Of Sky Arcobaleno and Pearls.
.
She remembers being younger and listening to bedtime stories. Uni remembers her mother speaking softly, that old tale, and she remembers.
Vongola, she murmured in sleep, shellfish.
In her dreams, she sees glowing orange eyes, cruelly kind, cold, calculating, warm, and beautiful. Flames shot from those eyes like fireworks, burning and illuminating her face, fanning over her cheeks, and tears fell from her lids, staining the white sheets with selfishness—she wanted to be saved from fate. She wanted to take the hand of whoever owned those eyes and allow them to take her away.
(She wanted to be a princess. She wanted the beautiful gown, to be the powerless one; the one who had to be saved. She wanted to be the one who got to wait to be saved.
She wanted to wait, but there isn't time.
There is no time.)
She drills these words into her own head, turns toward the future with shaky confidence, trembling like her legs. She wanted someone to save her, take her away, but people like that don't exist anymore, she reminds herself. Pearls shattered like bones under the shock of bullets, and the only person she ever thought could be her true hero is gone.
Blood filled the cracks of the pavement, began to corrode away at the coldness through heat and fire, breaking the foundations of what she knew, allowing her to begin moving forward, carefully. She flattens her face and enters through the doors carefully.
(God, please save me.
Save me.)
. . .
She is not brave. She's just a child who didn't get to celebrate her step into adulthood, sitting in her room alone, wondering if anyone had even remembered.
She hadn't wanted to grow up to die. Once, when she was littler, she had wanted to grow up and have a family with a loving husband and many kids. She wanted a white house with a garden out back where she grew tomatoes and herbs of her own, flowers and fruits and vegetables, somewhere away from the city.
She had wanted to fall in love, have dreams she could pursue, live for herself. But duty took precedence over wishes. The world was a cruel place, and Uni was not a princess. All the Prince Charmings were gone, anyways, chasing after evil witches or fighting dragons for their one true love, leaving her to be devoured by a fallen angel.
He trapped her in something like a spider's web, sinking into the waves, watching the rainbow flutter over her head. She was sinking, fading, going pale and weak; she was leaving—slowly, softly, silently—
(But she had known this was going to happen.
It was nothing new.)
. . .
She knew the story better than she knew herself. She had understood it from a young age, had heard it fall from her mother's mouth into her lap, gently plopping down as if into water, so often that she was lulled to sleep by the images it gave her.
She saw rainbows on water, shifting on the waves, and shellfish bearing pearls like children, into the cold waters of the sea. It was light, soaring with the sky over the water until she was falling into the dark water, being sucked down until she choked and went still.
She knew. Oh, how she knew. She knew—had known—her whole life that there was no escaping that final fate.
(Still, she cries out for someone to save her in her sleep, wakes up with her hand reaching up to the ceiling, trembling as her chest rises and falls rapidly. Cold sweat travels down into her hair, and her sheets are already soaked with the smell of selfish desire, of cowardice.
Her eyes well up and she thinks of the man she had wanted to know: chocolate hair and a smile that melted into your heart, warming every crevice of a person's being, amber eyes like the droplets on pine trees, and she knew—she almost reached out to take his hand as he left, but she knew.
Oh, how she knew.)
. . .
She can hear him—someone she's long since forgotten the name of—singing to her. He is calling, and her eyes shut slowly, wondering what words he was saying. It sounds like, feels like, a lullaby. Uni tilts her head back to hear a little better.
Goodbye, I am sorry, and his voice was soft, remorseful: it sounds like a dirge. Uni wishes she couldn't hear him. She has no strength left—but she still presses her hands to her ears, because the beautiful sound that man was making frightened her. She doesn't want to die yet. She doesn't. The voice seeps through her fingers anyways.
(But she's always known she doesn't have a choice.
"The sky dies young,"
The words her mother said to her gently weigh on her, but she repeats them over and over like a prayer, as if they will give her strength. The words force her to be strong, because her mother had died young, too.)
The voice continues, and she focuses on the sound of her mother's voice, soothing and stabbing, repeating, and Uni finds herself on her knees, curling over her legs like a child hiding from a rainstorm. A dirge and a prayer become confused and jumbled, falling over themselves like drunken men, falling over and tripping, mixing, and Uni doesn't want to cry. She doesn't want to show that sort of weakness with people nearby, because she needs to be strong, for them.
But God, she wants to break. She wants to be lucky enough to ride off into the sunset Happily Ever After, but this just proves she is still a child. Her deep blue eyes flash over the pacifiers she holds in her hands and she composes herself. She needs to do this. She knows this, has known, that she would need to do this. Uni looks out the window, thinks of something calming, and the voices vanish like spring mist.
She will do this. It isn't a matter of "can" or "can't" anymore. It was a matter of being the Sky Arcobaleno. When it got down to it, she was forced to see she had no choice in the matter at all. She closed her eyes against the landscape flying past her and focused on the feel of her cloak. This was not an option. It was the requirement.
(After all, life required sacrifice.
You couldn't just get something for nothing. There is always a price someone else has to pay.)
When she meets Vongola the Tenth, she knows. Oh, she knows. She looks into his eyes and sees the colors from before, the firework-eyes that haunted her young dreams, glowing with cruel kindness, even though his eyes are brown now; amber like sap, but Uni recognizes him. (She would recognize those eyes even if he was old and falling apart at the joints.)
His eyes are light concern and sweetness, caring and filled with a hidden resentment at his own innocence and naivety. These qualities, however, are already beginning to fade with every gentle scar that fills the surface of his skin, skin pearly as a burn.
Uni feels herself glowing when she looks at him. He's so confused, so pure, she wants to cry. She wants to taint him, protect him with her pretty lies and white words, hide reality from him and then shove it in his face like ice water. She wants him to understand, but she wants him to stay the same.
He blushes when she smiles, and so she smiles wider, radiates purity which could fool even Gamma.
(She wants him to suffer the same fate as her. She wants him to live so he will grieve over her.)
She wishes Vongola—Tsunayoshi Sawada. That was his name—had come to her sooner.
(Maybe then, he could have saved her.)
. . .
She remembers being little, hearing the man singing to her in her sleep, late at night. His voice flowed over wooden pillars like mountain water, melting, and she would cry out into the dark, reaching for the ceiling, but it was so far away—
Her mother would come in, hold her as Uni pressed her hands to her ears. Eyes clenched shut and fists pressing into her ears like she's trying to crush her own head, she imagined she couldn't hear him anymore. Her face buried into the orange-salmon of her mother's night shirt, breathing in the scent that is purely Aria, and she tries to calm down. She hiccups a few times, blinks the tears away and rocks with her mother's swaying, the older woman murmuring a combination of hums and "shh, it's alright,"s.
She falls asleep, but wakes up early the next morning, unable to go back to sleep. She sits up, watches the sun rise over the last few inches of hill, and attempts a smile.
Her mother asked her, later at the breakfast table, "What happened last night?"
Uni responds softly, mature, "I heard my funeral song."
Aria looks at her, mixing remorse, bitterness, love and wry humor into once glance, a quirk of the lips.
"Yeah," the older woman murmurs, "That can happen sometimes."
. . .
She can hear him now, every night, regardless of sleep. He sings softly, like an apology for killing her. Uni accepts, forgives him, and stays up to listen to him. It only takes two days for her to learn the melody, three to learn the chorus, and eight to learn all of the words. From that point on, she sings along, adding a soprano to the man's not quite low voice.
She sings until someone tells her to be quiet. If no one says it, she sings until her throat cracks and chokes her, sending her into a coughing fit which destroys her lungs.
It is a vicious circle, Uni thinks, panting from one such fit as she lay on the ground, cheek pressed to the damp grass. She can't stop singing. It makes her feel alive, her spirit rising with the shaky flying of her own voice, soft and young still. She needs to sing now, needs to express herself.
(But it just feels like she is hastening her own death.)
The Arcobaleno lays there for a little longer, catches her breath, when she hears the shoes. Sneakers appear in her vision, and she looks up hazily, sees wide amber and she smiles wanly.
Tsuna asks softly, trying not to wake anyone, "Are you alright, Uni?"
She pushes herself up into a sitting position, brushes off what she can see of herself. She still smiles up at him, says, "I'm fine. I just choked on some dust."
He blinks, and hesitantly sits beside her.
"I see," he mutters quickly, looking up at the stars.
They look up together for what seems like might be hours. It's nice to have that feeling of separation, detachment. It feels like nothing exists but the centimeter between their arms and the stars twisting and leaping in the sky, writing under the music of the man singing her funeral music.
(Uni thinks that if she turns her head a little more to the left, she would be able to see him. But why would she want to meet the man who's been singing a requiem to her since she was two?)
Tsuna eventually looked over at her, caught her eye and flushed a little, like he was noticing the closeness for the first time. She didn't find it uncomfortable and watched as his honesty flashed through his eyes faster than she could catch.
He murmurs, "We should go back. There's a battle in the morning, after all," and Uni nods serenely.
"We probably should go back," she agrees, humming.
But neither of them moves, and they continue to look at the stars until their shoulders brush and they get used to the feel of another's clothing. They don't move their faces from the heavens, which are still doing a drunken sort of tango, and the dawn breaks silently.
(The lament stops suddenly, drops out of her hearing and she sees orange everywhere, like a saving grace.)
. . .
When it is finally time, Uni looks up at the sky, and then at Tsuna, and smiles. But it falters, fades, because she knows. She can't do this.
(She sees herself as a skeleton—she lies in the black, sinking, the eyeless sockets staring at her. They'll stare like that forever and longer, leaving the scorches behind in their wake.)
Her flames flicker tellingly and she clutches the pacifiers closer, as if they'll tell her something to strengthen her.
She's only ever met these babies once, each, but she remembers so well each one. She can remember Fon, with his careful distance, and his polite habits which masked pride and a fierce nature. Uni remembers his gray eyes flashing as he looked at her, with the gentle 'smile', like he was measuring her. She remembers the easily flustered Skull, the cocky genius Verde, and the aloof Mammon, all looking at her through what looked like the eyes of children.
She remembers Colonnello and his abrasive cheer, how he grinned at her and ruffled her hair before leaving, and she even remembers meeting Lal Mirch for the first time, the woman assessing her sharply before pulling her goggles back down harshly, saying, "You're just like your grandmother."
(Uni still isn't sure if this was an insult or a compliment.)
Then there was Reborn. In the present, her eyes looked up, met his black ones, and she could feel herself tearing apart—she wanted to cry, to scream, to be able to hug him and to be comforted. She wanted to be a child again, but she can't forget what he had told her the first time they met.
She clenches her eyes shut, holds the Arcobaleno pacifiers closer, praying, God, please, give me strength—mother, grandmother—Luche, Aria, someone—please give me the power to do this.
As if answering her prayer, Gamma is suddenly in front of her, and she wants to cry again, God she wants to cry. But he gives her his strength in the form of his flames, and suddenly she feels herself overflowing, pouring, and she looks over Gamma's shoulder to see Tsuna looking at her, horrified, and she almost thinks she can hear him screaming, "Uni, no!"
She smiles at him tearfully, tries to convey everything she feels in that one moment, no longer than a second, and a tear slips down her cheek and over her tattoo—reminds her it had always been like this, there had never been any escaping this moment where it's just her and him, and he was trying so hard to protect her—
"I'm sorry, Tsunayoshi-kun," she murmurs, but her smile does not falter. (She does not falter.)
It takes only a second, and then there are just her clothes, floating in the air before falling to the ground with the pacifiers clattering unceremoniously. Whatever was left of her is gone now, poured into the only thing she can give: rebirth. She was so young, she thought she remembered herself thinking, she didn't want to die. But then, who was "she"?
She closes her eyes, hears a man's voice disguised as a child, speaking to her sharply, frustrated, sad, relieved, and she floated away into black, waiting.
"It's time to stop dreaming. You stopped being a child a long time ago, Uni, and you know that better than anyone."
. . .
(All good things must come to an end. Beautiful things are easily destroyed and the pure die young. Everyone is the same before their destiny, pulled to a fate they can't deny, no matter their power. Reborn was no exception, Tsuna was no exception.
Sky Arcobaleno are no exception.)
The man's voice keens mournfully, and she can almost hear the sobs. She dissipates and wonders why he was singing in the first place: this is, after all, not a pointless death, but a sacrifice for the good of all.
If only she really believed that.
As she disappears slowly, fading from the edges, she recalls what a pointless existence she was. Born to die for this one moment, raised to suffer and die like this. She thinks of Tsuna, and smiles, feels the tears slip behind the curve of her ears and away. He cared for her in a pure way, something genuine she had wanted to give herself up to, even though they had only known each other this short time.
He wasn't like Gamma, who loved her but also saw her mother. He wasn't like Byakuran, who wanted her only for her status as an Arcobaleno. He wasn't even like Reborn, who loved her because of her grandmother, protected her because she was the boss. Tsuna cared. He was protecting her for all of them, selfless and selfish in his innocent wish to simply get everyone home safely.
She choked on a laugh, hearing it echo into the mist, and noticed numbly that she could no longer feel her legs or arms, moving to her shoulders and up her torso. Uni had no idea where she was going, but she hoped her grandmother and mother were there, smiling in a white light happily, holding out their hands for her—wouldn't that be nice?
But she thought of Tsuna and cried. She had wanted to stay. She had wanted to be his friend, wanted to see the future with them, see everything put right. She cried hard and without shame as she faded, her wails sailing out until she was too tired to see correctly.
A light began to pour softly over her like home. Uni reached out an arm that didn't exist anymore and felt herself pulled through as the last of her vanished into black, the light engulfing and welcoming.
. . .
(Nothing is free. Neither angels nor demons can escape from this rule.
Everything costs something. The larger your wish, the larger the price you pay in the long run.
Nothing is exempt.
Not even the sky.)
. . .
. . .
. . .
Um… This started as a bunch of random segments from Uni's perspective, and then … turned into this, gradually. I started writing this right after reading chapter 279, so … yeah. I shed a few tears after that chapter, hahah. Uni was really the only female character who I really came to love dearly (although I still love Haru and Chrome, of course), and who it was very, very easy to picture with Tsuna. Her calm but commanding personality completely grounds his nervous, insecure persona … and it just felt so pure.
Augh. I don't know. But her death made me really sad, even though it made so much sense, and it will probably spark a reaction from Tsuna. (note after reading 280: It did. So much pairing-ness! "You don't even have the right to speak her name!" aosdnjdff. D: )
I still don't understand why it couldn't have been Kyoko, since the two females I really liked so far are both dead … /: (I liked Bluebell a lot, too). I feel like this manga kind of has a thing against women, even though it's by a woman … which has always struck me as odd. Ah, well, I still love Reborn! to bits and pieces, despite that obvious flaw.
Anyways, this is a very raw, emotional piece, because I was also a bit depressed from other things while writing it … so yeah. Any kind of feedback is welcome and appreciated, but it's not required at all … since this story makes me feel somber, hahah.
…
Oh, Uni …
manrii.
p.s. "Look After You", will be, unfortunately, on hold for a little while until Spring Break. My computer crashed and I lost the prompt behind it, so I'll need to wait until I'm at home to retrieve it. On top of that, fanfiction is being a little weird because of my school's network. I apologize for the wait, but I'll do my best to get several chapters of that out soon.