Title: Bambino: Small Steps

Time passes much faster than I can really register afterwards. Before I know it, I'm one and a half. Slowly learning to awkwardly toddle around under the watchful eyes of the nurses and my padre. And... well discovering how flames work. The purple fire, while I know what they are at least in a loose sense I don't know how to reach them.

As time goes by they just seem to refuse to come back to the surface.

It's frustrating. Because I can still feel them. I know that they're there and at night when I'm sleeping purple flames flicker and dance in my dreams. Winding around and making various things grow or multiply, and if I hurt myself in the dreams... the flames flare and sew my injuries back together.

Propagation.

The increase, the duplication and multiplication. The flames increase the growth of cells, which would theoretically hasten healing. Or something like that, though it would also trade off for a decreased life expectancy due to the aging of cells and limited amount of times they can divide themselves... unless it just makes them from nothing and multiplies them as a perfect copy.

Except, I can only do these things inside my own head, in my dreams.

In the waking world the purple fire remains stubbornly out of the grasp of my hands. It's frustrating. Because people have expectations, and I can feel their gazes on me, and hear the whispers at my back. It's not something that I enjoy.

It's rather disquieting really. Makes me twitch and shift and hatehatehate. I don't like it when people look at me and just expect something. It feels like a collar or chain and I just don't like it. At least Padre doesn't really expect anything from me. He's a lifeline really, simply happy to let me take my time. Rubbing my head absently while he sits and does mountains of paperwork. Sitting up with me when I demand to be read a story and patiently working with me when it comes to my progress when it comes to growing up.

Small steps, babbles that mix English with Italian and Spanish...

And the absent sheets of paper that get absolutely covered with various pictures, drawings and sketches. Words that wind together and shift in their patterns. Codes and stories and it's an escape. When I get too frustrated, when I get too upset. I retreat and turn to the scattered paper, to the ink brushes and the forgotten pencils. And... I teach myself to draw, to write and create.

To dull the rushing pounding pain in my head, and the tight claws around my heart.

Because even though I'm growing up, it's still not home.

It's not home and that still bites, and hurts and sometimes I wake up abruptly from dreams of purple fire and I want to scream. I want to scream and call for people who don't exist. Who will likely never exist if the small snippets of conversation that I hear aside the whispers about me are true. Differences, some small and some big...

But all of them add up, and it's enough... Enough that I know this isn't my world.

Aside the Flames, aside the abilities that I believe that they'll gift me. There's more... and a large part of it is the Mafia. Organized Crime groups in general really. And... that's right smack dab in the middle of where I've been born. The current only heir to a Criminal Syndicate, as far as I can gather.

And there's so much to understand.

So much history, even though this group is still new. Relatively speaking anyway, it wasn't founded in the eighteen hundreds anyway. We were really only recently founded, in the 1970's so not that old. And I was born this time around in the year 1994...

A twenty year span at least...

And I'm already almost a third generation boss in this family's case...

Talk about a short lived Group... then again, I can vaguely recall hearing stuff about the group in my previous life. The Underbelly, it had something about Gang Killings and Crime in Australia, and featured some of the Carlton Crew... of course the real group pretty much stopped existing by 2006, or something like that... I don't know... I wasn't really paying that much attention to any of these things in my previous life. And in this one, there's just so many different groups, different families who knows how long it's going to last. Especially since this time around it seems like the group actually has some form of inheritance since I'm actually related to the founder.

Go figure with alternate worlds and timelines and universes.

But it's kind of cool I guess. I'm the Heir to a Criminal Syndicate! And once I'm in charge I can change things around to how I want them to be.

No drag trafficking, no human trafficking, eh... assassinations would probably be fine, and all the other stuff will be dealt as I figure it out... Rigged Gambling halls, and illegal casinos...

Of course, while I'm only one and a half I don't think that any of that really matters as much as just figuring things out does. As much as learning to walk, learning to talk, to tie my own shoes and actually make it to the potty. As much as reaching for and accessing the flames.

None of it matters as much as simply growing up.

And that's when someone shoves a gun into my face.

"Che?" I blink and slowly peer up at the new man. Light skin, with a slight tan, messy auburn hair, and dark blue eyes, like midnight. I blink again before taking a deep breath and kind of puffing it out before pushing the gun out of my face and returning to the messy sheet of paper. I can almost read it... almost. Except the man is insistent, trying to catch my attention, draw it towards the gun.

It's frustrating.

"Vai via" I growl shoving the gun away and growling. And... I can almost feel them, actually really I can always feel them. Within me... Because they're new, and although they've always been there, they're something that's just different enough. And now...

I reach, I breath and it's like an explosion. A flare and well a pencil can be a weapon if you know how to use one... Or just if you jab it hard enough into someone... and if it's abruptly much bigger than me well... I just kind of whack him with it, like a bat. Actually if I were a bit bigger that would be around the size it is... a baseball bat. As it is though now it's over-sized, awkward and I tumble over backwards with it.

A jolt of pain and a rush of air from my lungs and tears at the very edges of my eyes. That hurts...

"Just a little weak girl after all..." the man says in Italian and I growl. Furious and in pain and I can feel the feral howl that leaves my grit teeth. I force myself up and narrow my eyes at the man baring my just barely there teeth. He simply huffs and ignores me, and I can't... Tears bite and my hands curl.

What does he even expect, I'm one and a half for crying out loud!

It's like the Weakest Gender argument all over again.

Both sides have their advantages, and their disadvantages. Developmental rates may be slightly different, with logic and maths and all that... but...

Biting back the tears and allowing rage to flood me. What does he expect, what does anyone expect from a toddler. Hands curl and clench and I set my jaw firm. Don't let them see that they get to you, turn it around and let it motivate you to be bigger than them. Old advice floats through my head and I can feel the moment when it all slows down, when the boil lowers to a simmer. Hands uncurl and I huff out a breath before grabbing the pencil that's returned to it's proper size and returning to my sheet of paper.

Gender has nothing to do with it... and... I grin as there's an exclamation of pain. Size isn't the only thing propagation alters. A small snicker and I happily doddle on my sheet. And, now the flames are closer...

So they're somewhat tied to emotion are they? Or more will, the want, the need the motivation.

A deep breath, closed eyes and I know how to use them. Motivation, determination, resolve.

Resolve

The will to live, to survive and to grow... and in some cases that includes the ultimate want to be left alone.

"Idiota..."