Their timing had been off. No one else had ever been as skewed as they were.
When Lambe had been seventeen years old, she had told Reborn softly, fearfully, "I love you!" She had been in her school uniform, pleated skirt and tan sweater, hair bound back with a cow-print scrunchie. She had looked up at him with her huge, teary green eyes, bottom lip caught between her white teeth.
She had never before felt so nervous in her life than she had on that day, having Reborn's black eyes stare emotionlessly down at her, hands in his slacks' pockets. His fedora had cast an intimidating shadow over his gaze, such as it always did, and Leon had watched her curiously from the brim of it.
He had, after so long, replied, "I'm sorry, but I can't return your feelings."
Hah hah hah… Hah.
She felt she had already known he would say that. He, the number one hitman in the world, easily able to get any man or woman he wanted, stronger than life and nearly undefeatable, would not settle for the slip of a girl she had once been.
But he had been gentle about it, because she had been a girl and he a gentleman. He had handed her a handkerchief and she had cried, cried, cried, cried, cried…
But, again, she had felt she had already known what he would say before he actually said it. Because he was Reborn and Reborn could have anyone. Thunder guardian or not, he most likely still only saw the little crybaby that had followed him around when she had been even younger.
She must have loved him from the first moment she met him at the tavern. He had been so cool, drinking at the bar, everyone respecting him, even her big brothers backing off and giving him room. Cool and mysterious.
He would always stay that way. Even to her.
It wasn't two weeks to the day of that confession that Vongola sent her to Mafia Land.
"Please, Lambe? Colonnello isn't responding to any of my messages and I have to know by tomorrow if he'll train the new recruits, seeing as how Reborn won't do it."
It would have been just as easy for him to send Yamamoto or Ryohei, two men that Colonnello were more familiar with and who were more like him. They both knew he had just wanted to cheer her up. After all, Colonnello or no Colonnello, it was still Mafia Land.
She had gone. And she had convinced Colonnello to do what Vongola wanted.
But then he had convinced her to stay.
"It'll be fun, kora. You haven't seen Mafia Land till you've seen it with me!"
And it had been fun… so much fun. A trip that had only been supposed to last for nine days turned into seventeen before her big brother had to pull the plug on her fun and call her back.
"You can go back to Mafia Land once you fill out all the paperwork you left behind," Vongola had soothed, "and calm Onii-san. He's been really wired up since you haven't returned, he thinks your virtue is being threatened."
"IS THAT LAMBE ON THE PHONE? LAMBEEEE! DON'T WORRY, LAMBE, I'LL SAVE YOUR INNOCENCE!"
She had been halfway to the dock when a jeep had come out of nowhere and an arm had reached out and literally snagged her off the walkway, nearly popping her shoulder out of place before she could even realize what had just happened.
She had been in the lap of the driver of said jeep. A driver who looked too much like Colonnello not to be Colonnello.
"Colonnello! I have to go home – what are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious, kora?" The blonde had given her the world's sauciest smirk. "I'm stealing you!"
"Y-yare, yare! You can't do that!"
"Why not, kora? It's only fair play."
"How's that?"
"You stole from me, so why can't I steal you?"
"I've stolen nothing from you!" She had almost been in tears. Yes, she still had the habit of taking sweets or small things from other people when the mood struck her, and she still reacted strongly when accused of doing something she had honestly done, but every time she had tried to take from Colonnello, she had kept ending up in the bottom of that freaking whirlpool of his!
She had learned her lesson and she had only been able to hope that they weren't heading back to the top of the cliff.
Colonnello had looked at her with those icy, warm blue eyes of his, like someone had just cut out two spots of the sky on a clear, sunny day, and had smiled a smile that had slowly been developing ever since that first night when she showed him just how angry she could get.
"Liar. You've stolen something from me and I can't get it back, kora." The jeep had come to the screeching halt at the top of the cliff. She had thought she was doomed.
But then he had kissed her. It had been soft and chaste – at first. And then deeper as she gasped in surprise, harder as she stopped breathing in pure shock, and his huge hands had been on waist, turning her just so in his lap.
"As long as you stay with me, it won't matter, kora. So you keep it, but I have to keep you."
'Ga-ma-n… W-what are you talking about?"
"You don't even know? Wow, that's sad, Lambe, you should know." He had put her hand over his chest, right above his heart, and she had felt its firm, strong beat against her palm. "You stole this from me. It's only right if I take yours." He had smirked. "A heart for a heart, kora."
That was where, in most romance novels and stories and comics, the woman would throw herself at the man and cry and give herself over to him without a fight.
In the real life of Lambe, she had hit him across the face, electrocuted his jeep's engine, and returned to Italy with a set jaw.
She had, after all, not meant to steal anything. She had so many big brothers, she hadn't realized that Colonnello was different. Reborn may not have loved her, but she had still loved him and having Colonnello do that to her had been… Something she hadn't been ready for.
On the other hand, she had been completely baffled that Colonnello hadn't liked Lal Mirch that way. She had always thought they were perfect for each other!
She would learn later that that sort of love had only ever been one-sided, and not from Colonnello's end either.
The ex-COMSUBIN had then tried a number of ways of getting her back in Mafia Land, or trying to simply ambush her at home in either Japan or Italy. She had always made sure to be a few steps ahead of him, though.
Trip to Mafia Land? Oops, she had promised Kyoko and Haru that she would take them to Belgium for chocolate.
Surprise visit to Italy? Oh, yare, yare, she was already in Japan helping momma cook dinner!
Surprise visit to Japan? She had already been on the plane back to Italy.
This went on for nearly five months before he finally came up with a plan better than all of hers.
As the guardian of the ten-year bazooka, it was her duty to keep it safe at all times and out of the hands of villains. Under no circumstances was she to lose it, misuse it, or screw up either the future or the past, and therefore the present, with it.
If she failed at any one of those, which she had done so every now and then, she was the one who had to fix the problem.
Having it one day go missing and the next being threatened to have it on auction left her no choice but to give in and return to Mafia Land.
That time, Colonnello really did kidnap her. He used plastic equipment with shock-absorbent wiring to keep track of her at all times and within the boundaries of the island. It had been a lot like wearing a house arrest ankle bracelet – as a matter of fact, that had been it exactly.
She spent two months like that, carted around by the pushy, kind blonde. The third month, Colonnello hadn't bothered to put the bracelet on her.
She hadn't been going anywhere, with or against her own will.
By the seventh month, she let him kiss her.
The ninth month, Colonnello was going around, announcing that he no longer had a single status and that any pervert who put their hands on his Lambe was going to get their weak asses kicked… kora.
But it took a total of two years before she could look up into his beautiful eyes and say, in complete honesty with only the slightest pang of agony in her heart, "I-I like you…" Not even love, but like.
Because she had spent ten years of her life loving a single man and no one just got over something like that.
He had been so patient, though, so kind and so handsome and so silly (honest truth), that from there, everything progressed so much faster than earlier.
When she had turned twenty-two, she gave him her virginity. His hands had touched every inch of her skin for hours on end and she still couldn't remember half the things he had done for all the pleasure that had consumed her.
Twenty-three, it had suddenly occurred to her that Reborn was staring at her longer than usual instead of dismissing her with a single glance or a weary glare (she would be the first to admit that she had tried upon many occasions to annoy him, knowing his morals and how he refused to harm a female). His eyes followed the sway of her hips and settled for too long on her lips.
He said nothing, though. She hadn't wanted him to. Because she had been happy… so very happy… with Colonnello.
Twenty-four, he had said something; a few things, actually.
He had tried to remind her how she had been obsessed with him. Walking down lonely corridors, he would suddenly appear and walk with her, striking up random and sometimes even pointless conversation. He developed a new hobby, kissing her on the cheek every time he saw her or left her.
She had known what was going on.
But it had been too late on Reborn's part.
Twenty-five and she had been pregnant… with twins! She and Colonnello had been excited, so very happy and overjoyed, as they had impatiently, like little kids, waited for the day she would give birth to the two bundles of weirdness they had conceived together.
There were many parties and balls during the first few months of that year, both because of her and the fact that Yamamoto and Gokudera had just gotten engaged (which, in her opinion, had taken longer than it should have! Hadn't it been obvious that they had loved each other since middle school?).
During such a ball, she had retired to one of the Maltese balconies. She had rubbed her distended belly, feeling her babies kick and wiggle with glee and torment, and claimed one of the seats as her own, kicking off her heels (as she had not wanted to wear them to begin with but her fashion sense had clawed at her to realize that cow-print bedroom slippers simply do not go with evening gowns) as she had done so.
And Reborn had joined her.
He had leaned against the railing and snuffed his cigarette out for her comfort, staring distantly into the nearby forest as he had done so.
"I could have loved you better."
She had laughed. "Anything you can do, I can do better~ hah hah…"
"I'm being serious."
"I know you are, Reborn." And, suddenly, she had been serious. "You already know you're too late."
"When you're me, there's no such thing as being too late."
"There is now."
He had gotten angry. It was the angriest she had ever seen him. His hand had cracked the alabaster pillar behind her as he had loomed over her, expression stormy and closed, other hand on her chin, pulling her face up towards his.
Before their lips could touch, she had said, "I love you." He had stopped, possibly startled or maybe waiting to hear what else she had to say. For whatever reason, she had taken advantage of the pause. "I will always love you… as the first person I ever really cared about. As my… friend. My best friend. And it will always hurt that we couldn't be more than that." She had met his eyes determinedly. "But I love Colonnello more."
She heard from Vongola that he had been in a rotten mood for the next two weeks. She wouldn't have known, seeing as how she only saw the remnants of his presence instead of the man himself. Destroyed furniture, terrified employees, strewn about bodies…
She had cried for every one of those nights.
Missed opportunities.
Why did they have to be missed?
But then worse things had come up.
Twenty weeks in, halfway through her pregnancy, she developed a high blood pressure.
Later, she began feeling lightheaded. Her vision and hearing came in and out frequently and sometimes it was all she could do to keep herself connected to the physical world. The strangest thing, she started playing with her hair. Not that she didn't do that anyway, but she would complete the same swiping motion over the left side of her head for minutes on end without realizing it at first.
Then she started fainting. Suddenly, she would collapse, every muscle in her body tight, and she would scream without meaning to.
She had been terrified for her babies. Colonnello had been more scared for her than anything else.
"Pre-eclampsia," Dr. Shamal had told the family. "Tonic-clonic seizures are just one of the symptoms, next she'll actually experience the seizures and some amnesia… We can treat this and we should do so fast. Before it develops into eclampsia."
"Eclampsia?" Vongola had asked numbly.
And Dr. Shamal had answered, "It's responsible for twelve percent of maternal deaths each year."
The silence had been thick after that.
"We need to put her on magnesium sulfate. Hopefully, this will stop her from developing eclampsia."
Colonnello hadn't let her out of his arms for days afterwards.
It didn't help that the one time he resolved to let her walk on her own, she lost consciousness and nearly fell.
Closer to her the end of her last term, everyone was holding their breath.
She hadn't been showing any signs of eclampsia, but that hadn't meant she couldn't suddenly go into a coma during pregnancy. She had wondered why they weren't more worried for her children. This could very well affect them too!
Colonnello said nothing about it. He knew better than to.
She could still hear his voice in her ear, that one night he thought she had been sleeping and he had leaned in to whisper, "I'm not going to lose you, kora. No matter what happens. I'll steal you away again if I have to. I'll do a lot of things you won't be happy with."
They drugged her and attached her to an oxygen tank.
The last face she should have seen before they began inducing labor was Colonnello's.
Instead, she saw Reborn's.
Leon had turned into a gun and Reborn aimed for her swollen womb, doctors too terrified to stop him as he –
BANG
– shot.
As she had lied there, dying, she had thought to herself, "My last wish… is that my babies are born alive and healthy."
A green flame had erupted on her forehead. Her expression had twisted into resolved rage as she glared at the doctors. "DELIVER MY TWINS."
Reborn had smirked and walked out of the room.
Thirteen hours later, she had fraternal twins.
The doctors tried to ask her if she wanted to hold them, as one snuck out to tell the awaiting, anxious family the good news. Distantly, she had been able to hear Colonnello's thundering footsteps coming closer to the deliver room.
Peacefully, she had smiled.
Machines began to go insane. Beeping loudly, long, hard, the doctors became frantic, desperately searching for a cause, and by time Colonnello nearly broke the door off its hinges…
"We're losing her! Quick, get me the pads!"
It's amazing what men with so much power could not do. Control rain, duplicate themselves, turn other men to stone, create illusions from nothing, defeat unmentionable terrors, be one of the ten smartest individuals in the world – but the moment the heart monitor's screeching turned into a long, high-pitched monotone, they had no trick left up their sleeves.
Simply. Amazing.
But Lambe hadn't been done existing. She had wanted to watch her children grow, play with their daddy, enjoy their larger-than-life family.
So she stayed, though no one could see her, and observed.
She used to be scared of ghosts. Now she was one. Life was funny like that.
She had died four years ago to the day.
Elegantly, fluffing her hospital gown like a dress, she sat down on the arch of her tombstone and watched her family come and go.
Colonnello was there at exactly 3:19 in the morning, to the very second the moment she had been declared dead. He sat down on her grave and two tired chibis claimed his lap for their bed.
She smiled because they were so beautiful together – her own family. Her boys.
Her teary, green-eyed, raven-haired Lambo and her tough, blue-eyed, blonde-haired Cornelio. Her strong, handsome Colonnello.
The whole of the Vongola family trickled in from that moment on. Vongola, Hibari, onii-san, Kyoko, Haru, Chrome, Mukuro, Dino, Romario, Basil, papa, momma, I-Pin, Fon, Gokudera, Yamamoto, Ryohei, Kusakabe, the Simon family, Lal Mirch… The list went on.
She was so happy to be so loved, even after four years (though some of her visitors really weren't there for her as much as each other, like Fon, Mukuro, and Lal Mirch). She wiped away a stray tear. Wasn't it fascinating that the dead could cry?
But Colonnello and her boys stayed, no matter how long every one else remained. Cornelio and Lambo eventually woke up and they asked for stories of her from the rest of the family.
"She was the only occupant related to this king of the herbivores that attended Namimori and didn't cost the school millions of yen in damage repairs," Hibari had muttered as he turned a harsh glare on the also-present Tsuna. The Don had laughed nervously.
"Well," Vongola began as they turned their big eyes on them, "she was a lot like Lambo when she was little…"
"When she was thirteen," Ryohei grunted nearly two hours later, "she showed me her EXTREME right hook!"
"She always did her best to help momma out," Nana said in a trembling voice. Iemitsu had had to hold her tight.
Pappa grinned and added, "She was a little daredevil when she wasn't crying!"
Rauji gave it some thought when he himself was asked, the rest of the Simon family quiet because they knew how much she had meant to their huge companion. "She got very lazy when she was twelve years old. Whenever she would tell me to play with her, she just meant she wanted to lie outside and try to see shapes in the clouds."
"She loved your daddy very much," Lal Mirch later in the morning added, looking down at the man she had once loved with pain in her eyes. Missed opportunities. Colonnello had smiled gratefully at her but none of Lal Mirch's affections were reflected in his gaze.
She felt so selfish and mean with how good that made her feel, knowing that Colonnello still loved no woman as much as he loved her. She should want him to move on – she was dead, after all – but her heart just wouldn't let go.
Yare, yare, how very awkward… She had been his in life, now she was his stalker in death. She chuckled at herself.
Everyone else told one of their own stories, so many people and so many memories. All throughout the day, they kept coming and reminiscing.
It went on till her babies fell asleep again later in the evening. Everyone had gathered at HQ, as was traditional on this day, and were talking about her. The good and bad times, the times she had made them laugh, cry, want to strangle her, and so on.
Kyoko eventually returned to take Cornelio and Lambo back home and Colonnello let her, as was the usual.
Lambe's attention caught on to what wasn't so usual, however. As if Colonnello being alone was a beacon calling strange creatures in, Reborn appeared. As a ghost, she still wasn't sure how he just came to be there between one second in the next.
Colonnello didn't look up, but she knew he knew he was there.
'This is the first time he's visited me since they cremated me,' she thought to herself. 'He looks like he needs more sleep.'
Reborn said nothing to Colonnello.
Colonnello said nothing to Reborn.
"I never thanked you," her man grunted suddenly, not looking away from her tomb. "She loved you, kora. I didn't have a chance till you turned her down."
Reborn tilted his fedora low over his eyes. Lambe thought that maybe his hands trembled the slightest bit. "I shouldn't have given you the chance. Now look where she is."
'So mean, Reborn!' Lambe fisted a hand in her gown, feeling Colonnello's pain as if it was her own. She abandoned her perch and reached out, arms outstretched – and went through her man.
Right. But he still needed someone to comfort him.
She glared at Reborn.
She knew he needed someone to comfort him too. This was no way to act, nonetheless.
Colonnello put his head in his hands. "You're right, kora. You shouldn't have given me the chance. If she had been with you, this most likely wouldn't have happened to her." Then he looked up and his blue eyes were two chips of winter. "But you did give me the chance, kora. And I took it. I loved her like she deserved to be loved and she had my kids!" His huge, muscled body sagged suddenly, as if all the strength had seeped out of him. "She'd most likely still be here right now if she had been yours, kora. But I'm happy for the time I had with her."
There she went again, crying. This was the most she had cried since she had first seen everyone grieving over her. She reached out, wishing that she could just touch him once more, just graze her fingertips over his cheek – anything. She concentrated her heart and soul into it.
Nothing. Her fingers went through him and all her effort mounted up to was goose bumps along her man's skin.
'That's something, anyway.'
"A lot that happiness does you now."
"It does do a lot for me, kora. And you can't say it wouldn't have done the same for you were you me."
"I would never do something so…"
"You're here now, aren't you?"
The hitman frowned. And then he… left. He turned on his heel, hands in his pockets, and walked off down the ceramic path back towards the cemetery gates.
Lambe was the only one to watch him go. Colonnello had already returned to her grave.
'I wish…' she wanted to say, 'that I could tell you just how much I love you and our babies. I wish so many things.' She rubbed a hand across her face. 'I wish I could tell you just how much you matter to me.' Then she caught a glimpse of Colonnello's watch. 'Yare, yare, how time does fly… It's nearly midnight. Don't you think you should be going now?'
The blonde stood, eventually, and stretched till it sounded like every bone in his body had cracked at least once. He patted her tombstone. "Next date's set for your birthday, right? I'll see you then, kora."
'No, you won't. You can't see me. I wish you could. But I'll see you long before then.' She pressed a phantom kiss to his lips. 'I love you.'
He didn't hear her, of course. He shouldered his survival pack on and left.
And she followed.
She was really good at following.
It was the next night when Lambo and Cornelio formed a combined force against their father, staring up at him with their same-sized, different colored eyes, practically bulging right out of their skulls with anticipation.
Colonnello paused in the act of tucking them into their twin beds. "What, kora?"
Cornelio, so brave and shameless, instantly sat up and took his daddy's attention first. "You never tell us stories about momma."
Lambo followed an instant later with an undignified squawk. "I demand you tell us 'bout momma!"
"Everything's already been told."
Colonnello was as far as the bedroom door before Cornelio dragged him back with eyes as cold and warm as his. "But you've never told us anything."
"Yeah!" Lambo seconded. "We wanna hear you tell us something 'bout momma!"
The man's held onto the doorjamb with a grip tight enough to crack the wood. Lambe's hand failed to settle on his shoulder, but she tried nonetheless.
'Don't walk away. Can't you see how much they want to hear from you? Yare, yare, whoever would have thought that you would be such a crybaby.'
It felt like too long before anything happened. When it did, Lambe's breath was stolen from her lungs. She hadn't seen that smile on Colonnello's face in too long.
He brought a stool with him between the two beds and sat down. "What kind of a story do you two want to hear?"
Lambo was the first to jump at the offering. "How did you and momma fall in love?"
'So sweet, Lambo, my sweet little baby…'
Cornielo blinked at his younger twin before redirecting to his daddy. "I want to hear about you two fighting."
'That isn't a good thing to want to hear about at all!'
But Colonnello's grin grew and he ruffled both their heads of hair. "I've got the perfect story, kora."
She settled on the floor next to him, smile just as big as his. 'I bet you do.'
"How about I tell you two about the first time I kidnapped your mom?"
~::~
Author's Note: WHAT IS WITH MY HETEROSEXUAL OBSESSION LATELY? Ah, well… I actually really enjoyed writing this… in a depressing sort of way.