Enrico, Massimo, Federico - The Great Rulers

Enrico - Home Ruler - Shot

thump thump thump

"Papa! Papa! Lookit!" Enrico stumbles his way towards him, his stick thin legs tangling themselves in his hurry. In his spider like fingers, he clutches a fluttering piece of paper.

Timoteo looks up from his papers, a small smile gracing his lips. He brushes a hand through his already peppering hair and lets out a little laugh.

"Enrico, Enrico!" He mimics fondly. Enrico walks around the hard mahogany desk teeming with files and papers and stationery, collapsing into Timoteo's lap. Timoteo gives a teasing "oomph!"

"My boy, you're growing like a weed!"

Enrico pouts, "Nuh uh! Mummy says that I'm just getting the better side of the genes!"

"That is what your mother would say, wouldn't she? I tell her she's not short and she doesn't believe a single word out of my mouth!" Timoteo ruffles his son's hair fondly. The boy had his mother's looks and his height, which meant he had the softest dark brown locks. "Did you want to show me something?"

The boy's face immediately brightened, "Yeah! Papa, look! I drew a picture of you and Coyote and Brow Nie, and Visconti and -"

He gently takes the proffered drawing, smiling at the colored figures drawn in crayon. He smoothed a hand over it, lingering fondly on the figures of his wife and son next to him, and chuckling at the array of colored stick people meant to represent his Guardians. This was precious, perfect. Timoteo wondered briefly if he had an empty picture frame around here.. Maybe Coyote would know?

Enrico would have wanted a sunny funeral. They hold a small service for him, and there were no flowers, just wreaths of leaves and berries.

(Enrico wrinkles his nose, a furrow appearing on his young face. A bouquet is set before him, one made of lilies and baby's breath and a variety of other small, delicate flowers. "The smell is too strong."

Iemitsu barks a loud laugh at that, "You've inherited your mother's distaste for flowers then! Such an unromantic! You'll never get girls that way."

Timoteo watches Enrico glare petulantly at Iemitsu and chuckles at their ensuing floundering, What a bunch he's raised.)

"I... am glad to have raised him. My only regret is that I couldn't raise him better." That is all he can say, all that he can force out of his throat and past his tongue without making it feel like he were lying. He can't cry, he doesn't cry, and it seems like he just can't breathe anymore. Deaths and funerals were not a rare thing, and to have cried the first few times was acceptable, but anymore...

It was a weakness.

But that's what they had considered Enrico, wasn't it? A weak spot? His little boy, dark brown locks and spider long fingers and weed like limbs, grinning and smiling and wearing his first pinstripe suit and ─

"Nono." Timoteo looks up. Coyote stood beside him, the sun catching in his hair and the sheen in his eyes. Beside him, the other Guardians stand, hunched over but still a predator's crouch to them. At Visconti's and Ganauche's side, Massimo and Federico stand, tears gathering in the corner of their eyes. "I'm sorry."

He shakes his head, and lets out a shaky breath. Enrico (and his precious precious wife, little Maria, beautiful dark brown hair all burnt up along with the rest of her skin) was gone, but Massimo and Federico. He had them.

Massimo - The Greatest - Drowned

"Hmmm... Five boxes of chocolate, some hard candies, all from that one shop that he liked, and.. What could I be missing, Coyote?" Timoteo rubbed his scruff thoughtfully, contemplating the small pile of sweets before him. Coyote gave him an exasperated look.

"Perhaps the rest of that store, nono."

"Well, souvenirs are important! And of course, so is my darling Massimo. He especially likes this area's sweets, you know," Timoteo chuckled, arranging the pile neatly by size and shape. He wondered if there would be any space left in his luggage. Then again, he could just send it separately.

"I think most of our budgets for these business trips are mostly spent on this type of thing," his Storm Guardian says wryly. He leaned comfortably on the side of the desk. "You spoil him."

"It's more a mutual spoiling. I buy him sweets, he brings me the best results for a mission. And lovely photographs when he travels. I may have to invest in a new album, soon, actually. But even if he didn't, he's still my son. My darling Massimo."

Massimo is drowned, and they find his bloated body the next day.

He is buried with Eupatorium rugosum, the chocolate snakeroot. The plant's white buds and thin stalk, not to mention it's sweet smell, belied its toxic nature. Perfect for Massimo. Massimo, who took photographs and wore modest clothes (so different from the black suits and neatly pressed shirts, so different from his older brother's pinstriped suit), who liked sweets. Who killed men by slipping in something extra into their meals. ("I am nothing like Poison Scorpion Bianchi; I can actually cook." "Why you little brat! Have a taste of my newest recipe, pickled jalapenos!")

In Timoteo's eyes, he was the greatest at what he was: a son.

Federico - Peaceful Ruler - Burned

Federico was painfully shy. He stood tall, like his oldest brother and father, and he stood with the awkward grace of a newborn elk. Where Enrico had eventually trained grace into the bones of his body, Federico had inadvertently nurtured the awkwardness that came with the long limbs. He had light brown hair that flopped just over his forehead and sunken, blue eyes. Light freckles dotted his face in the untraceable patterns of the stars.

Timoteo had fallen in love immediately the moment he had come out creased with nine months time in the womb, as he was wont to do with all his sons.

They found his bones.

When Federico was in his late twenties, he had pulled out of mafia business altogether. He left the mansion with nary a glance back and applied to the closest art school he could find. Federico's pieces would turn out to be abstract works painted with watercolors. He would turn out to never speak to the Famiglia again, be he really didn't need to. He sent back a canvas each year to Timoteo for his birthday. The first one he sent home was his only acrylic work, a portrait of Timoteo as his youngest had remembered him.

His isolation did not save him.

They put them into a rich, wooden, box which was lined with velvet on the inside. On the outside was his name. They buried him, and no funeral was held save for the private one of Timoteo and his grief.

The Unknown

XanXus - ? - ?

He makes a mistake of leaving the journal out.

Or rather, he makes the mistake of not talking to Xanxus personally about the entire matter. He acknowledges that he could have handled Xanxus' roots better, could have told him earlier and told him why he would never acknowledge him as his successor.

But nothing, not even his mistakes, can justify that his son is trying to overthrow him and his people. There is nothing that justifies Xanxus' burning of their headquarters. There is nothing that justifies the fallen men beneath the Varia's feet.

So Timoteo steels his heart and closes his eyes to the pain and indignation in his youngest son's (because he'll always be his son) eyes, and performs Primo's Zero Point Breakthrough.

One day, Timoteo hopes to blur the difference between Family and Famiglia with Xanxus. Today is not that day.

(The day comes sooner than he expects. Timoteo smiles at his youngest, only son as he sits across from him. They share a bottle of aged wine between them while Tsunayoshi plays mediator. He looks ready to faint, but he's smiling.)

A/N: I wrote the first part like a year ago. I finished Xanxus' and some of Federico's today.

It's not really good. And it's not really deep. But I wanted to at least acknowledge the fact that Timoteo's lost three sons permanently.

Story notes from like a year ago:

"I was hit with feels recently because my friend was rereading the series. Timoteo lost three sons, essentially, and he may have almost lost a 4th. Iemitsu isn't on here becaaaause I'm lazy and I forgot. Maybe when I'm feeling particularly writer-y again I'll add his part.

This doesn't separate it by chronological order. There seems to be little mention of it during the fic, but if you're interested, here's how my thinking is:

- E, M, and F were the biological sons, who probably died AFTER Xanxus was frozen because it's their deaths that act as catalysts for the Ninth seeking out Tsunayoshi.

- Xanxus probably joined the biological sons' life when they were in childhood or just leaving it. I'm assuming the boys (E, M, and F) were at the very least 30 when they died, because the Ninth is 70. Assuming that Enrico is the oldest at maybe 35+, with Xanxus at 24, that's a 9 year gap. So a bit of alienation, or doting fondness."

I do want to point out that I implemented like zero of these thoughts. But I really liked figuring out the logistics of the entire thing. So really, those notes were the only good part of this entire thing.