"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it."
― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
-ooo-
NOW
VONGOLA
NAMIMORI
January 7, 2003
TSUNAYOSHI
Tsunayoshi breathed a huge sigh of relief as he realized that, for the first time in a long time, he was actually alone. Before Reborn had shown up in his life and declared him to be the tenth boss in training he had almost always been alone. His entire life had been like a bad joke. He'd been terrible at everything and no one wanted to be around him and no one but his mother probably would have missed him if he'd been gone.
Now, everything was different and, most of the time, if you left aside the crazy dangerous things and the violence and the embarrassment of constantly waking up to find he'd done something totally nuts dressed only in his underwear, it was actually really… fun. But sometimes, even leaving that aside, it was a lot to get used to. Gokudera was pretty great, but… he was also a LOT of work. He was terrifying most of the time and he had a bad temper and he got really violent sometimes and he was so smart, so crazy, crazy smart, even if he didn't act like it sometimes. Sometimes… sometimes he was afraid Gokudera would really hear him when he told him he didn't want to be Vongola's Boss. That he'd hear him and understand that he'd never be his right hand man or whatever and then he'd wake up one day and Gokudera would be gone, would just disappear from his life as quickly as he'd appeared in it and… he didn't want that. He didn't to be a mafia boss, but… sometimes he could feel these friendships and connections bricking him into the role, weighing him down, as unavoidable as gravity. And he wondered if that wasn't Reborn's intention all along. If he wasn't building a family for him from friends and all these scary, wonderful people for the express purpose of making it impossible to refuse the role he was meant to accept.
Yamamoto was simpler, but also harder to understand in some ways. He'd known of Yamamoto for years, but knowing of someone and really knowing them were, Tsunayoshi was discovering, two very different things. Yamamoto was completely different than he'd thought he'd be, not that he'd ever given it all that much thought. The best thing about Yamamoto, he thought after over a year of tentative, surprising friendship, was that Yamamoto didn't make him feel stupid, because he was just as bad at test taking as Tsunayoshi himself. He often acted like he thought the whole mafia thing was a game though, so that was kind of scary in itself and it made him feel… kind of bad, sometimes, like he was getting away with something at Yamamoto's expense. Like he was stealing his friendship under false pretenses or something. His problem with Yamamoto was almost the exact opposite of his problem with Gokudera. Where with Gokudera he was afraid he'd wake up one day and realize the mafia thing wasn't going to happen, he was equally scared that Yamamoto would realize one day that all those games weren't games at all. That the violence and the danger and the explosions were all real and he wouldn't want any part in any of it, wouldn't even want to be his friend because Tsunayoshi hadn't made more of an effort to tell him. Sure, Yamamoto had been happy to jump some yakuza when he'd thought he'd been kidnapped that one time, but… it still felt like cheating whenever Yamamoto laughed off the scary things that happened around them.
Kyouko's older brother was just really intense and intimidating. Of course, that was really as much because of how passionate he was about everything as it was because he was Kyouko's older brother. They didn't really look much alike, but he'd noticed they both had the same sunny smile and while her older brother's smile didn't make him feel warm and nervous the same way hers did, it was still a nice sort of smile. It made him glad that Kyouko's brother seemed to like him. Even if he did find is enthusiasm really overwhelming sometimes and he really wasn't completely certain why he liked him exactly.
Hibari, by contrast, was simple to understand. He was frightening, of course, Hibari was a really tough, ruthless, intimidating sort of guy, but for all that he still didn't find Hibari terrifying the way he found Bianchi or even Gokudera terrifying. He'd thought about that a lot in the weeks since he'd first met him and he thought he even kind of understood why.
Hibari didn't seem to like him at all, but not in a mean way just… he didn't seem to have much of an opinion about him either way really. Instead, he seemed to regard him the way a hunter might regard some sort of small animal in the wild, a vague curiosity at best that was only truly interesting in how it could be used to draw the interest of larger more dangerous prey. He was pretty sure that Hibari's entire interest in him and why he showed up from time to time had nothing to do with him at all and everything to do with Reborn. Hibari was just so very much not his friend, wasn't even the slightest bit interested being a part of the family Reborn was trying to build for him and that at least was something Tsunayoshi could understand.
For the most part, Hibari was just this strange solitary presence that drifted along at the edge of all the crazy things that happened in his school life. He was just there and he always seemed to be too busy making his own fun to be particularly bothered by the presence of crazy assassins or explosions or any of the other strange things that happened. Of course, usually his idea of fun seemed to involve lots of people getting their teeth kicked in so maybe all that other stuff just seemed normal to him. Tsunayoshi was honestly just glad it wasn't usually him on the wrong end of the beatings Hibari dealt out.
He still wasn't quite sure what to do with the fact that Hibari had been perfectly fine with the idea of disposing of a body. That didn't seem like the sort of thing that a normal person would just be fine with and yet he'd treated it like it was the sort of thing that he did all the time. He'd even seemed to already have a system in place within the disciplinary committee for handling such situations. He kind of wondered what that said about Hibari and what kind of person he was. He didn't think Hibari was a bad person, he didn't really think any of the strange people he'd met and had begun seeing around since Reborn had shown up were really bad people. Weird though. They were definitely all super weird, but weird wasn't always the same as bad.
Well… except in the case of Bianchi maybe.
She was literally the most frightening person on the planet and sometimes he couldn't get to sleep thinking about the fact that she was staying in the spare room just down the hall. He figured at some point he'd go to sleep and just never wake up because she'd finally had enough of waiting or trying to assassinate him with her poison cooking and instead just grabbed a gun and shot him while he lay there defenseless one night. He couldn't even begin to understand how Gokudera had survived an entire childhood with her. He'd even asked him about it once, a couple of weeks ago when it was just the two of them hanging out after school because Yamamoto had needed to go home in a hurry to help out his dad at the restaurant, and he still didn't understand it.
Gokudera had insisted on walking him home that day, something about it being the job of a right hand man to watch over his boss and make sure he got home safely. He really hadn't been listening, because sometimes it was just easier to go along with Gokudera's whims than argue. So they'd been walking huddled close because it was December and colder than usual in the way it got sometimes as it got closer to the New Year and they'd gone by the park because the main road had been closed for construction and, even though it was cold, he'd found himself wandering in to sit on the swings. Gokudera had just come in with him and plopped down in the swing to his right without questioning it at all and it had been really… nice. He hadn't even complained about it being too cold or anything, he'd just lit up another cigarette and taken a long drag, using his long legs to push himself back and forth in the swing.
"I used to come here a lot when I was really small," Tsunayoshi had confessed and he thought about telling him more than that. About telling him why, maybe, but in the end he'd just left it like that. He still wasn't super comfortable talking about himself with them, still half expected to be the object of ridicule even if Gokudera had never been anything but almost frighteningly nice to him since they'd become friends. He still didn't really know anything much about him except that he was obsessed with the idea of being his right hand man (which he didn't even pretend to understand), liked explosives way too much and that his sister was even scarier than he was. And he thought that that was probably part of the reason everything was always a little strange when it was just the two of them without Yamamoto's easy laughter to ease the way. Yamamoto always seemed open and uncomplicated and casual in a way neither of them could ever manage to be on their own.
Gokudera nodded, mostly to himself, or so it seemed, "It's nice here."
"Yeah," Tsunayoshi replied, leaning back in his swing to stare up into the cloudy grey-blue sky. "Is it hard living on your own?"
"Nah, I'm used to it. I was on my own for a while before I moved here, after all."
"You didn't live with Bianchi?"
"I did when I was little," Gokudera hesitated, like he wanted to say more, but in the end he just kind of shrugged, taking a quick drag off his cigarette. "It's a really boring story, Tenth."
"Oh, yeah, okay," Tsunayoshi replied awkwardly, because the last thing he wanted was to push Gokudera to talk about something he didn't want to talk about, but… when Gokudera said things like that it always reminded how fragile their friendship probably was. Not that he really understood what a strong friendship really entailed since Gokudera had really kind of been his very first friend.
"I…" Gokudera began, scowling at nothing and everything, cigarette clapped between his lips. He was silent for a really long time, just glowering at the merry-go-round and the slide and probably scaring the squirrels away. Tsunayoshi thought about breaking the silence, but he couldn't think of anything to say that didn't scream of desperation so he just sat there, swinging his legs back and forth and waiting to see if maybe Gokudera would finish his thought. In the end, minutes passed and Gokudera's cigarette burned down to the filter. He cursed softly as it burned his lip and tossed butt down, crushing it under his heel before touching a finger to his lip gingerly.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, it's nothing, Tenth."
"Right, okay."
"You can ask me things. If you want to... about before," Gokudera said, hesitantly, pointedly staring down at the sand as he spoke. His voice was quiet, quieter than Tsunayoshi had ever heard it. Usually Gokudera was all bravado and fire. He shouted a lot and even when he didn't, he was usually loud and assertive like he wanted to make himself impossible to ignore or disregard. "You don't have to, but you can. If you want to."
"Oh, um, okay," Tsunayoshi replied, swallowing hard and kind of feeling like an enormous weight had been dropped onto his shoulders. Like if he didn't ask anything or the right things he'd be letting Gokudera down somehow. He wasn't sure if that was really true, but it felt like it might be and that was kind of terrifying in its own right. "You, um, grew up in the mafia?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, okay."
So awkward.
So, so, so awkward.
"My father is the head of a small Famiglia, the Aquila. We're only second generation, so we're mostly in trade and wet work. That's how a lot of Famiglia get their start these days."
"But if your Dad's the head of the family wouldn't you be…" Tsunayoshi trailed off, uncertain how to ask or even if he should. He still didn't understand how any of this mafia stuff really worked. He didn't really want to either. Like understanding it would mean he was interested and Reborn would be able to look at that and say 'ah ha!' and somehow use that interest to trap him into the position of Boss. For all he knew, maybe that was how Bosses were confirmed even if it wasn't how they were chosen. When it came to how Bosses were chosen he was pretty certain that he at least had been chosen by picking names out of a hat no matter what Reborn said about it. He couldn't think of any other reason he'd be chosen for anything really.
"Nah," Gokudera replied quickly, shaking his head violently and fumbling into his pocket for his crumpled cigarette packet. "I'm not… I left all that behind a long time ago. Besides, I wouldn't have been the next Boss anyway even if… I mean, that is, it would always have been her."
"Right, so Bianchi…?"
"Yeah," he shook a cigarette from the packet and balanced it on his burned lip as he fished about for his lighter. "She's been moonlighting as an assassin for years, but someday she'll definitely be asked to settle down and become the head of the Famiglia."
"Huh," Tsunayoshi exhaled heavily, breath white in the cooling afternoon air. He just couldn't think of anything scarier in the whole world than Bianchi in charge of people the way Dino was. He'd be so, so, so dead. "That's a really scary thought."
"Right?" Gokudera laughed, lighting his cigarette and taking a long pull before blowing the smoke back out and shaking his head. "No way I was sticking around and getting stuck working for her. She'll probably make them all eat her cooking every day. I'd want to fucking die."
"You probably would die from that," Tsunayoshi shuddered. "I don't know how you got through years of eating it."
"Yeah, me neither."
They sat in silence for a while each reflecting privately on the horrors that Bianchi perpetrated in the kitchen.
"I mean just… why? Why poison cooking? It just seems like a really terrible skill right? Do you think it was accidental the first time?"
"Hell, I don't know, probably. But most people would eventually stop fucking doing it, right? That's my sister for you though. Say anything you want about her, but she's not a quitter."
"Well, that's true, I guess. She's been trying to kill me all year and I don't think she's planning on quitting that anytime soon either."
"Probably not. Sorry, Tenth."
"Why are you sorry?"
"Eh, I don't know. Just seemed like I should apologize."
"Well, it's not your fault."
"You're the most gracious guy, Tenth! Taking the time to console me when my sister is the one trying to take your life! You're really the best! I'm definitely going to prove myself worthy of being your right hand man!"
Tsunayoshi sighed, realizing that the strange quiet interlude was over and Gokudera was determinably back on the 'right hand man' campaign wagon.
They'd left the park shortly after that and walked home. It had been weird, but nice like a sneak peek at what friendship what Gokudera might look like without the mafia thing hanging awkwardly between them. The rest of the walk home hadn't been the least bit quiet because it hadn't been long at all before Haru had shown up out of nowhere spouting off some kind of crazy stuff about the kids and being a mafia wife and… he had tuned it out after a while because she'd gotten in a fight with Gokudera over something and then Lambo had shown up and started screaming something about candy and Gokudera had tossed him over a fence when he'd pulled out a grenade and it had been all the typical craziness. All that had been missing really had been Reborn shooting or throwing things at him.
And then, of course, they'd finally gotten home and Bianchi had been there and Gokudera had ended up crawling right back out again, shouting apologies over his shoulder. He wondered again how the hell it was that Bianchi had ended up living in his guest room in the first place and why his mother had so blithely accepted the presence of not only Reborn, but Bianchi and Lambo and even I-Pin into their daily lives. He wondered sometimes if there wasn't something wrong with her, because she didn't seem to have any idea about the mafia thing and yet she was just so willing to accept what to anyone else would have been these incredibly weird, outrageous developments as commonplace.
Sometimes he wanted to talk to her about it. To sit down with her and ask what she was thinking allowing her only son to be trained to be a mafia boss, but… he didn't want to panic her if she didn't know about that part of it. He wasn't entirely certain what would happen if she knew. The last thing he wanted was to worry her, but… he really, really, really wanted to know why she'd accepted the idea of a toddler tutor like that was a completely normal, rational thing. Why she seemed just totally fine with Lambo and all his crazy, with Bianchi and all her crazy poison cooking stuff, I-Pin being just… I-Pin, Dino showing up with all those incredibly obvious mafia guys and just… all the other bizarre things that had been happening since Reborn had come to be his tutor. How it was that all of that strangeness didn't even seem to register with her at all.
But, most of all, he wanted to ask her the things he'd always wanted to know. Why did she marry his father? Why did she love him? What the hell had been so great about that loser that she'd want to have a kid with him? Why couldn't they just have a normal life? What had happened to him? How were they getting by without him? Because Mom had never had a job, but she never seemed to worry about money or having all those extra mouths to feed so sometimes, late at night when he was trying to fall asleep and nothing was working, he looked over at Reborn and he wondered. He wondered if it was because of the mafia that they were able to live like they did.
In the bright light of day he knew that was stupid and his Dad had just probably had a really big life insurance policy or something, but… he was still afraid to ask. Afraid of what the answers to all those questions would be or, worse somehow, that his Mom would just give him that blank look like she didn't understand the question and his heart would sink into the vicinity of his stomach and he would finally know that she wasn't… that something was really, really wrong with her. And that scared him more than anything else. So, maybe… maybe it was better that nothing had ever made any sense. Maybe he could live with that… for a while longer at least.
His life was so weirdly complicated now.
Not that he ever really wanted to go back to the simpler days when he'd just been No-Good Tsuna and he'd had no friends and been awful at everything and no one had believed in him at all. He still felt stupid and he still sucked at just about everything, but he didn't mind so much now at least. His grades had even improved a little bit. Well, some of them had anyway. Most of all he didn't dread going to school anymore because– even if he still failed most his tests and rarely understood what the instructor was talking about- he still got to see Kyouko every day and have lunch with Gokudera and Yamamoto. Plus, the days were never boring since he could never tell when some new mafia related craziness was going to happen, but even that wasn't all bad.
The best thing to come out of all of this, of course, was his new almost, sort of, kind of friendship with Kyouko. She noticed him now, she talked to him and sometimes she even came over with Reborn or Lambo or I-Pin or Haru and it was… amazing. It had seemed like he'd spent years loving her from afar and now, now he was beginning to get to know her a little and she was nice and kind and everything he'd thought she was and imagined she was for so long.
The worst thing was… he was never quite sure why Gokudera and Yamamoto and Kyouko and Haru and the rest actually liked being around him or if they even really did. Sometimes he thought he'd wake up and find that none of this had been real at all. That there was no Reborn and he'd just dreamed up Gokudera and he'd never spoken to Yamamoto or Kyouko. That everything from the day Reborn had appeared in his house had all just been one very long, very weird dream.
And if that were the case… he kind of hoped he never woke up.
-ooo-
NOW
THE GANG
TRADITORE
January 12
KEN
"India was crazy hot. I mean, seriously, it was like living on the surface of the fucking sun. And I guess he knew it was gonna be like that, so Mukuro found us this nice place with air conditioning, you know, because none of us were really used to that kind of heat. The problem was that we got there during the middle of winter and so no one even bothered to turn on the air conditioner until it started getting really hot, because, I mean, why would you, right? So, anyway, Mukuro goes to turn it on and nothing happens. Mukuro's jabbing the buttons and glaring at it like maybe he can make it work just by disapproving of it hard enough and Lancia's already calling the person we were renting from to bitch about it and I'm laughing my ass off because I can hear the damn thing grinding away trying to turn on. So, like three or four hours later the damn thing still isn't working and Lancia's still trying to get up with the landlord and we're all sweating fucking buckets. We've got the windows open and the fans on, but that isn't helping at all. So, then the delivery guy shows up with our lunch and makes a comment about how hot it is in the apartment, like maybe we just have no damn idea, right? So, Mukuro takes the food from him, calm as you please, and then this woman shows up out of fucking nowhere with this big damn bucket of ice water and just dumps the entire thing over the delivery guy's head. And Mukuro's just standing there holding the food and staring at him as if that sort of thing just happens all the time. And Chikusa falls off his chair and I'm laughing my ass off and Lancia is just rolling his eyes like he's embarrassed to fucking know us, but he's smiling so you can tell he thinks it's funny too and the delivery guy is just standing there with his shoulders all bunched up around his ears, breathing hard, obviously still in shock. And after a minute Mukuro hands the man the cash to pay for the delivery and this guy is just sopping wet and he takes the money and looks at it and then looks back at Mukuro like he's got to be joking and says, 'No tip?' Like maybe Mukuro had just forgotten or something and then Mukuro says, 'Don't complain about the heat to a man standing in an oven.' And shuts the door in his face."
M.M. chuckled, "Mukuro's kind of an jerk, isn't he?"
"He really is," Ken replied, grinning broadly. "You're gonna really like him. He's the best."
"You realize that I've met him a couple times now, right?"
"Yeah, but that was mostly business, right? He's different once he gets to know you. Oh, and Lancia. He's supposed to get out of infirmary soon, I think, finally. You're totally gonna like Lancia. He's like Mukuro's Gal Friday."
"You realize that the chief requirement of being a 'Gal Friday' is being a girl, right?"
"Huh? Is it? Oh. Well, he isn't a girl. He's just, you know, the guy who takes care of stuff for him, he looks out for us too. He's also the person we're supposed to say is Mukuro Rokudo. So, you know, there's that, but you don't have to call him Mukuro. That'd just get confusing after a while. Everybody knows he has another name anyway so no one seems to find it weird that he call him Lancia instead of Mukuro all the time."
"So it's just Lancia? Like Madonna?"
"Nah, um, I think it's um… hey Chikusa, what's Lancia's last name?"
"…Salvatore," Chikusa murmured, glancing up from where he was shifting about and checking the needles he typically wore under his skin. He smelled faintly of blood and poison and it was such a nostalgic scent that Ken was kind of tempted to go curl up with him and put his head in his lap, but he knew that him being close like that made Chikusa nervous when he was messing about with poisons. Even though they both knew that poison probably wouldn't hurt him any at all.
"Salvatore? Seriously? Lancia Salvatore? Like Cacciatore's Lancia Salvatore?"
"Why does everyone always say it like that?" Ken commented, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I mean he's our Lancia Salvatore, you know, not Cacciatore's, but I guess, yeah, he was in Cacciatore before that."
M.M. frowned, leaning back against the cell wall. "The reason everyone says it like that is he's famous. Well, infamous is probably a better way to describe it. He's the strongest man in Northern Italy. My father once got into a dispute with the Cacciatore over some piece of land near their territory. He wanted it to expand one of his underground transport routes, they had it, and my father wasn't exactly known for asking nicely. He had one of his men go over and harass the lieutenant of the Cacciatore who was in charge of that area, break a knee or two, nothing too serious. Two days later, a man named Lancia showed up in my father's business office in the area. When he left there was nothing left of the office but a pile of rumble and a heap of broken, bleeding people bearing the warning 'do not think to harm the Cacciatore'. Then the boss of the Cacciatore sent him a note apologizing for his bodyguard's behavior saying Lancia always gets a bit overzealous when it comes to defending his family. So, my father kind of shrugged it off and took the apology as a sign of weakness and went on trying. He tried twice more to move against the Cacciatore and ended up with similar results each time. Finally he gave up the expansion as a bad job and moved on. He'd never done that before."
Ken shrugged, "Yeah, that sounds like something Lancia would do. He's pretty amazing that way."
"Yeah, I'll bet. So, my question is: how the hell do you have Lancia of Cacciatore working for you? When you're loyal like that, you don't just wake up one morning and decide you're going to murder your Famiglia and run off to join a gang with a bunch of twelve-year-olds."
"Hey, I'm fourteen you know."
"So am I and I don't care how old you are, the point stands."
Ken scratched the back of his head, a little nervous. He hadn't thought about having to explain Lancia. The truth sounded really, really bad.
"Mukuro pays really well," Chikusa interjected, saving him from his big mouth.
"I suppose he does," M.M. replied, still frowning like she didn't buy that that was anything close to the full story. "Well, whatever. I guess it'll make it a lot easier to get out of here working with someone like that. He could probably just rip the bars clean off."
"Yeah, pretty much," Ken shrugged, grinning. "He can throw me about twenty feet in the air."
M.M. scoffed, leaning forward to poke him in the chest, "Big deal. You weigh what? Three stone soaking wet? You're tiny."
"You'd be surprised. I'm heavier than I look."
"Inmates!"
Ken winced, slapping his hands over his ears as the guard's exclamation was followed by the heavy ringing sound of the guard rapping his baton against their cell door. Pain rang through his skull in time with the beats of that stick against the bars, loud and echoing within the relative quiet of their cell. He was pretty sure the guard was telling them it was time for lights out, but he couldn't hear it over the ringing in his ears. Beside him he could feel M's hands settle against his side, giving him a push in the direction of his own bed. He hopped obligingly off M's bed and hurried across the room to his own bunk, turning his face away from the guard at the gate so he could yank the cartridge from his mouth. The pain lessened immediately from a dull roar to a mild ache and he breathed a sigh of relief.
Of course, with his fucking luck it would just end up triggering another headache. Seemed like he had no end of fucking headaches lately. He wasn't sure if it was because of all the noise or the cartridges or not really sleeping a whole lot or what. Whatever it was, he was wearing on his last fucking nerve.
-ooo-
"Mm, you still smell like cyanide," Ken murmured, snuggling down under their shitty blankets. It was cold at night lately, like the heat was malfunctioning or something, and it made him drowsier at the same time everything else about the stupid place kept him too wound up to actually fall asleep. But the cold and cuddling up with Chikusa under those blankets reminded him so much of being little kids that it was comfortable and easy to just kind of zone out and drift even if he wasn't able to really sleep much.
The winter that Mukuro had been with the Cacciatore, it had just been the two of them most of the time. Long, dark nights when they'd curl up at night in their tent beneath all the blankets and fluffy comforters that Mukuro stole for them and they'd huddle together for warmth and still be fucking freezing half the time. The days weren't much better, even when the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and warmed the cold air or melted the snow that was piling up outside a little. He remembered stiff limbs and watering eyes and a nose that seemed to run all day every day, how his nose hairs had frozen and crackled when he was out there too long or too often.
Some days were so cold that they'd just stay in the tent all day too, only going out if they had to take a piss or something. They'd eat soup out of cans or packets of crisps or something like that. They'd bundle up in layers of clothes they'd picked up different places and they'd both be wearing big ugly knitted hats and sometimes they had gloves, but not that year. That year they'd cut the fingers off some of the old ones so they could wear them and still be able to play cards or so Chikusa could read the cheap paperbacks and comics they'd picked up in Lucca. He'd always read them out loud so Ken could enjoy them too. Most of those cold winter days though, they'd pull the blankets up over their heads so they were just locked together in this little pocket of warm space and it was like their own private world and sometimes they'd flip on a flashlight so they could play go fish or something with a ragged set of cards they'd picked up at one of the first houses they'd stayed in. The deck was missing three of the twos and a couple of sevens, but it didn't much matter for just playing simple games.
Some nights Mukuro would show up unexpectedly, breathing hard from running, his cheeks red from the cold, wearing a big puffy jacket and a red hat pulled down over his ears. He would always show up well after dark, usually past midnight, and fall shivering into the tent between them.
Those were the best nights. Even though Mukuro never really slept or said why he'd come and he was always gone in the morning as if he'd never been there at all. He'd usually leave behind some new bag of food or something, but Ken kind of thought that was mostly just an excuse and that even Mukuro got lonely sometimes. That eventually became the reason they were camped out so close to the Cacciatore property most of the time he was there. They talked about it during the first couple of months and they'd both agreed it had been worth the discomfort to stay close. They both felt better knowing Mukuro was nearby even if they only rarely saw him. Sometimes it just wasn't possible because they had something else they were supposed to be doing, some other assignment, but most of the time he left them to their own devices and he didn't really seem to mind their presence at all so that had been good enough for them.
It was during that year that he'd really gotten good at using the cartridges and Chikusa had started using poisons to coat his needles. Not that he needed the poison to be deadly, he didn't, but he said that it allowed him greater versatility. Said he might as well make use of the fact that he was immune to that sort of thing. They'd become better killers on warm spring afternoons in that forest and things had been so much simpler then. Before Lancia and everything that came after, when it was just the two of them, sometimes the three of them, learning how to turn the things Esterneo had done to them into strengths.
"Sorry," Chikusa commented, brushing Ken's hair from his face. It was getting too long again so it was a good thing Lancia was coming back soon. Chikusa would probably cut it for him if he asked, but Chikusa pulled it whenever he fidgeted too much whereas Lancia just pinned his head in place which was way easier and less painful to boot.
"Nah, I like it. Between that and the ricin it makes you smell like almond yogurt. It's strong enough that it makes it tougher to smell other things," Ken replied, snagging Chikusa's arm and bringing it up to his face. "I'd much rather smell you than M.M.'s perfume or the guard's B.O. or whatever." The scent clung to his skin along with the faint scent of blood. This was familiar too. He hadn't known what those smells meant when they were in the room, but Chikusa had told him about what he'd read in his file later. About experiments with ricin and cyanide and batrachotoxin, all words he'd made Chikusa repeat again and again until he knew them by heart. The names of the poisons that could have killed him but hadn't. That had changed his body chemistry so much that the scent of them would forever linger in his blood, on his skin. Those poisons that were how he was able to wear and handle poison filled or coated needles without worrying that he'd kill himself with them.
He'd made Chikusa read him the folder front to back over and over again during those first months they were all together and free even though none of it had ever really made sense to him. But then he wasn't some fucked up mad science nut that got his rocks off experimenting on kids. So maybe there was some fucked up logic to making a kid invulnerable to poison and then drilling into his skull and operating on his brain that he just wasn't capable of understanding.
"It's nice," he commented finally, pressing his lips against the inside of his wrist before letting it go.
"You're so full of it," Chikusa mumbled, taking his arm back, but he could see the flush across Chikusa's pale cheeks even in the dark and it made him smile and press in closer until he could bury his face against his shoulder.
"Am not. I love this smell. It's my favorite smell," he replied honestly, because it was. It had been his favorite smell since the very beginning of them. It was funny how sensitive he was to every other damn smell in the world, how most everything bothered the fuck out of him in one way or another, but the smell of poison on Chikusa's skin was like coming home. It probably said something about how nuts he was about Chikusa that he liked that smell. Of course, he'd grown to like the darkness and death smell of Mukuro too. Lancia… pretty much just smelled like everyone else. Maybe a little bit more like leather and soap, but rarely of much else because he'd gone out of his way once he'd realized how sensitive Ken's nose was, even without the cartridge in, to find a neutralizing deodorant. It wasn't really necessary anymore as Ken had adjusted to Lancia's odor a long time ago, but he appreciated the effort anyway. It made him feel special, like Lancia really gave a shit about them because it wasn't something even Mukuro had thought to do before.
"Well, you stink," Chikusa grumbled, his breath stirring Ken's hair as he worked his fingers through the thick tangles. It hurt a little, but it was mostly just nice and Ken sighed, leaning into the pull of those fingers through his hair.
"You just say that because you want to shower with me," he teased, grinning.
"Shut up. Just want you to bathe properly."
"Well, I would if there was a bathtub, but there isn't. Besides, what are you complaining about? Mukuro showered for me last week."
"Last week," Chikusa replied, because he was totally fucking weird and would shower like six times a day if they'd let him.
"And yet you're still willing to sleep with me," Ken taunted, grinning widely and pulling Chikusa into a tight hug. "You love the way I stink."
"Do not."
"You totally do. And to honor that I'm not gonna let Mukuro shower for me again for a month."
"Gross, Ken," Chikusa grumbled, wiggling free of Ken's embrace and punching him in the shoulder.
Ken just laughed and grabbed him again, rolling him over and pinning him down until Chikusa's fingers started jabbing at pressure points, forcing him to relent. He ended up facing away from him, tucked against Chikusa's chest and he didn't even mind that his head hurt more than it had to begin with, not really, he was just glad for the weight of Chikusa's arm across his chest and the warmth of him at his back.
-ooo-
NOW
THE GANG
TRADITORE
January 13
MUKURO
It was worse than he thought.
Much worse.
It had taken some digging, but eventually he'd managed to find out when the Vindice had discovered the slaughter at the Esterneo compound. It wasn't really surprising that it had been only three days after they had left New York; he'd almost been expecting it really. What was surprising was that despite his best efforts he hadn't been able to discover how exactly they'd found out about it beyond the vague 'tip' comment he'd gotten when they'd first told him they knew they were from Esterneo. So, it had absolutely been retaliation and they- whoever the hell they actually were- had almost certainly been hiding the compound up until that point. And that meant they had an illusionist of their own, someone far more impressive than the one they'd used to guide him to New York if they'd been able to keep all that flagrant law breaking from being discovered by the Vindice, or anyone else for that matter, for so many years.
What bothered him the most though was that he didn't understand why. Why bother? What the hell was the point? Why conceal it, why reveal it? What did they have to gain? All he knew was that they had led the mafia to them by the nose. Just as someone had tipped off the Vindice about the compound, someone (probably that same someone) had urged the Council to look at Traditore for survivors, encouraged them to look at children and the rest would have been simple. They were prisoners with no right to refuse if someone were to wish to take blood or fingerprints and they'd all bled and bled at Esterneo. Even he had bled there and they couldn't help but have touched things. Even if he'd had the presence of mind to wipe clear their fingerprints he'd have only known where to start with his. When he was the boy he'd been before, he could have gone anywhere, touched anything, and he'd never have known for certain.
That room on the top floor would have probably been positively lousy with them. He would have had to burn the entire place to the ground to cover their tracks completely. Probably should have, but it had simply never occurred to him, not until months later. He had been tired and newly minted and cripplingly naive in so many ways and too worldly by far in others. Besides, he wasn't certain he could have ever even found the place again even if he'd been inclined to go back. Even now he had only a very vague idea where the building stood. He highly doubted either Ken or Chikusa had any better idea of the location than he did and even if they had… it had always seemed as great a risk to return as it had been to leave things as they stood. And knowing what he knew now, he was quite certain that if they had been able or inclined to return they would not have enjoyed the welcome they would have received.
No, he might not understand the purpose or the goal, but he understood well enough that they were expected to remain players in this whatever stupid game they were playing so long as they allowed themselves to remain within Traditore.
And so there was the plan. The plan that was, as yet, not so much a plan as it was just a desperate, half-formed gambit cobbled together from guesses and assumptions and bits of information and a compulsive need to run.
Japan.
Vongola's successor.
It was probably a stupid plan.
It was probably going to get them all killed, but at least they'd go down fighting on their own terms. At least they wouldn't die trapped in the mousetrap that was Traditore, because that's what they'd turned Traditore into for them, he was quite certain of that. He'd thought about it a lot since that day and he had no doubt they were all going to pay for his refusal to play along and eventually allow himself to be dragged off to Vendicare without a fight. The best he could do was free them from it before anyone had a chance to set it off.
He reached out for Chikusa and found only the soft vague feeling of his dreams. He could have gone deeper, maybe, slipped into them. He'd been practicing that with strangers for a while, but it only really worked well with people he was compatible with, people with a will similar to his own and while he and Chikusa were more compatible than he and Lancia or Ken, it would still be challenging.
He reached out for Ken instead and found him awake.
Awake, but still sleepy and cozily bundled in against Chikusa as they still had an hour, maybe two, before he'd need to drop down to his own bunk before the guard came by for his check at three hundred hours. He didn't sleep much even with Chikusa at his back, his senses too oversensitive to ever allow him more than a light doze even with the real illusion ear plugs he'd created for him tucked snugly in his ears. It had been different before, during their first time in Traditore when all he'd been battling had been some low-grade paranoia and nerves. Now, his senses were operating in constant overload even without the cartridge in and it was slowly eating away at him bit by bit. Ken had gotten decent enough at managing it instinctively, so much so that this morning he was just a little anxious and had only a low-grade headache to contend with. Nothing too severe yet and while he couldn't feel the pain himself he could feel Ken's muzzy thoughts about how annoying it was.
It had taken him a while to figure it out, but New York had been good for a lot of things, not the least of which was discovering that Ken's hyperactive senses caused as many problems as they solved. Most of the time the healing factor took care of the worst of it, healing the damage before Ken could even notice it, but when his system became overwhelmed from wearing the cartridges too often or for too long or by a constant bombardment of overwhelming levels of sense stimulation, his body stopped being able to keep up with the progression of the damage. He'd been anxious and irritable since they'd been brought back to Traditore, but it had been getting dramatically worse over the last month or two. He had difficulty sleeping and seemed to lean more and more on Chikusa for support and comfort. There was virtually nothing Mukuro could do to help as his illusions wouldn't be able to mitigate the damage, just affect Ken's perception of it which seemed like it would cause greater harm than good. Even the ear plugs were a bit of a risk as they made his hearing a little more sensitive whenever he took them back out, but it was a necessary risk. He hadn't slept at all the week he'd finally decided to make them for him. Things weren't much better now, but a little sleep was still preferable to none.
Sometimes he possessed Chikusa just so he could keep an eye on him during the night, watch his labored breathing when he wasn't awake and aware enough to keep it under control. Chikusa would always ask why and he couldn't bring himself to answer. Gave him some bullshit about just wanting to check in and sometimes they talked about the cartridges other effects and he listened to Chikusa fret about his feelings for a bit. The feelings thing was easier to handle with Chikusa who often seemed strangely disconnected from his emotions and spoke about them in vague terms as if he couldn't ever find the words to define them properly. He knew Chikusa had his own worries and concerns about Ken and that had kept him blind and distracted from the larger issue. Hopefully he'd be able to get them out before that larger issue really became a problem. Chikusa was already inadvertently managing the condition by insisting on Ken removing the cartridge at night and as often during the day as he could so it wasn't as bad as it could be, not too terrible that he needed to talk to Ken or Chikusa about it since he couldn't be sure doing so wouldn't simply make it all worse.
Hey, Ken sounded drowsy, but content as he sensed his presence. It was a good sound, a warm feeling. You okay? You don't usually come to visit this early.
Just wanted to hear your voice, he answered, a little surprised to find it wasn't quite a lie. It wasn't the real reason, but it was reason enough. He really did… miss them. And all the research and strategizing had kept him away from them all more than he liked.
Nightmare?
Not exactly, just… I have to do some work so we have a place to go when we leave here so I won't be around for a little while.
We still going to Japan?
That's the plan.
Think it's nice there?
I hope it's safe there, Mukuro answered honestly. M.M. is going to continue to help you with your Japanese while I'm gone. Try not to be terrible.
Yeah, yeah, Ken replied, waving off his concerns. I got it, Mom; I'll do my homework.
Mukuro gave him the prod that comment deserved, enjoying the little jump and the feel of Ken mentally scowling at him. Hey! No fair poking me when I can't poke you back.
That's sad for you. I'm dreadfully unfair that way. I am a very bad man after all, Mukuro replied, settling back into his own body.
I hated doing that, you know. Ken replied, his mood turning suddenly serious. We both did.
Hated doing what?
Telling them that it was you. Blaming you. Pretending to be scared of you. Making you the bad guy.
Ah, Mukuro replied articulately, uncomfortable as ever with Ken's incessant need to be so… needlessly sentimental. He'd forgotten that he hadn't spoken with Ken much directly since he'd asked them to do that.
You know that we…
I know, Mukuro said quickly, feeling panic rise up in his throat. You know I can't…
I know, Ken replied, but those warm, adoring, excitable emotions still rose up and buffeted him from all sides. Those wretched emotions that were like Ken's arms around his shoulders, full of such amiable affection, a fondness he'd never known quite how to handle. Fear bubbled up like bile within him, bitter and caustic, and the urge to retreat back into his mind and body was almost overwhelming.
Being in Ken's head was always like this. Like being in the eye of an affectionate hurricane that could shift at any moment and result in him taking the emotional equivalent of a house to the face. It was why he so rarely possessed Ken or used him when he needed to convey messages. It was simply easier, more pleasant, for him to use Chikusa or Lancia who felt less and had better control respectively. Ken had always understood his particular limitations better than the others. He was, after all, the only one who was aware of how afraid he was that he would hurt them. Who understood that fear, because it was one he sometimes shared even if their methods and triggers were markedly different. For all that they were very, very different people they understood each other very well.
He could already feel Ken working to shove those swelling feelings down, away, rein them in before they could swallow him whole. He supposed the cartridge was good for that, at any rate, forcing Ken to learn absolute control in extreme conditions. In moments, the torrent of emotion had subsided and he could breathe again. The impulse to run was still there, but it no longer felt like an imperative.
The urge to shut down and escape was always there during possessions, always an undercurrent below every move, every thought, every misplaced desire, but the more time he spent within any one body the more prevalent it became, the more difficult to distinguish where he ended and where they began. The more their thoughts and emotions impacted and influenced him. He had a feeling that at some point he would reach some critical mass that would keep him from possessing them any longer without the risk of losing himself completely. It felt like he was getting dangerously close to that point with Lancia sometimes.
Sorry about that. Out of practice. You okay?
Okay, he echoed, because that was a decent enough description for how he felt. Unsteady, certainly, but in reasonably decent control of his faculties.
All right. So, you do what you've gotta do and we'll do our best with the Japanese. Lancia's going to be back with us soon, right?
Yes, he should be released the day after tomorrow, I believe. I'll check to be certain and let you know if that isn't the case.
Cool. I'll tell Chikusa what you said. Can you do me a favor before you go?
What is it?
Can you make an illusion of the mark on my cheek? The one the cartridge puts there?
Such a simple solution to a complicated problem and he's a little annoyed he didn't think of it first. Yes. Of course, hold on.
A few seconds of concentration and he's drawn the image from memory, traced it across Ken's cheek and made it self-sustaining so it'll be visible to anyone who views it regardless as to whether he's around to enforce it or not. It's done. The mark will be there whether you're actively wearing the cartridge or not. Are you…?
Just… it's too much, sometimes. I mean, most of the time it makes me feel safe. Knowing that if something happens I have claws and teeth to defend us, but… it's tougher to control some things when I have to wear it all the time. I just… need to be able to go without it sometimes.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
The conversation lapsed into silence and Mukuro realized that for all that he had been so eager to leave moments before, now that the time had come, he was reluctant. Which was stupid, of course, it wasn't as if he were going to be gone weeks or months. There really was no reason at all to drag his feet and make mountains of molehills. I'm going now. Take care of each other. Try not to kill anyone unless you have to.
Yeah. Be safe.
He left the feel of Ken's mind behind and sunk back into his own body with a relieved sigh, curling up on his bunk to the accompanying symphony of rattling chains. He needed to rest for a bit before he went to check in with Lancia.
-ooo-
CHIKUSA
You will lose everything you love.
He'd woken up that morning to find the note on his pillow. Just a long unremarkable little slip of white paper like the sort of thing they'd found in those funny cookies from the Chinese restaurant they'd usually gotten take out from while they'd been in New York. It had just been lying there when he opened his eyes and it wouldn't have even bothered him except… except it hadn't been there when he'd fallen back asleep after Ken had rolled out of bed just before the guard came around. It hadn't been there and someone would have had to come in and leave it without disturbing either himself or Ken and that... wasn't the sort of thing just anyone could do.
They'd have to be tall to avoid having to stand on Ken's bed so that took M.M. out of the running as well and while Ken had played the occasional prank on him over the years, it wasn't his sort of thing or his handwriting for that matter.
"Hey," Ken called, the top of his head popping up over the edge of the bed a bare instant after Chikusa had palmed the paper to hide it. "Mukuro wanted me to tell you that M.M. is gonna be taking over Japanese practice with us starting today since he's gonna be gone for a while."
He wrinkled his nose at that. He was fine enough with the idea in theory, but… he would really rather not have to talk to that girl more than he absolutely had to.
"Don't be like that, Kappa. She really is pretty cool if you would just give her a chance."
And that really didn't make him like the idea or her any better. He hadn't minded her during the first few months when she was just a helpful stranger, but now that Ken was always laughing with her and telling her stories, letting slip little things about them that no one else knew like she was a permanent rather than a temporary fixture in their lives. He didn't like it. Didn't like her. Didn't like how things felt like they were changing. He clutched that scrap of paper in his hand a little harder. "Fine."
"See, you say fine, but you don't mean it," Ken grouched, sighing as he dropped back down as the guard's footsteps echoed across the walk outside their cell.
No, he didn't mean it. He pushed that piece of paper into his pocket and resolved not to mention it to Ken.
If anyone had asked him, he wouldn't have been able to articulate why he did it exactly, just… it made him feel bad looking at it, touching it. Sent a chill down his spine and he wanted some time to think about it before he told Ken. To think about the circumstances and how it had gotten there on his pillow, how sick it had made him feel to see it lying in the dent Ken's head had left behind.
So, he resolved to keep it a secret just… just for a little while. Not forever, obviously, just until he'd had a chance to decide what it meant.
-ooo-
LANCIA
"Forty-nine… Fifty. Very good, Mr. Rokudou," the nurse who doubled as his physical therapist said with a smile and Lancia grimaced and fell back against the cool tiles of the infirmary floor. "You're really coming along well. You'll need to keep it up when they move back to general population tomorrow though. Bet you're excited to be getting out of here, huh?"
"Oh, yes. Goody goody, regular prison, hooray," Lancia replied, rolling his eyes as he shoved himself into a sitting position. His abdominal muscles screamed bloody murder at even that small movement. It really was completely fucking pathetic how quickly he'd gotten out of shape just by lying on his ass in a hospital bed for the better part of a couple months. He was really fucking glad Mukuro wasn't around to poke fun at him as he hobbled back over to the bed.
Truth be told, he was actually pretty damn eager to get the hell out of the infirmary. He was sure that gen pop at Traditore would be a steep step down from the cool, quiet infirmary, but he'd finally be able to take a piss without an escort again and, honestly, he missed Ken's constant chatter and Chikusa's steady presence a hell of a lot more than he liked the peaceful isolation of the infirmary.
"Oh, um, they asked me to mention, um, the verdict came back. They found you guilty and, um, your sentence was…"
"Death, right?"
"Uh, yeah."
"It's fine, I figured that would be the case, probably. No big," Lancia yawned and clamored back up onto the bed, sticking his hand out obligingly so the nurse with the unlikely name of Larry could cuff him to the bedframe. They were apparently all operating on the honor system with this shit. They would do their part by cuffing him to the bed and pretending that might be a deterrent if he really actually felt like going somewhere and he did his part by not ripping the railing off the bed and beating anyone to death with it. Everybody won and nobody got dead. "What about my boys?"
"Oh, um, they didn't tell me, um…" Larry stuttered, looking incredibly nervous all of a sudden.
"Don't fucking wet yourself over it. I'm sure I'll find out eventually," Lancia replied, rolling his eyes again as he leaned back gingerly against the pillows with a relieved groan.
"Sorry," Larry commented and he did seem legitimately apologetic. Though that probably owed more to the fact that he always seemed five minutes away from freaking out before he ran screaming from the infirmary for no particular damn reason. Lancia couldn't decide if the little bastard was just a nervous, high-strung sort of fella or if he was just scared of Lancia in particular. Could have been either really.
"Yeah, yeah. When are they doing it? They issue a date yet?"
"I heard the twenty-seventh of June."
"Oh, they've just got all the jokes, don't they? Fine idea for a fucking anniversary present to the murderer who has everything, I guess. They can all just go suck a bag of dicks." Lancia grumbled.
There were days when he'd be perfectly content with Mukuro burning the entirety of the damn Mafia to the ground. Far more times when he wouldn't be, of course, but plenty of times when he just couldn't be bothered to give a damn. Fuckers probably thought they were being ironic or some shit, executing him on the same day he'd slaughtered his Famiglia. Like the families of his victims would appreciate that horseshit. He didn't know them, but he knew they were out there somewhere, brothers and mothers and fathers who'd lost their siblings and children to his hands, probably a fair number of kids out there too. He tried not to think about that too often. It was just too fucking depressing and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to make amends. Still, he doubted any of them much gave a shit about what day he'd be executed. He knew he wouldn't in their place.
Larry disappeared into his office looking uncomfortable and Lancia sighed turning his head against the pillow as he felt Mukuro's presence shudder up his spine, I was wondering when you'd be showing up.
Oh? Don't tell me you missed me. Mukuro replied, sounding exhausted and tetchy.
Not fucking hardly. You sound like shit, by the way.
You're being released tomorrow? Mukuro replied, pointedly ignoring his commentary.
That's the plan. I already signed all the bullshit paperwork and everything that they shoved at me. Of course, I'm a little surprised they don't have a private wing for death row inmates.
They do. Unfortunately there was flooding and a gas leak in that part of the prison and then the whole thing caught on fire so they've been forced to integrate those prisoners into general population or move them down to isolation for the time being. It's all very unfortunate.
Well, you have been fucking busy little bee, haven't you?
Mukuro chuckled. I appreciate that you think I spend my days sitting on my ass down here eating bonbons. This was the only way to be sure no matter how the verdict came back that you'd end up where I need you to be. I will admit, I wasn't anticipating you confessing to the murder of the Cacciatore. They probably wouldn't have sentenced you to death if you hadn't.
The last person in the whole fucking world he wanted to discuss that decision with was Mukuro. Yeah, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. What did they sentence you with?
Death, of course. They really are not terribly fond of me. June twenty-seventh is the date, I do believe. I'm not sure if that was for the sake of efficiency or because they simply have no way of nailing down the date I actually killing them.
Oh, happy day, matching execution dates. Think I'll be your opening act or you'll be mine?"
I would assume they would do it simultaneously. I'm pretty sure they just shoot people to execute them here.
Do they? Huh. Blindfolds and cigarettes and you're too young to smoke, that must be a real bummer.
Oh, yes, because I'm certain age of consent is prohibitive when you're planning to shoot someone. Wouldn't want me to accidentally pick up a bad habit on my way to the firing squad.
Lancia snorted, earning him a funny look from Larry, who'd come back out of the little office flipping through a big manila folder. He shrugged and turned his face away, Fair enough.
Of course, we'll be out of here long before they get a chance. I have no intention of dying at the hands of the mafia's justice.
I figured. You got a plan, smart guy?
Not yet, but if all else fails, I could always start a riot and you could just rip all the doors off their hinges and we could escape in the confusion.
That sounds like the worst fucking plan ever.
It would be. Too many variables, too much risk, I always prefer precision to luck and happenstance.
No fucking kidding.
I'm working on a plan. It'll take a few weeks to finish putting everything in place. In the meantime, you're going to need to learn Japanese.
Seriously? Japan? What the fuck is in Japan?
That hardly concerns you at this juncture, just know that that is our next destination and I'm going to expect a greater degree of fluency than you had in English.
Hey, my English is fucking fantastic.
It was passable.
No, Ken's English was fucking passable. Mine is stellar. I, unlike you little fuckers, had to actually use it on a daily basis.
There was a long pause, but Mukuro's presence was still there, lingering, lurking at the edge of his consciousness. Like he was waiting for something or reluctant to leave, Lancia really wasn't sure which. Finally, he sighed, Just fucking spit it out already, kid.
Ken's having a rough time here.
No fucking shit. You got any other dead obvious news to report? I'd be more surprised if he wasn't. Between the cartridge and those heightened senses, prison has to be that kid's idea of hell on earth.
He could practically feel how relieved Mukuro is by that, by the fact that he'd picked up on that. Like anyone could really fucking miss it. He doesn't have to even be with them to know being in gen pop has to be driving the poor little bastard nuts. He was probably climbing the damn walls.
I don't know how to make it better for him.
Get him outta here as fast as you can, kid. That's the only thing you can do. Just keep working on putting your fucking ducks in a row so we can put this place in the rear view, huh?
Keep them safe while I'm away.
Obviously.
And with that Mukuro was gone and he was alone with only Larry the nurse and a pressing need to see his fucking kids. He was so fucking ready to be out of here.
-ooo-
He wasn't sure exactly when he had fallen asleep, but he was awakened by the blare of alarms and the sound of shouting to find some fuckhead he'd never seen before holding a knife to good old nurse Larry's throat. That, in and of itself, didn't particularly bother him. He could give a shit about the skinny little nurse and it didn't even surprise him that someone had managed to get ahold of a damn scalpel. They kept the damn things in a cupboard – an unlocked cupboard, no less – so really they kind of fucking deserved what they got on that front.
What he did care about was the way the asshole with the knife kept darting glances in his direction as if he were judging the distance and wondering if he could make it to him before the pissed off guard standing in the doorway shouting at him to get down on the floor could shoot him.
That wasn't a particularly great sign.
He was a death row inmate and probably a pretty fucking well known one at his point. So, while there was a possibility that this little skinhead motherfucker didn't know that, he was pretty fucking sure even this dumb bastard couldn't possibly think a laid up prisoner made a better hostage than a nurse. The man was tall and gaunt and wearing a piece of gauze wound roughly around his head. It was a little bloody and half-undone so he could only assume Larry had been in the process of patching him up when the fucker had decided to grab a knife. He had heavy, patchy scruff scattered across his cheeks and chin and his eyes were dark and sunken, though the longer he watched the more often he saw them oscillate between hollow and vacant and a sort of sly, calculating intelligence. He felt a chill run up his spine, because this felt familiar. It was like having someone walk over your grave. He couldn't have said where that odd feeling of déjà vu came from exactly or why, but… it was there, this lingering feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. Just a knee-jerk reaction that didn't do anything but make him more fucking suspicious of the motherfucker with the knife and his intentions.
Of course, that wasn't the biggest fucking issue. The biggest fucking issue was the guy was, very, very slowly, easing towards him and either the guard in the doorway hadn't noticed, didn't care or was too big a pussy to actually take a shot at the bastard. And like fuck he was just gonna just sit there and wait to find out what the crazy son of a bitch had planned.
Lancia gripped the bed's handrail in one hand and gave it a firm yank, ripping it free from the bed with a squeal of metal that caused three things to happen in quick succession.
Nurse Larry screamed and fainted at the sudden, unexpected noise, slithering out of the prisoner's grip like he was suddenly made of fucking gelatin.
The prison guard at the door jerked in surprise and fired his gun, the shot going wild as he let out a surprised little yelp like he'd never fired a damn gun before.
And with his hostage gone and the guard momentarily distracted, the prisoner made a desperate leap towards Lancia.
And that last part, at least, was kind of exactly what he had hoped would happen. Lancia greeted his charge by swinging the guard rail like a baseball bat and while he might still be a little out of shape, he was still strong enough to be able to knock that little fucker into the back wall of the Infirmary as easily as if he were batting away a kitten. The prisoner hit the wall with a sickening and rather satisfying crack, embedded just enough in the cheap-ass plaster that they'd have to peel him out of there. Lancia grinned at the image, at the blood dribbling down onto the prisoner's shoulders from what was probably a fatal head wound.
"Drop the bedrail and put your damn hands up, inmate," the guard spat, having apparently picked his jaw up off the floor and realized he still had a job to do. Lancia turned back to find the guard aiming his gun at him, his hands shaking with residual adrenaline.
Great.
The last damn thing he needed was to get fucking shot again. He'd had his fill of that shit in Mumbai.
"Relax, I was just defending myself," Lancia commented, dropping the bedrail to let it jangle uselessly from his arm as raised his hands in the air. He managed to refrain from rolling his eyes at the guard, but it was a close fucking thing.
"Don't you fucking move," the guard replied.
"Sure, sure. Whatever you say, boss."
Other guards finally came filtering into the room a couple minutes later, though whether they'd been drawn by the blaring alarms or the gunshot, Lancia wasn't certain. Either way, they scrambled in like the Keystone fucking cops, bumbling about in the too small space, getting in each other's way as they moved to secure the prisoners and check on the still unconscious nurse. Lancia kept perfectly still, allowing the guards to uncuff him from his weapon of choice and cuff his hands together behind his back. So, they were back on the honor system again apparently.
"… And I mean, obviously, that big guy was probably calling the shots."
Lancia whirled around to glare at the guard, he of the happy trigger finger, who was in the process of explaining emphatically the many trials and tribulations he had faced and apparently merrily fucking embellishing the shit out of what had happened while he was at it.
"Are you fucking kidding me, you little shit?" Lancia snarled, causing the guard to jump and fluster. "I was fucking taking a nap and I wake up to find that fucker over there taking that guy hostage and you pointing a gun at him. How the fuck am I meant to be calling the shots on that clusterfuck?"
"You… well, you were… you're Mukuro Rokudo."
"I don't give a shit if I'm the goddamn Queen of fucking Sheba. What the hell would I have to gain from any of that bullshit?"
"Well, I mean, they just, uh, they just sentenced you so, um, maybe you were, um, planning to escape and, um…"
"Look, if you're gonna try and fucking blame me for something, at least make it something I'd actually fucking do, huh? Because I have literally fucking nothing to gain from having some incompetent fucker I've never even seen before trot his punk ass in here while I was sleeping, take a hostage, draw your attention and then try to fucking stab me for kicks."
"We should really get the Warden down here," one of the other guards suggested as a few more began the process of trying to pry the dead guy out of the damn wall.
There seemed to be a general consensus that that was a pretty good idea and Lancia finally did roll his eyes as he leaned back awkwardly against his bound hands and waited for these dumb fucks to get a clue.
-ooo-
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 163
January 15
CHIKUSA
"What the fuck?"
Chikusa startled awake at the quiet, groggy exclamation and he was rolling out of his bed, to fall into a crouch on the floor beside Ken's before he'd even fully awakened.
For a moment, he couldn't quite process what he was seeing and when he did, he felt his stomach clench with anxiety. Ken was scrubbing his hand through his even blond hair. His sheets and blanket and pillow were littered with little tufts and strands of golden hair. He looked vaguely panicked, "I couldn't have done this, right? I mean, I… my nails don't without the cartridge and…"
"No," Chikusa murmured, crawling up onto the bed beside him and running his own hands through Ken's fluffy uneven hair, catching Ken's hands and drawing them down and away. "Prank."
Though he wasn't sure he really believed that. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that yesterday there was a weird note and today there was… this.
Ken frowned, his eyes still wide with panic and his fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against Chikusa's hands, "And I didn't wake up? Seems like I should have woken up, right? I mean, I can barely fucking sleep as it is so why…?"
The question hung between them and Chikusa wished he had a good answer… or even a bad answer, just… any answer at all.
They both should have and he didn't like that they hadn't. Didn't like that someone could get that close to them in their locked cell and they hadn't woken up, but the only other option was that Ken had done this to himself and he didn't believe that.
"M? Did you cut my fucking hair?"
"Why the hell would I cut your hair?" M.M. replied, yawning and rolling over to look at them, her eyes widening once she caught a good look at Ken and his lopsided hair. "Oh my god, what the hell happened to your head?"
"That's what I wanna fucking know!" Ken grouched, sweeping irritably at his lap, knocking the bigger chunks of hair off onto the floor. Chikusa watched them fall, his fingers still caught in Ken's uneven locks and the sickness in his stomach solidified into something like dread.
But then the guard was arriving to take them to the showers and there wasn't time for much else. None of them missed the guard's smirk though and Ken hunched his shoulders, shoving the cartridge in before they left the cell. Chikusa gave him his hat to wear and Ken pulled it low and tight across his forehead, walking approximately six inches closer than he usually did all morning.
After breakfast, they went back to their cell and set about the task of awkwardly cutting Ken's hair with a pair of safety scissors that the girl had managed to scourge up for them from somewhere. She stood guard outside until they were finished. If he'd had any lingering doubts about whether Ken had miraculously started growing claws without the aid of the cartridge and accidentally sliced off those chucks of hair in his sleep, using Ken's claws to trim up the remaining hair once the little scissors had stopped working would have done away with them. He took off his glasses and wielded Ken's clawed fingers as knifes and it had still taken nearly an hour before he was finally done.
In order to even it out, he'd had to cut it close and it was far, far shorter than he'd ever seen it. He stood in front of him after he was done and it was so strange. It was almost like he was looking at a stranger with a familiar face, someone who looked a lot like Ken, but wasn't him at all. He ran his fingers across the scruff of it, pushing the soft bristles up and back, scratching his short fingernails over Ken's scalp.
Ken made a soft, injured sound and dropped his head forward to rest against Chikusa's stomach.
"That feels so fucking weird," he muttered, wrapping his arms around Chikusa's waist and holding him fast when he was about to step away. "Do I look weird?" He asked, his voice muffled against his shirt.
"No," he lied.
-ooo-
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 162
January 16
A lock of Ken's hair, braided and tied off with black string was on his pillow when he woke up that morning.
The golden strands were smeared with blood.
And another note: Is a lion without a mane still a lion?
The sound of Ken's snoring echoed through their room and it was comforting… but also terrible. Before even just a hint of unfamiliar blood in the air was enough to wake him from a dead sleep, but… things were different in here. He'd barely slept all those first few weeks unable to relax or ignore all the random and unfamiliar smells that made up the recirculating prison air. He'd adjusted eventually to a point but, even now, Ken still slept lightly or not at all and it scared him a little that Ken was sleeping through this just as he'd slept through yesterday's haircut. Nothing he could say to Ken would make any difference except to make him more anxious, make it more difficult for him to rest, but… he didn't like keeping secrets. Especially not this, these notes that made him feel sick and ashamed like whoever was writing those words was getting away with something and he was letting them.
He wished for the cool, shivering rush of Mukuro's presence. Mukuro would know what the right thing to do was. Whether he should tell Ken or keep it a secret so as not to panic him. Ken was already freaking out about the mysterious haircut and he could see the way the strain was affecting him. How much harder he had to work to manage his emotions while he had the cartridge in. He wore it as little as possible, but even without it he was on edge, paranoid and self-conscious. They'd been lucky that Mukuro had made that illusion, that had been a good idea, but Ken still couldn't bring himself to go out of the cell into the public areas without the cartridge in now. Maybe he'd have been all right before the haircut, but now he was jumping at shadows. Plus there was the additional problem of the hair growth the cartridge caused. If he kept wearing it every day, taking it in and out like that, they'd have to keep trimming it. The length had never been a particular problem when it was long and shaggy, no one had noticed if it was a little longer than usual and so maintenance hadn't really been necessary all that often. Now though their situation was delicate enough as it was with the council knowing they were from Esterneo, if they also realized that they were different as well… he wasn't sure if they would care, really, but he worried about it nonetheless. Worried about little rooms and being studied and pulled apart piece by piece while mafia men with their filthy, blood-soaked hands tried to figure out how they worked.
He squeezed his eyes shut and clutched that lock of hair in his hand and called Mukuro's name silently again and again even though he knew it didn't work like that. Even though he knew Mukuro couldn't hear him.
Mukuro wasn't there.
For the first time, Mukuro wasn't there when he needed him.
Not even Lancia was there.
He was supposed to be released from the infirmary the day before, but there'd been no sign of him. No sign of Mukuro, no sign of Lancia.
He was alone.
So, he tucked the lock of hair in his pocket along with the note so he could toss it once he got to the bathroom, slid off his bunk and dropped to the floor.
-ooo-
NOW
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 161
UNAFFILIATED
TRADITORE
January 17
WARDEN PELLEGRINO
There were plenty of days when he hated his job. It was typically a stressful and thankless task being the man in charge of an exclusive mafia-only prison facility. They were privately funded and overseen by the Council and so it wasn't even as if he truly held much power over anyone or anything within these walls besides guard rotations and prisoner work details. The pay was poor, bonuses and vacation time virtually nonexistent, he was blamed and held accountable for every little thing that went wrong and lately he'd been having the worst run of luck.
It wasn't that he wasn't glad to have them back. Those little bastards who had been the first prisoners to ever escape these walls. That part made him very happy indeed. He'd been thrilled when the Vindice had delivered them to his door. Perhaps slightly less thrilled about the condition of the ringleader since he then had to spend precious resources getting him patched up and on the mend, but overall quite glad. He'd been planning for this day for almost two years. He'd hired all new guards. He'd installed new security measures in both the General Population block as well as Solitary. He had even fast-tracked their processing to get them through and into general population more quickly. This time, this time, they would not escape. This time he was ready for Mukuro Rokudou and whatever his little band of miscreants could dish out. He would prove to the Council that he was more than capable of keeping a bunch of children incarcerated and they would have to stop calling him 'Catch and Release Pellegrino' behind his back.
Then, of course, the trouble had started almost before they were even in the doors. He'd had one guard dead and one completely unrepentant child killer who'd moved so fast that even looking back at the security footage and slowing it down, he was only able to see a blur of motion and then a guard bleeding out while that boy put his hands behind his head cool as you please. That had been bad enough. But then several of the younger guards had decided to take out their frustrations on that child after they'd taken him down to Solitary. He knew, better than anyone since he was one of the last remaining employees who'd been present for Mukuro Rokudou's last stay in Traditore that Mario Rossi probably wasn't a normal kid. He hadn't needed a letter to inform him of that fact, though he'd been grateful for the confirmation nonetheless.
Still, abnormal or not, Mario Rossi was still a child. The last damn thing he needed was for the Council to find out that his guards had almost killed a child in his custody. They'd replace him in a hot minute and while he often hated his job, he wasn't quite ready to leave it behind. So he'd covered it up as best he could, erasing the security footage, leaving Mario Rossi to heal alone in his cell with only occasional checks from the nurse in the infirmary just to be sure the injuries were healing well enough. He'd also slowly replaced the guards who'd done the deed, firing them for minor infractions and hiring replacements that were a little older and wiser than the boys they were replacing. Life moved on. Then, of course, just when things had seemed to have finally settled down, the Council representatives had shown up to interview Mario Rossi. And, of course, the little bastard had attacked them. That was just how his luck ran. He'd managed to bypass most of his security measures like they were nothing and had put his hand through the shoulder of Simone Pasquale, had slammed the Boss of Vongola against a damn wall. It was just... so embarrassing. And, of course, he'd been blamed for it.
Never mind that Boss Pasquale had been the one to order the cell door opened in the first place.
Fortunately, not everything that had come out of that day had been a total loss. He was fairly certain that it was because the boy had managed all that that he'd gotten the initial offer after all.
It was a common practice that people within the mafia could negotiate and pay for the release of prisoners held within Traditore and Vendicare. It didn't happen terribly frequently as lawbreakers weren't exactly a priced commodity within the mafia as they often attracted far more trouble than they were worth. But, it was known to happen on occasion particularly for inmates who had one-of-a-kind skill sets. It was frowned upon, but the prison system of the mafia was as much a business as anything else and as long as the prisoner wasn't one that had enemies in the highest levels of the mafia establishment, the Council generally turned a blind eye to the practice.
Of course, since Vendicare usually housed the more dangerous and thus more high-value prisoners, the warden was quite certain that the Vindice had far more interest and received far better offers than he did for his considerably less glamorous minors and standard grade inmates.
Mario Rossi, however, was different. His attack on the Council and his sudden association with the infamous Esterneo Famiglia had made him a very special case indeed. He was certain the Vindice would have loved to get their greedy hands on him, but there was no chance of that happening now. After all, Traditore was the prison used to house death row inmates except in very particular instances where the inmate required far greater security than Traditore was capable of provided. And while his speed and strength were impressive, they were hardly singular or spectacular enough in the grand scheme of things and to warrant transfer him to the more secure walls of Vendicare. Still, while it might not make him dangerous enough to require a transfer, that speed and strength had still apparently been interesting enough that word had gotten around about him.
The warden had been delighted to receive his first offer for the boy's release in November. It had been, as all initial offers are, far too low for him to even consider it, particularly with Rossi being such a high profile prisoner, but the fact that he'd gotten an offer so early did bode well for the future.
He'd received another offer in early December that had been almost three times what that initial offer had been and when he'd refused he'd almost immediately received a third offer for an even larger sum with a request for a counter offer as well as a small list of good faith requests that he hadn't seen any reason not to grant. They were small things for the most part, easily done and even more easily concealed and he was quite eager for the negotiations to go well. If he were able to procure the sum he had in mind he would be able to retire to a beach on some uncharted island and never worry a day in his life about repercussions from the mafia.
He was in the process of writing a response to the latest offer when a frantic knock at his office door summoned him from his thoughts. "Enter," he called, turning the paper over and placing his folded hands over it as the door opened and a guard ducked his head in.
He recognized the guard as one of those he had working down in Solitary, but damned if he could remember his name off the top of his head. "Yes?"
"Uh, sorry to disturb you, sir, but, um, there's a problem down in Solitary," the man said, fidgeting nervously in the doorway.
Agosto. This guard's name was Davide Agosto. He'd been one of his first hires when he'd been forced to purge the guard after Mukuro Rokudou's little band of miscreants had escaped. He'd been working down in Solitary for about three months. "What kind of problem, Agosto?"
"Uh, it's Mario Rossi, sir."
"What's he done now?" He asked, rubbing his forehead irritably. If that boy wasn't worth so damn much money….
"Well, that's just it, sir. Nothing. He's still sleeping."
"How is that a problem exactly?"
"He's been sleeping for almost three days, sir. He hasn't eaten and we don't think he's woken up at all. I mean, I know you said…"
"Three days? And you're only now letting me know?"
Agosto looked positively flummoxed, "Um, we told you yesterday, sir."
"I think I'd remember you telling me one of the prisoners down in Solitary was basically comatose, Agosto," he snapped, his mind whirling as he went over his day. No, he definitely didn't remember getting even a passing comment about anyone in Solitary much less Mario Rossi.
"Well, I mean, we sent Mario up and tell you about it, sir. He said to just have Larry check him out and leave him be, sir."
"Mario? Do we have a Mario working down in Solitary?" He furrowed his brow, shuffling papers aside to find the duty roster. Where the hell was the damn thing? Why couldn't he ever find anything in this mess?
"Um, yes, sir? The new hire? He's been down there for a few days now. I thought it was kind of weird because you don't usually put the new guys down there, but…"
He didn't remember approving a new hire. Not since last November and that had been that short, stocky Paolo. And even if he had, he wouldn't have assigned them to Solitary. He didn't assign anyone but the most seasoned guards down there these days. Not since the first Rossi incident.
He finally found the duty roster folder buried under a stack of Lancia Salvatore's medical files and flipped it open to the appropriate week, frowning. Just as he thought, there was no Mario listed at all. Anywhere. He had absolutely no one working as a guard or anywhere else in the prison named Mario. "Is this Mario here today?"
"Yes, sir. I think he's on his lunch break, but I definitely saw him this morning. He's usually in surveillance room rather than on the block though, so I wouldn't…."
"It's fine. I want you to find him and bring him to me down in the surveillance room, I don't want to sound the alarm, but this little bastard isn't one of ours. I want you to be prepared to shoot him if he tries anything, got it? Make sure all the other guards you run into along the way are aware of the situation."
"Y-yes, sir," Agosto replied, trailing behind him as he stomped down the hallway. Like hell some little prick was going to come in here and steal his meal ticket and that was almost certainly what was going on.
Unbelievable. Just completely unbelievable. He was having absolutely the worst run of luck. Like he didn't have enough to worry about without having to worry about whether his meal ticket was going to die on him or be stolen away by some infiltrating son of a bitch. Negotiations were progressing so well too. Certainly he'd had to make a few unusual concessions, like that idiotic thing about putting Salvatore in the Box for a week, but nothing that would compromise him if there were a council inquiry and now… this. No one would pay for a comatose murderer. That was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.
When he reached the surveillance room he found a thin cigar burning against an ashtray on the desk and the chair still warm, but no sign of the mysterious Mario. Grumbling to himself, he sat down at the desk and ran the exterior hall tape back until he caught sight of a man walking away from the surveillance room. He played the tape, narrowing his eyes as the dark-haired man in the uniform waved over his shoulder.
He snagged the radio from the desk, "I want that man stopped immediately. He has dark hair and he's wearing a guard uniform, he goes by the name Mario and you might have seen him working down in Solitary this week. He's heading for the exit. If he refuses to stop, shoot him in the damn leg. That should slow him down a fair bit."
Static and silence were his only answer.
Cursing, he clipped the radio to his belt and went to check on the boy. He could see him on the monitor, lying back on his bed. He wondered if they'd adjusted him, he'd seen enough surveillance of Rossi over the last six months to know that he rarely laid flat on his back like that, preferring it seemed to sleep sitting up against the wall. Still, the footage could be faked or looped. He wouldn't feel at ease until he'd seen the boy with his own two eyes.
He was halfway there when the radio at his waist burst with fresh static and a voice he didn't recognize. "I would suggest calling off your guards if you don't want to explain why you lost five of them today."
"You've got a fucking nerve, don't you? I have a good mind to just have them shoot you."
"Now, now, that's hardly polite. I don't think I like your attitude. You'd never even have known that I'd been here if that guard hadn't been so overly concerned about the boy. Honestly, it isn't as if he were going to sleep himself to death," the man commented, sounding as casual as if he were chatting about the weather. "As to who I am, just think of me as a concerned party who wanted to have a look at merchandise before purchase. Nothing you need to worry about, of course, I hardly intended to steal him away without paying you what you're owed. I was merely curious as to how he was reacting to all I've done for him lately. Imagine my disappointment to find him sleeping through it all like a damn princess in a tower. I'm truly devastated. I went through all that effort, came all the way here and he's spoiled the fun." The man didn't sound devastated, if anything he sounded cheerful. It made the warden's skin crawl.
Dammit.
He had reached Mario Rossi's cell and found the little door window slot standing open. The boy was inside, lying on his back, chains limp around his wrists and quite dead to the world, just as he had appeared on the security feed. His long hair was loose around his face making him look younger and softer than he ever did when he was awake.
Dammit.
"So? What's it going to be? Are you going to call your men off or do I have to kill the lot? I really don't have all day."
Dammit.
This was almost certainly the unseen man he had been negotiating with. This man could have funded his retirement if only he'd never shown his face here, if only they'd never actually spoken. It would have been so simple sell that child to some unknown, unseen entity. He'd have done it and been thrilled with the deal he'd made. He didn't have much in the way of sympathy for murderers of any stripe even if they were children. Even now if he were just a smidgeon more of a bastard than he was he'd still be fine with it But… he'd never thought of himself as a cruel man, a greedy man, certainly, but not cruel. And the idea of turning over this boy to this laughing man… there was simply no way he'd be able to live with himself, not for all the money in the world.
Son of a bitch.
He'd really been looking forward to that retirement too.
He pressed the talk button on the radio and breathed a long sigh, "Kill the bastard."
A hail of gunfire rang out over the radio and he had only the barest moment to wonder who was pressing down the button so he could hear it before the man's voice spoke again still as cheerful as ever. "See what you made me do? You've got quite a mess to clear up down here now, I'm afraid. It's going to quite a chore explaining to the Council why five of your guards just decided to spontaneously shoot each other." A soft clicking sound followed and then the press and release of a door being opened and then slamming shut again. "It truly is quite unfortunate that we couldn't be friends, Warden Pellegrino. Do be sure to take good care of my property while it remains in your care, won't you?"
-ooo-
KEN
"Seriously, dammit, what the fuck is that fucking noise?" Ken howled, slapping his hands over his ears as the piercing sound rang out again, sharp and loud and echoing through the entire fucking prison it seemed like.
"Seriously, I have no idea what you're talking about," M.M. replied, sighing into her magazine. "And why are you shouting? I can hear you just fine."
"How can you not fucking hear it? It's loud as shit. It's like, I don't fucking know, a steam whistle or something!" He knew he was shouting, but he couldn't seem to stop himself, not with that sound still ringing in his head.
"Maybe it's a dog whistle."
"Oh, fuck you, very fucking funny!"
"I meant that seriously, dick. It's a loud, piercing whistle that only you can hear. A dog whistle is a perfectly legit possibility," M.M. replied crossly, dropping her magazine in favor of glaring at him.
The sound cut off abruptly and Ken breathed a sigh of relief, yanking the cartridge out of his mouth just in case it went off again. His head ached, but that wasn't anything new. He'd had a headache all damn day. He seemed like he'd had a headache for fucking months. "Why the fuck would someone in here have a fucking dog whistle?"
"I don't know. Why would someone bother to cut your stupid hair? Obviously someone is fucking with you."
"Yeah, I guess so. Fuck," Ken scrubbed a hand through his hair and hated it all over again. He looked fucking ridiculous. He had half a mind to just keep putting the cartridge in and taking it back out over and over until it grew back, but… but that seemed like a really stupid idea. Mukuro had been really fucking specific and bitchy about the idea of him using it more than he needed to in the first place. He'd probably be super pissed if he found out he used it because he didn't like his fucking haircut. "Just… don't mention it to Chikusa, alright? He's been really fucking weird since the haircut thing and I don't want him to flip his shit."
"Is Chikusa even capable of flipping his shit? Wouldn't that require him to have more than one emotion to speak of?"
"Shut up," Ken snapped automatically. "You don't know anything about it."
M raised her hands in mock surrender, "Easy, Tiger. Fair point. He's your friend, I shouldn't have said that."
"You're my friend too," Ken grumbled, glaring at her because that had seemed like the world's most insincere fucking apology. "I wouldn't let him say shit like that about you either."
"I told you, we're not friends. I don't do the friends thing, Ken," M replied, looking a little put out herself now.
"Whatever. Just don't fucking tell him, all right?"
"Like I'm really going to go out of my way to talk to someone who hates me."
"He doesn't fucking hate you."
"He really, really does. Ask him."
And because that's just how the universe worked, Chikusa chose just that moment to come back from the bathroom. "Chikusa, do you hate M?"
Chikusa blinked and then shifted his gaze over to M for a long moment before shifting it back to Ken. He shrugged and adjusted his glasses before continuing on across the room to his bunk.
"See, I told you so," M laughed, sounding more amused than insulted by Chikusa's dislike.
-ooo-
NOW
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 160
(FORMER) ESTERNEO
VENDICARE
January 18
LUCIA
She sat across from him, a cigarette dangling from her yellowed knuckles and a thin smile on her face. There was nothing quite like old enemies when they needed something and she did not believe Timoteo of Vongola would have come to see her on a whim. No, most definitely not. She had been in Vendicare for ten years and no one visited this place on a whim, no one came here simply to chat about the old days, and no one had come for her at all in all those long years save one. Not that that had been unexpected. When you break Omerta, you are a fool if you expect others will thank you for it even it was a necessity. The mafia loved to believe themselves righteous, just. That was the principle upon which it was founded though few enough seem to remember that now in their struggles for power and honor and wealth. No, the mafia's justice was anything but just. The mafia of today was ruled by thickheaded little pricks who loved their little secrets and their pointless traditions. They spoke of honor, but their honor had never been the same as hers and she was content enough knowing she had done what was needed. She cared nothing for what those worthless bastards thought of her. She had not broken one of the mafia's most sacred laws on a whim or for a pat on the back from those. She had done it for one reason only and she had weighed the cost all those years ago and resolved herself to paying it and she still did not regret doing so. Would never regret it even after she was a corpse turned to dust.
Still, she could admit that it was nice to have company besides the cunts on her block, nice to be out of her cell and nicer still to be smoking a cigarette with a filter. Such silly fucking things, but those were the things that you never appreciated until they were nothing but a fond memory. She tapped the cigarette gently against the edge of the cheap plastic ashtray before taking another long drag and slumping deeper into her chair as she blew the heavy, rich, stinking smoke in the Vongola's face. "You are a delightful man after all, Timoteo. The cigarettes they allow you in here are garbage. You bring me these good cigarettes, you feel free to come visit any time."
"It's good to see you, Lucia. You're looking well."
She scoffed, she'd never been one for pleasantries and the years between them hadn't changed that fact, if anything they had made her less patient with such social niceties. That was one thing she enjoyed about Vendicare, no one here bothered to shy away from calling a spade a spade. "I am old and I grow fat from years spent in tiny cell. There is no room to run in a prison yard even if we got more than a few hours a week to do so. You've grown old and ugly. I suppose we are both losers to time. We have both of us lived good long lives and soon we shall die and leave behind old, ugly corpses. Your corpse would have been much more handsome if you'd simply allowed me to rip out your throat fifteen years ago, yeah?"
"I suppose it would," Timoteo conceded, ever the good sport. "Aria asked me to send her regards."
"Aria…. That is Luce's girl, yes? She was pretty girl, nice face, tragic life to look forward to. You don't have to tell me that Luce is dead. She told me she was dying the last I saw her. I know this to be true because I do not see her again. She always said she would die young. Fate is cruel, but she always believed it would work out for the best. I hope she is right for her own sake. The world is already too full of such sad things. How is Luce's girl?"
"She has a daughter of her own now, she turns eight next week."
"And the years roll on. Soon she shall be dead and her daughter shall take her place. Maybe this year, maybe the next, it matters not as it will always be too soon. But you did not come to speak of such things and, even if you did, I have no desire to speak to you, you of all people, about the few things I hold dear."
"You're right, I didn't come to talk about Luce or Aria. I came to show you something." He took out a photo from his briefcase and placed it face-up on the table before sliding it across to her. She glanced down at the photo casually; amused to find it was a booking photo of a trio of children. She was about to ask why he was bothering to show her such a thing when her gaze touched on the small boy on the right side of the photo, all devil-may-care attitude and punkish blond hair. She leaned forward, the cigarette dangling forgotten from her lip as she studied that image.
The smoke got in her eyes, stinging as she examined every detail with a hungry gaze. She knew those eyes, that disorderly hair. She did not know those scars, but that attitude that seemed to leap from the page… she had been like that in her younger, wilder days. Long before she'd have ever thought of having children or that she would consign herself to prison for the sake of her only child's future.
This child's future.
"My son," she whispered softly, ash spilling from her cigarette. She brushed it away absentminded, as she traced a shaking finger over his face. So small. He was still so small even after all this time. There was no point in being coy about what this boy was to her. Timoteo would not have bothered coming here if he did not already know. "You have come here to speak of my son."
"I thought that he might be yours, he looks quite a bit like you. If you want there are tests…"
"Bah, tests. Nonsense. Five minutes, twelve years, it matters not. A mother knows her child. A mother always knows, whether it be a child born of blood or love, it matters not, a mother always knows. This is my boy and he as beautiful and strong now as he was then. What is his name? What do they call him?"
"Ken. Ken Joshima."
"Ken. Bah. Like doll. A weak name for such a strong boy. And he is strong. A mother can tell that too. He was so small when he was born, when they cut him from my belly. So early that they worried he would not live, but when he screams it echoes through the room like thunder. He has heart of a lion, my son. It does not matter his size. Who are these boys with him?'
"Chikusa Kakimoto and Lancia Salvatore. Chikusa is another survivor of Esterneo and Lancia was a member of Cacciatore."
"Kakimoto? This is Nadia's boy then, hm? They are friends?" The boy looked like Nadia. The same delicate bone structure, the same pretty face and straight, dark hair. Though that last was difficult to see with that hat in the way. Still there was so little of that woman's husband there, as if even Nadia's genetics had been stiff and frigid and absolute in their refusal to compromise. Strange to think of her son and Nadia's being anything so simple as friends. The world was wide and filled with such odd wonders.
"It would seem so. They're all very loyal to each other at any rate. There was another boy with them as well. I'm assuming you heard about Esterneo? What happened at their headquarters?"
Lucia snorted, it such a ridiculous question that was, "Only thing that travels faster than bad news in prison is glad tidings. I have heard what they say. I do not believe they are all dead. Some rats might get caught in the ship or the suction, but few enough are actually dragged down and drowned when it sinks."
"I imagine you're probably correct in that. That's one of the reasons I came to speak with you. You broke Omerta once, you can't break it or be punished for it again."
Lucia chose to ignore that last, more interested in what information she could weasel out of him than what information he might want from her. "My boy. Why is he in prison? What has he done?"
"He was a survivor of the massacre."
Of course he was. Damn that woman. She should have killed her when she killed her worthless, no account son, but she had not wanted her boy to be adopted into the Famiglia proper or, worse, by Nicolo or, god forbid, Alonzo. That loathsome man who had led Esterneo down the path of ruin and dishonor, who cared for little enough besides power and being the one to wield it. It would have been just like him to adopt her boy to spite her. Of course, it would seem all she had done was postpone the inevitable if her boy had still somehow found his way to Esterneo even after all she had done to keep him from it.
She tapped a sharp nail against the photo, glancing up at Timoteo briefly with narrowed eyes, before turning her gaze back to her son. "I do not believe even mafia justice believes in imprisoning victims. Though perhaps this policy has changed since I have been in here?"
"The third boy, who has been going by the name Mario Rossi, has confessed to being the one behind the massacre. He attacked the council when we arrived to question him; he's been sentenced to death for his crimes. Lancia is implicated in the murder of his own Famiglia so he faces the same fate. Ken and Chikusa are being held as accomplices only. They will probably be released in a few years."
Good boy then, that one, that Mario Rossi, a smart boy. She wondered whose son he was, this boy who was not pictured, who had protected hers. For she knew a lie when she heard one. No child of hers would have been content to cower while others bled for him and Nadia's boy didn't have the look of a victim either. No, if three boys had walked out of Esterneo alive then it was three boys who participated in the slaughter. Of that she was quite certain. And it was a smart boy who kept them together, kept himself from the walls of Vendicare. She was certain the Vindice would have been quite happy to have him, a strong boy like that.
Still, there was a hole in this story the same as there had been a hole in the story that circulated Vendicare, shouted down the line and whispered in the yard. No one talked about why and massacres rarely happened without a cause, without a reason, especially not massacres orchestrated and executed by children.
She turned her gaze away from the photo to the Vongola with great effort, "You are not telling me something important."
Timoteo nodded, his expression solemn, "Esterneo… was experimenting on those children. I'm not sure what they did to them, as none of them were willing to talk, but I have received some reports from my associates in that regard and have observed a few things myself. If you're interested in a trade, I would be willing to share this information with you."
Ah, there was the snake she knew of old.
She leaned back in her chair, taking a long drag off her cigarette before taking it from her mouth and flicking ash on the floor. "What is it you wish to know?"
-ooo-
NOW
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 160
THE GANG
TRADITORE
January 18
LANCIA
Special Solitary or, as it was more commonly known in Traditore, The Punishment Box or sometimes just The Box, was not, in fact, actually a box at all. No, The Box was instead just a tall, narrow room, the size of a utility closet, with no windows and a solid metal door with a slot at the bottom just large enough for a meal tray to be slipped through. There was an old, rust-stained toilet, a tiny sink that spat and sputtered ice cold brownish water and just enough floor space to sit down, or maybe to lie down if you curled up in a ball and happened to be pretty fucking small to begin with. It was freezing cold in the winter and boiling hot in the summer and the air always felt stale and smelled vaguely of mildew because the air circulation in that part of the prison was exceptionally poor. It was located within the oldest part of the prison that had never been fully converted for use as part of the modern prison and thus had fallen into terrible disrepair for lack of funds to renovate it. At some point, they would inevitably need to convert some other area of the prison into a Special Solitary cell, but for now they kept on using this place as it was convenient and still functional enough to serve.
It reminded Lancia, vaguely, of some places he'd stayed in when he was a kid living in the back rooms of condemned buildings, squeezing through broken windows or doors to carve out a bit of space for himself amidst food wrappers and broken bottles, the rubbish and debris of strangers that always seemed to accumulate in such forgotten places. It reminded him of piss-soaked mattresses and crumbling ceilings and the pervasive damp that seemed to linger everywhere in those rooms during the warm seasons. Not the sort of place he'd have wanted to linger even when he was small and desperate and much less the sort of place he wanted to be now that he was older and far too large to fit comfortably in such a tiny space. He had enough room to sit uncomfortably, pressing his bent legs against the far wall.
He'd been here for three days and the simmering rage hadn't dissipated at all. He still wanted to fucking murder someone, because he fucking knew, absolutely fucking knew, that this was being done to keep him out of general population. Like hell they actually gave a shit about whether he'd killed another inmate or not, especially not one who they'd agreed he'd killed in fucking self-defense.
No, that was fucking bullshit.
Total fucking bullshit.
He didn't give a shit what that fucking weasel of a warden said or how nicely he said it. He knew a set up when he fucking stepped into one and he'd have kicked the door down days ago if he thought he could get to them and prevent whatever the fuck was about to happen. Because this had to be about them, had to be about Chikusa and Ken and he knew, he fucking knew they could take care of themselves. They'd always been tough little bastards and he'd worked with them enough that he knew damn well they could take anyone that came at them directly. The problem was these fuckers weren't coming for them directly. No, they were sidling up to them in the dark and biding their fucking time. They'd managed to out plan Mukuro and he didn't want to fucking know how they'd figured on him being out of the picture for the time being. Or maybe… maybe they hadn't. Maybe whatever the fuck it was that was happening wasn't something Mukuro would have been able to stop even if he'd been present and accounted for. Maybe this was all some fucking morality play being staged for Mukuro's benefit and the intended audience hadn't bothered to show up for the performance. That'd be a fucking laugh. Of course, that didn't mean the show wouldn't go on. They'd gone to an awful lot of fucking trouble to set him up, he could only assume they hadn't put forth any less effort in whatever they were doing to Chikusa and Ken.
He'd raged the first day, kicking dents in the walls and the door, cursing a blue fucking streak at them for putting him here, at himself for falling right into this stupid fucking trap, at Mukuro for not being around the one fucking time, the one fucking time, he wanted him to be. Now he just sat. Sat and ate his food when they brought it and waited. His anger was a simmering fire in his chest and all he could think of besides hundreds of awful fucking things that could be happening to the boys was how he was going to fucking gut that sniveling rodent of a warden before they left this prison. That was going to be his reward to himself for not busting down the damn door of this cell and giving them an excuse to chuck him down in the solitary confinement wing with Mukuro.
Four more days.
He gave the wall opposite him another swift kick adding another dent to the collection already there. It didn't really make him feel any better, but he was satisfied that he was at least leaving his mark on this place.
Just four more days.
It seemed like a fucking eternity.
-ooo-
CHIKUSA
"Who is that?" Chikusa murmured and M.M. looked a little startled as if she can't quite believe he was talking to her. He supposed that that was probably fair as he doesn't really like talking to her, doesn't really like her. He makes a point of only speaking to her when he has to which means he hasn't spoken to her directly in weeks. He doesn't like how she laughs with Ken sometimes as if they share private jokes he knows nothing about. As if there are suddenly little slivers of Ken's life that belong to her instead of him and it's never really been like that before and it makes him restless, unsettled. Even with Mukuro and Lancia it never felt like he was being left out because Ken would always notice and would haul him along or pull him into the conversations or tell him about them later. But now there were conversations that happened when he wasn't there that Ken didn't tell him about. It was like they were slowly growing away and apart and he wasn't sure how to stop it or even if he should and it hurt.
This girl was a stranger or as near as made no difference. Certainly she'd helped them out a few times and Mukuro had hired her to help them with the escape and with their Japanese, but that didn't make her one of them. She wasn't one of them. She was just a stranger and even if she hadn't meant to do so, she had stolen just a little of Ken's focus for herself, a little of his laughter and good humor and affection.
He hates her a little for that.
He hates himself for hating her.
The circle goes round and round.
He knows that he has no one to blame but himself as he's been finding it… challenging to be close to Ken and not tell him about the notes. The notes that keep finding their way to his pillow every morning bringing new messages and he's stopped throwing them away. Instead he saves them, folds them up small and keeps them hidden in his pockets. He's not sure why. At first he thought he was keeping them so he could show Ken, but he knows he isn't going to do that. He doesn't want Ken to see those words. Those awful words that make him feel sick and helpless in a way nothing else ever has. When they lay together at night, Ken keeps looking at him like he can see that something is wrong, but every time he opens his mouth to tell him he finds himself saying that it's nothing. That he's tired. That he's worried about Mukuro or Lancia. And none of those things are lies, but none are the truth either.
"Who is what?" M.M. answers finally, her gaze darting off in the direction he's looking. Somehow she manages to figure out exactly to whom he's referring just from that. He wonders if she'd noticed the way he'd been watching them as well. "Ah. Him. Yeah, that's Birds."
"Birds?"
"Yeah, you're talking about the creep with the hat, right?"
"Yes. Been watching us."
She snorted, "Well, he would be, wouldn't he? Total creep. He used to eyeball me the same way when I first got here. I've heard he's got a thing for kids. Other than that, I don't know much about him except that he runs some kind of mail order assassination thing and they let him keep those stupid little birds which always just seems unhygienic, but whatever."
Chikusa nodded, frowning slightly as his mind raced over the options. He didn't understand everything she was saying. He'd rather ask Ken about it than admit his ignorance, but… he didn't want to worry Ken if he didn't have to which was the only reason he was even talking to her in the first place. Besides, Ken was having a difficult time with the cartridge as it was and stress would make it worse. "Thing for kids?"
"Yeah, you know, he…" M.M. frowned and turned to stare at him for a long moment. "You seriously have no idea what I mean do you? Damn, you guys must have had a weird childhood. Didn't your parents talk to you about strangers?"
Chikusa felt his frown deepen. He didn't want to talk about his parents, didn't want to think about them either. He'd made a point of not thinking about them in the years between Esterneo and now. Esterneo had stolen most of those memories from him like water being squeezed from a sponge. He just hadn't been able to hold them, hadn't wanted to because it hurt to think of those things when he'd been sleeping on a concrete floor and the only thing that had existed for him outside that room had been pain. If there had been caring, concerned parental conversations about strangers and the dangers they posed, he didn't remember them. Didn't want to.
"No," he answered finally, because he wasn't going to talk to this girl about those things that he'd only ever spoken of to Ken and Mukuro. And, even then, only very late at night when they'd been plagued by their own nightmares and they needed something to focus on besides their own horrors. They didn't have any happy stories to tell each other, not really, so instead they'd always whispered secrets. Those things that would have normally been too awful to talk about during those first days and weeks and months they'd been together. They never talked about them outside of those moments, but in the dark they had been the only gifts they had to give. It's how he knew about Ken's cats and Mukuro's barely remembered other lives.
She just looked at him for a moment that seemed like an eternity and he resisted the urge to fidget. Now that he had a hat again, he'd taken to wearing it whenever they were outside their cell. With the hat on, he didn't feel as exposed and vulnerable as he had during the first months they'd been there, but he still didn't like to be so closely scrutinized. Eventually she nodded, mostly to herself it seemed, and glanced away towards the bathroom Ken had vanished into a few minutes before. "He likes to torment kids. It's like a hobby for him, I guess. People say that he gets off on it, you know? I mean, people say all kinds of shit and you can't believe half of it because people have nothing better to do with their time in here than make shit up and fuck with people, but I think it's probably true when it comes to him. So, if you're trying to figure out if you should be worried that he's taking an interest? Yeah, you should be worried. When he looked at me like that I killed some poor letch with a lunch tray for grabbing my ass. Not my proudest moment, and it bought me a couple truly delightful weeks spent in the Box, but he hasn't looked twice at me since so it was effective enough as a deterrent."
"Not an option," Chikusa replied immediately, he doubted that they'd be able to do anything that would result in both of them going to the Box at the same time. He wasn't sure precisely what the Box was, but he was quite certain it wasn't built for two and even if Ken wasn't exclusively his anymore… that didn't mean he wanted to leave him on his own with just M.M. to watch his back.
"Yeah, I figured. You boys are pretty much attached at the hip and, to be honest, that's probably what caught his interest. You might have noticed that not a lot of folks in here are, um, affectionate the way you guys are."
"Understood," Chikusa interjected immediately, his face warm. He's seen the way other people looked at them, the way it sets Ken's teeth on edge because the cartridge made him territorial in a way it didn't used to. He'd made it a point whenever he had the time and the ability to research the animals associated with Ken's cartridges ever since the day Ken lost it a little when they were escaping Vendicare last time. He knew that Ken had picked up little characteristics and instinctive inclinations from the cartridges he'd worn too long and too often.
He'd made a point of talking about it a little with Mukuro sometimes, because at the end of the day they were all someone's science experiments left to boil and cure without proper observation. Every scrap of information they'd stolen away from Esterneo on their individual conditions and situations had been little more than theory and conjecture. They hadn't known what the long-term effects would be, hadn't even known whether they'd even live long enough for that to be an issue at all.
Mukuro never talked about whatever issues he was having with his powers and he himself never spoke about the migraines or the occasional complete loss of depth perception, the way his perfect clarity of vision just seemed to collapse, usually when he was over-tired or when he spent too long without his glasses, into a mess of color lacking even the faintest hint of form. He'd even made the effort to keep those problems concealed, burying them under his concern for Ken and a hundred other mundane things he'd known Mukuro wouldn't poke at too deeply. At the end of the day, they would never be great at talking about their own failings, but their mutual concern for Ken had always been safer ground.
-ooo-
THEN
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 196
December 13
The transformations probably put undue strain on his body that's being compensated for by the healing factor they incorporated. The trauma of the transformations alone probably would have killed him years ago if not for that. The problem is he tends to favor the more useful cartridges and he's only used the one in here and doing that is training his body to that form, at least that's my theory. You disagree?
Mukuro still sounded so tired that he almost hated to talk to him about these things, but he worried…
No, it's fine. We need to… it's fine, Mukuro replied, waving off his concerns. I'm going to be a little tired for a while yet.
Okay. Aggressively territorial, overly affectionate, constantly in need of physical reassurance and he…
Kissed me. He didn't really think it at Mukuro, but he felt him pick up on it nonetheless.
Ah. Mukuro replied, his voice quiet and thoughtful.
Chikusa was glad that he didn't have to explain about the kiss. He wouldn't have been sure what to say about the kiss, especially to Mukuro who seemed to find physical demonstrations of affection difficult to deal with at the best of times. Really, of the three of them, only Ken was good at that sort of thing though Chikusa wasn't adverse to it exactly just… Ken didn't want him to take it wrong and….
You're not an idiot, Chikusa. You're both so… you need to figure this out. I'm not fit to be anyone's therapist, much less yours, I need you to figure this out on your own. He didn't kiss you because of the way the cartridge affects him anymore than you kill people because you think he's incapable of protecting himself. You both have terrible impulse control and you both make me want to bash your heads together sometimes. Repeatedly. I find all of this exhausting.
Mukuro was many things, but he'd never been patient or subtle when it came to them as if he saved all the conniving, sly, artful bits of himself for enemies and strangers. The genuine Mukuro wasn't patient or subtle or sly, he was short-tempered and abrupt and really kind of an… asshole. He always felt strange even thinking curse words, something like guilty, maybe. As if someone had told him a long time ago, in another life maybe, that those words were forbidden, that something bad would happen if you used them. He still felt vaguely like giggling every time Ken or Lancia or even Mukuro- who did it much less frequently- cursed. He never did, of course, but he could always feel it there like hysteria, bubbling below the surface of his thoughts. Like he knew they were doing something wrong, but… he liked it. Liked the way all that cursing tasted like rebellion. And… asshole was the right word for it, for what Mukuro was when it was just the four of them, but he didn't mind that. Didn't mind that Mukuro was an… asshole, because that meant that Mukuro, the real Mukuro, was theirs. Just theirs.
Just deal with it, okay? You're not an idiot, Chikusa. Just… just figure it out.
-ooo-
NOW
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 160
January 18
The problem was he still wasn't sure what was the best way to deal with it. He liked things the way they were, the way Ken pressed against him at night and stayed close during the day, the easy rhythm of the banter and insults and conversation. Mukuro was right, of course, he usually was. The cartridge complicated things as it made Ken more high-strung, in need of greater reassurance than he usually was, but everything else… that was pretty much just how he'd always been. And he liked all of those things. He liked his world just as it was and admitting that he was maybe starting to want… other things… was difficult. That he sometimes thought too much and too often about Ken's fingers resting against his hip and tracing over his scars and Ken's lips and breath warm against his throat. About that quick kiss and the way Ken said he'd think about him when….
All those things were just another step down the road to everything changing. Ken having other friends, friends like this girl, were the first step and it had been a bitter one he didn't care for one little bit. He wasn't sure he'd like it any better if they became more intertwined than they already were, became more of a danger to each other and less useful to Mukuro than they already were with this devotion to each other that always trumped good sense. He wasn't even all that great at friendship sometimes, he knew that, he would probably be much worse at the kissing thing, at everything that came along with it.
Change had only very rarely worked in his favor and he wasn't sure he could take it if things went badly with Ken. If things didn't work out or if Ken didn't want… or if he couldn't handle it which he thought might be the most likely problem. So he found himself paralyzed at the crossroads, unable to move forward, unable to go back either, and he knew at some point circumstances would steal his choices away. And he knew waiting was cowardly that not making a choice was, in the end, the same as making a choice, but every time he thought about… about kissing him or about pushing him away… it was like he couldn't breathe.
This… this made things easier. Made the decision easier. If their relationship, such as it was, was putting Ken in danger, making him a target, then he could… he could fix that. That made things simple. And he liked simple things. If things had to change then he would always choose the path that kept Ken safer. Always.
Though it made him feel like a terrible coward.
"Understood," he whispered it again, mostly to himself.
-ooo-
NOW
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 159
THE GANG
TRADITORE
January 19
KEN
Ken waited patiently until he was absolutely certain that M.M. was sleeping. The last damn thing he wanted for this conversation was an unintended audience. Finally, when her breathing was deep and slow and her heart rate steady, he yanked the cartridge out of his mouth and shoved it under his pillow. His head ached and he'd been simmering with rage for the better part of a day and the cartridge made it feel a thousand times worse. Made everything a thousand times worse. He just didn't trust himself not to accidentally break something if he left the damn thing in. He'd feel really awful if he hurt Chikusa, after all, even if he was a total asshole who obviously had it coming.
"So do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on or do I need to beat it out of you?" Ken grumbled, pulling himself up on Chikusa's bunk and punching him in the shoulder.
"What?" Chikusa commented as he lay there on top of his stupid blankets still dressed, still wearing his stupid hat even, as if he'd been expecting him and didn't want the vulnerability of being even down to just a t-shirt while they fought. And hell, maybe he had, he hadn't exactly been trying to hide the fact that Chikusa's behavior was confusing him and pissing him off. It only made him more pissed off that Chikusa sounded irritated. Like Ken was the one with a problem. He was just gonna fucking lay there rubbing his injured shoulder with that blank, vaguely surprised fucking expression, like maybe he thought Ken had no idea that he only gave blank face that good when he was hiding something.
"Fuck you and your what," he snarled. "You know damn well fucking what, Kappa. Don't be a dick."
"You punched me," Chikusa replied with a frown as if that were the issue. As if Ken had no reason at all to be upset and was just going around punching people for shits and giggles. Which was really, really fucking annoying.
So he punched him in the shoulder again, because it seemed like the thing to do. "Because you're being an asshole. What the fuck is your problem?"
"Don't have a problem," Chikusa replied, his voice stiff and stilted and practically fucking screaming that something was wrong, wrong, desperately wrong.
He'd first noticed it yesterday when he'd come back from the bathroom to find M.M. and Chikusa sitting just where he left them, painfully awful at pretending to be totally casual. Like maybe he wouldn't be able to sense the tension between them. They were always fucking weird around each other because Chikusa didn't like her yet and she didn't much like him either. But this had been different for the normal awkwardness because usually they didn't try to hide their discomfort. It was obvious, they were obvious, and neither of them seemed to give a flying fuck. The fact that they suddenly cared was what was enough to set his nerves on edge.
Acting like maybe he'd have no idea that they'd been discussing serious shit that probably involved him behind his fucking back. And it would have been fine if it had been personal shit, but that probably wasn't it. Chikusa didn't talk about personal shit all that often in the first place and he sure as shit wouldn't talk about it to M because Chikusa took a really long, long, long time to warm up to people. Hell, it had taken him years before he'd been comfortable saying more than a few words at a time to Lancia. So, if it wasn't that then it meant that they were either fucking fighting, which would suck, but he could deal with that. Of course, if that had been the case Chikusa wouldn't have bothered to keep quiet on the subject. So, instead, he was pretty fucking sure that they were conspiring to protect him from some new bullshit or spare his fucking feelings about something and that… that was fucking lame. He wasn't some baby or some delicate fucking flower that needed to be coddled or shielded or what fucking ever. Or that maybe that M had decided to go behind his back and tell Chikusa about the fucking dog whistle and that would have been unbelievably fucking annoying, but he didn't think that was it.
Either way the fact that it was happening just three days after the hair-cutting bullshit just made it fucking worse, because he'd known, known something was off. Chikusa had been quieter than usual and had been so quick to fucking play it off like it wasn't a big fucking deal. And then he'd just been acting so fucking weird. He'd been tense and he wasn't really eating much and he kept looking around like he expected some moustache-twirling, black hat wearing villain to leap out of the shadows at any moment. He hated seeing him like this. Hated knowing that it had something to do with him, but for some damn reason Chikusa was refusing to talk to him about it and that was weird and wrong and stupid. If it was something to do with him then he had a right to know about it.
He had thought about taking M aside and smashing her against the cell wall and putting his claws against her throat until she spilled every last word they'd spoken to each other, but… she was his friend. His very first friend and he wanted her to stay his friend and he was pretty damn sure that he couldn't get away with that kind of thing with friends. Besides, he was pretty sure it was mostly the cartridge talking anyway, identifying her as a threat to Chikusa or to him and taking out aggression on her that he should be aiming squarely at Chikusa. Because M was just his friend and he kind of wanted her to be Chikusa's friend too and he got that she wouldn't ever be that if she were just reporting back to him everything Chikusa said.
Chikusa, on the other hand, was his and had always been his and Chikusa was supposed to tell him the things that really mattered. He'd kind of thought they were trying to be more honest with each other. He'd been trying to be anyway and maybe… maybe that was the problem. Maybe Chikusa wasn't… didn't want… but he'd have thought that at least Chikusa would tell him if he was angry or upset or sad or… whatever this was. He really wasn't sure and he really wanted to know, needed to know, because he just didn't understand why. He didn't understand what he had done or what was going on at all.
All he knew was there was suddenly what felt like nothing but empty space between them and it was making him fucking nuts because Chikusa wasn't saying what was wrong. He was just sitting further away from him at meals and he wasn't leaning into him the way he usually did and he wasn't talking to him as much or in the same way that he usually did. He was tense and prickly and he'd insisted on sleeping alone last night, all night, and he hadn't even really said why and Ken hadn't pushed it. Had just accepted it and he hadn't gotten any sleep at all because his brain was running around and around like a hamster on a wheel trying to remember what he'd said, trying to figure out if maybe he just smelled really bad, or maybe he'd done something that had made things so….
And then he'd remembered that tension. He'd remembered that weird tension and the haircut and how quiet Chikusa had been since, even for him, and he knew, he just fucking knew that it wasn't anything he had done. It was something else. It was stupid fucking secrets. And maybe, maybe he wouldn't have minded, well, no, he would have, but he would have dealt with it if it were something Chikusa really wanted. He'd do anything, be anything, if that was what it took to make Chikusa happy and content, because he knew the things he wanted weren't maybe the things Chikusa wanted and that was okay, he could deal with that, but… this wasn't Chikusa happy. This was… this was Chikusa something close to miserable and completely out of sorts and this was total bullshit. This was Chikusa being an asshole and he wanted, needed to know why.
He thought seriously about biting him as Chikusa stared up at him mutinously and just continued to give him absolutely nothing to go on.
"You think I can't tell, Chikusa?" He growled, pitching his voice low and soft and crawling over him so he could sit on his damn hips and pin him to the bed, leaning forward so he could speak directly into his face. "You think I don't know when you're fucking scared, Kappa? I know this. I know you. So, just tell me. Just open your mouth and tell me. Just tell me, tell me what is freaking you out and I'll…"
"You!" The word is snapped out into the air between him and somehow it felt like Chikusa was the one suddenly doing the punching.
Oh.
Strangely, the pain isn't quite immediate. That feeling of being off kilter, of his world rocking off its axis is, but the pain isn't. He's been injured enough times to know that there's this moment when you take the hit, when its really bad, when your brain just kind of shuts it down, just decides that it's too much, that there's no way you can deal with this and so for a little while at least there's no pain at all. There's just… nothing. Maybe a throbbing, dizzy sensation, maybe a swell of warmth as the blood floods to the surface, but that's it. He always knows though, kind of, that at some point, some point soon, it's going to hurt though. There's always this stupid little voice in his brain saying, 'hey moron, this is gonna hurt like a bitch in a minute'. And he's always found that voice funny, because he knows that. He knows it's going to hurt and maybe he even thinks it's funny because he deserves it. Deserves the pain he's going to get because he was too slow or too stupid to see the blow coming.
When the first giggle slips out of his mouth, he slaps a hand over his lips like that'll help keep the rest in, but it doesn't. He's shaking so hard suddenly that he can't even keep the hand on his face and he knows that shaking doesn't have anything to do with the laughing, except that it does, because he wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it hadn't been that. It hadn't been… he hadn't thought he… he wasn't…
And just like that the laughter shuts off as realization rushes in to the fill the empty space with pain.
-ooo-
CHIKUSA
And he realizes with mute horror that that had come out all wrong as Ken rocks back like he punched him and for a moment he doesn't even seem to be seeing him at all anymore. He just stares into the middle distance and then there's laughter, these soft sobbing giggles like hiccups and he's shaking so hard that the entire bed creaks and groans. Then the laugh is gone and shaking is gone and Ken scrambled back and away. His eyes are wide and panicked and he almost doesn't look like himself at all, because Ken's never been scared, not really, not obviously, not even back then. Not even when they were kids in a dark room with a man with a gun. A man who'd just killed the kid sitting next to them. He can count on one hand the number of times he's seen Ken really, truly afraid.
He blinks away the tears that are suddenly clouding his vision, because it hurts to see him like that, to know that he put that look there. He's pulling away and backing off the side of the bed, running away and he needs to stop him, needs him to understand. He doesn't know how to fix this, because that wasn't what he meant. That wasn't it at all and he'd just been frustrated, because he was trying to keep him safe. And he knows he's messing everything up. That he's doing all the wrong things and he should have just told him everything from the very start, but he hadn't and now it feels like it's too late. And he's almost afraid to speak at all for fear that he'll say the wrong thing again, that he'll make things even worse. So he just shakes his head, hard and fast and grabs at Ken's shoulders, desperate for purchase. Fingers snagging and yanking at his shirt, bunching and pulling the fabric up around his shoulders, gripping it like a lifeline.
"Please," he chokes the word out past the fear that's strangling him.
Please just stop, please just listen, please don't leave, please just….
-ooo-
KEN
"Please."
The word was just a whisper, but to Ken it seemed loud as a shotgun blast, startling him and stopping the terrible nightmarish cycle of logic and panic his brain had fallen into. It froze him in place, hanging half off the bed with Chikusa's fingers knotted awkwardly in his shirt.
Chikusa never said please. Never had to. As far as Ken was aware he'd never used that word in his whole life. It was a word other people used. He used it sometimes and Mukuro used it all the time and even Lancia said it from time to time, though mostly he didn't mean it, but Chikusa never did. It was too close to asking maybe and Chikusa didn't really like to ask for things. He gave things and he took things, but he almost never asked for things. Ken didn't know why that was and he'd never asked, but he'd noticed. And noticing made it important. Important enough that he was able to look at Chikusa again, to shove away his own pain and panic and really look at him.
The way Chikusa's blank expression had crumbled, broken down until he looked as horrified as Ken felt. How he just kept shaking his head back and forth dizzyingly fast and the way his fingers were digging in and tearing at his shirt, hauling at him like he was trying to pull him back, keep him close. Keep him from running away like he wanted, needed, to do because he'd never, ever thought about Chikusa being scared of him before. It had just never occurred to him and the idea was so big, so fucking awful it just seemed to eat the entire world and he couldn't….
"Not like that," Chikusa whispered, distress and panic and terror in his voice and on his skin so thick and heavy that Ken could almost taste them. And he tried to calm down and understand what Chikusa was saying, because he was easy to misunderstand sometimes. To push the panic down and wait, muscles quivering with tension, for something that made sense, something that meant this was one of those times when Chikusa used too few words to try to explain something and it made it impossible to understand, because if this was simple… if this was simple he…
"For you," he said finally and Ken felt something in his chest unclench at that even though he still didn't really get it. He collapsed boneless back to the bed as the tension that had held him rigid became like smoke, insubstantial, lingering thick in the air and in his lungs but no longer able to support his weight. He hunched a little, hugging his arms to his chest and he let Chikusa draw him in, pull him against his chest, eliminate the distance he'd put between them. He could handle that. He could handle anything, whatever it was, as long as it wasn't that other thing. That had been too much, too fucking awful.
"Never of you. Never," Chikusa whispered, his breath warm and moist against his cheek. He sniffled and Ken wanted to tell him it was okay, that he understood, that they were okay, but he didn't. He still didn't understand any of this. He still didn't understand what the fuck Chikusa was really trying to say, only what he wasn't saying and the fact that Ken kind of wanted to fucking punch him again for scaring the shit out of him, for whatever fucking nonsense bullshit idea had gotten into Chikusa's head. He didn't need Chikusa to be afraid for him.
That was fucking stupid.
"You're an idiot," Ken growled, digging his toes viciously into the sensitive dip between ankle and heel in Chikusa's long bony foot. Chikusa yelped and kicked him viciously in the shin in return. After several minutes of exchanging increasingly irritable kicks, Chikusa managed to catch him off balance and boot him straight out of the bed. He yelped, catching himself on the rail and swinging down onto his own bed. He poked his head back up over the edge only to have Chikusa pummel him with his pillow until he retreated laughing. Which was when M.M. woke up and told them to shut it and a guard came by and shined a light in on them that found them both collapsed into their beds pretending to sleep while their hearts raced.
And everything had seemed like it was okay. He'd climbed back up after the guard left and curled up next to Chikusa and dozed off for a while with Chikusa's fingers dancing restlessly over the knots in his spine. He'd dropped down to his own bed a few hours later just before checks and ducked back up again after the guard had moved on, ignoring Chikusa's soft, surprised voice.
"Just a little longer, Kappa. I'm really tired," he murmured, curling up again in the warm spot he'd left behind. He was almost asleep again when he felt Chikusa press in close around him, tucking his knees up behind his own and throwing an arm around his waist. And he must have fallen asleep like that because the next thing he knew Chikusa was prodding him awake so the guard wouldn't catch them when he came by to open their cell door. It wasn't until he was down in his own bed, pretending to sleep that he realized that Chikusa had never actually bothered to explain what he was afraid of and so he'd asked him about it after they got back to their cell from the shower room, before they went to breakfast, while M was out using the bathroom.
Chikusa had just given him that stupid, fucking blank look again and refused to say anything about it, like he'd decided that in order to avoid misunderstandings he just wouldn't talk about it at all.
He wasn't really sure why the hell he'd expected something different.
Probably because if Chikusa was an idiot, and he obviously was, than he was twice the damn idiot for expecting him not to dig his heels in like the stubborn jackass he was perfectly capable of being.
It hadn't even felt vaguely satisfying to punch him in the damn face, but he'd done it anyway. Not hard enough to really hurt him, not half as hard as he wanted to, but hard enough to make his knuckles ache as he stalked out of the cell.
-ooo-
NOW
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 158
UNAFFILIATED
FRANCE
January 20
FRAN
This one looked nice.
She had a kind of plump, poufy sort of face. It was a little floppy in the cheeks maybe and wrinkly so it kind of reminded him of a dog he'd seen in someone's yard the other day.
The little one that had licked his knuckles and rolled over on its back for a belly rub. He had liked that one and it had liked him too. It hadn't even barked at him at all when he went into the house and took some fruit and a yogurt from the fridge. It just trailed after his wagging its tail enthusiastically as he'd looked at all their pictures and taken a little wooden figure that looked like a frog. He liked frogs.
There'd been another dog in the last town he'd visited before this one and that one had been mean and a little scary and had just kept bark-bark-barking at him when he sat down on the curb to eat the sandwich the man in the little shop at the end of the street had made for him. That one had been really annoying and he'd just wanted to eat his sandwich (which had been really good and crunchy though maybe a little dry). He'd been really tired too and his feet hurt because he'd been walking all day.
So, he'd told the ugly, scary dog it had to be quiet or the fairies would come and sew its yapping mouth shut. He'd warned it twice even, but dogs were really bad at listening sometimes just like people and the fairies had come and then… no more yapping dog mouth. It had been kind of funny how surprised it had seemed, but it had calmed down pretty fast and he had liked how quiet the street had been after that. There'd been some wind chimes somewhere and he could hear them clanking in the breeze. It had been a nice sound, quiet like the street and he'd eaten the rest of his sandwich and he'd really enjoyed it.
Then, of course, that woman had come out and started screaming about her dog. He hadn't liked her either, but he'd already finished his sandwich so he'd been about to leave anyway. So, he'd stood up and started off down the street and just put his hands over his ears and told her she was too loud and that she kind of looked like a fish, both of which were true things.
She'd thrown a garden gnome at him.
Which hadn't been very nice.
So, of course, the fairies had thrown it back.
He was sure they hadn't meant to throw it that hard, but sometimes it was difficult to gauge these things. There had been an awful lot of blood though so he'd turned and left in a hurry before anyone else came by and noticed because that would be a real pain. The police were always very nice and helpful at first, but they never liked his hair or his face and they always asked awkward questions that he didn't want to answer about parents and homes and if he talked to them about the fairies then they'd take him to the hospital and he did not enjoy the hospital. They had terrible food and the nurses poked you with things and there was an awful lot of screaming when he thought up something else to wear because the hospital gowns were drafty and uncomfortable.
No, he didn't like hospitals at all.
So, he'd left the yard and the woman and her dog behind and hurried away. There'd been a treehouse in a yard a few streets away that had seemed like a nice place to take a nap. He'd never climbed a tree before, but there was a ladder so it wasn't too difficult though it tired him out pretty quickly and his arms hurt a bit. The treehouse wasn't too much more than a rickety platform with a roof and a couple of holey walls, but there was a nice breeze and the leaves of the tree rustled pleasantly and so he kind of liked it. He could take off his coat and use it as a pillow and the floor was nice and cool and it was easy enough to ignore the wail of distant sirens as he drifted off.
But all that had been months ago and while he liked wandering from place to place it was really cold out and he was just about ready to settle down someplace nice for a while which was why he was at the market shopping for an old woman to go home with. He'd tried living with a bunch of different people over the last few weeks, but none of them had really worked out. Not that it really bothered him, but it was kind of a pain to have to move on after only a couple days or a week. He really wanted a more permanent living situation where he didn't have to worry about nosy neighbors or grabby hands or traveling or…
"Oh, well, hello there," the old woman with the poufy, floppy face said, stopping in front of where he sat on an overturned milk crate next to the tomato bin. She smiled down at him and that seemed like a strange reaction. Hardly anyone smiled at him like that even when he was pretending to be his or her offspring/grandchild/cousin/nephew/ward.
"Hello," he replied, unsure what else to say. He wasn't prepared for this sort of situation. He didn't like talking to people straight away like this. He liked to watch them for a while first, think about what they liked so he could say the right things.
"You're here on your own, aren't you?" She asked, hitching her vegetable bag over her shoulder.
"Yes," Fran answered because he wasn't sure where this was going, but he didn't mind finding out.
"Would you like to have lunch with me? You look like you could use something to eat and I could use the company."
He liked her face and no one had ever asked him to lunch before so he went along. He had chopped steak and hot cocoa in a big mug that felt nice and warm against his palms. She talked a lot about her family that she never saw because they lived in Munich- which was in Germany though he had no idea what that actually was or why he should care- and they were very busy with their own lives and she didn't travel as much as she used to. She didn't ask him any questions and didn't seem to mind that he didn't talk much, content to fill the silence with cheerful chatter about people he'd never met and places he'd never been. She had a nice voice, deep and soft, so he didn't mind listening to it even if he didn't really care about any of the things she was saying. By the time he'd finished his cocoa and she volunteered to get him a second cup he'd made his decision.
"You live by yourself, right?" He asked, interrupting a long story about a cow and a boy named Fredrick.
She smiled kindly and nodded, "I do. For a long time now."
"Is it far from town?"
"My home? Yes. I have a little place in the hills about ten kilometers outside Saint-Julien."
"Are you lonely?"
"Sometimes, I suppose, but I've become accustomed to it so I don't mind the quiet."
"Any pets?"
"I have a poodle that used to belong to my son and a ferret that I call Monsieur Tibbles," the old woman replied pleasantly, obviously quite pleased with her pet choices. "He's quite a nice, frisky little fellow."
He wasn't sure what a ferret was, but he knew a poodle was a type of dog so it was probably something like that. "Okay, I've decided. I'm going to come live with you, Grandma."
The old woman blinked a few times, "Pardon me?"
-ooo-
NOW
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 157
THE GANG
TRADITORE
January 21
M.M
"Oh my god, Mukuro wasn't kidding around, your English is awful," she commented, shaking her head.
Ken wrinkled his nose, flipping her off from where he was currently collapsed on the floor in the middle of the cell. He seemed to like the floor for some unfathomable reason. Or at least that was what she assumed based on the fact that he laid and napped on it any time he wasn't absolutely required to be in his bed. It was really weird. Usually he'd drag a blanket down there because the concrete was freezing this time of year and Ken hated the cold, but for whatever reason he seemed to be into the cold today. Right now he was laying face down on the concrete, his cheek pressed against it though his face was turned towards her. "Like yours is so great?"
M.M. smiled, "No, mine is awful too, but at least I know it's bad."
"Hey! I know my English is bad!"
"No, you think your English is bad, it's actually earthshakingly terrible. You guys lived in New York for how long?"
"Nine months, three days," Chikusa answered softly, from where he was curled up on his bunk, back to the wall and knees pulled tight against his chest.
"Then how the hell did you never notice that you were mispronouncing the word 'sandwich'? Seriously, did you guys just never talk to people while you were living there?"
"Shut up! Aren't you supposed to be teaching us Japanese?"
"Sure, I'll continue to teach you Japanese the second you can say 'sandwich' correctly. If you can't take simple instructions, I can't teach you anything."
"Samwish. Happy?"
"No. That's still garbage. Sandwich. Sand. Witch. Hard consonants mush-mouth. Say it like its two words, maybe that'll help."
"Sand-fucking-witch. Sandwich. Now can you stop making fun of my English and get back to the next language I'm gonna be fucking horrible at already?"
M.M. sniffed, mildly annoyed that Ken thought so little of her teaching skills. "You're not going to be horrible at it. I'm going to make you spectacular at it, relax."
Chikusa grimaced, raising his hands to obscure the expression under the guise of fixing his glasses. On second thought, that might have been a smile rather than a grimace, but as she'd never actually seen him smile and had a difficult time believing he was actually capable of the expression. Whatever it was, he must have made some noise with it as suddenly Ken flipped over on to his back and glared at him with narrowed, bloodshot eyes, "Shut it, Kappa."
M.M. frowned as it occurred to her that it was the first time she'd seen Ken look at Chikusa directly in days. He'd even started asking her to help him out with his hair in the shower room yesterday, glaring irritably at the floor all the while. She felt kind of bad about it, honestly, but she wasn't sure what to do about it exactly or even whether she had any business interfering at all. After all, she might even have been partly responsible for whatever was going on because she'd told Chikusa all that about Birds. Not that he wouldn't have just figured it out some other way, he probably would have, but she was pretty sure it was right after she opened her big mouth about why he might be interested in them that things had really started going wrong. Of course, it could have just as easily been the mysterious haircut that had created the tension or Ken not telling Chikusa about the whistling sound (because he obviously hadn't, he was still trying to play it off as nothing whenever he winced or cursed randomly).
Whatever had started it, it had now gotten completely out of hand and it was kind of like living in the Twilight Zone. She hadn't even realized how accustomed she'd become to them until all of a sudden Ken was moody and irritable and Chikusa was stiff and standoffish and even quieter than usual. And they were so obviously, completely, studiously ignoring each other. And she really, really wasn't sure what the hell either of them thought they were going to accomplish with this nonsense. But it was uncomfortable and irritating and it was making it almost impossible to teach them anything because for all they weren't talking and kept pretending like they weren't interested in what the other one was doing, they were so damn focused on each other that it was difficult to pull their attention for more than a minute or two at a time.
She'd tried talking to Ken about it a couple times, but he'd sullenly told her to mind her own damn business or just changed the subject whenever she tried to bring it up. It was such a far cry from the almost overly enthusiasm that he'd been treating her with even a week before that it made her angry. At both of them. Because, dammit, she didn't want a friend, she didn't need one either. She just… didn't want to watch them do this. That was all it was. It was just that it was really annoying. Which was the primary reason she pulled Chikusa aside the next time Ken stormed out of the cell to go to the bathroom.
"What the hell are you hoping to accomplish with this?" She asked bluntly, leaning forward into his personal space and earning herself a warning look. She saw his fingers twitch towards his wrist and narrowed her eyes. The last thing she wanted was to end up on the wrong end of one of those poison needles. "I know I said you probably attracted his interest because you guys were close, but… what you guys are doing isn't attracting any less attention, you know? Besides, Birds is nasty business, but there are three of us and between us we should be able to handle anything he throws our way. All right, why are you staring at me like that?"
If there was one thing about Chikusa that bothered her, and there were several, but if she had to pick just one, it would be that dead-eyed blank look he got on his face sometimes. Like his alien overlords had forgotten to mention to him that in order to blend in properly with the human race he needed to emote constantly like a normal person rather than just on special occasions.
"More complicated than that," Chikusa murmured finally, digging into his pocket and pulling out a handful of crumpled little strips of paper and holding them out to her like a grandfather trying to give a child candy.
She took them reluctantly, grumbling a little under her breath as she stalked over to her bed. "Seriously, you can't just tell me?"
She flopped down and immediately began to spread the little papers out so she could read them properly and immediately wished she hadn't.
Is a lion without a mane still a lion?
If you were gone he'd miss you at all, he'd be fine without you.
Is it the shower or the water that frightens him so?
Does he growl like that when you touch him?
If he doesn't like to sleep alone…
"Fucking gross," M.M. hissed, crumpling the lot in her hands. "Is there a reason you're keeping these besides just torturing yourself with them?"
Chikusa shrugged, his gaze trained somewhere in the vicinity of her shoes. She decided that was answer enough and escorted those tiny horrors over to the little sink in the corner so she could give them a proper burial at sea and then maybe scrub her hands a couple thousand times to get all the third-hand gross off them. "Was that all of them?" She asked finally, once the papers were only a terrible memory.
"No."
She sighed and shut off the water, turning back to face him. She didn't know how she felt about Chikusa, honestly. He was weird, definitely. He wasn't like Ken. Ken was easy to like. He was eager and kind of funny and honest and personable. He was easy and accessible in every way that Chikusa was complicated and closed off. Chikusa was a fortress that Ken scaled and conquered with the ease of long practice, but that kept itself cut off from the world at large. She was pretty sure that no matter what she said or did, she'd be standing on a distant shore, never able to move an inch closer. That didn't mean that she shouldn't try. "How's he been getting them to you?"
"Bird drops them on my pillow in the morning, just after dawn."
"Okay. Thought about killing the messenger?"
"Poisoned a couple. They probably died. He has more."
"Right. Okay. Thought about just telling Ken? Not about the messages, I maybe get why you don't want to tell him about those, he'd probably gut that revolting motherfucker like a fish without a second thought and there goes your 'we're just a bunch of helpless kids' defense. But at least about Birds himself? He's obviously responsible for that haircut. So why not at least tell him about that?"
Chikusa shrugged, looking away.
"Look, I'm not telling you what to do here. We don't know each other and we aren't friends, I get that. I don't even want to be your friend. You creep me out. And, really, at the end of the day, you're a big boy and you probably won't listen to me anyway, but I'm still going to say it. You should tell him everything. He's gonna find out one way or another and… why are you shaking your head like that? You're going to give yourself whiplash or something. Use your words, Chikusa. I know you know more than twelve or I wouldn't have to bother teaching you Japanese."
"Want him safe," Chikusa murmured and that made no sense at all. She knew there were a lot of things she didn't understand about them, she'd overheard enough to know that Ken had impulse control issues or something, but that wasn't any kind of reason to keep him in the dark about this. She also knew that Ken was crazy about him and even if he didn't feel the same way, he had to know that just giving him the cold shoulder was a bad way to handle things.
"Then you need to talk to him, because what you two are doing? It isn't working for either of you. You both look like shit and someone is going to stab you because you're not paying a lick of attention to anything but each other. So, tell him about Birds, start with that. He probably paid someone else to do it. He doesn't do a whole lot of his own dirty work, I don't think."
"Guard?"
"Probably. Wouldn't surprise me if some of these bastards were making a little money on the side from pulling shit like that and Ken isn't exactly well liked, you know? He mouths off a lot."
"Yeah."
"Though I still don't understand how he managed to sleep through it. He threw a shoe at me the other day because I was chewing my gum too loudly."
Chikusa shrugged again which wasn't the least bit helpful.
-ooo-
KEN
He was dozing, not quite asleep and not quite awake, just zoning out. He knew it was late or maybe early because the guard had just passed by (cigarette smoke and dirt and BO and egg salad, a little whiskey on his breath like he'd taken a shot just before driving in to work or in the break room with his lunch). His head ached, his eyes felt dry and scratchy whenever he opened them so he kept them closed. It didn't make much difference, they still ached regardless, but at least they felt less like they were just gonna fucking fall out this way. There was nothing to see anyway. It was dark and he couldn't get comfortable. M was asleep in her bed, breathing evenly (minty toothpaste, that terrible floral perfume, deodorant that he thought was supposed to smell like coconut… it didn't really).
The ache in his head had been with him all day, pounding between his temples like a heartbeat. It had been a little better when they were outside in the yard, but once they came back to their cell it was worse than ever. He stayed in bed rather than go to dinner because he was pretty sure he'd just throw it back up. Better to just curl up in bed, on top of the blankets because it was too hot beneath. He knew it was cold, they hadn't fixed the fucking heating or anything, but he'd been unbearably hot for hours. He hadn't really slept in days, not since that last time he'd fallen asleep with Chikusa that last night. It'd been a couple of days since then and, not that he'd been sleeping all that well even before that, after days of no sleep at all… nothing seemed quite real. And sometimes he blinked and minutes seemed to have gone by like he'd passed out between one moment and the next, but he'd been unable to stay passed out. Like he'd be listening to M talk about something and he'd close his eyes and open them again and she was talking about something completely different. Sometimes he saw spots in the corners of his vision too, like little flares of light and that was just another reason to keep his eyes firmly shut.
And then there was that fucking noise. That dog whistle, if M was right and he knew she probably was, that went off at random fucking intervals and just went crawling straight up his fucking back like the sound of nails against a chalkboard. This lingering, grating, awful fucking noise that was bad enough all on its own, but because there was no set schedule, no rhyme or fucking reason for when it started or how long it lasted, he couldn't fucking anticipate it and that made it so much worse than it might otherwise have been. He couldn't stand to wear the cartridge at all anymore, because every time he was wearing the cartridge when that fucking sound went off, it was fucking crippling. It'd happened once when he was in the bathroom and the sound had just fucking echoed through the room. He'd woken up on the bathroom floor, in a pool of blood and vomit and tears, his nails thick with blood and gore, the cartridge held tightly in his hand, his mouth aching where he'd clawed the damn thing out. He'd stared at his hands for the longest fucking time and he was just so fucking scared because he… he didn't remember doing that. And if he could do that to himself, he could do worse things to other people. To Chikusa and M, to Lancia if he ever fucking actually showed up.
He'd cleaned up as best he could, but he'd stopped wearing the cartridge after that. It made him edgy and he felt like he was painting a fucking target on his back doing it, but he couldn't… couldn't take the chance. If he thought he could get away with it, he'd just wear the fucking earplugs all the time, but he'd tried that once and he couldn't even fucking walk with those in. Just fell right the fuck over like he relied on his hearing for everything, so much so that it tossed his balance to be without it. Which was weird and kind of fucking pathetic.
He'd noticed the way Chikusa had watched him after the bathroom incident, like he could tell something had happened, like he could tell something wasn't right. He probably could, but fuck if he was gonna tell him when Chikusa wouldn't tell him anything. So, he'd just gone back to his cell and tried to pay attention during fucking Japanese lessons and tried to ignore how blurry his vision seemed sometimes and how much his mouth still ached, raw and painful for hours, long after it would normally have healed up.
Everything was so fucked up.
He tried not to think about Chikusa on the bunk above him. It didn't really work. He knew he was awake, could practically feel him tossing and turning up there, restless, even if he couldn't hear him with the plugs in. But if he opened his eyes, he knew he would see the mattress dip and press against the bars above him as Chikusa shifted his weight from one side to the other. They hadn't really talked in days, not since Ken had hit him that last time, and he kept thinking about maybe talking to him. Trying to pull him aside again or just pretending like nothing was wrong to see if Chikusa would just go along with it. If maybe they could just ignore the awkwardness between them and go back to at least talking. Even if all the other stuff was off limits, he missed just being able to talk to him and call him names and tease him and… he wasn't sure how things had gone so wrong in less than a week. Wasn't sure how to fix things.
If Mukuro or Lancia were around he could ask them, but they weren't. Lancia was supposed to have been released days ago, but he hadn't been. He'd tried asking the guards about it, but they wouldn't tell him anything. Mukuro hadn't been back either, but that wasn't really weird on unusual. Mukuro had always come and gone, but before it had always felt like Mukuro would always know if they needed him. Would just be able to tell and maybe he could when he was close, but he was miles and oceans away probably and he wasn't there to knock their heads and tell them to get it together. It felt like everything that was important to him was slipping away like sand through his fingers and he couldn't stop it. He didn't know how to fix things with Chikusa. Didn't know if Lancia or Mukuro were okay.
Everything was just so fucked up.
There was a soft thump and the cheap mattress dipped and Chikusa slid onto the bed beside him and he was afraid to open his eyes. Afraid that this was a dream, that he'd finally fallen asleep and he'd open his eyes and he'd be alone and that was just too unbearably pathetic. It smelled like him at least and it acted like him, tentative like he was unsure of his welcome, unsure if he should come closer and Ken didn't want to reach out and scare him away. Didn't want to scare him away even though Chikusa had said he wasn't actually scared of him… he still couldn't help being a little afraid, because he didn't feel like he was in control of anything at all. He felt like he was balancing on the edge of a cliff and his balance was shot to shit and any second he was just gonna fall into the abyss. It was bad and it was just getting worse and worse every day and if he fell… if he fell, he didn't wanna take Chikusa down with him.
Chikusa's fingers slid over the shell of his ear before sliding in to pluck the plug out of his ear. "Ken?"
"Chikusa?" He replied, his voice hoarse and as tired as he felt.
"Don't know if I'm doing the right thing."
"You know, I think that's the most words I've every heard you string together into a single sentence."
"Shut up."
"I don't know what you're trying to do, Kappa," he answered honestly. "You won't talk to me."
"We're talking now."
"You know what I mean."
"Yes."
"Then would you please just fucking talk to me already?"
Chikusa ran a shaking hand through his hair and it was both comforting and kind of awful, because he wanted Chikusa to touch him, but he also hated being reminded of how short his hair was now. Just another thing he'd lost, but at least that had been taken from him. At least that wasn't his fault. "Know who did this."
"What? Seriously?"
"Man named Birds. Don't know how. Paid off a guard maybe."
It felt strangely good to have a name, to have someone to blame for something, to have a target for his anger. And he was angry. So fucking angry. "Well, that's creepy as fuck. Why would he do something like that?"
"Don't know. Watches us. Like we're meat."
Ken growled low in his throat, opening his tired, aching eyes at last. And Chikusa was inches away, face pale and drawn and he seemed thinner than he had been, "You've been worrying about this? This is what you've been freaking out over?"
Chikusa nodded, averting his eyes so it felt like the truth, but not the entire truth. He growled again, snagging Chikusa's hand from his hair and dragging it down to press it between both of his. They could keep going like this, round and round, keeping these little fucking secrets from each other. Trying to protect each and getting mad and being stubborn and he felt awful and he was so fucking worn out and everything hurt, but nothing hurt more than fighting with him. Then falling to pieces because Chikusa wasn't there to hold him together. He didn't want to do this anymore. Whatever Chikusa was hiding… he didn't even care anymore. He just… he just wanted him to stay.
"Hey Kappa? I think something's really wrong with me. I feel really sick."
"You can't get sick," Chikusa whispered, pressing his free hand against Ken's forehead and wincing. "You're really hot."
"That's what he said," Ken snickered and Chikusa just sighed. His hand was cool where it rested against Ken's forehead.
"You're not funny," Chikusa shoved at his shoulder and he smiled.
"I am though. Everybody says so."
"Nobody says that."
"Yeah, but you think so and that's all I really care about," Ken grinned, though it faded soon enough. "Can we just… just pretend everything's okay? Can we just pretend that you're not fucking lying to me about whatever the hell it is that you're lying to me about and that I can't practically smell the lie on you and just pretend that everything is okay again? Just for a little while? I feel like shit and everything aches and some asshole in here has a dog whistle or something and they keep blowing it all the damn time and it really fucking sucks."
"Probably the same guy," Chikusa murmured, his fingers flitting across Ken's cheeks and forehead and nose and lips like nervous butterflies uncertain where to land, unable to settle. "Don't understand why you're sick. You've never been sick. You didn't have dinner?"
"No, it's… I feel like I'm gonna throw up. I don't know. Maybe I just need to sleep or something, but it's…" he shrugged, closing his eyes because they were beginning to really ache again and he kind of wanted to just claw them out of his skull. "It keeps getting worse."
"What do you need?"
"I don't know. For you to stop freaking out just because some old fucking pervert is harassing me and probably thinks about us when he jerks it? That'd be a start. I won't let him fucking touch you if that's what you're worried about."
"Not worried about that," he whispered and Ken sighed.
"Shut up, I know. What I don't know is why the fuck you didn't just tell me. It's not like some old perv creeping on us is going to freak me out more than you just not wanting to be near me. You're an idiot."
"Sometimes," Chikusa agreed and Ken frowned, brushing his fingers over the side of his face. Chikusa closed his eyes, turning his cheek into the touch and… that was nice.
"I don't get it, Kappa. Wish you'd let me help."
"You're sick."
"Yeah, well, nobody's perfect."
"Yeah," He could hear the amusement in Chikusa's voice and it gave him the confidence to ask.
"Stay with me?"
"Okay," Chikusa whispered in reply and he was asleep in moments. He must have been really tired. Maybe he hadn't been sleeping well either. It was funny that that thought made him feel both worse and better all at once.
He laid there in the dark for a long time, listening to Chikusa breathe, before leaning in so he could press his burning forehead against the cool skin of Chikusa's cheek.
He wondered as he slid the earplug back in place and slowly drifted off to sleep he finally allowed himself to wonder whether he was dying. If his body was finally rejecting all the things they'd done to it, all the modifications they'd made. It seemed like a pretty stupid fucking way to go, his body just breaking down around him like this. Nah, fuck that. He'd always figured when he died, because he knew they all would at some point, that it would be violent and messy and he liked to think maybe he'd go out protecting them because that seemed like it wouldn't be an awful way to go. That was a death he could live with. Or not live with, what the fuck ever.
Nah, dying like this would just be too fucking lame.
Yeah, no, fuck that.
-ooo-
NOW
DAYS UNTIL EXECUTION: 156
THE GANG
NAMIMORI
January 22
MITSURU/MUKURO
The boy's name was Hizimori Mitsuru, though everyone called him Mi. He liked his brother, baseball and a girl named Yui. He lived in Namimori near the edge of town and he had a scratch on the back of his hand.
It wasn't a big scratch really, but it was brown and scabby and it ran from his thumb to his wrist and so his Mom had smeared some ointment on it and let it be since she didn't want to cover his hand in bandages over one little scratch. He'd gotten the scratch from a big girl he'd passed while walking home from school yesterday pushing his bike up the big hill behind his house. She'd said she was sorry, but she'd said it the same way his brother said 'sorry' when he wouldn't take him along for baseball practice or when he went out with his friends. The kind of sorry you said, but didn't really mean at all or maybe it was the same way his Mom said 'that's nice, dear' and his brother said 'in a minute' like they weren't actually paying attention. Yeah, it had been something like that. Like she hadn't even really been there at all, like someone else had done the scratching and she was just doing the polite thing by saying 'sorry'.
It had been really weird.
-ooo-
Mukuro blinked, shaking off the kid's thoughts of baseball and what they were having for dinner. Thoughts of his puppy and how he was going to play with him when he got home with the new ball he'd gotten him and how he was definitely going to teach him to fetch. Sighing, he rubbed a hand over the boy's spiky brown hair and leaned the bike against the fence, sitting down beside it to give himself time to orient to this new body that was so much smaller and weaker than his own.
He yawned heavily, rubbing a hand over his face. He hadn't slept in days and while that wasn't an entirely new experience, as he had never slept particularly well or often, it still wore on him in the wake of everything that had happened. He mostly just wanted to light the whole world on fire and watch it burn. To destroy the mafia and Vongola and Esterneo and everything in one fell swoop so they were the only ones that remained. At least then he wouldn't have to worry anymore about who to trust and where to go and what to do. It was exhausting, caring this much, and not something he'd ever wanted. He could feel it chewing at him the way a dog might gnaw at a bone, whittling it down until nothing remained but the hollow core, black and brittle and utterly breakable.
So, now there was the plan, this ridiculous plan that would likely only end in tears and blood and pain, but when one was lacking for options even the bad ones started to look good. It had taken the better part of a week to wind his way from body to body before he'd finally reached Japan. The distance was such that he could only use people who were compatible for more than a few minutes at a time making the pickings slim and the chore of transferring from host to host increasingly difficult. It was longer and farther than he'd ever attempted before and he'd never been out of his body for so long and he was utterly exhausted. He was raw and aching, stretched painfully thin and he wanted little more than to return and have a rest, check in on the others, but he needed to finish this first. They needed somewhere to go, a safe place, and once he had that then he could return.
Namimori, as it turned out, was a generally quiet and rather beautiful little town located in the Mie Prefecture in Iga. It was a cool place, but not overly cold even in the dead of winter, or so it seemed as his body was wearing a winter school uniform and no extra coat even though it was only late January. He could feel the brisk air against his borrowed skin, but it wasn't particularly uncomfortable for the boy. From what little he'd been able to glean about the successor to Vongola, he was young, very young, perhaps the same age as they were or close to it and he likely attended Namimori Middle, but he'd been able to find very little information on him beyond that… which was peculiar.
There had been really no end of information to be gained on previous candidates, the sons of Vongola Nono, and some of the more prominent members of the Italian branch of the Famiglia. He'd even been able to ferret out enough information on Xanxus, the candidate favored by the Famiglia in general, that he thought he'd be able to leverage that against Vongola at some point. But for as much information as he'd been able to find on the various members and factions of the primary branch, he's been able to dig up practically nothing when it came to the branch of the family that had left Italy for Japan in the Famiglia's earliest days. It was as if the Japanese branch of the Famiglia had been completely uninvolved in Vongola since that time, but if that were the case then why would that man have chosen a successor who was unknown and unremarked with no connections to the current version of the Famiglia.
It made no sense.
Perhaps if this boy were uncommonly strong or showed the sort of limitlessly potential that came around once in a generation, something of that nature might make the decision comprehensible at least. He would have to make a point of attempting to track Fuuta de la Stella as the little record keeper would probably be one of the few reliable sources of information on the Vongola boy. That would at least give them a place to start without alerting the new Vongola and his lackeys to their arrival. Which, of course, brought him back around to why he had come here in the first place.
They couldn't headquarter themselves in Namimori, as that would likely get them found and returned to Italy long before they had a chance to ferret out the Vongola. Fortunately, Namimori was a large town situated next to another town of similar size. Kokuyo was close enough that, if he were correct in his assumptions about Esterneo, it should allow them the security of being within striking distance of Vongola while still being far enough away not to be immediately observed and detected by Vongola. Better still, of course, if he could find them a place that was near the town border. Something secluded, but still within each reach of both the Kokuyo Junior High and Namimori Junior High. Half the reason he'd come here today and possessed this boy in particular was to look at one such place to see if it would be suitable for their needs and purposes.
His body's stomach gurgled and growled and he glared down at it irritably. The boy had skipped lunch in favor of saving his money to buy a toy for his mutt. Ridiculous. He'd have to leave some notion behind that would require the boy to eat properly or he'd never be able to get anything done if he persisted in this sort of behavior. For now though, he would just have to put up with it, he needed to get going if he was going to make it over to look at the place before he needed to turn his attention back to his own body. He knew he was reaching the limit of what he could handle.
He gave the bike at his side a dubious look. He'd never learned how to ride a bike. Never bothered though he supposed there had been opportunity enough over the years. There had simply too much else to do and he'd spent much of his time indoors in Mumbai and New York where it might have made the most sense to learn. The boy he'd been before he was Mukuro Rokudo… he wasn't sure what he had done, but he was reasonably sure it had had little enough to do with bike riding. Mi knew, fortunately, so he could slip that information away and absorb it. Just another ill-gotten talent for the pile, but the knowledge would be theoretical and thus useful only in this body.
He stood up, stretching and reached for the bike. Getting on was easy enough and though he wobbled a fair bit at first, he didn't fall and after a minute he was coasting smoothly down the street, legs pumping and hands tight on the rubber grips that covered the handlebars. The physical exertion of the ride might tire him out a bit more than walking would, but he'd inevitably save more than enough time to compensate for it. Plus, he might have need of this boy's body again when they came here so memorizing this skill probably wasn't a complete waste.
Unlike language skills and the knowledge gleaned from school courses, he wouldn't be able to learn this ability and keep and apply it within his own body. Like any other physical skill, it was one part theoretical knowledge and two parts physical muscle memory that made one successful at it. He was fluent in fourteen languages, cursorily familiar with fifteen more, but he couldn't ride a bike or skip rope or throw a baseball with any particular speed or accuracy in his own body despite having possessed enough people who had those particular skills over the years.
On some levels he'd found this restriction grating, as he'd typically hold on to just enough theoretical knowledge about any given skill that he often found his own body attempting to do some of these things instinctually only to find himself hopelessly lacking and frustrated by his inability to do any of them well or most of them at all. If he wasn't paying very strict attention it was difficult to keep straight sometimes what was a skill he himself actually possessed and what was not. It would have been infinitely easier if he could simply forget all about these physical skills when he returned to his own body, but he never did. Not for want of trying, of course, but he'd still never managed it to find a way to do so and that was often infuriating. Primarily because many of those physical skills weren't so benign as bike riding or fishing or throwing a baseball.
No, most of the physical skills he had picked up over the years were of the sort he desperately wished to have never needed. He had, after all, possessed a lot of unsavory people and there were some things he'd just rather not be able to do or remember at all really when he returned to his own body, but… he always did. Always. The worst part of that, of course, was that there were some things that sat firmly at the crossroads of knowledge and physical, things he was sure he would be able to do if he wanted in his own body with no trouble at all, but he had not the least inclination to challenge that notion. Things he sometimes absorbed on purpose and sometimes by accident because his mark was thinking too intently about these things or happened to do these things while he was riding along rather than driving as he sometimes did when the activities made him uncomfortable and he was unable to abandon the body for one reason or another.
He'd known forty-three ways to dismantle a human body, twenty-two sexual positions spread across multiple genders. He knew how to make people moan in ecstasy and scream in unimaginable pain any number of different ways by the time he had turned (what he was reasonably sure was) fourteen. More often than not he tried not to think about these things. He locked them away as deep as they would go. Fed them to that black, fathomless pit within his tattered soul where he kept the worst of what he was, where he locked the impulse to hurt them, himself, the world and every last person in it. Sometimes he needed to dredge these things up, to apply them in one infiltration or another which was why he thought he'd be able to use them in his own body, but afterwards he always locked them away again though he always felt the lingering marks they left behind, like grease stains on paper napkins.
The process of inflicting and enduring pain rarely bothered him in any meaningful way. He couldn't feel it and he'd seen and done enough horrifying and terrible things in is life to be overly affected by such things. The other things though… those things always made him feel vaguely ill even when he wasn't controlling the body directly, wasn't an active participant. He still remembered the first time, as he remembered everything, and how he'd spent what seemed like hours or days sitting on the floor of the shower letting hot water splash over him after.
He remembered Ken with his big brown eyes, wide as saucers, staring at him as if he were both a stranger and something precious simultaneously. He remembered laying on the filthy bathmat cold and wet and pressed between them and asking them to stay, but never telling them why.
There had been reasons, so many reasons, why he had been too distracted in New York to notice that something was wrong and that had certainly been one of them.
He'd always wondered if this was something they'd planned or if it was just a natural consequence of his situation, the ability to retain knowledge and the inability to forget it. The complete inability to feel pain when he was in possession of the bodies of others, only the vagaries of pleasure and the way even that left him shaky and vaguely sickened in the aftermath when he returned to his own body. Like they'd adapted both his soul and his body for efficiency, because even in his own body physical pain was dull, pleasure virtually non-existent, as if the circuits had never connected properly when his soul had been jammed back into this body on that operating table. He supposed he was grateful for that in a way, whatever the cause. It made it easier not to care about things when he couldn't connect with them too deeply. Because that was part of the problem with possessing people, infiltrating their lives, you needed to do it right or it wasn't worth bothering at all. If you became too invested there was little point and even less profit to be had in it.
The amusement park had been closed for the better part of five years and it showed. There was only road leading into the place and the road was falling into disrepair, the pavement was cracked brown tufts of grass poking through here and there as he stood up on the pedals, pushing harder to encourage the bike up the road as it became steeper. Mitsuru's breath came in harsh pants, muscles straining and he was relieved when he reached the gate at the end of the road. He could see buildings in the distance and the sign over the gate was pockmarked with rust and bird droppings.
Kokuyo Land.
His brother told him about a birthday party he had here once. About the petting zoo and the squirrel garden. About the carrousel and the white-painted elephant he'd ridden on over and over till he was sick from too much candy and too much spinning. He'd begged Mom to have his birthday party here last year, but she'd told him it had closed down a long time ago. They'd ended up having a party at the park instead. He'd had a pretty fun time, but there hadn't been a squirrel garden or a carrousel.
Why was he…?
Mukuro shook his borrowed head, rubbing irritably at the boy's forehead. He was reaching his limit. His control faltering as it became more and more difficult to stay present. Now that he had a solid mark in Namimori he'd be able to come back, but… he wanted to see this place for himself. He wasn't sure why exactly. Why he was so certain that this place would be what they needed, but he was.
It certainly didn't look like much from this vantage point. It hadn't looked like much in the pictures he'd seen online either. He'd been outside the prison in a body in Florence researching Namimori a few weeks ago and he'd happened upon the article in the online version of the city's newspaper.
-ooo-
PLANS TO DEMOLISH KOKUYO LAND MEET WITH VOCAL OPPOSITION
Plans to demolish the derelict amusement park in favor of a shopping complex have been met with stiff opposition both from the Kokuyo Historical Society as well as nature conservationists and many private citizens at a planning commission meeting held to discuss the proposed renovation yesterday afternoon….
-ooo-
The photo with the little article blurb had been of the park when it was operational. There was a Ferris wheel of all the silly things and a Carousel barely visible behind a glistening glass dome. And there were trees, just a sea of trees, some in the background and some in the foreground and there were kids laughing and it looked….
It was stupid really. Like seeing a picture in a catalogue and dreaming of owning a perfect moment that could never belong to anyone, much less you, because it was a moment that didn't truly exist, but… it had looked like a nice place. It had looked like the kind of place where bad things just didn't happen. Even the more updated shot that had been posted with the main article that had showed the park as it stood, overgrown and abandoned and still been… appealing.
So, he'd made inquiries. Found out that the land was still privately owned though the city of Namimori had put in a bid for the land in the hopes of expanding because while Kokuyo Land itself was technically within the city boundaries of Kokuyo it was so close to the line that such a purchase would allow for a case to be made for redrawing the boundaries to suit allowing Namimori to bring in new businesses and even though much of the land was protected forest that couldn't be developed what could be developed would more than pay for the initial land purchase. It was actually a really intelligent and well-considered move for all that it wasn't a particularly popular one with the citizens of either Namimori or Kokuyo.
Apparently the owner was quite eager to sell, had been trying to sell the land for years, but most buyers and developers wouldn't touch it because of all the protected forest that came with it and all the difficulties that went along with building and developing in such circumstances. It would seem that the town of Namimori was the first serious offer he'd even had on it.
It hadn't been difficult to find out what that offer had been either. Nor had it been particularly challenging to arrange for an informal safety inspection of the area.
It would be expensive, he'd checked before coming out here. Purchasing this place and setting up an account to fund the property taxes and utilities for the next few years would burn through most of what he'd managed to build up in terms of assets and savings, but….
He left Mi's bike propped outside, against the fence on that empty, abandoned strip of ill-kept road. Mi's tiny body made it easy enough to slip through a gap in the rusted fence, to squeeze beneath the chain that held the gate doors shut. Once inside he jogged up the overgrown path leading into the park.
He liked how far away it was from the city center, how far it seemed to be from everything even though it really wasn't. How quiet it was, almost desolate, the way the light shone on all the dusty windows of the buildings and how it felt like nature was trying to reclaim it. That it was so completely out of the way that even the most desperate and destitute people in this area hadn't seen fit to make a home here in this abandoned, forgotten place. The cars on the old Ferris wheel near the back of the property creaked and swayed gently in the wind. There was some trash and empty beer cans scattered in the corners next to the buildings, but not much in the grand scheme of things, as if it were too inconvenient for even delinquent kids to bother using it.
He stood in the middle of the path and listened to the wind rustle through the trees and he thought that this could work. That this place could be… that it could really work.
It wasn't perfect, of course, the electrical lines were still good, but the water lines in the area were shot, so they'd have to bathe down the street at the public bathhouse, which would bother the hell out of Chikusa and Ken would probably use it as an excuse to bathe even less often than usual, but they'd lived in far worse conditions over the years. Fortunately, the sewer lines were good so I long as they brought in water they could use the toilets and the sinks at least. And maybe, if this worked out, he could have the lines repaired. It wasn't out of the question. He knew Chikusa wouldn't complain, but it would be better if he could shower whenever he wanted in private in his own place.
He climbed to the top of one of the main buildings, through worn halls, over crumbling stairways, through an old theatre with moldy curtains and up onto the roof. Standing up there he could see for miles. A breeze stirred the short hair of this body and he closed his eyes enjoying the play of that breeze across his borrowed skin.
It wasn't perfect. It was broken and abandoned and probably dangerous, but that just made it the sort of place where they'd feel comfortable.
A place they could finally call home maybe.
Ten minutes later, Mitsuru blinked, mildly bewildered to find himself coasting downhill on his bike. It had been kind of cool looking at the old amusement park, but he was excited to be on his way home to play with Beats. His stomach growled irritably and though he was really glad he'd gotten that ball for Beats, he thought this would probably be the last time he'd skip lunch just to buy something for the puppy.
He was starving.
-ooo-
He blinked awake to find himself staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. There was a soft, steady beeping sound and it didn't take him long to realize this was the infirmary. That he was cuffed to an infirmary bed.
Huh.
He probably should have assumed they'd take him here when he didn't wake up for a few days. Of course, then again, they'd never seemed to give a damn when he was injured or concussed before so maybe it wasn't so strange to assume they wouldn't bother. Not that it mattered, really. Not that he cared. Maybe he'd care later after he'd gotten some sleep.
He thought vaguely about reaching out to Lancia to see how they were doing, but before the thought could even fully form he was already falling back into darkness and dream.
-ooo-
NOTES:
As always comments thrill me to no end, but are obviously not required. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Additional notes can be found over at the Archive of Own version of this chapter for the curious.
Camping Outside Cacciatore - In case you wondering where Ken & Chikusa were during that year. Also, this is where all that stuff Mukuro was known to be stockpiling way back in Chapter One was going (though I'm sure y'all probably figured out this was the case already, but since I believe this is the first time it's been referenced directly that I'd go ahead and call it out).
"That room upstairs" - If you read that and were mildly confused as to what room Mukuro is referring to, you're not alone. Mukuro did some exploring while Chikusa was showering and Ken was napping that day. What exactly he was doing has only been touched on very briefly once before and I wasn't terribly direct about it. It'll come up again.
Lucia - Her first language is not Italian which is why there is a disparity between how she thinks and how she speaks to Timoteo.
