AN: So I just had to write something about the Arcobaleno, but jeez... does my writing have a long way to go.
Disclaimer: Don't own.


The Giglio Nero Family was old, fortunate and their leaders, kind. They're family wasn't large but they weren't small either. They had territories but not enough to be antagonised and that was how they wanted to keep it. Simmering under the shadows they kept each other safe.

By the time Luce could walk and talk she knew almost everybody in her family. She knew who would keep them safe, who would bring danger even if they didn't mean to, she knew who would die for her and more importantly who would live for her.

It wasn't until she was twelve did she realise that she also knew who would die because of her.

It was a short trip, routine really. Although that was probably why they were killed; routine, it made them predictable.

The shot rang out as somebody walking past Luce collapsed, screaming in shocking pain. It took Luce a second to realise that it was truly was aimed at her. Martin, Marc and Kate all went into action before Luce even realised she was in danger. Maybe they just reacted on instincts alone; after all, the echoing sound from a barrel was never good in their experience. Especially not now.

Not so soon after the Korean War, not during the Vietnam War and with the Cold War. Weapons scattered and plentiful, the black market might as well have been legal (few missing explosive and artillery didn't stop the shooting on either side; there was always more pressing concerns),

Death wasn't pretty and it felt just as ugly. It made Luce feel sick to her stomach. She never asked them to save her but they saved her with their dying breath. Maybe it was just a bit selfish of her to think it wasn't fair that she had to feel this way. That she had to live with this tragedy while they –she pray- rest in peace, content at their last actions. They had no right to decide that her life was more important than theirs.

Mother called this feeling 'survivor's guilt'.

She had no doubt in her mind that without her small legs and weak physic, the three grown-ups would have easily escaped into the crowd. A ten minute run made twenty because she ran twice as slow and had to stop one to many times to catch her breath, heaving on the side walk or alley way (they never stopped somewhere to open or with only one exit).

Marc died shielding her, Kate stayed to throw them off trail and Martin took on the thugs that caught up. In the end she was running her own pace down the lane, this time never stopping once or looking back. Every gunshot made her run faster and every scream made her flinch because the next one could be her own.

The worst part wasn't trying to convince herself that their blood wasn't on her hands because it was, despite the fact she wasn't the one that pulled the trigger, the one swing a bat or one that stabbed an already bloody and violated stomach. She has made peace with this knowledge.

The worst part, the thing that haunted is the question of who did they die for? A girl, a child, an innocent? What had she done to deserve their loyalty? (Or was that their loyalty lay ironed to her mother and they protected the child of their Don.)

Luce knew that these were simply the thought of a guilt ridden child, still young and unaccustomed to the way of life she was born into.

Months later she asked her mother, "Why did they die for me?"

"Why do you assume they died for you?" Her mother asked in return. Luce gave her a look and changed her question.

"What makes my life more important than them?"

"Nothing," her mother smiled. This time Luce stayed silent, but frustration built up and her teeth clenched. Her mother always had the answer for everything, the problem was she never said enough and at the same time said everything. But this time she went on, "Sweetheart, never ponder too much or assume anything about the dead because we are not them. Our feelings, emotions, reasoning and thoughts will never be anyone else's but our own. And when you die, you take all those with you. What makes you important is because they thought you so.

I cannot say what you might think or cope with people dying for you but this is what I believe in..." Mother pauses and looks to the sky, "I want to protect them with my life and they want to do the very same."

The sky was a brilliant blue, and clear, a vast sheet of blue that overwhelmingly and endlessly continued, only stopping at the heavens.

Luce didn't think she saw the same sky as her mother.

Yet with those knowing eyes, the elder woman unquestionably saw hers.