been born a boy, maybe this would've been what she felt. Insecurity, fear, shame – he is not good at hiding his emotions, she learns, and his smiles are watery and always, always so sad. He doesn't know what he is and was supposed to be, doesn't know what he is and was supposed to do. He'd never been taught that boys were supposed to be stronger than girls. He'd never been told to hide his emotions and to hold up a strong face. His Mamma, he says, calling Aria by simply the informal Mamma and not Mother like Uni does, said he didn't need to.

He is eight and she is six. Uni cannot help but wonder why despite the difference of two years, she is the older while he is the younger, and spends the time talking to him, dealing with his insecurities and fears. He needs someone to talk to – so overly dependent; she wonders how he managed through Aria's death. She doesn't ask because she doesn't need to. Despite the fact that he's not very extroverted, he knows a lot more than she does, such as Genkishi, who Uni has never thought as warm and gentle, and Gamma, who does not like him, and thus he does not like Gamma. The way he sees things are blunt and do make sense, unblemished with an adult's complicated way of thinking. In him, there is no hidden agenda, and where Uni reads hearts, he reads emotions. Everything is open to him.

She's jealous of him. But only a little because she should know better.

end.