So the Prompt was to ship Reborn and Lal. I didn't ever imagine this happening. This prompt actually made me ship this. Holy shit help me.
Reborn has never been someone to dance around a situation. If he wanted something he took it, it was as simple as that. Or at least that was how his life worked on a usual basis, but then again this was not normal. Having feelings of true affection towards a person that was securely beyond his reach is in fact the opposite of normal for said hitman. But then nothing in his life had been normal for a very long time.
He supposed it all started when he ran into her on a mission. The first time the soon to be arcobaleno met the young woman had only been a week before. If he was being honest with himself, and Reborn was always honest with himself, he was not impressed by her. In fact none of his soon to be compatriots seemed particularly skilled. At least not compared to him.
"You wasted a bullet."
What did she say?
Looking up from the man laying on the floor before him, a bullet hole directly in the center of his forehead, Reborn allowed his left eyebrow to raise. He was nearly insulted that she even got passed his senses for a moment, let alone long enough for her to supposedly watch him waste a bullet.
"How?" This was was the only thing the black haired man deemed worthy of speaking to her.
The young woman in question simply smiled in a manner that was far too close to teasing for his liking. Reborn had not been teased in years, and the last man to have done so had gotten enough bullets in him to satisfy a trigger hungry marine for months. He was not about to start accepting it again now. The young man was about to prepare his trigger one more time that night, no matter if it was on a supposed comrade or not, when the woman with dark blue hair spoke.
"When there were the three guards on patrol you shot the first one as he came around the corner. You then proceeded to sneak up and kill the others by sniping them from your position. If you had sniped the other two before you did the first one would never have been any of the wiser. Then you could have come up and killed him by asphyxiation saving you a bullet." Her speech was stated as a simple matter of fact, nearly metaphorically knocking Reborn back a step. The key word of course being nearly.
"That would have been inefficient. I would have had to engage in physical combat with the first guard. The time that encounter would have lasted is more than me pulling the trigger. As the outcome would have been the same either way it is obvious that my way was more efficient and has more merit than yours."
At this Lal Mirch started to laugh. Laugh. Reborns finger started to move to the trigger when she stopped as abruptly as she started. It was almost as if she never let out a noise in the first place. Looking straight into his eyes she replied.
"One of these days you may be in a situation when you need that bullet. Don't say I didn't warn you when the time comes."
And then to Reborns chagrin she was gone.
It was years later that Reborn realised that Lal maybe had a bit of a point. Reborn knew his strengths; there were many, as well as his weaknesses; of which there were very few. So when he ended up far outnumbered and down to his last clip of bullets he took a simple moment to recall her words. Even though he may have been in a cursed body it would have been easier for him to take them down by physical force when they had been separated. Now the World's Best Hitman actually had to put in effort for a simple mission, which made him more than a little pissed.
"One of these days you may be in a situation when you need that bullet. Don't say I didn't warn you when the time comes." The words echoed in his head as he took down assailant after assailant. How dare that woman end up to be right. Someone who was not even a full fledged acrobaleno, a stain on the name of the Worlds Strongest Seven. And to think at one point he had almost been willing to accept her, after all she had nearly earned it. Once again the key word of course being nearly.
Once everyone had been subdued, and by Reborns standards that meant dead, he allowed himself one moment to think what could have been. What if Lal had been strong enough, forceful enough, to take on the full brunt of the curse he and the others were forced to bear? Would they have been on this mission together instead of her safe somewhere back at some base for all that he knew? Or would their initial antagonism simply turned into a full fledged rivalry that spurned them both to greater heights? It would have been the first time in a long while that the curly haired man had an equal.
Alas it was not to be, and Reborn had made his peace with this. Mostly.
"Maggot you call that a push up? Is Reborn not kicking your ass enough on a daily basis?" The infant appearing woman scolded from the back of the person she was currently berating. Reborn meanwhile was sitting comfortably off to the side, taking a bit of time to clean his gun while Lal yelled at his student. If Reborn had been horribly possessive of the young Don he would have not stood for her words. As it was though the young Sky had not pulled his hard sun flame in to his circle and as such he was perfectly fine with watching Dino go through what the teen probably considered hell.
The Arcobaleno had all been stopping in to see the young man that Reborn had taken under his wing, the first that any of the others could remember. That meant that the brown eyed woman eventually heard as well and came over to have a look. If it had been a few short years ago Reborn may have kicked her out on her miniature ass. As it was he now knew that Lal admitted that he was the strongest of the Arcobaleno. Thus she would not try and undermine his work, knowing that he could surely over power her.
"I've been more concerned about the fact that the wimp can't even walk down the stairs without tripping if his right hand isn't in the vicinity." He replied not even bothering to look up.
"Oh is that how it is? Then let's go for a run around the mansion. Get some of those coordination skills up to par!" The baby answered leaping off of the blonds back. "Let's go or do I need to break out some of my arsenal as incentive to get your ass in gear!"
Reborn did not even bother to hide his smirk as his young student started running at full speed, clearly trying his best not to trip over his own two feet. Maybe the failed Arcobaleno was not as easy to dismiss as he initially though.
The very thought that there was a future in which he was deceased at such an age was nearly unfathomable. The fact that Lal Mirch was still alive was as much salt in the wound as it was comforting. The salt came from the fact that someone inferior to him had survived when he had not. The comforting factor originated from knowing someone who he had grudgingly let close to him was alive. He was also less than slightly ashamed to say that he wished he could say the same about the others affected by the curse, alas they had apparently shared the same fate as himself and were no longer among the living.
Looking at Lal's aged up form was as close to a blast to the past as Reborn figured he would ever come. Meaning that it was a form of nostalgia to see her that way that he never dared hope to see her or any of them again. It hurt in a good sort of way that made Reborn want to throw things at anyone who so much as looked at him, and to go release clip after clip of bullets into some unsuspecting foe.
His internal walls almost shot back up into full form, but the black eyed man refused to let them. If there was one thing that he had learned in all of his years it was that some walls were meant to not exist for certain people. These were some of those walls, and Lal was one of those people.
"Hey! I'm gonna go and check on your new shrimp. Want to come along?" Lal asked looking down at him. What Reborn saw there, the trust and genuine happiness at being in his presence, only secured his position on keeping his walls down. With Lal there was no need.
"Of course."
Soon Reborn would have his body back.
The idea was daunting in only the best of ways, mainly for the fact that he would most likely have to go through puberty once more, unless Verde found some alternative to the natural aging process. He was not looking forward to that in the least. He was however looking forward to truly seducing the ladies once more and not feeling something sickly at the bottom of his stomach when he did so. No grown woman should look at a baby that way, no matter how experienced he appeared to be.
And god did he need to get laid, because he needed to get his mind off of Lal. Lately she had been all that he could think of when it came to women and it was making him angrier than he would ever admit to anyone out loud. Especially since she had just earlier that day gotten engaged. To Colonello. The one person in the entire world Reborn would feel guilty taking her from. Anyone else and he may have just shot them in the head point blank, but Colonello was an ally and a friend. Reborn didn't have many of those, and the ones he did he held close.
It was almost like he traded the curse of being an infant for that of unrequited love. Reborn would still take the second in a heartbeat over the first however. He knew he would grow again, and his heart would heal. And when he needed to he could always look back on his memories of her until the romantic love there turned into the platonic sort.
Until that happened, well there was always a young Don to train.