I am Angelo, and I lost Mamma.
I am not Angelo, and I lost my world.
But I am Angelo now.
Ugh.
The small body on the bed shifts under the blanket, and stills. (It should be bigger, it should be fatter, it should be stronger, it should have breasts, it should have-)
I read somewhere that babies have suffocated in their sleep due to something blocking their airways.
I am no baby. Not mentally, not physically- but maybe?
Maybe.
Am currently unable to cry myself to sleep, but I could always breathe 'til exhaustion.
They would be so disgusted, but they aren't me. So if I meet them they could kindly fuck off.
(...No, don't leave.)
Shock, denial, anger, guilt, depression, acceptance.
These are the stages of grieving, not necessarily in that order, and some stages are skipped, mixed, or relived, but acceptance is always the last. Probably. Who knows. Emotions are weird shit so anybody who quotes him on this are at their own risk.
Everyone that is long in the crime business knows these.
It doesn't mean it helps.
Luke knows for sure. He's a bartender, and bartenders on Mafia Land have at least gone through the basics of the psychology of human behaviour and motivational techniques- or learned from experience.
He has thrown himself into work when he's not taking care of their patch-work family. When had they become a family? A thing? She just sneaked in with her baby, got a promotion, dragged Wolfgang into babysitting… The traces are just as numerous as the unhealthy amounts of sugar she dumps into her tea.
A part of him is grumbling about denial and guilt, the rest is telling it to shut the fuck up. He's allowed to do that, okay? At least he's not pulling the disappearing stunt on them, shouldn't he be allowed some privacy?
(He doesn't hire another manager. He doesn't serve Earl Grey's.)
Wolfgang is a combat instructor and mercenary. He has regular psyche evaluations, because clients want to have somewhat predictable and who wants someone incapable due to a mental illness guarding them? Also, self-awareness is an useful trait.
It's his self-awareness that tells him he has passed the initial shock stage and jumped to guilt. It's partially his guilt that makes him even more protective of Angelo. It's his guilt that invents scenario after scenario how he could have prevented that. It's his self-awareness that is warning him that he could slip into a depression, again.
Oh hell no. He's needed right now, thank you very much. The depression can come back later. Please. Anne-Marie will resurrect herself from the dead, piece herself together, and kill him if he doesn't attend Angelo and make sure Luke does his dish-washing and have some extra cash-
Job. Right. That makes something wriggle in the back of his mind.
Job. Jooooooob. Mercenary. Hitman. Guard. Mafia Land Guard.
Mafia Land. Neutral. Explosion. Attack.
Attack on beach. Beach. Hilarity Highway.
Shit, is the admins are gonna be pissed, especially at how ballsy the attackers are. Targeting one of the main-income sources? There's gonna be an influx of requests.
He finds himself smiling grimly. Well, money and revenge never hurt anyone too bad. Or at least not his rag-tag group.
Conveniently, it also forces Luke to care after Angelo. Just speeding things up a bit, right?
(If Luke had telepathy and could share knowledge with his future self, he would have made that him use his brains.)
Angelo is worrying them, well only Luke now since Wolfgang is on a job. He seems to have forgone the denial stage completely, although it is partially understandable (having her shield you from an explosion and shrapnel might do that), and has slipped into depression after the anger phase, with anger lingering.
"Angelo, it's time for breakfast."
"I'm not hungry."
"Neither are we, but we have to sustain our bodies to be healthy."
"Don't wanna."
"So?"
The bundle on the bed curls even tighter in itself. "Mamma might have let me stay."
Luke's mouth corners tightens, cheapshots are encouraged, but this one is so transparent it's borderline painful- if it wasn't painful from the topic in itself. Alright, calm. He's a brat. He's a brat who lost his Mamma, okay? He's allowed- it is understandable, to be a brat. It doesn't excuse it, though. It hurts, it fucking hurts, alright?
"Keyword being might." And he hauls the limp child over his shoulder. "Look, if you were more healthy, you would have an easier time being bratty and even more hurtful than you already are. Congratulations, yes, you have indeed hurt my feelings and now I feel terrible for being hurtful right back at- But that can wait after we have finished breakfast."
None of them break the grounding yet somehow shrill silence between them. Forget a wall, there's a vacuum sucking any ideas of how to remedy, how to apologize into a void that decided to manifest directly in their brains.
Then, an accidental glance of mutual discomfort is exchanged, and they break into hysterical laughter.
(They still don't apologize, still have no idea or clue how. But it is lighter, almost easier, and they can almost navigate through a moment of small-talk.
The now salty breakfast is thrown away into the compost bin and they eat brunch in a awkward but relieved silence instead.)
"...This emotion-shit pile, I fucking swear. If I have to bring this quasi-sorted clusterfuck up in the session-"
"Wolfgang, ready?"
The mercenary in question gives a grunt.
"You know damn well that it was rhetorical." Luke countered, sipping his drink. "Don't think that I haven't noticed you guiding me into starting first, actual genuine thanks for that by the way, since Angelo is such a fucking brat at times, so that you don't have that much time to talk about your repressed feelings and guilt, and then excuse yourself with work."
"It worked hella fine, though."
"Only because I let it. I am not a barkeep for nothing, you know? Also, topic changes are bad. Talk."
"Bossy much?"
He sighs nonetheless though, and runs his fingers through his dark brown hair. Luke smiles lightly.
This is exactly how a healthy relationship of any kind should be like: Pressing the right buttons, letting them think they have successfully executed their master-plan, proving them wrong by showing that he knew it all along, rambling a bit to meet his daily quota, and then showing how their master-plan was already calculated in his master-plan.
Oh wait, he meant victories. Victories, yes. Relationships like that need therapy. There is a reason why he shouldn't drink too much. Just as much as he knew that ridiculous villain phase was going to haunt him. Oh well.
Wolfgang stares into his beer, and takes a sip. That's usually a good sign, so Luke doesn't press. Yet.
"I... always get stuck in the guilt. I don't think- I don't expect me to heal from any of that," he whispers, avoiding the actual, hidden question of what his emotions are up to now, but that's alright. Baby steps are good.
"But I also don't know how, the fucking concept is- you are supposed to be healed from the shit. The acceptance? It'll be there, with that typical dash of guilt. But I just never feel fucking okay with them being dead. I hate, I loathe that word 'healed' so damn fucking MUCH!"
He takes a deep breath the calm himself and lowers his steadily risen voice again. "...In this context at least."
"I think that the only way someone would be okay with them being dead is to forget about them." The blond croaks after the somewhat long, but not awkward, silence. "Which we obviously won't."
"No shit." Comes the prompt snark, grey-blue eyes glaring over the rim of his beer glass. "That's what you are going to fucking say?!"
Luke relents. "That was very stupid of me to say. But what I meant is that we are not supposed to forget them, we are supposed to think of them less frequently in our daily lives, and if we do, with fondness. Or at least that's what the handbook said. It is a shitty handbook."
Wolfgang clicks his tongue. "Amen to the underlying message of 'Get your ass back to work sanely! And fast.'"
"Mhm. It was sprinkled all over the place in varying transparency. Civilians, no even the Vindiceless in general, are way better in this therapy-thing than we the big 'n bad folks are."
"The propaganda admins won't be happy to hear that ."
A comfortable silence settles between them. Wolfgang turns so he gazes directly into Luke's brown eyes and leans forward, their faces encroaching that zone-
Lips stretching to form a smug grin, eyebrows wriggling in an alarming way, blue eyes actually twinkling what the fuck. "Your turn."
"...right."
"Ha!" The fellow-pseudo-dad-whom-attractiveness-he-is-now-alarmingly-aware-of barks out a gleeful laugh that has tasted revenge- and Holy Shit do those canines look sharp right now. Like a wolf. Wolfgang, ha. Haha. Wolf. Puppy.
Imagining a young and hella grumpy Wolfgang in a wolf-onesie is adorable as fuck and even more so hilarious.
"Luke? HELLO?! ...I fucking swear if you die by fucking drowning in your own goddamned-"
All in all, it was a productive session, and he also managed to waste enough time to avoid his problems, namely the emotion-shit pile. (Wolfgang definitely wasn't unaware, given his glowering.) Even if he is now very attracted to the fellow pseudo-dad, but who's counting that? Certainly not his schedule. Or Angelo.
He also mentally notes to drink less next time. The consequences will bite him in the ass. Not that they already haven't, but it is better not to tempt fate. Especially now that the emotion-shit pile has changed its status to one of a emotion-shit hill.
Godfuckingdamnit.
One thing that they all silently agree on is that, ironically, all those silences are the worst.
It's not only those typical, actual silences: The ones that you come home to, expecting her to glower at you, or the rather obnoxious way she used gleefully cackle in that surprisingly low pitch, nor the many improvised and not in-tune melody she hums for different occasions, and so many more noises and sounds she did, created, and caused.
There is that spatial silence that screams and hollers at that empty spot of that annoyingly loud and bold warmth and comfort and Anne-Marie, mental neon signs and arrows pointing, blinking, and shrieking that it is wrong for her to be gone.
There is that bland silence that weeps and whispers in monotone, steadily drowning your motivation and consuming any other emotion than emptiness and guilt, reminding you, as if you needed that reminder, that everything would be better and louder if she was there.
There is that mocking, black hole-like silence at social interactions. That futile command to open your mouth to say something, anything, to fill the silence even if for only an instant, and the only thing that you hear is that what you heard before- nothing. The urgent want to comment, to be able to pretend you are okay; are alright just to get an idea of how it is like and was, and dismissing it as frivolous, as a lose-lose scenario where both results would have the most bitter after-taste.
There is that wicked silence that helps sustaining the other silences by ambushing, pouncing you just when you think you are getting through, and spit in your face, then rub it in with a slap and a few jabs to the gut. Whether by turning your head to ask her if she wants to steal cookies with you, by noticing you're at the training field when you're not supposed now that she's not there, or by asking someone else to do the calculations and startle when they are finished too quickly, too clean, too different…
And they all silently agree on both the irony and the concluding hypothesis that their lives would probably be easier if it weren't for that last kind of silence.
Whoever said that silences aren't diverse?
(And those who say that silence is just the absence of sound... They can consider themselves unwelcome by a now hostile and still traumatized family of three missing their fourth member.)
