Poem by Emily Dickinson.
XXIII
I reason, earth is short,
and anguish absolute,
and many hurt;
but what of that?
.
I reason, we could die:
the best vitality
cannot excel decay;
but what of that?
.
I reason that in heaven
somehow, it will be even,
some new equation given;
but what of that?
On that particular day, a man of storm was silent.
The howling winds brought a biting cold to the tips of his ears, and he gazed up at the achromatic skies: a sea of white, indistinguishable clouds.
It was going to snow soon.
He waited for the piercing chill outside to level with the glacial reticence inside him.
A broken clock fails to tick to the expectations of others. Such a clock is of little use to anyone in the living world.
He didn't know what time it was. Threw his bloody watch out. Didn't matter anyway. If someone was out to get him, they'd get him regardless of his punctuality.
Gokudera leaned against the sordid alley walls, thinking. He ran his fingers over the coarse paper in his pocket, a dim reminder of a final obligation.
Even now, his father's presence suffocated him in its lingering absence. He could envision the man's wrinkled smile, laden with a timeless sorrow wrapped in guilt and drowned in helplessness. When he smiled, his eyes did all the work. His mouth had become an effete cavity useful only for rattling off lies, "I'm sorry" being a staple of his drivel.
Sorry for what?
Sorry for the way you made your illicitly born son live his days in the dark without a mother's love? Sorry that you resented him for her looks, once she was gone? Sorry that you bent him to your will and the ways of a prodigy who would live up to family name? Sorry that he was never part of the family, and would live a lie?
Being sorry doesn't change a fucking thing, old man.
When was the last time he had seen his father?
He couldn't recall. Seeing the man had made him nauseous. His father's rheumatoid arthritis had driven the storm guardian mad—Bianchi had continually pressed for his sympathy, as if becoming pathetic excused you of your own pathetic doings. According to her, pity and forgiveness were in order. "Leave me out of his shit," was all he had said, knowing it put her in an even more difficult position as their mediator. Indifference was the closest he could come to broaching forgiveness. Going any further would knock him off balance permanently. He had disciplined himself to face the facts, a measure taken to refrain from going off the deep end.
What else was he to do? Admit that, frankly, the man ought to suffer for his sins and that death would be too merciful an end? Bianchi would have none of it. "He's your father," she would insist, as if it meant anything. If anything, the pronunciation was a curse. A reminder that, in order for him to exist, his father had to have met Lavina. Everything had to happen the way it did. He was the very product of their misery.
The death of his father abruptly plucked him from his pent-up childhood rage and plunged him under another. This profound rage was vacuous, as he didn't quite know whom or what his hatred was directed at. There had always been an easy explanation, a blame ready for casting. Cold logic had pulled him through.
Hadn't it?
But now there was no one left to hate.
Except, perhaps, himself.
Numb fingers fumbled for a cigarette. The sight of the sickly-colored nicotine sticks stirred a convulsion in his stomach. He pocketed the pack, and closed his eyes. Behind the orange haze of his eyelids, he could still see the white skies overhead, plaguing him to a sentence of empty life.
Haru warmed her palms, letting the heat of friction gradually override her chilled limbs.
She handed the street vendor a wad of yen, and the old woman flicked through each bill before pausing to scoop up a bouquet of white and green carnations. The flowers bloomed beautifully in spite of the winter season, and Haru grasped the base of the bouquet with bare hands, thanking the lady graciously.
The brunette craned her neck upwards, squinting in the harsh light. She heaved a sigh of relief. Wearing boots had proved insightful; if it snowed, she wouldn't be walking in soaking wet soles. She passed a soup kitchen, inhaling a prolonged sense of warmth and chicken broth. The skies were blinding white with mourn, but the town was grey and dull in contrast. Amid the dark and dismal atmosphere stood a head of silver, motionless.
Haru raised a hand to graze her lips.
The sight of him alone should have warned her off, but she drew closer, bound by the gravity of his silence.
He raised his head with a sharp jerk, muttering point-blank, "What do you want?" His gaze was drawn to the plaintive bouquet in her arms, and his eyes narrowed. "I'm not in the mood for sentimental gestures. The dead will stay dead, flowers or no."
Haru clutched the flowers tighter, rustling the plastic. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't jump to conclusions." Her eyes flashed as she continued, "Death hasn't singled your family out in particular, so don't feel too bad for yourself." She bit down any further retorts, realizing she was now treading on personal territory.
"You think I pity myself?" Gokudera snarled. "If anyone's pitying here, it's you. You and your fucking condolences. Don't fool yourself into thinking you understand."
"Today happens to be the sixth anniversary of my mother's death," the woman spoke, considering the man before her with a soft smile. "Died in a boating accident." She paused. "As for not understanding, it's a bit hard to do that when you don't let anyone try."
The storm guardian froze, glancing at the brunette with a speculative eye. Her mother...? "I never knew my mother until she died," he said quietly.
His tone was so contrite, almost akin to the way a child might profess to breaking a mother's vase "on accident". Such a raw emotion coming from this man was unthinkable. The snow began to fall, like little flakes of memories, melting away into what used to be and what never was. A dance of ice, raining down from above.
All around them, a world of white.
She said nothing, but leaned against the wall next to the man. When he made no move to shift away, she sighed and relaxed the tension in her shoulders.
A strange quiescence enveloped the two, leaving unissued questions hanging in the air between them.
"I'm sure your mother loved you," Haru spoke, to no one in particular.
"Not if she could see the way I am now," he snorted, noting the crease in the woman's forehead as he said so. A searing rage tore in his chest, and he wondered, not for the first time, if she was only here to feel bad for him. To put him in his misunderstood, pitiful place. Bianchi had joked about "settling down" the other day, and he had very nearly lost it. There was no fucking way he could ever trust a woman, not in that way. It disgusted him that she thought she could tease a laugh out of him with her playful conversation. They left him no space for peace, always crowding in with their well-wishes and subsequent cringes, as if they'd expected him to react any differently. They left him no guiltless way out. Everything he did had to offend someone in some way.
His hands were pale and dry, but two days ago they had been dripping with the blood of another. Kill or be killed. It's not something you know until you can't deny it. Honor wouldn't save anyone in a gunfight. Sympathy wouldn't prevent murderers from murdering.
That's all there is to it.
"Well, being in the Mafia isn't exactly the epitome of moral rectitude," the woman remarked.
And he couldn't help it—he laughed. It was true; too true. "Someone's got to do the dirty work," he answered, hoping she wouldn't contend otherwise.
"It doesn't have to be like that."
He turned to her, muttering, "Your idealistic values are useless."
"People who hate intensely must have once also loved intensely," Haru quoted, standing firm in the face of the man's incredulous stare.
"Will you stop seeing in shades of black and white—good and bad, heaven and hell? You might as well group me into your list of 'baddies' and be fucking done with it."
Rounding on him, the woman snapped, "Then what do you call the work that we do? The lives we kill? Is it good? Do you enjoy knowing that innocent—"
"They're not fucking innocent; these monstrosities are serial killers, Mafia among Mafia; none of us are all good or all bad, so ditch your fairy-tale ending already."
Haru blinked back the hot sting of moisture in her eyes, balling her fists and gritting her teeth. Don't consign me to the role of the preaching idiot while you sulk. If you could only imagine a way out, you would go for it. If you could only see..."I'm not talking about fairy-tale endings. But why act like the ending has already been written, if you're not living a story? Your cynical judgments are useless," she tossed right back at him.
Before he could manage something like "As least it keeps me alive," the woman cut him off. "And this, what you call 'life', has no meaning unless you make one for yourself. These sorts of things go on forever—conflict is so easy to build up on—and it will, because we let it. We stoke the fire, then cry as it burns us. Find excuses, vendettas. And so on. Just stop stoking the goddamn fire. No one said it would be easy, either way." She stared at the ground, face contorted with bitterness.
The snowflakes fell in an aimless waltz. A frigid flake pirouetted before landing on the tip of Haru's nose.
He humored her, "So what do you propose I do instead?"
She didn't care for his tone, but granted that it was better than nothing, she replied, "Let go. Don't let your past fuel your hate for something out of your control." Haru didn't know how to comfort him, but sensed that comfort was not what he needed. How was she to make him understand that life must go on?
And then, the four words that undo him completely, "It's not your fault."
He slammed a fist into the wall, fingers too numb to even twitch. "Don't fucking joke with me—like hell it isn't my fault! I'm sick of you traipsing around trying to see the good in everything, because sometimes things are just ugly and twisted, don't you get it?" He hung his head, shaking with scornful laughter. "What am I saying—of course you don't get it. Couldn't even if you tried; the truth is too inconvenient for you to accept. Why're you even here? In the mafia. You couldn't have expected rainbows and butterflies out of this, could you?"
A nest of melting flakes lay in the wavy brown locks of an woman wrought with indescribable fury.
Swallowing her guilt (because she really shouldn't have uttered those last four words), Haru met the fire in his emerald eyes with heightened infuriation. "So sue me for trying to understand you despite everything you do to evade understanding—I care, okay? I care to understand you because I can barely understand myself these days, and I need to start somewhere.
"Do you feel sick to your stomach after pulling the trigger? Or have you become so accustomed to the lingering echo of a bullet that it doesn't bother you anymore? Does that scare you? Because it scares the hell out of me that I stand and watch as a life slips through my fingers. I can't do this knowing that I am no different from what we call our 'enemy'. What's the point if we're only running in circles? Kill one today, hunt the next one tomorrow? When does it end?"
Her brown eyes were unusually sharp, gleaming with a churning passion that made something tighten in his chest.
"Why am I in the mafia? Maybe because I'm as selfish as you are, and I want to stay alive despite a lack of purpose; maybe because I have nothing better to do, or maybe I believe in Tsuna—who knows? I don't know anymore. But something's got to give." The words seemed to pry themselves out of her mouth, and she's kept them in for so long that she emits a strangled sound, choking on unwept tears that wouldn't fall.
Gokudera presses his lips together and drags a hand down the side of his face. The woman never failed to surprise him; never failed to open his eyes to what he didn't want to see. If he had aimed to demoralize her, he was doing a shitty job of it. But he wouldn't have it any other way.
The carnations were drooping with the weight of the snow, and he shook the bouquet in her arms lightly, just enough to relieve the flowers of the weight.
What was he supposed to say?
He was accustomed to women with secrets to keep, women with complex torments and unknown motivations. He was not used to her—a woman with straightforward pains and a habit of blunt argumentation—fending off his insults with counterattacks of her own, motivation worn plainly on her sleeve. He watched her struggle to compose herself, and dreaded the upcoming waterworks. But she turned to face him, eyes clear. Her cheeks were flushed with a roseate tint, her nose reddening in the frigid temperatures. He reached into the left pocket of his coal-black slacks for the address just as the woman plucked two flowers—white and green—from her bouquet and handed them to him.
"White, for death. But more importantly, green. For life."
He accepted them without a word, and when a hesitantly beautiful smile broke across her face, he scowled.
Gokudera handed the note to her.
She knew this place, she said. She visited the cemetery every year, and had the address down by heart. He scoffed, but believed her.
Haru estimated the site to be within a walking distance of a half-mile. The storm guardian nodded, and inwardly winced as he realized his socks were soaked through with slush. They walked to the cemetery in the flurry of ice-crystals, with the woman paranoid about possibly contracting hypothermia.
He shrugged it off, smirking at her miffed expression. "I've had worse."
Thinking of Bianchi and her cooking, she conceded.
The graves were rooted to the ground with a rigid slab of stone, and down the aisle, the woman was busy brushing the snow off the gravestone. He couldn't see her face, but he knew she was crying this time. But she wasn't crying for death, she was crying for life, and the fact that she is living still.
Who knew there was a difference?
His speeding pulse permeated the stiffness of his joints, and he knelt down, placing the white carnation over his father's grave. After a moment's contemplation, the green flower of life parted with his fingertips, resting gently on his mother's grave. She had been buried in an unmarked grave to conceal the fact of her inappropriate role in the famiglia. Later, he had carved her name in with a knife. The epitaph read: he didn't deserve you.
Time was ticking away with the cascading snowfall, and as a blanket of silence cloaked the two, the gears inside his heart slowly, but surely started again.