disclaimer: I wish I owned Reborn. There would be more sex than fighting.
I suck at writing, orz.
Enjoy, anyway.
Different.
They were completely different. It's so hard to look at him and not see her, and Belphegor knows this, he thinks it himself and curses it everyday he muses it, but they were not alike in the least bit. Fran was too annoying, too tall, too small, too pale, too green-haired, too whatever motive he wants to use that day so he has a reason to complain or an excuse for why he can do the things he does with Fran and why it would never be a malicious action towards Mammon—she would kill him, just destroy him if he thought they were alike, because that would be a lie.
Sometimes, when he's sitting in his room—it was always so messy, she'd float sometimes to just get to his bed, and she'd sniff and scowl and he'd laugh, she was always much more focused on the clutter than he ever could be—he'll stick his knives into the dashboard and remember, even though it hurt and even though it was a waste of time.
Not that he ever had any emotions, either to give away or to use, but something painful and sharp, a precise pain slipping through his ribs and puncturing his lung, liked to attack him whenever he tried to think back, because it's only scary when he can't remember her anymore. He wasn't ever really sad—what did that word mean again?—but when her voice wasn't there anymore, a rushed panic took over and he'd look down, to block everything else out and to just remember. He wasn't good at it, memorisation wasn't his forte, but he had to, he just had to.
He can't actually remember the day Mammon disappeared because it was just too normal. He can remember what he thought a month later, when her joke had become a worry and his calls for the end of that stupid, fucking hide-and-seek game never became answered. Since no one else ever cared for her aside from the illusions and magic she'd use, it was pointless to ask around. So he spent a week, calling for her and looking and checking all her hidey-holes, all their secret spots, getting more and more anxious when nothing came back, when all he was ever met with was an echo, his voice bouncing off the walls and nothing more.
The world was going to hell outside, God trying to be secretive as he broke down doors and stole your babies from their cribs, but it meant nothing to Belphegor. His head didn't work properly for that month after, when Squalo finally seemed to find it fit to tell him, oh, yeah, she's gone, we're looking for another, because she's dead, she killed herself.
How the hell did he know, why the hell did he know. Belphegor's throat didn't handle the shouting for much longer. She just disappeared? Bullshit. She was bound to show up, this must be a prank, she's probably just making everyone think this while she mulls over her life or whatever the hell she does whenever she goes missing.
But she was gone, gone, gone, gone. The vase was dropped but it wasn't just shattered, those pieces were too big and could be seen under the rug despite your lies and your distractions. It was decimated, a pile of dust lost in the wind when you swept it out the door, your shaky hands still not believing and still in shock. How sad could it be that the only time he believed this was when he entered her room and she didn't appear to yell at him and throw him out as he laughed in what would then be relief instead of amusement. Even when the game went on, he could stop it. But there was no game then, she had stopped it with her beating heart.
And then a year later—a year, three months and fourteen days, but he wasn't counting then, only after, when things started to look like they were falling into places—Fran shows up, looking so very much like her that his first thought was that the game had ended and she was just hungry.
But they were so different, so very different. Mammon ate with her thumb and forefinger holding the fork, dainty and careful, Fran just ate with his fist, stabbing and chewing. He was annoying, she was bothersome. And he was taller, much taller than her. He hated that the most. His hair was too light, his eyes were too small, his fingers were too long. Belphegor wishes sometimes that he could break everything on Fran and then fix it all the way it was on Mammon, because if they were THAT similar, then it wouldn't be too much of a bother to make them the same. For a replacement, Fran was too not like Mammon to be that much like her.
And that was what he believed in for eight months, before the kiss and before that first horrible realisation hit him much harder than Squalo ever could. He punched walls and cut open many a soft item before he swore to himself that he was never replacing her—grouping the two together, calling them alike, even making Fran wear that stupid frog hat, his hands started shaking, it was all his head making them one, trying to get over Mammon, trying to forget her.
If Belphegor were one for emotions, this would have torn him apart. Mammon always liked saying things to that effect. 'If you had a heart'. Because she thought she knew him, and it was always in the best way that he hated her for that.
They were different, they had to be. Their kisses and their secrets were nothing related to her, because if they were, Belphegor was afraid he'd wake up one day and forget exactly how many shades lighter the couch had to be to match her hair colour, or exactly where the freckle on her back was. Instead, all he would imagine would be a horrible mix of Fran and Mammon, and that was something his mind rejected violently. If it ever came to it, he would destroy the entire china collection, to keep his memory of that goddamn broken vase intact and safe.