Title: illuminato la mia vita
Summary: The possible romance between Dr. Shamal and Gokudera's mother. Pure headcanon.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
The title roughly translates to "light of my life". Google search takes credit for it.
The truth is, the greatest love stories in the world are those that occur backstage, behind the epic, caught only in wisps of whispers and dimmed stage lights.
~0~
She is fifteen when he mets her, while on loan to the ailing Cavallone as a second-rate shooter. She is leaning against a wall of volcanic rock, barefoot against the red earth, eyes closed facing a vineyard, listening to the breeze, lips pursed in a crisp-pear melody. He is pushing twenty, and felt somewhat like a pervert for ogling the beautiful half-breed daughter of the Cavallone's Yakuza informant.
She notices him only when he starts hacking his lungs out in the grip of whatever new illness or terrible allergy that has befallen him. It's only when he staggers that the suspicion leeches from her eyes and she bends to help him.
The conversation that follows is as disconcerting as the age gap: somewhere between his carefully-measured inquiries and her rather tart replies, he realizes the mild, snappy accent reminiscent of lands far east, and the civilian mannerisms, the open palms and open face and the free sharing of opinion on his face (Are you sure you're not older? Your hair's like this teacher's and he's aaancient, she say, without malice). Her words are animated, played out by long-fingered hands, her smile soft and infectious.
And Shamal - cold, proud, upstart Shamal - is terribly fascinated.
~0~
Shamal wonders why he goes on this voyages under the blistering Mediterranean sun and listen to her chatter on about the Lochness Monster or the Eumenides or some equally horrible mythical being when he could be perfecting the armored Trident X with a delicious new strain of the hemorrhagic fever or, at least, pretending to review the medical textbooks he's long since mastered for the looming medical board exams in the cool air-conditioned comfort of his rooms. He supposes it's a matter of duty and honor, since the girl didn't seem to realize that over the course of a few summers, she's grown a rather fine set of legs - and she goes to music school, it's ridiculous - and a hundred other lovely features capable of stopping a bullet at twenty paces.
The turqoise of the basking sea, however, is a breathtaking reprieve from the chiaroscuro of underground laboratories and nighttime escapades and morgues and Vendicare, and the company is much lovelier, if a little unbalancing when walking around in fluttery white dresses that share too much skin.
He regrets not one whit of the outings.
~0~
It is an ideal place to meet; the cafe is low-key: the inconspicuous, neighborly kind that caters well to mafioso on the move and stars on the rise. It's quaint enough that he can imagine their bimonthly friendly catch-up meeting a date-in-style.
She wears one of those ruffled dresses she's loved since she could afford them, oversized gems round her neck, and oversized sunglasses on her dainty nose, hair in a flighty fall around her face. She looks so bang-up endearing that it makes a sharp contrast with his sleek, sharp, dark good looks. He's already made a name for himself - the Trident Shamal, genius hitman - and had found a more-or-less desirable Famiglia to end his freelance days, and he is of dark Armani suits, outrageously-expensive watches and that black dragon of a car (it helps when he intercepts half-interested glances from the more respectable men at nearby tables).
Amusement adorns her smile even as she points a stern finger at him. "You're late."
He shrugs dismissively. "Lost my keys."
"Why do you always lose things before you realize you need them?" She contends, her smile still too wide for her face.
~0~
Shamal invites his boss to her seventh performance, the one critics will later claim as the peak of her career, and once the man is comfortably seated, the best seat in the house no less, Shamal slips to the backstage, past the star-studded door, and salutes at her reflection. He smiles, thinking how this is it, this will be the last time he'll see her before he makes his intentions known, because five years isn't so large a gap anymore. He's thinking how he'll cut down on his hours and settle down and he'll take her to visit Japan, maybe, because she'll be absolute fireworks in a kimono, or Egypt -
"Hey you," she says when she turns around and walks to him. She's barely to his shoulders even in her lacy heels, and has to kiss him somewhere in the vicinity of his chin.
She pulls him to sit by her in front of a grand piano she uses for practice. She smiles like she has a secret, there is love is bright in her eyes, and she says, "This one, I'll play this only once -"
And it is their song.
~0~
They meet in one of those bars where people go to borrow comfort from a bottle, the atmosphere is of smoky lighting and chipped mugs and the heady-sweet scent of home-grown wine. She sighs into the back of her left hand; his eagle-sharp reflexes catch on to the bitten nails, the polish not quite smooth but pale-pink as sea shells. Her right hand distractedly fiddles with the lily-white irises carefully placed to the side.
Flowers. From the boss.
Shamal didn't have very many people he respected, in a wide spectrum of world leaders and reknowned doctors and crime lords, but the head of the Gokudera Famiglia was one of them. Shamal had been his subordinate for years and service to the man had taken on an almost automatic quality, whether it be rendered in corpses or explosions or damning headlines, his loyalty absolute and unhesitant and unquestioned. Being forced to take back his love and stow it to the crevasse of his heart is, perhaps, the most difficult duty of all, and the one thing the boss cannot be completely forgiven for.
Shamal betrays himself and her both, chooses to go by the rules, and says he's a good man with finality, sounding it over her precisely-spoken I would've chosen you.
He makes to leave, but he forgets she's still got the hot blood of Mafia in her, however diluted, and that she's not one to take anything as momentous as this sitting down - she'd never been fond of letting anything go - and they get into a majestic fight over it.
His last words are flung: that's the way it is, honey. in my world, everything is forfeit to the boss.
~0~
The boss wears a white face and a tired grim expression when Shamal storms into his oak-panelled office demanding what the hell is going on? when rumors surface in freaking Brazil over the shabby treatment of his mistress. Shamal wears fury like a black and crimson cloak, disables all the guards without a second look, uncannily surprised to find how ready he is to cross that invisible line of authority.
"You're a doctor," Gokudera merely says, face void of any of the emotions Shamal is clearly showing, eyes unflinching. The boss' hands are steady even in the onslaught of a six hundred death-dealing mosquitos. He passes over a white folder, the edges creased like it had been opened many, many times and thrown unto a wall even more often.
Shamal sees the laboratory printouts and blood freezes in his veins.
~0~
Shamal sees her in the mansion only once, standing at the side entrance like a common supplicant, waiting in the hot sun on the boundaries of the kingdom she should've been queen of. But her smile stood out against the frail bones of her face, fierce and strong even as her health spiralled down to where even his medicine cannot reach, excited to see her child (her child, the phrase is mind-boggling).
He's looked for only a few seconds before turning round to give swift, coarse orders to the guards to let her in immediately, you stupid morons, because God knows how long she's been standing there, and can't you fucking see she's already fading away. Something terrible like a sound caught between grief and despair rises in his throat, even as he smiles coolly at her entrance, not five feet away. He lets the distance pool out between them, thinking it might save him from the tidal wave of loss. In a mindless panic and unreasonable anger, even with all his genius, this harshness is the only way he knows to save himself.
Almost one month ago, the boss had told him to spare no expense, raid all resources, pull every string. A cure, you will find it, you have to.
Shamal doesn't dare even look at her until he cures her.
~0~
The car is a smoldering wreckage.
His heart, not much better.
~0~
Once, Shamal had fought the uncontrollable passion that had called many great Italian men to ruin. He had seen the fiery ambition that fell empires and brought them up from the scorched earth, the hatred so strong it drove civilization to bloodlust and the love so selfish it brought the world to its knees.
Once, he'd seen it run his own family to the ground, unto the streets, without protection nor power nor a hint of respect.
Once, he'd thought to save himself from that.
Why do you always lose things before you realize you need them?
But no more.
~0~
Shamal's love story is consigned to a hundred places littered over Italy, not in the places people would expect - not the plush chairs of the Roman countesses, nor the delivately-woven quilts of the Sicilian maids, not the tattered beds of Palermo's whores, nor the history-marked flats of Venice's artisans - but rather -
a neglected vineyard bordered by stalks of lavender and basil-
a lake's edge from where a mythical creature was once rumored to be seen-
a cafe just outside the city where the wine was good and the cheese exquisite-
a cheap bar where the salt air of the Mediterranean still permeated-
a reknown theater-
a room with a piano.
End.