Title: Fon x Reborn
Summary: Reborn is traded to the triads for a year so the Vindice can get access to China's particularly dangerous criminals. Reborn doesn't really get a say in this, but at least he meets a nice martial artist called Fon.
Background; Pre-curse, Triad AU
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China is rather traditional in their use of flame.
Places like Oceania, they use it externally to influence the environment. New Zealand hardens the outer edges of clouds with Lightning to drag them behind planes for watering farms. Australia holds raging wildfires frozen in time with the tranquillity of Rain.
The Americas are focus on brutal, damage dealing techniques. Brazilian Suns can crush steel with a kick by activating their muscles. Mists in the USA mould their flames into spears, hitting hard and cracking the mind open with one attack, certainly not subtle or reversible but with a terrifying efficiency.
Europe relies on profit. Storms in Spain burn through tons of garbage that other countries sell to them. Clouds from Germany propagate raw materials to boost the manufacturing industry at little to no cost.
Africa is ... well, people don't talk about the Skys in Zambia.
China is traditional in that the techniques are passed down and any deviation is swiftly corrected. Storms will rage, Suns will heal, Lightning draws attention as the shield while Mists are not to be seen.
Reborn was requested by name because he used the activation property of his Sun to steal the Mist flames of a higher up in the Triads. It was a coincidence, both of them caught in a skirmish and Reborn simply stole a little bit from her before disappearing under a cloak of illusions.
Asia has the majority of people born with multiple flames, and it's become something of a speciality. Having Reborn teach his technique could mean rapid expansion of an individual's skill set. The Triad dreams of clansmen with all seven colours dancing along their fingertips. They would be unstoppable.
"The foreigners are coming today," Fon's newest master says as they stretch out on the dojo mats.
She's a Kalarippayattu specialist the clan head picked out personally for Fon continue his learning with. It's been four months and there's very little she can teach him but she clings, insists Fon isn't up to par despite it being six weeks since she last won a fight against him. She is not the first to prioritise her pride over the job and she won't be the last person that Fon breaks for it.
"We'll end our session earlier today," she continues. "Perhaps, with continuing diligence, you will master Kalarippayattu before the foreigner leaves."
The Western guest will be leaving in a year, an insult.
Fon is the only one that walks out of that dojo.
A brief clatter of something ceramic breaking on the wooden floor alerts Fon. He backtracks down the hallway and peers through a small gap in the door.
The European jailers, the Vindice Fon believes they are called, surround a struggling man in a slim cut black suit and fedora. One cloaked figure is holding onto the man's arm, their top hat knocked off.
Another approaching Vindice is kicked in the stomach, used as a spring board for the man to backflip over the one holding him, that momentum allowing a shoulder throw that flings the Vindice into the wall hard enough that the entire hallway shakes.
The man takes a step forward but his leg sinks through a black swirl on the floor and he falls, catching himself on the ground at the last moment and unable to defend from a kick to head by another officer. The man -Italian, Fon vaguely remembers his previous instructor saying- hits the ground and is engulfed by the abruptly spreading black hole.
Another swirl opens up above the desk and the Italian falls through the air, landing in front of the desk but stumbling from the previous blow to his head. The officer sitting behind the desk steeples his fingers together and observes patiently as his fellow prison guards force the man to bend over the furniture and wrench his arms behind his back.
"Are we done?" the officer behind the desk says.
"I didn't agree to this," the Italian snaps. "I said I'd consider it, but I'm not going to be traded like cattle."
The officer cracks his knuckles loudly. "Are you right handed or left handed? I often see you welding a gun interchangeably."
There's no reply but the Italian clenches his hands tightly.
"Perhaps I will simply cut a finger from both."
"Is there no one else?" the man asks. "Is there no amount of money or flame technology that you could offer instead? Was I just the easiest to grab?"
The officer leans forward. "They asked for you specifically. Have no fear, little sun, I will not let them keep you."
The man laughs. "I'm going to kill every single one of you."
The officer hums. "Break his arm."
Fon sees a guard make a sharp pulling motion and the Italian jerks, gasping in pain. The leader stands up, still playing with the man's hair, and starts giving orders to his subordinates.
They release the man and start collecting files of paper from around the room. The man tries to push himself up but the hand in his hair holds him down.
The leader turns, looking right at Fon's hiding place despite bandages covering the man's face and obscuring his eyes. Fon slides away quickly, ducking through an empty meeting room further down the hall. He stays there until he hears all of the Vindice pass by, chains clinking even as their steps are silent.
One pauses outside the door. "Do remind your Triad that this is ... an educational field trip. If he is hurt, you will quickly learn just how far we can reach."
Fon stays in the room longer than strictly necessary after the Vindice leave but eventually emerges and returns to his previous place. The door is open now and the man is sitting on the floor in front of the table, holding his broken arm to his chest.
"Let me help," Fon says, moving cautiously towards the Italian.
Black eyes flicker to Fon and the other stands up quickly. "I don't need your help."
"I didn't say you needed it," Fon corrects, coming to a stop beside the foreigner. "I said let me help. Putting a bone back in place yourself is always so much more complicated."
Fon reaches out slowly and gently takes the arm. A gun is pressed under his chin. Fon smiles. "Take a deep breath."
"Just do it."
There's a muffled click and the man blinks, slowly. Fon feels Sun flames rise under his finger tips until the man pulls his arm away.
"I suppose, since they left you here, you are not invited to the negotiations?" Fon assumes.
"Do you ask a dog if it wants to be adopted?" the Italian scoffs.
Fon tilts his head to the side. "My presence has been requested but I would much rather spar with you."
The man finally holsters his gun. "You can call me Reborn."
"And my name is Fon."
Two months later, Reborn leans out of a window above where Fon is passing. "Hey!" he calls out, already swinging a leg over the windowsill. "Catch me!"
"No," Fon says but ducks two steps to the left and catches the falling hitman in a bearhug that knocks the air out of both of them before putting Reborn on the ground.
"Nice catch," the hitman says happily, smoothing down his bespoke three-piece-suit. "If you dropped me, I would have gutted you."
"You just fell from a four-storey window. If I had dropped you, you would never walk again," Fon says warily.
"Aw, it's sweet that you care," Reborn admits. "I would have pretended to catch you, but then stepped back and laughed."
"Yes, I'm very aware of what you've been doing these past few months. There seems to be a trend."
"Oh, you watch me?" Reborn smirks. "Fell in love with just one meeting?"
Fon pauses, wondering if he should just say it. "I've been reassigned here specifically to take you down if you cause too much trouble."
Reborn starts to say something but there's a sudden commotion from the window he apparently just escaped from. He grabs Fon's large sleeve and takes long strides to hurry away.
"What have you done?" Fon asks politely.
"Nothing you can prove," Reborn tsks, swings around a corner and into the next building over which is a dojo on the lower floor.
They walk around the black crash mats, Reborn smiling charmingly at all the people currently practicing (Lightning and Rains judging by their green and blue collars) and into the changing room.
Reborn looks around the empty room and smiles at Fon. "So I was-"
Fon grabs Reborn by the upper arms and slams him against lockers that clang loudly against each other. Fon leans in close. "I am not your friend, hitman. If yet another person ends up dead, within even a kilometre radius of you, I have been told to bring you in to somewhere more comfortable."
Reborn is watching him with a blank face, arms pinned to his sides and unable to reach his shoulder holster for a gun. "I haven't killed anyone-"
"You take a great amount of delight in making it look like a particularly unfortunate accident," Fon cuts in. "I've been warned about you, so have the other assassins placed around you. Unless you'd like to tell me that thirty-six dead is simply a coincidence?"
Reborn huffs out a laugh, grabbing at Fon's dangling sleeves and yanking to try and find any gang tattoos on Fon's forearms. "Who's your master, dog? You dumb son of a bitch, do you think you can touch me? I killed the first two who tried, and the Vindice took out the third."
"The Vindice have no loyalty here in the Triads," Fon dismisses. There were no reports of interference, Fon isn't going to believe the hitman.
"There's no loyalty, period." Reborn says with an eyeroll. He holds Fon's wrist. "Sure, some of that was for fun." Reborn meets Fon's eyes and smirks. "Some of that was business."
"Are you saying you were hired?" Fon asks, squeezing Reborn's arms until the hitman winces. "By Westerners? Is that why you're here – is it a ploy to get closer to your targets?"
"Who owns you?" Reborn demands.
"Answer the question, hitman."
"I am," Reborn laughs. "Took out someone who pissed her off and she thought I did good work, gave me more. Got a bit too eager apparently, clearly someone caught on and here you are."
"My clan head is a man," Fon lies.
"Well then who did I meet?" Reborn muses, clearly not actually caring about the answer to that. "Not that I mind, I enjoyed myself. Got paid a ridiculous number too."
"In euro?" Fon clarifies. His clan head refuses to trade in foreign currencies so this can narrow down who the hitman is actually working for - if he isn't lying about being paid either.
"In whatever you got here," Reborn says carelessly, leaning back into the locker as much as he can to adjust his grip on Fon's wrist. "R-M-B?"
"Renminbi," Fon murmurs, staring at his own hold on Reborn's upper arms that has gotten a lot looser. Reborn shouldn't be able to move with how much body weight Fon is putting on him. Did Fon relax too much?
"I should look up conversion rates," Reborn says, watching Fon through half lidded eyes, keeping his voice calm.
"One to point-thirteen," Fon answers automatically.
Reborn pauses and does some very fast maths. "Fucking what?!"
Fon is shoved back and he stumbles, body slow and half numb. He trips backwards over a bench, can't catch himself, hits the opposite lockers with the back of his head and shoulders.
"That woman has been paying me what?" Reborn snaps, flexing his arms to get the feeling back, the hand that was on Fon still lit gently in soft, insidious Sun flames.
Fon sits there, head pounding, dazed and barely conscious. He doesn't understand, doesn't even think of purging his body with Storm flames.
He vaguely hears Reborn storming out of the locker room and then he passes out.
"That Sun flame trick isn't going to work a second time," Fon says without turning around, sweeping the room and disintegrating the decorations to make room for the next person.
"Are you still upset about that?" Reborn complains, leaning against the doorway. "That was ages ago."
"Three weeks," Fon corrects. He summons his flames back and turns to face Reborn. "And in those three weeks, my branch of the clan has been absorbed and redistributed by the new clan head so I'm rather busy reorganising right now. Do you need something, hitman?"
Reborn blinks long eyelashes at him. "To be fair, you said your clan head was a man so, you know, I didn't think I was causing so much trouble when I accidented her down two flights of stairs and out of a window."
"Do you need something."
"I'm bored," Reborn admits. "And I'm not allowed outside the main compound here." He raises an eyebrow. "Unless I'm accompanied by someone."
Fon tells himself he's not going to get sucked into this man's games.
"I'll take you once, for one day, and then you don't bother me again," Fon says.
They go out every week for the next six months, and that doesn't count when they take walks around the compound, or go out to lunch, or just pass each other in the halls and smile.
The clan heads are sitting on cushions across a low table, the wooden deck raised above a clear pond that fills the rest of the space, a huge weeping willow sitting off to one side of the large courtyard.
Fon kneels to the left and behind his new clan head, an identical copy of him on the right. The two assassins have their heads down, bland smiles on their faces, hand on their laps and sleeves gracefully spread out on the wooden deck. Both of them are ready to pour tea, or kill their counterparts sitting behind the other clan head.
Whichever comes first, really.
Fon has his teeth gritted because he can see Reborn out of the corner of his eye, the hitman peeking around a corner. Fon's clan head turns to look and smiles, gesturing Reborn closer.
Reborn puts on a surprised face and points at himself as if to say 'who, me?' but is quite happy to saunter over.
"And this is the hitman exchanged with the Vindice," the clan head say to his southern peer. "He's been seducing one of our assassins away. Isn't that right, Fon?"
Fon lifts his head at being addressed. "Sir-"
"He can't help it," Reborn cuts in, sitting down on Fon's lap. "I'm a charmer."
Fon, who just barely snatched his hands out of the way before Reborn sat on them, clears his throat and shuffles Reborn off and onto the wooden deck.
"Ah, young love," the clan head says wistfully and turns to the other head. "Here's hoping Fon pulls in the hitman permanently."
Fon keeps the smile on his face. So does Reborn, despite knowing that's an order for Fon to make it happen.
At the end of the negotiated period, after Reborn messed around with teaching some Sun recruits absolutely nothing at all but has been gaslighting them into thinking they're just weak and pathetic and too stupid to learn, the Vindice come to pick him up.
Reborn is holding a large suitcase, handle already pulled up and messy with various cute lizard stickers, filled with his clothes and the souvenirs Fon bought him. "Do you...want to come with me?"
Fon doesn't give any sign, but he knows the room is filled with other Triad assassins, ready and waiting for when Fon steps out of line.
Fon smiles at Reborn, soft and warm. "Go first, I'll join you."
