Prologue: A Week of Bliss

He hated them. All of them. The adults who looked on him with sympathy and at his mother with a mixture of pity and disgust. The children who treated him like scum, who dared to treat his mama the same way. The quaint working-class neighborhood that ostracized his little famiglia. Xanxus hated them all.

His flame was a blessing, a birthright. Not a sign of his dear mama's insanity. There were whispers about him, the son of the town madman. Madwoman, in this case. His mother was convinced that he was the son of the Vongola 9th. His mama, of course, must have been right, because she would never lie to him, and she was clearly not insane. The proof was in the flames that sprang up as he willed. He was the 10th. He was Xanxus.

Things, though, were bad lately for the future boss. His mother could no longer leave the house. She was ill, for one, and people were crueler now than they had been before. In her current condition, his mama would not withstand the jibes thrown at her, the sneers and the climate of revulsion. It was he, Xanxus, that had to act as a buffer between the town and his mother, though he was still young, too young, perhaps, and that made all the difference.

"Watch where you're going, bastard child! Surely your crazy mother taught you that, at least? You could have seriously hurt her!"

Xanxus snarled as he turned around, ignoring whoever he had knocked over, feeling the familiar heat of his own anger spring up in his hands. No one spoke about his mother like that. An arrogant boy who seemed to have taken it upon himself to personally torment Xanxus, the spoiled son of a wealthy merchant, was glaring at him, looking smug as he did so.

"No, please! It my fault! I see not where I walk! Apology. I apology. No trouble. My fault."

The voice was high and unfamiliar, with the strangest, thickest accent, and her grammar was terrible. Italian clearly wasn't her first language. So distracted was Xanxus by this interruption, he turned around and missed his enemy, Francesco, signaling for two of his "friends" to grab the black-haired boy. They had him in a restrictive hold within seconds, each boy with frightened fists clenched tightly around Xanxus' wrists. He struggled, furious, his dark red eyes glimmering with unadulterated rage. The girl he had knocked down looked horrified, scrambling up from the floor, ignoring her skinned knees and turning on Francesco.

"Do not! Why do this thing?"

The other boy shook his head.

"Don't worry Miyu, you just don't understand because you're not from here. He's a freak. His mother is crazy, more of a freak than him. It's what he deserves."

Just as the foreign girl moved forward, an outraged expression on her face-it was clear that she had understood at least the gist of what Francesco had said-Xanxus, seeing her eyes glint in righteous anger, felt something inside him snap and then release with a twang.

His flames were his birthright, and when they exploded from his hands into a raging inferno, none could escape it. The boys who dared put their hands on him lay on the ground, delirious from pain, and Francesco scrambled to his feet, whimpering, sporting a nasty burn on the arm he had thrown up in order to shield himself, and scampered away. His friends were not so lucky. Xanxus fell to his knees, panting from exertion. He had never used his flames like that, and he found that he liked it. There was a soft, muffled sigh of relief and he turned his head sharply away from the still breathing bodies that lay on the ground, both of them, only to see the foreign girl, her sleeves in tatters, her arms burnt, smiling at him.

"I glad you okay. I nervous for you."

He stared at her for a moment, trying to discern whether she was joking or not. When she held out her hands in a gesture that offered to help him up, he glared at her. Rather than stand there, she took action, pulling him up to his feet without wincing at her burns.

"Will you go to house well?"

He tore himself out of her grip, spitting angrily at her feet before running away. Bizarrely enough, thus a beautiful friendship was born.

At first it was only curiosity. Yes, curiosity, he told himself. Any person who witnessed a boy nearly killing two other children and severely injuring two others-including said witness-that reacted only with a smile was potentially dangerous. And thus, out of some sense of duty to the town (which he hated) and its people (which, suffice to say, he despised even more), he found himself following her around. She was Japanese, visiting with her older sister and her boyfriend. Her name was Miyu, and it seemed that her sister had taken her in as her own after the death of their mother. She was about his age, a few months younger, and an incredible thirteen years her sister's junior. She had been burned so badly by his flames that she had to be taken to the hospital, and her arms were to be bandaged for the rest of her trip. Her Italian was horrendous, though to be fair, for someone who had attempted to learn at such a young age she wasn't so terrible. Then again, maybe he was just making excuses.

She was staying at a local inn, and her somewhat ditzy sister had given her free reign to wander about the town, after being reassured by her boyfriend that she would be safe no matter where she got off to. The young couple was very much in love, and it seemed like the boyfriend was well known in this part of Italy. Xanxus snorted. Blood was what mattered here. Who your mother is, who your father is. The man probably had connections through blood.

He had been on his way to gather groceries-it was most definitely a coincidence that he passed her hotel-when he noted that she wasn't there, playing out in the street as she always was. He frowned. Could it be possible that he had missed her return to Japan?

"Do you need help with bag?"

Cursing, he looked up, only to see her perched up on a low branch in a tree, smiling down at him (an annoying habit of hers, he noted).

"No, I don't. Don't you have better things to do with your time, like fucking learning to speak Italian properly?"

Okay, so maybe he had a dirty mouth. He was a street rat, though, and that exempted him from all codes of propriety. As long as he didn't disappoint his mother, he would do as he pleased. The girl carefully dropped down from the tree, holding herself suspended in the air for a moment before gently dropping the remaining foot to the floor. Without waiting the time it would take for him to insult her again, she took some of the bags from his hands and took a few steps away before turning to him over her shoulder.

"You come?"

He hadn't paused because he was disarmed by the way she treated him-not this time, at least. No, he had stopped when he saw the flower loosely held in her free hand. It let loose a current beneath his skin, and he clenched his fists around the handles of the bags to keep his palms from sparking. Who dared give that to her? This idiot, who couldn't even speak proper Italian, this idiot with no common sense, who would give this smiling idiot any sort of gift like that? He growled as he stalked off in front of her.

"Hurry up, dumb shit."

Vaguely, he wondered if she understood him. And then shook the thought from his mind. They walked in silence for the next few minutes, and they would have done so for longer had she not been cheerfully examining the surrounding area, committing it to memory.

"Ah, you live close where beautiful woman live."

Her fragmented Italian was starting to piss him off. Starting? No…it was making him feel homicidal. How the hell was he supposed to understand what the bitch was saying? He closed his eyes in frustration-why was she so damn annoying?

"You see like her face."

His eyes snapped open. Her face was mere inches away from his, her eyes happily narrowed as she inspected his features. What the hell did that mean, anyway? He scowled, but before he could say something-preferably something mean and hurtful enough to make her get out of his personal space-she had let out a joyful gasp and run off, his grocery bags still held in one hand as she tumbled into the arms of a very familiar woman.

His mother.

"Hello beautiful woman! I brought for you gift."

The flower she had in her hand was placed in the hand of his mother, who smiled.

"Thank you Miyu. You always bring me the nicest blooms…"

His mama gently closed her eyes and took in the flower's scent.

"It smells lovely, Miyu. Would you like to come in?"

Miyu shook her head, dimpling.

"Not today, thank you but I take bags for Xanxus' house. He friend."

She had never said his name before. Heat filled his cheeks and he glared. Stupid annoying twit. It was time for him to take charge of the situation anyway. Who was she, thinking that she could talk to his mama and bring her flowers? He had vaguely wondered where they had been coming from, the blooms in the little vase on the table. He had chalked it up to mementos from his mama's wanderings and gone on with his life.

Seeing the tired but cheered smile on his mother's face as she glanced over at him, amused by Miyu and the fact that the girl did not know who he was filled him almost with shame. Who was she, daring to bring his mother flowers, the same blooms that made her smile in the evenings when she lifted them to her nose to breathe in their easy scent? Who was she, to make his mother happy in such a way when he did not?

"Alright, dear. I suppose you're coming in after all."

There was something in the surprise on her face and the strange little yelp that slipped from her soft pink lips as his mother took her by the arm and led him in that made him grunt and huff impatiently. And follow, nonetheless.

"Hey Xanxus?"

He looked over at her lazily, his habitual scowl on his face, brow furrowed.

"What?"

Ignoring his sharpness, she smiled.

"I think you be great one day."

He scoffed, wondering how he had ended up spending the entire week with her.

"What the hell does that mean?"

She sighed and leaned back onto the flower bed on which they lay.

"How I say…Miyu thinks one day you be in great, high place…like emperor?"

Though he would never admit, and he wouldn't, because he was far too proud to do so, he was pleased by the sincerity with which she expressed what he had thought all along. He adjusted his head so that he was more comfortable, grouchily sneering in her direction rather than thanking her.

"Don't be stupid."

It almost frightened him how well she knew him, well enough to smile at him happily with a certain understanding in her eyes and shrug.

"It true. Miyu knows. I see it in you."

They spent the rest of the afternoon in silence, because Xanxus would not mention that she was leaving the next day. The last time he saw her was that evening, laughing, tucking a flower he had ill-temperedly ripped out of the ground behind her ear, smiling at him and then walking away. It was an especially harsh winter, it seemed, with her gone, and it was then that his life changed.

Vongola Ninth came to his town, and his mother had woken him in the middle of the night, dragging him from his bed, bundling him up in his shabby coat and pulling him nearly the entire way to the alley in which he finally met the man he had been inherited his flames from.

He was adopted and went away to live with the man he had known all along to be his father. And he thought he would never see her again.

A year later, he was visiting his mother, who was no longer ostracized because of the Vongola Ninth's recognition of him, and he remembered vaguely a time when Miyu had told him the meaning of her name. It was written in those odd Japanese letters-the ones that looked more like hieroglyphs-and it meant "beautiful" and "gentleness and superiority." He had been strolling past her hotel, simply for the sake of reminiscing, when he heard her cheery voice.

"Xanxus!"

He looked up, and there she was. And it all began again. Year after year, she was there. He grew into a man without peer, rich, powerful, lean as a tiger, ruggedly handsome, famed for the glint in his crimson eyes and his legendary temper. She was like the touch of silk and the lightness of a fragrance traveling on the breeze, the subject of poetry that suited her, perhaps docile, but caring and with a refreshing look in her eyes. She wasn't beautiful to most, maybe pretty when she smiled, but all in all almost plain looking, save to those who could notice the length of her eyelashes, the glimmer of life in her dark but inviting eyes, the smoothness of her skin. The pale, petal-soft lips that could now form words in Italian fluently-a fact that Xanxus could greatly appreciate-and the devastating curve of her collarbone. Her coloring was nothing special, ordinary to a fault, but her features themselves were exquisite, and Xanxus noticed it. He noted everything. They had known each other for years, and he had watched her grow into the woman she was, and he had noticed everything.

He wasn't sure when he had made the conscious decision to make her his, but he had, and he wasn't fussed about how it happened. It simply had.

Her sister was married now. He had never cared much for the details about her little family, and he found himself quite unable to remember anything about her sister and brother-in-law other than she still lived with them, being underage. He had come up to the hotel where they always stayed-coincidentally, it belonged to one of the Vongola's allies-and, on a whim, he had pulled a flower up by its roots, cleaning it up, brow furrowed in concentration as he walked to where they usually met.

"Xanxus?"

He stopped and looked up, his usual scowl easing off his face somewhat. There was a smile on her face, and she looked as lovely as ever. He was itching to take her away, to install her in her own rooms-or better, his-back at his father's house. He wanted to show her that she had been right so long ago, that he had indeed risen to a high, high place.

"Looking as clueless as ever, trash."

She just smiled all the more gently and stepped towards him and pulled him into a shy embrace. He scoffed but allowed himself to wrap his own arms around her, pulling away after a minute and shoving the flower in her hand. She looked at it, delighted.

"Sweet pea! How pretty."

She took a slight whiff and closed her eyes cheerfully.

"Thank you…"

He snorted.

"You're too easily pleased."

They turned down the path without words, a particular tradition of theirs, as they were just as content with each others' company in silence as they were with conversation. She held the flower between her slender fingers-her hands were a bit on the larger side, though thin and clever and he found that he liked it, he fancied it showed her character nicely, hardworking and skillful. Perhaps she'd have a future in his business one day…but he pushed the thought from his mind. They walked for half an hour but their time was done. She looked a little contemplatively up at the sky, the faintest sense of uneasiness in her gaze when she turned it back to the hotel. Xanxus followed her stare and misinterpreted it.

"If you don't want to stay with them, I have plenty of room at my place, even for you."

Especially for you, he might have added, but he was Xanxus, and he wasn't the type. He vaguely thought his intended acidity was a bit weak-but she didn't seem to notice.

"No! No, I'm alright. Thank you. I just…I feel as though I am a burden. While I am here, at least, I can watch over my nephew…"

She suddenly grinned.

"He's the sweetest child I've ever met. I'm sharing a room with him right now, and…I'll…I'll miss him when I leave…"

She turned to him with a sincere expression.

"I'm going to move out next year. I've been taken as a sort of apprentice in a florist's shop, and next year I'll be able to leave school and work, in the shop, full time. I won't be in the way anymore and it makes me so very glad."

The smile she suddenly flashed in his direction was as wistful as he had ever seen, and he found that, though a pretty expression, he didn't like it one bit. She let out a little sigh and dropped her gaze from his to the flower she was twirling between her fingers.

"Sweet pea means good-bye, departure, and blissful pleasure in the language of flowers. That is one thing I've learned so far in my apprenticeship. We have to know all the meanings of the flowers we sell, so that we can help our customers express themselves, to say what they can't with words."

He watched her carefully as she laughed, turning her dark eyes onto his as she bumped into his side as they walked. And then scowled.

"That's stupid. Scum should just say what they need to and get it over with. They're just stupid plants, anyway."

They had reached the front doors, and she was laughing quietly into her sleeve. He narrowed his eyes at her. How typically Asian. All she needed was a silk kimono. Really.

"I think it's nice. And you know, Xanxus…sweet pea means something else, too."

He grunted, and tried not to stiffen when he felt her soft lips brush his cheek, making their way to his ear. He shivered slightly.

"What does it mean then, trash?"

He cursed at how husky his voice sounded, biting down on his tongue to keep from slamming her into the damn wall and taking her like a fucking boss. When she at last spoke, it was in a subtle whisper that had him tingling.

"Thank you for the lovely time."

It was the last week they would spend together. When another year had passed, he had returned, bitter and betrayed, in need of her soothing presence, waiting at the door to her hotel as he had every year before, this time with a single red tulip in his hand. He had ordered his men to find him someone well-versed in the so-called language of flowers, and he had then forced the poor man to go through the meaning of every flower three times until he at last had found one that he liked. He, Xanxus, would not wander into a florist's shop like some pussy-ass piece of trash to ask for flowers to convey his feelings. In fact, he did not care in the least what the damn flower meant. Miyu would care, and she would know.

A red tulip is, in the so-called language of flowers, "believe me," a declaration of love. They were sixteen now, and she was old enough by Japanese law (he had looked into the matter, not that the law was so big of an issue to the heir of the most powerful mafia family in existence) to leave her sister's household and work or do as she pleased. He intended to make Italy her country of residence before her week was up, to keep her here as he had wished to do for many years gone by. The fact that her things were still in Japan, with exception of whatever little she had brought with her, and that she didn't have a visa to stay in Italy any longer than six months was irrelevant. He was the heir of the Vongola, and he'd be damned if he couldn't have her things brought over or had her made a citizen by the trash that called themselves the government. Guns could talk, and his had tongues of silver.

So, full of expectation but never anything as common as "excited," he waited. And waited. And waited. And at last found out she had not come to Italy this year, nor would she return any year, having left her sister's household for good.

With a snarl, he threw the tulip to the ground. He had come for her, and she was not here. He had been betrayed by the last person he had faith in, and it was not a fact taken lightly. It was she who might have stopped him from attempting to overthrow the Vongola Ninth, but she was. not. here. He would remake the Vongola in his image, and he would do it tonight. He would rage higher and higher, until he had conquered even the heavens. And she would not leave him again.

A Week of Bliss/End.