So, this is my sorry one-shot for bashing Luce a lot in Keep Walking.
That's really it.
I don't own Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
Once upon a time, Luce tried to tell others what she saw.
When her step mother left for a mission at her father's orders, she told her that if she went, she'd be killed.
They would see her and gun her down. They would never find her body, but her father would waste his life away looking for her. He would die from sorrow, waiting for the day she returned. The last words that would fall from his lips would be 'She's still alive, I know she is.'
Her step mother merely smiled patronizingly and patted her head. She walked out the door with nothing more than a backwards wave over her shoulder.
She never saw her again.
Her father didn't believe Luce when she said she was dead.
Instead, he withered away behind his desk, sending his men after ghosts. So many died while he was drowning in grief.
Luce tried to warn them too.
Why did no one believe her?
All she got were pitying looks. They started to mutter behind their hands. 'Insane,' they would say. 'Just like her mother, the poor dear.' 'What about then the Don dies? Do we want an insane child as our Boss?'
They were starting to rebel against her. Why didn't anyone believe her?
She told them her father was dying. She told them he would be dead in a week, that they needed to make arrangements because once he was dead, they would be attacked by a rival family.
They started to point fingers at her when her father passed away exactly a week later. When the Rosso Family attacked one of their teams, assassination attempts from her own Family began.
She knew they would do this, however.
She knew that they would continue until she was dead. They didn't want her sitting in the chair her father had toppled off of.
She was thirteen years old when she shot a member of her Family on her way to the Giglio Nero throne. These were men her father handpicked to work beside him.
Luce needed new people, people that would listen to her without a question. People that wouldn't blame her when her words were correct.
Demon, witch, cursed brat, devil, possessed child; she's heard it all.
She learned to smile through it, even when she knew they were all going to die when she sent them on their missions.
Slowly, she integrated new blood, new faces into her inherited family. She made Giglio Nero hers, the way it always should have been if her mother hadn't died during childbirth, if she had never left her to suffer alone.
When she finally felt safe, surrounded by people that would never believe her dreams, but never blamed her either, she learned to be quiet.
Why put suspicion on herself if no one was going to believe?
(They never believed her away. No one ever did, she was all alone, surrounded by blind fools who could never understand the truth that flowed from her lips. It wasn't her fault, no, it was theirs, theirs for not listening.)
Luce spent the rest of her life hiding the truth from everyone. 'Sacrifices were necessary,' she told herself as her Rain Guardian went away on a mission.
She knew even before he left that she would never see him again.
She smiled.
Later that night, when the world was silent and no one could judge her, Luce screamed and sobbed, tearing apart her room as her Guardian was cut into little pieces.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair!
(She couldn't save them all, no matter how hard she tried and it hurt her so much, like a part of her heart was being torn off as they were carelessly sawing apart his limbs and she wanted to burn her enemies to the ground for what they were doing to him- why couldn't she save him?!)
Luce tried to save one of her men, once.
He had been her mother's Sun Guardian, a man that survived her purging of her father's men and stayed by her side. Just like everyone else, he didn't believe her dreams.
But, he would listen and tuck her in at night, which was more than her father did after her step mother never returned.
She loved him.
(She loved him so, so very much, why didn't anyone ever believe her?)
When she woke to a dream where he died after going to spy on a rival family, she refused to give him a mission, stating that she wanted him by her side in case of more assassination attacks.
A day later, when her dream said he was supposed to be shot in the head, he fell down the stairs.
He was dead before he hit the first floor.
She tried again and again to save her favored Mafioso. And, at the end of the day, they were still dead, accidents that could never have been prevented.
She stopped trying when she turned eighteen, having realized that the world just wanted her to suffer.
She learned to smile, instead of scream.
When Luce was finally happy, when Family was stable, she dreamed of her death.
There was a little girl, barely eight years old, crying at her bedside, begging her to wake up. Her screams of 'Mama, Mama!' only made Luce happier.
The next day, she slipped past her Guardians, losing herself in the underbelly of Italy, in search of the perfect sperm donor. The child would not come from a healthy relationship; after all, the Donna swore to never love someone who would only leave her.
She swore that any child of hers wouldn't be stuck with a father that didn't understand their precious gifts, who just brushed them off as insane or needy.
(Father, Father, please, believe me. I would never hurt you like this, why do you only push me away, Father, I love you, can't you see that?)
It didn't take her long to find a candidate, an arrogant man who believed God gifted him upon humanity – specifically women.
It barely took her any effort to seduce him away from his adoring fans and into a room, far from anyone that would hear them.
Luce enjoyed slitting his throat when she was satisfied with his work, already feeling Fate clicking into place as he gurgled futilely.
She laid back down, curling up around the cooling corpse, comforted with the knowledge of a job well done.
Nuzzling the father of her child's ruined neck, Luce rubbed her stomach with a smile.
She wasn't alone anymore.
She dreamed of this day.
She knew that it would happen, but she dreaded it. She tried to make the days drag longer, anyway to slow the coming of this day.
In one hand, Luce held a familiar letter; her other rested on her rounded stomach.
She knew the two paths this letter displayed for her.
She could agree to meet with six strangers, play them like a puppet master and leave them behind to their fate. She would die, but her daughter would live.
Or, she could deny the request and die anyway, leaving her adolescent daughter alone in a cut-throat Familigia that would never understand her. An Arcobelano would be protected, treasured.
Luce had stood back and watched as her Family died, again and again. She had allowed her closest companions to suffer torture because of her inability to change Fate.
After everything, what were the lives of six strangers to the happiness of her daughter, the only person that could ever understand her?
(Why did they never believe her? She repeated the truth again and again until her voice was hourse and there was so much blood on her hands.)
Her blue eyes glinted dangerously and hardened into steel.
There wasn't even a choice on the matter.
When she met with her new Guardians, Luce smiled. She smiled and rubbed her stomach, thinking of the future she had foreseen.
She would protect the life she was born to create.
This was her Fate and she had long since accepted it.
(She could do nothing else, not even her screams or her tears or her blood could ever change her dreams)
Nothing, not even six strangers that tried to worm their way into her heart, would stop her.
I tried to make Luce a likeable, understandable, tragic character.
I think I failed.
Completely and Epically.
(I don't regret it though. I needed more VaguelyPsychotic!Luce.)
I'm pretty sure my genre tags are wrong. Hm.
(The things you find when searching through the depths of your incomplete fanfiction files, really. It's amazing)
Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed this one-shot. I'm not planning on continuing it.