I don't know why everything is wrong. I don't know why she screamed.
But she is mad at me... I did something... terrible..?
Viper disappeared from their grasp as soon as darkness settled and Tonno was out of their sight. Luce didn't hold it against her. They would meet again, she knew, though the other girl might not take kindly to Tonno's presence. Luce watched her cloak disappear from sight from the corner of her eye, feeling melancholic.
But maybe it wasn't a good idea for Tonno to meet more of hers- unless she managed to properly impress on him that doing whatever he had done was a Really Bad Idea. He still seemed somewhat out of it, though, and Luce had caught him rubbing the cheek she'd slapped with a distant look on his face. He looked... lost. In more ways than one.
Oh, how Luce loved him. But she had to tread carefully, making sure to not love him too much. And that was the problem, wasn't it.
...
When Tonno returned with yet another child on his heels, Luce took a deep breath before looking.
It was a boy. A boy, older than Viper, eyes as dark as an abyss. Luce felt a shiver run up her spine and raise the hairs on the back of her neck. The boy was unnatural. Unholy, demonic, whatever the word. Tonno had him sit with them, but Luce clearly saw that he stood between the three siblings and the boy at all times. He knew the boy was dangerous. Why had he brought him along?
Luce could barely look into the boy's eyes. Every time she tried, he seemed to snap to look at her, and the grin, the smirk, that spread his lips like a demon's made her drop her eyes as quickly as if she'd looked into the sun. The boy burned, like Tonno did when he had those orange eyes. But unlike Tonno, who changed into something soft and malleable and pleasantly docile, this boy did not. Luce saw only a future of burning out too early. It didn't look pleasant.
Marco and Colombo were the first to fall asleep that first night. Luce felt the boy's presence too keenly to do so.
"You're not going to live long if you continue like this," Tonno's voice was blunt. Luce could almost feel the orange gaze creeping along her back where she laid on a frayed cot, facing Colombo's serene sleeping face.
"Did it occur," the boy's voice was quiet, the fire curled around it and tightly packed. To a normal person, he would be deadpan. She could only hear the raging anger of a cornered beast, "That maybe I don't want to?"
She heard Tonno snort. "You're an idiot." There was something bitter and biting in her older brother's tone. She didn't want to hear him speak like that.
"There's nothing left," the boy continued as if her brother hadn't spoken. "I'm nothing. If anything, I should be destroying everything around me." The fire curled even further into itself, devouring, and the burnout was far closer than she had realized.
"There is a shitload of things left," Luce's ears burned with the word her mother had drilled into her mind never to repeat, "Like, for example, your want to live, your Will." Something in the way Tonno said the word made her shake.
The boy scoffed. "As if you know anything about me."
Luce heard a whistle. Then a crack. The boy yelped indignantly, scared, but- his position was off. She scrambled up to look at them.
Tonno held him against the wall of the alley, his hat fallen off to the ground, for the first time in months allowing his hair freedom. His eyes were orange, and his hands wrapped around the boy's neck, unflinchingly strangling him even as the boy dug his nails in and scratched away at his flesh.
Luce didn't quite know what to do. Tackling Tonno meant freeing the boy, and she had the distinct feeling that if she did that, both of them would attack her in turn. Nothing would change if she tackled the boy. She tripped on her way to them, taking hold of Tonno's wrists and bravely trying to stare him down.
There was a thin ring of red tarnishing the orange she feared- and though the fear of the orange was something she'd gotten used to, this red, this... bloody crimson sent unbridled terror spinning through her mind. The boy seemed to share her feelings, for he howled, half in anger, half in fright, and Luce could see blood welling up from where he furiously scratched at Tonno's hands.
The red flared in her brother's eyes and the next thing she knew, the boy had dragged her away from Tonno, abyss eyes sharp and focused and mouth twisted in a feral sneer. Tonno straightened, observing the boy and Luce. She... was confused.
"See?" Tonno's voice and expression were flat, but there was a glimmer of satisfaction, "That is your Will." Luce felt the boy's arms go slack with shock, and she took advantage of it to hurry back to her cot, suddenly feeling foolish. Tonno wouldn't have hurt the boy... right?
...
The next day, when her younger brothers asked the boy (again) what his name was, his smile was crooked and mocking, but he answered the only word he knew of English.
"Reborn, like a demon crawling from a grave away from death."
"It fits you," Tonno commented quietly with a strange, knowing smile. The boy eyed him, blankly, curiously. Luce smiled, because despite the unsettling words, the furious flame in his eyes had settled into someone who wouldn't simply roll over and let himself be killed.
...
Reborn had decided to follow them.
Luce didn't quite know whether to be delighted or worried, but she supposed this time Tonno had done something right. Maybe Viper simply hadn't been compatible with his methods, or... maybe he had changed his methods somewhat? She'd never know, as Tonno wouldn't tell her what he'd said to Viper even if she asked. Her older brother could be rather secretive when he wanted to.
Reborn, on the other hand, wasn't secretive. She could see through him far more easily than she ever thought possible. It wasn't that he didn't want to answer her younger brother's questions, he simply had no answer. He didn't know what was his favorite food, he didn't know what irked him the most, he didn't quite know what his greatest fear was.
The more he didn't know how to answer, causing a slow, bewildered blink on his otherwise blank face told Luce- and Tonno, she knew he caught those signs, as well- to wonder what kind of family kept a child so closed. And what exactly had happened to such a family for the boy to be in the state they had found him, thinking of either dying in battle, or destroying everything in his path until he burned out.
Her younger brother's enthusiasm, however, made the boy start to wonder himself.
Luce had to watch in stupefied amusement as he tried a little bit of everything that crossed his path- and while her brothers laughed with tears in their eyes as he gagged and Luce smiled, bewildered, every time he curiously stuck his finger into another pastry, she saw Tonno allow his lips to quirk in the slightest curve, looking fondly at the black haired boy. She wondered what had endeared the boy to her brother.
And then they had hit upon chocolate. But not normal chocolate, no, that would have been too easy- Reborn kept complaining it was too sweet.
"Then try this one," annoyed, Marco had found a way to get a bar of dark, bitter chocolate. He shoved it in the hands of the boy, confirming Luce's suspicions that he was dreadfully jealous on the way Reborn had gotten in Tonno's good graces so quickly. "It's not too sweet it will make your tummy hurt."
She winced as Reborn's own not-quite-whining words were thrown back at him. The abyss-eyed boy, for his part, just returned with his infuriatingly slow blink before taking the darker-than-normal treat.
Marco and Colombo missed it, but she saw the absolute amusement on Tonno's face. Reborn's features seemed to relax in surprise as he looked down at the chocolate. Then a small narrowing of his eyes showed his pleasure as he bit a second time on the bar. "Still sort of sweet, but this is good."
She didn't find out why Tonno laughed in that moment until later on, when he gave each of them a small cup of dark brown liquid- coffee, he said. Reborn's entirely too pleased expression and Marco's loud complaining on how bitter it was told her all she wanted to know.
...
"What's your goal?" Luce was just a few moments from falling asleep when she heard the question in Reborn's voice.
"We're trying to find a Famiglia," Tonno answered after a few moments, "The Giglio Nero."
Luce frowned. That name was familiar... "Are you really sure you should be telling me this? Who knows, I might be an enemy." She felt uneasiness rise in her throat at Reborn's retort.
"You don't know that," Tonno returned coldly, "And I don't think you'd attack her." Luce swored she could feel both their gazes on her back.
"...point," Reborn groused, "You shouldn't trust people this easily, no matter what you know about them, still."
She could almost see Tonno's amused little smile, "Thank you for the advice." They fell silent after Reborn's snort.
...
Luce was not surprised when Reborn led Tonno to a specific location, some weeks after the quiet talk while the three siblings were all supposed to be asleep. Reborn didn't elaborate why, but Tonno trusted him in strange ways, and Luce knew something would be gained through the abyss-eyed boy, even if she could hear gunshots from two houses away of said location.
As always, she was right. They both returned, Tonno with his determination flaring, and Reborn with jerky movements, eyeing her strangely. Something he'd heard, something Tonno had unearthed or even said himself, had shifted the boy's perception of her. She didn't have enough strength to see what it might be, but she had a hunch.
They all helped Tonno pack their measly belongings into a small bag that Reborn offered to carry, if only to keep Tonno's hands free, before they set out to their new destination. Three days of travel, as Tonno had informed them, was what it took to get to the town they were seeking, and that was where Reborn refused to follow them further.
"But why?" Colombo's tearful whine, as all other complaints from her younger brothers, elicited only the raising of an ink black eyebrow. Reborn was not moved.
"I have other things to do," he answered simply, "I can't do them where you're going."
"Then where are you going?" Marco's eyes held a glint of some sort of machination she couldn't really guess at. "Tell us that, at least."
Reborn's eyes narrowed at the younger boy, scrutinizing him. Luce thought she caught light movement from the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look, Tonno's face was impassive. "I'm not going too far." Tonno's lip curled in distaste, and Luce knew it was a lie.
Marco didn't seem to know. The glint of machination in his eyes only grew. "Don't lose us." And though those were perfect words to say to someone like Reborn, Luce knew the boy had taken an immediate dislike to her brother. Reborn wouldn't lose her or Tonno, and maybe even Colombo, but Marco had managed, with one question and two thinly veiled orders, to get into the older boy's bad list.
She kept quiet.
Reborn nodded stiffly at her brother before tilting his head at her with a soft look, eyed Colombo blankly, and then... glowered at Tonno. Her older brother just grinned and ruffled his hair, scratching a particular spot she knew could make abyss eyes half-lidded in boneless pleasure.
Reborn batted his hand away with a growl.
And then he turned away and disappeared in the shadows of the town. Luce tried to feel less disappointed than she had with Viper, but it was difficult. She took the same comfort that she had with the girl- she'd see him again.
That was inevitable.