Aaaayyyyy, it's late at night but I just finished this fanfic, so bear with me and the weird stream-of-consciousness writing style. Mostly for my own satisfaction, but also for that of an acquaintance of mine. Please enjoy, read, and review, hopefully in that order.
Fugo heard the fridge door open behind him, and the shuttling of glass jars across shelves as someone sifted through the various containers in it.
"Hey, Fugo, d'you remember where you put the pickle jar?" Sheila asked. Her voice sounded a bit strained, so she must have been on her tiptoes. The tension in her muscles would have constructed her breath.
He lifted his eyes from the newspaper, and tried to recall the ordering of the fridge. Condiments tended to be in the back, but Sheila's surprising addiction to pickles meant that they'd be stored in a more prominent place, alongside the carrots.
"Try the left shelf, second from the top. If they're not there, they're somewhere near the cheeses."
"All right, but I don't see — oh, never mind."
There was the sound of someone trying to unscrew a lid, the sound of a drawer opening and a small, flat piece of rubber being pulled out, and the sound of a jar being opened.
Fugo mentally followed the footsteps from the kitchen behind him around to the couch. The small apartment was closed-in, with a wall separating most of the kitchen from the living room, and a separate hallway housing the bedrooms.
Search and challenge accomplished, Sheila perched herself on the arm of the couch with the jar and a two-tined fork.
Fugo returned his eyes to the newspaper. The couch was comfortable, and he was sitting far enough away from Sheila to not have to move.
The apartment wasn't huge, but it was big enough for two touchy people. They'd had been living there on the basis that a single person to an apartment was unaffordable, and that the only other people they could comfortably put up with were each other. Well, there was Murolo, but his personal life was a book the two of them would rather keep closed. Anyone else staying there would run the risk of annoying at least one of them, if not both.
Not that that was always a problem, but you know. There's no substitute for time and space.
"I don't get how you can just eat those out of the jar."
Sheila shrugged.
"They're just cucumbers. You eat cucumbers fine, right?"
Fugo raised a finger, not looking up from the article of the moment. It was about the deteriorating stability of Venice's buildings and the increasing infrastructure costs of the rising canal water. Quite fascinating, if it hadn't been the umpteenth article on that matter in the last year, let alone the past five.
"Correction: they're cucumbers with the water replaced with salt water and vinegar. Cucumbers are mostly water. So you're basically eating salt and vinegar."
"Crunchy salt and vinegar," Sheila corrected, "People eat salt and vinegar crisps, don't they?"
She finished the sentence absentmindedly, and picked up a discarded leaf of paper.
"Point taken."
Sheila crossed her legs, managing to be eating, holding the jar, and reading the paper, all while sitting on the arm of a couch. It required balance, Fugo noted, or the assistance of a stand.
He suppressed a chuckle. Narancia had a similar habit of perching, but his sense of balance outweighed his sense of propriety, so his positions were often creative.
"Apparently Venice will have sunk into the ocean in a few decades," he commented.
"What a pity it would be to live there," Sheila replied.
"Indeed."
Fugo had already sunk back, absorbed in a type of philosophical mathematics.
The compartmentalization of emotion, as elicited by memories.
Specifically, the re-ordering of his mind after the past six months of catatonia and his recent acceptance into the new Passione. It was a bit of an endeavour, akin to a daily workout. He got enough physical exercise fleeing or chasing, and he could easily participate in a mental Olympics, but emotions had never come easily to him, as with art.
When they left him — no, when he left them in Venice, he'd known that at least one person would be dead by the end of it. Probably Bruno, and likely Abbaccio.
He regretted that — far more than he should — but told himself there was nothing to be done about it.
He'd known that a few more would follow — four or five dead, was his estimate. He didn't know who would survive.
And so, in anticipation of what would come, he had placed each potential corpse into a little box, and labeled it accordingly. He had promised himself never to open the boxes until he saw their occupants alive.
Needless to say, he had failed in that, but that had been the plan.
His eyes glanced over another article about allegations of corruption in the municipal government. Big surprise; he supposed his daily job could be construed as contributing to it.
The crunching noises to his right and the rustling of the paper faded into the background, as unreal as the inked letters that seemed to float above the off-white background.
Now, he went to a different place, outside of time. A Christmas tree, and underneath its branches, six packages.
…
Months ago, on a hard, narrow cot in a third-rate hotel, he had been the one to wrap the presents.
…
A quick summary, to make it simple.
Bruno was admirable. He was kind. He seemed to have had his sense of humour surgically removed, but sometimes he said something that could be interpreted as deadpan. He was the leader of the group, and because of that, Fugo's chief reason for living.
But he had made a stupid decision. Noble, but stupid. And Fugo still clung bitterly to life with the desperation of one who knows that, if there is no afterlife, death is the most terrifying of concepts.
He had made the smart decision.
And so he dropped everything he believed in into a perfectly cubic wooden box, and labeled it: "Bruno Bucellati. Reason for living #1. The best of humanity."
He sealed the box off, with glue in the seams. Nothing so gaudy as a ribbon would disgrace the dark, polished casing. An elegantly taped-off covering of deep blue paper would do the trick just nicely.
Even if Bruno had been stupid, he deserved respect.
…
Next: Abbaccio, who had been dead from the beginning.
He was quick, efficient, and businesslike. His previous profession meant that he had taken this job to be of some use, rather than to accomplish anything.
He had been an ideal partner.
Fugo had been comforted by the knowledge that, if things ever went down the drain, they'd both be fighting for themselves only. The expectation to protect was a bit…weird, for lack of a better term, and Fugo had been glad to be free of it in Abbaccio's presence.
That wasn't all.
Fugo had been reading off the list behind his eyes, and so he scribbled a footnote in the margin.
Abbaccio had the sense of humour of a thirteen-year-old boy.
It was mostly an insult, but it added a colourful streak of childish, second-hand ribbon to the stark white of the paper wrapping.
And so another doll dropped into the box, and was labeled: "Abbaccio, who was good at what he did."
…
And so we go down the list. There is an order to it, if an odd one.
Now we come to Mista. This was a fairly simple one. He was carefree and lucky, and a bit simple in the way that a dog was. He liked to tease people (Narancia in particular), but he was amusing. Except for his obsession with the number four.
This particular labelling went quickly: "Mista, and his hat." He was rather proud of the sentence, as it implied playfulness and childishness with half the letters.
The easy part was over.
…
Trish and Giorno. Giorno and Trish. They got separate boxes, but he'd known each of them for too little to form too much of an opinion.
Giorno was helpful. Very helpful. He seemed like he might be a bit like Bruno.
"Giorno. Kind, helpful."
Trish was aloof. That was all he'd got from her. She was difficult to read. So he labelled her with the only fact of significance to him.
"Trish. Narancia said she was him."
And so they were done.
Except one.
…
That didn't end up being quite true. It was not the packing that was difficult for the two of them (wrapping the pattern of her skirt — he liked that pattern — and blue with gold-tinged clouds), but the unwrapping.
…
The last label made him come out of his head for a moment as his right arm shook slightly. Sometimes that happened when he was angry.
He might have been angry now, curled up on a narrow bed as if sick, cradling his head in the crook of his arm.
He couldn't be bothered to tell.
The last package — as opposed to the deep blue, white, floral, pastels, and pale blue of the above ones — was a gaudy orange, striped through with black and purple. To an American, it would resemble a Christmas present done up in the colours of Halloween by, perhaps, a seven-year old. The paper was bent and folded clumsily around the corners, with tape tacked on haphazardly and bits of white showing through where the paper had been folded too much. As if to hide the mistakes, a broad ribbon tied in an awkward how contributed to the look of bad execution despite good intentions.
This one required a slightly longer benediction before it was put away.
It was Narancia's.
Fugo had been the first of them to see him, and the first to take his hand and lead him out of the gutter.
That meant nothing.
It simply meant that Fugo was in the right place at the right time to make another addition to the team.
Narancia had idolized Bruno from the moment they met. Fugo acknowledged that most people felt that way — even he shared in the feeling — but Narancia saw him as less of a leader and more of a god. Even so, Fugo was his teacher (and occasionally his target practice). Fugo couldn't blame him. His own fits were something to behold. Truthfully, it was incredible that Narancia held even the barest measure of liking for him.
Narancia was what he might have been if he had given up the bitter arrogance that dragged him through life.
And so, as Narancia learned to live, he felt as if he lived as well.
But that was just a summary. There was too much that could be put down in a couple of words, a couple of god damned sentences.
Fugo's fingernails bit into the flesh of his hand, but he didn't notice the blood.
One time, it had been spring.
…
Narancia flopped down in the chair next to Fugo, trying and failing to look nonchalant. His childish excitement was getting the better of him.
"Give me a question."
The confidence in his grin suggested to Fugo that today might finally be the time to move on to times tables.
He scribbled a problem on to the sheet of paper in front of him, and passed it to Narancia.
126 + 398 =
"See what you can do."
Narancia picked up his pencil, and spun it in his fingers as he scrutinized the question. Fugo quickly tallied up the number in his head, to be sure, and watched as Narancia scribbled a few numbers on to the piece of paper.
He'd come a long way. A few months ago he could barely grasp the idea of counting beyond a hundred. Fugo felt no small amount of pride in this achievement — he was not cut out for teaching. Particularly when there was a 40/60 chance of having a knife up your nose at the end of a lesson.
He had to say, though, he started it most of the time. Narancia just continued it.
The muscles in his right arm tensed, and started to shiver as his heart rate rose. As he steadied his breath, Fugo reminded himself to apologize again. Formally, of course.
His eyes flickered back into focus, and settled on Narancia's concerned face.
"Earth to Fugo…"
"What?"
"You okay? You looked pretty zoned out."
"I was just thinking of another problem," Fugo said hurriedly.
"Oh, yay."
Narancia turned back to his work, and Fugo watched him write a few last numbers in the childish print of his.
398 - 400
Clever kid. Narancia finally seemed to be picking up on the shortcuts Fugo used.
126 - 124
Good, good, balance it out.
400 + 124 = 400 + 100 + 24
Five hundred and twenty four. The right answer.
Fugo allowed himself a moment of quiet pride, but it dragged itself away from him and blossomed in the sunlight.
Math seemed irrelevant in the mafia, but it was a good exercise. More than telling you if you were getting cheated or not, it sharpened the mind.
It seemed so superficial, but faster thought processes could mean the difference between life and death in Bruno's gang. Narancia might understand that one day, but for now, him getting a right answer was as good as anything.
"The answer's five hundred and twenty four."
Narancia leaned forward as he answered, looking expectant.
"Did I get it?"
Fugo paused for a moment, smiling. Teaching Narancia was all the sweeter once he learned, as much for the difficulty in doing as as anything else. Something else.
There was a brief flurry of movement, and Fugo felt warm.
"…so, I did get it right?" Narancia said slowly, relaxing. Fugo's arms were pretty skinny, but they were pulled tightly.
"Yes, you did. Like I taught you."
Narancia chuckled, and drank in the feeling.
"You're happy today."
He felt Fugo's arms quickly unwind, and saw him recoil awkwardly.
"Sorry, that was stupid," he muttered, "Involuntary contraction of muscles caused by lack of oxytocin."
Narancia laughed again.
"Whatever," he said, grinning, "Feels nice."
…
He'd longed to rip his fingers into the wrapping paper for so long, and savour the brief moment of anticipation before the grief.
But too many missed opportunities had passed.
The feeling of staring at a present is infinitely better than the present, just like the smell of sausage is better than the actual sausage.
Another opportunity passed, and Fugo sat hunched at the base of the tree, surrounded by five opened boxes and torn shreds of wrapping paper.
And one clumsy, childish gift sat in the centre of the carnage, perfect and untouchable.