Names used: Romano/Naples (Lovino Giovanni Napoletani, Lovi), Sicily (Bibiana Rosalia Di Mauro, Lia)
Author's note: I don't really ship Romano with anyone, the same way I don't really ship America with anyone, and I think that's partly because I feel like they're both a part of me. But while I was sick I took to reading all the southern Italian history, especially as it relates to the two Sicilies, Sicily and Naples (my family is from both), and once more bemoaned the fact that we've no Sicily and that Romano isn't actually Rome, which was a papal state, but more than likely Naples.
I hope you enjoy then this ode to Romano (Naples) and Sicily and thanks to tumblr/wifeofbath for letting me bounce these ideas off her.
Due Sicilie
I.
He remembers waking in her bed; what came before that moment Lovino has no memory of. He only remembers waking her bed, falling off it to the floor, and wandering outside to where she sits. And when she turns her head, long, dark hair flying over her shoulder as sweet, darker eyes take him in– she is the first person he ever sees, walking to her as if mesmerized, drawn to her as if they were two parts of a whole. Her arms reach out for him, tan skin like his, and she lifts him with ease to sit him in her lap, arms around him, rocking him and singing him a soft lullaby.
Lovino falls asleep in her arms again after that, content with the world.
II.
They live out in a little country house, visiting neighbors around them. She seems to grow old slower than the others and yet she's still older than him, always holding his hand as they stroll happily. She tells him he has brothers, elsewhere, and that she is his caretaker; he starts to think of her as his sister.
Now Lovino speaks her language, listens to her stories of a great empire that once was. She explains to him as they look out over the sea that they are different from the rest, that she is from an island that he's never been to. She calls herself Sicily, calls him Naples, but he doesn't like it so she kisses his nose and calls him Lovino Giovanni, her little Lovi. And when he gets afraid at night, or loses her, he calls out for Lia! Lia! Lia! The men that occasionally visit call her Bibiana Rosalia but Lovino can't pronounce it as nicely as they do and the men always seem to upset her.
Today Lovino begs Lia for a coin, sneaking off to buy a small flower with a petal missing. "For me?" Lia laughs, crouching down so he can put the flower in her hair.
"I love you Lia," Lovino whispers and that wins a kiss to his cheek, the young woman breathing in his ear,
"I love you too, Lovi. Come on, let's go home."
III.
Lia is sad as she feeds Lovino breakfast this morning, men clearly standing outside. "What's going on?" the little boy asks, annoyed at the men who were mean to Lia and raised their voices and hands to her.
A thin hand smooths down hair around his face. "We are going on a trip, Lovi, only–"
"Only what?"
She smiles. "We are going on two different trips. Be good while I am gone my love?"
Suddenly not hungry Lovino hops down from his chair to hug Lia's middle, nodding and trying his best not to be upset or cry. "For how long?"
"Not too long, Lovi; not too long."
IV.
Lovino has to put up with a lot of different people for a long time, pissed at all of them. He's growing now, taller though still small, older though still a child. Someone makes the mistake of giving him a small sword as a joke and when he nearly stabs the man, screaming that he wants his sister back, they take the sword from him and send him to Rome. To get the devil out of him, they joke. Lovino curses them all.
By the time he's settled in Rome though war has broken out and he must return to Naples, banned from fighting and finally understanding why Lia had picked a country house far from politics and cities to raise him in. Lovino hates all the others he's come to learn about, Francis de Bonnefoy and Antonio to the west who one day arrives to claim his prize.
"Where's my sister?" is the first thing Lovino says to the Spaniard who shakes his head and laughs.
"Still speaking her language I see then? Don't worry, you'll learn Spanish soon enough too."
V.
Antonio purposely keeps them apart and Lovino learns to hate him for it. He hates the way Antonio laughs when he speaks of pretty Bibiana Rosalia who refuses to be his mistress, he hates the way the man compares her to other women who could never compare, but most of all he hates the way others hate it too but never say anything. Maybe they hate it because they can see the anger bubbling up in Lovino's blood; maybe they hate it because they can sense the ever-present wars approaching once more.
And it's during one of those wars that Lovino makes a run for it because he'd heard Roderich telling Antonio about where Bibiana Rosalia was being kept. While the Italian was pretty sure Roderich had done it on purpose, was aware of the young man now fourteen hiding at the door, he doesn't give the Austrian any credit. Instead he hates Roderich as much as he hates Antonio.
The journey itself takes several weeks, passing through territories and countries, getting forged documents. So close to the Italian states a woman finds him, Camille the younger sister of Francis, and she greatly assists in securing Lovino a trip on a vessel across the sea. He stops in Sardinia before arriving for the first time in life on the island called Sicily.
Where she should be, in the castle in the capital, she isn't; men, shocked to see someone claiming to be Lovino Napoletani, tell him Lia is living in a smaller town. So he prepares for another trip, two days of riding, until he comes to the tiny farm at the edge of the town and a woman in a dirty green dress sleeping under a tree. Lovino lays down under Lia's arm, staring at her face like he could never see it enough: the straight nose with its bump, how burnt her skin has become from working under the Sicilian sun, the line of her jaw that hasn't changed a bit.
"Lovi?" she mumbles, barely opening her eyes. "Oh Lovi."
Into her bosom, held tightly, Lovino cries for the first time in centuries.
VI.
Once more they ignore the world: the Spanish, the French, the Revolutions, none of it matters. Men come to the house but now they're kinder to Lia, gentler, more respectful; whether that's because they love her more or because they're afraid of being killed by Lovino, he doesn't know and, frankly, doesn't care.
He works harder than he's ever worked in his life, actually trying and finding he enjoys it when he's side-by-side with Lia. Lovino couldn't say who ruled Sicily or Naples but he could tell you how best to plant the crops, who made the best sauce in town, and which boys sang the most beautifully on Sundays during mass.
On their way home from mass one day it happens, Lia taking his hand, and Lovino doesn't know what to do at that beyond blush. "You've grown," the woman he for so long thought of as his sister observes. No, maybe sister wasn't the right name for her, not when now Lovino was more aware of who his younger brothers were. Lia had raised him until the wars but now the Neapolitan knew it was because she had been just as alone and frightened as he had been. "You're nothing like the little boy I found in Naples."
"You found me in Naples?" Lovino demands, having never thought about what his life had been like before waking in Lia's bed in the countryside.
"Oh yes, an unclaimed little orphan boy." Lia smiles for him. "The priest didn't know your name, had taken to calling you Giovanni though you had refused to allow him to baptize you. But I knew, right away, that you were like me. When the priest brought me to you, you seemed to calm down and accept whatever I told you, as if you knew we were alike as well."
"I don't remember," Lovino sighs. "I don't remember any of that." How could he not remember? He'd always reasoned that maybe he hadn't been old enough before Lia found him, that maybe that's why he couldn't remember anything before that farmhouse. "How can I not remember?"
Lia shifts to hold his arm now, the blush on Lovino's face burning more heavily. "Maybe because you were alone before that," the Sicilian reasons. "Maybe because until I took you home, you had nothing. I am so very, very grateful to have been the one to find you my love," and they pause so that she could look at him with her large, dark brown eyes. "You may no longer be the child I watched over but you are still the man that boy was always destined to be."
Contrary to her words though, Lovino doesn't feel like a man; he feels sixteen and awkward as hell. He feels scrawny compared to the big men and like an impostor most days. His voice still cracks sometimes, when he tries to flirt with the girls in the village. His anger he felt in Spain bursts forth when someone tries to tell him what to do, letting out every nasty word he knows. Lovino feels very much like he's still a boy.
But Lia is no girl, not like the thirteen-year-old he first met. She's instead a twenty-year-old beauty with dark hair and overworked hands and skilled in things like dance and art and piano and drawing, yet willingly living the life of a farmhand. Lovino is starting to understand why Antonio was so obsessed with making her his mistress, why Francis and even Roderich would become alert at the sound of her name: Bibiana Rosalia Di Mauro, the Kingdom of Sicily, was something else entirely.
A hand brushes back the hair on his face. "Do you still love me, my little Lovino?" Lia teases.
"I– I– I– fuck!" and he storms off much to the amusement of his Sicilian companion.
VII.
They don't share a bed like they did as children anymore, Lovino instead going to Lia's door to wish her goodnight. She cracks the door ajar slightly to peak through, clearly holding something to her chest to cover her body as she wishes him pleasant dreams with a large smile.
All night he can't get the image of her out of his mind, the curves of her body, the nape of her neck, the way her breasts heave when she sits up under the hot sun to wipe the sweat from her brow. Lia is still twenty; now Lovino is eighteen. The last thought he has before falling asleep is wondering if she's ever had a man or if, like him, she's been sheltered and powerless for so long that she's untouched by another.
VIII.
It's hard to say who's more shocked at the news, both Italian immortals staring at the official before them.
"Married‽" they demand once more in unison.
"That is the decision of the king, yes," the official says lamely. "I shall leave you two to discuss this and return in the morning." The man excuses himself quickly as if aware of the storm brewing and knowing better than to let himself get caught in its violence.
"Oh my fucking God," and Lovino is pretty sure it's both the first time he's heard Lia use foul language and the first time he's heard her take the Lord's name in vain.
"Yeah," he agrees because that more or less sums it all up neatly.
For a long time they both stare at the floor. Then they finally realize they have to stare at each other if they want to get to the awkward conversation.
Now both immortals are twenty though they haven't spoken of the fact that Lia has stopped aging. Instead upon looking up Lovino feels his face flush, watching Lia swallow something that seems to cause her pain as her hands fidget in her lap.
"Shouldn't be this surprised really," she squeaks out in a high-pitched voice. "It's just…."
"Yeah," Lovino agrees. "Yeah."
IX.
He hovers at the edge of the bed, unwilling to admit that he had no idea what he was doing but also unwilling to be the first one to say anything.
Lia, for her part, looks equally uncomfortable under the sheets. At least she's talking. "They'll expect us to consummate the union," she explains slowly, her nose bunched up in disgust at her own words. "They'll check me, in the morning, to make sure."
Lovino can only nod, staring at where the Sicilian's toes are pointing up beneath the sheets.
"If–" He looks up at her stutter, Lia's eyes sad like they had been the day they were separated all those centuries ago. "If you don't want to, Lovi, I can send for another."
"You have a…" Lovino begins lamely, not sure where he was going with his thought.
"No," and his green eyes snap up to meet her brown ones. "No, I've never, but he's my friend and someone… needs to…." Lia's words trail off but Lovino's mind fills in the blank: violate her, take from her what wasn't theirs, force her into a marriage she didn't want and then force her into submission to a man as if she was something to be claimed. As if either of them were just places to be claimed and not people, damn it, honest-to-God people who deserved better than all these other fuckers. All they had ever wanted was to be left alone.
"I'm sorry," Lovino says weakly though he doesn't know what exactly he's apologizing for.
"So am I," Lia agrees.
X.
Now they share a bed, holding each other through the night, for fear that they will be separated if they don't. War rages all through their kingdom, Italians fighting Italians, and Lovino almost misses his youth. Lia in his arms shakes from what must be battles and sieges in Sicily, so connected to the land she feels each fight more strongly than Lovino ever has.
But in the morning she is calm, the Sicilian's dark hair strewn across the pillow. Lovino sits and watches her, pushing hair from her mouth. Lia looks almost peaceful like this in a comical sort of way, her mouth open and drooling, hand unconsciously laying atop her breast; taking her in all the anger Lovino feels for the wrongs committed against him during his life melt away.
The Neapolitan is sure the Italian states will be unified and though it pains him to accept that, so long as Lia stays with him he's sure he could learn to live with a single, solitary Italy.
He lays beside Lia on the bed once more, taking her hand with her wedding ring, and whispers, "I will love you until the day I die, Bibiana Rosalia." She breathes out softly in response as he kisses her cheek.
XI.
Feliciano is the one the officials keep bringing places and that's, as far as Lovino is concerned, just about right. Those northerners wanted to be a country so fucking badly for all those years, let them deal with his incompetent brother.
As for Lovino, who as of late the government has taken to referring to as Roman instead of Neapolitan, he was content to be given a new, nicer house in the countryside. The pope had annulled his marriage with Lia years early, the marriage that they had never actually consummated, yet he still lives with Lia who continues to go by Signora Napoletani though now Lovino, like Feliciano, is a Vargas. If anything the giant contradiction their life has become keeps Lia's spirits up.
She's out in the garden, Lovino quietly coming down the stairs to watch her admire the fruit on a tree. "Lovi?" Lia asks without turning, holding out a hand and trusting that he will take it as he always has. "Lovi, I want you to promise me something."
"Of course Lia." He wraps his arms around her waist. "Anything for you."
"Tell them I died," and she smiles at the words, eyes out over the sea in the distance. "Tell them I died in the unification."
Lovino can't help but stare. "Why?"
Big brown look at him as if the answer was obvious. "I want to live in peace now, Lovino. I want to be left alone. Please, as your once-wife, if you ever loved me, grant me my request."
Beyond the obvious fact that it would constantly remind Lovino of his life-long nightmares about Lia disappearing and dying on him, telling others the Sicilian was dead would mean less time spent with her. It would mean having to work harder to visit her without blowing the lie. It would mean sad looks from the others but also their urging to move on, to find someone new, though Lovino had no desire to do that. He wanted Lia and only Lia.
"Lovi?"
"Give me a kiss," Lovino breathes, "and I'll do it." Even after their marriage they've never shared a kiss, not a real one at least.
A soft hand, finally free of farm work to roughen it up, caresses his cheek before tugging at his hair for him to bend down. Lia tastes like the zeppoli they had had after dinner, her arms light around his neck. Her nose rubs against his and Lovino sighs to finally know what it feels like to kiss the only person in the world who has always, always mattered to him. The one person he has always loved.
XII.
Outside the gala in Rome Lovino finds her leaning against the wall, looking out onto the city. All around them countries mill about and yet, for people who spent so long fighting over Sicily, not a single one recognizes Lia for the woman she was. Idiots, the lot of them.
Lovino wraps his arms around her waist, pressing his chest into her back, and kisses the side of her neck. "Do you think there will be a war?" Lia asks quietly.
"Dunno, don't care, so long as I've got you."
His best friend laughs, wrapping an arm around his neck, as she begins to softly sing a song they used to love in a language they used to know. And Lovino, inhaling the smell of lemons in her hair, enjoying the warmth of her body against his, lets his eyes close at the sound of her voice, quite content with the world.