Cozart had stolen his vision. Whether directly or indirectly was irrelevant as it was happening all the same. Nothing was bright, nothing was vibrant. Everything was dull.
The world was in black and white – a blank canvas that had been bleached of all life. Trees no longer glistened green; the water ways in Venice no longer blazed blue. Everything was dull.
With a heavy sigh, Giotto balanced his chin on a closed fist, desperately trying to find a reason to listen to G's droning report. There was nothing even remotely interesting about the man's mission to a terribly inactive Germany. They didn't have any allies there, no, but it wasn't like a grand hub for mafia activity in the first place. The only reason he had actually sent the man was to get him out of the mansion for a bit; a vacation, of sorts.
Whether it was for his benefit or G's was quite fuzzy. The tattooed man would insist on the former.
"Boss?"
Giotto mad an unintelligible noise in return, running a hand through wild, unruly hair.
"You're not listening," G griped, taking a long draw from his cigarette. "Doesn't matter. Not like it was very important anyway." He blew three large smoke rings into the Primo's face. "What's up, boss?"
The blond man coughed, waving away the pollution. "I thought I told you not to smoke in my office."
G arched an elegant brow. "And?"
"And what?" he grumped, irritated. Giotto rose from his seat and turned his back on the other man, facing the window and the scenery below. He tried to ignore the way everything seemed clouded over.
"Don't give me that." G sighed heavily and balanced himself against the desk, the sharp corner digging into his hip.
"G," he warned, shooting him a glower. This verbal combat between the two of them was nothing new – in fact, it happened much more often than Giotto would have preferred. He was fine, he was always fine. He was still alive, he still had his family. Nothing had fallen apart. Absolutely nothing was missing from his life. He was fine, he was fine, he was finefinefinefinefine-
Another sigh. "Giotto, you can't keep this up."
The Primo ran his gloved fingers down the window with an odd clink clink as the bulky metal made fleeting contact with the glass. Tiny imperfections made themselves known – little cracks and chips missing from the many times he had down the exact same thing in dangerous moments of stress. There was a large dent in his desk, too, where he had punched it when he found out the details of Daemon's betrayal. Many fissure lines were scratched across his desk from where he had dragged his pen across the grain, questioning whether or not he should sign this, or that, or make a treaty with whom.
And the wallpaper! It was peeling! No. Not peeling, it had been clawed away by furiously gripping hands and tugged at by clawing feet because they needed purchase – something to hold onto because their knees were weak and their breath short and oh God there were lips on lips and a hand drawling up a smooth spine; large, warm palms that spread across tanned, freckled shoulders and –
"I apologize, G, but I have a meeting shortly and I need to be prepared."
The smoker looked like he was about to protest, but instead, he inclined his head and marched out, hands shoved deep within his pockets and a defiant curve to his back. No, their conversation wasn't over Giotto knew as he slumped into his chair, hand tangled in his hair; far from it, in fact. He best be prepared before the man attempted to chorale him into talking again.
Gathering several important looking documents into a somewhat tidy stack, he stood, stretched to the point where his back popped and made his way out of his office, hitting his shoulder against the door frame on the way out.
He vaguely wondered when his once brilliant red curtains took on a light grey hue.
"Cozart, cut it out."
"Hmmm, I'd rather not, amore." Such a haunting lilt to his usually casual guffaw made Giotto's skin crawl rather pleasantly; toes curling in his shoes and a shudder running along his hair line.
"You know I have work that needs to be done."
"Do I?" And the red head trailed his open palm down the man's chest, fingers curling over fancy lapels and curling around golden, ornate buttons.
Giotto leveled the man with a very penetrating gaze, eyebrow slowly ticking up along his forehead. It was becoming alarmingly apparent that the other boss was trying his damndest to distract him for whatever reason; he was going to have none of it – and no amount of Cozart telling him to "calm down and smell the flowers" was going to change his mind.
"Ah, amore. You've gotten senile in your old age."
The Italian man opened his mouth to protest, an equally righteous quip balanced on his tongue before Cozart carefully took his by the shoulders and pushed him away, sending him sliding halfway across his office thanks to his wheeled chair. The chair bumped into a wall and he jumped to his feet, ready to finally, finally give the man a piece of his mind. He had work to do!
"I know you would prefer to stare at my rear end all day, Giotto; but I would prefer if you would come and help me with this." And the man promptly spread a wide arrange of flowers across the desk.
Giotto scrubbed at his eyes before reluctantly trudging over, a melodramatic swagger to his step. "You know I'm no good at flower arranging…"
"Si. But," the man turned a tulip over in his hand, carefully peeling the petals back to view the inside, "You're rather good at cutting the thorns off the roses."
The blond man supposed he had to take that as a compliment.
When G found him next, he was shaking water from his hair and releasing a fish from the confines of one of his waist coat pockets.
"Did you fall into the pond or something, boss?"
"As a matter of fact, I did."
G smothered a snort. "How on earth did you manage that?"
Giotto continued to wring out his clothing, face pressed into a mask of stubborn indifference. He had already taken enough abuse at the cost of his own embarrassment, thank you very much.
His right hand man shrugged and made his way back to the mansion, drawing a long breath from his cigarette. As the he neared the door, he swore he could have heard a muddled, "I couldn't see it" before the heavy wood swung shut behind him.
"Put it down."
"But-!"
"Cozart, now."
". . ."
"I swear, if you even attempt to bring another kitten into the mansion…"
"Alright, amore. Have it your way."
He found that old age wasn't the only thing working against him.
Everything had faded to black and white, much like the vision of a much more inferior animal. It was difficult to find the folders he had originally color coordinated; G was harder to spot in a crowd; and he knew that the frequent, incessant headaches were not in anyway stress related.
They would stalk quietly while he worked and as he sun set and his office steadily darkened, they would jab at the back of his eyes with something hard and fleshy and throbbing. At first, they were easy to ignore, to play off and simply pretend that they would go away with time or after a heavy dosing of some kind of pain killer.
But they were relentless.
Slowly his work efficiency dipped lower than normal, then his ability to maneuver about his office – he constantly rammed into things or tripped over objects that had originally been obscured by a cloud of black plague.
Tunnel vision was something he had become accustomed to, and whatever he was suffering from now was having a very similar affect. A constant fog clouded his line of sight and as the days dragged on, a black border steadily closed in.
G was obviously worried, but he had yet to express it aside from a few, suspicious glances.
"Yes, Cozart, the garden shed counts as a part of the mansion, too."
"Shoot."
There was indeed a very good reason for him to be concerned that he had just awoken on the floor, head cradled in G's lap, but he honestly couldn't work up the nerve to care. His head was pounding a steady staccato against his eyes, and a dark, ring marred most of his vision.
And yet, he felt nothing.
"Still with us, boss?"
He blinked in reply, attempting to get a clearer image of his subordinate.
"You fainted."
A single, nonsensical word fell from numb limbs.
"Oh."
"For the last time, if you use the toilet in my office, you put the seat down."
"Hmm."
"Cozart."
"I'm just waiting for you to fall in, amore."
Every logical problem had a probable solution. It was the rational rule of the universe that would never be broken, never misconstrued. Whether the solution was what the person had originally been aiming for or not meant nothing because, in the end, the problem had been solved.
And as a steady wave a pain ran from the top of his scalp down to his toes, riding along his nerves like a stinging creature of the deep, he found the perfect solution to his problem.
All he needed to do was lock the door – after all, pens were sharp and he knew that he probably had a letter opener lying around that he never got any use out of. He would take the end and drive it into his skull.
Left eye socket.
Then the right.
It was simple, and he felt no careful preparation would be needed. He could cauterize the wounds with his flames to avoid certain blood loss, and it wasn't like he got any use out of his eyes anyway, so G would never notice!
He dragged one of his canines over his bottom lip and the soft flesh easily gave way.
Blood graced his chin and he brought up clumsy fingers to wipe it away.
It was red.
A bright, beautiful red that hadn't graced his vision in who knew how long. So agonizingly beautiful and he found his breath catching in his throat because it was just like his. Giotto wiped more blood away and brought his palm to his face and simply stared, eyebrows twisting. With his original plan forgotten, he wiggled and waved his fingers and watched as the sun gave it a healthy glow.
God, it was so gorgeous.
G, in some frenzied tizzy, came hours later to find him in the same position slumped against his desk. The normally calm, collected man dragged him to his bedroom to lie down, ranting on and on about a fever of some sort.
To Giotto's dismay, the color had faded.
"Giotto…"
Officially, he had gone blind.
Personally, he was the luckiest man alive.
Every time the dark threatened to consume him, he could see red. So vibrant and brilliant that it brought a storm of colors with it. Blues and greens, purples and yellows. A swirling, swarming mass that had no definite shape, no definite color but simply existed in a plane of utter desperation.
It was beautiful.
And the conductor of the storm was none other than Cozart Shimon.
"Stop pouting."
"But, amore, please-!"
"No. Now cut it out, I'd rather not see your ridiculous face in my sleep."
"You know you could never forget this face."
"You're right, I couldn't."
A/N: So this is for a very important friend of mine and I sincerely hope she enjoys it. ;_; Tuna, if you read this, I am sorry that this is terribly clumsy and half-assed and aaaa, but yes, this is for you, bby. And I hope you enjoy as I butcher your representation of Giotto! If it piques anyone's curiosity, Giotto has an acute case of Glaucoma.