…and he picks up the pieces as best as he can because someone has to and it may as well be him. It has to be him.
Tries to glue them back together, metaphorically. Or perhaps more accurately, zip things together so precisely you don't notice the gaps. And it works, after a fashion. He reforms Passione. He excises the rot, throws open the windows to bring the light in. He ends the drug trade and when he's put that to rest, he examines Passione and knows that to help people, to actually help people, there's so much more that he needs to end.
So he ends what deserves death, turns it into something shining and new, and when he's got that done, it's debatable if you can even rightfully call Passione the mafia anymore.
Cut away the bad parts. Zip the rest back together. They don't notice the gaps. He does.
Giorno Giovanna brought him back to life after he died a slow death trying to ignore the reality of what Passione was doing to the people, trying to ignore the reality of what it was doing to his own heart. Bruno buried Giorno in a sunny spot full of flowers and birdsong, and he planted a myrtle tree by his grave. It blooms the color of the ladybugs on his jacket. And he tried to ignore the fact that he was the only one at his funeral but he couldn't.
He buried them all. His family sleeps amidst flowers and forest, and Passione keeps him busy but never too busy to sit a spell among the blooms and talk. He waters the plants, tell them about his day, tells them about his plans for the future.
He planted oranges for Narancia. He picks them, candies the peels, dips them in chocolate, takes them as a treat sometimes to one of the schools Passione funds for at-risk children. It's a cause that's very dear to him because he knew Narancia, he knew Pannacotta, he knew Giorno, and he knew how the adults in their lives failed them.
He knows how he failed them. Over the years, he's thought about adopting children but then guilt twists his gut. His kids are dead. He's one of the most dangerous men in the world, one of the most targeted men in the world, and he could not live with himself for endangering any more children.
Wild strawberries grow on Pannacotta's grave. He didn't plant them. They just appeared one day and he took it as a sign, so he does his best to protect them, to nurture them, to ensure they spread, and they have. It feels wrong to eat them but he knows that the rabbits do.
He planted marigolds for Mista. He did it because they remind him of the color of his stand, but later, after he had planted them, he read about their connotations in other parts of the world. They guide the dead. He wonders.
Trish is not buried in the field of flowers. She's buried alongside her mother. Even still, he planted vibrant peonies in her honor, the exact shade of her hair. He picks them, takes them to her grave, offers some as an apology to Donatella for not protecting her girl well enough from the devil that was her father.
And for Abbacchio, for Leone, for the man he loves so well, loves dearly and strong, unfaded by the passage of years, the man he loves and the man he lost, he planted a field of lavender as an apology. He keeps bees now and they love the fragrant blossoms. When he gathers the honey and stirs it into his tea, it's as sweet as his lips.
And when the wind blows through the field of lavender, the bees dance and for just a moment, Bruno closes his eyes and he's twenty again and in his proper body and Leone, eyes full of laughter, leans in close to whisper into his ear a scandalous secret he's uncovered about a rival gangster, now probably long dead, before pressing a kiss to his jawline and he smells his perfume all around him, lavender.
For himself, he planted lilies, white as bone. Bruno buried himself when he buried the rest, buried himself next to Leone. He wears another man's body now, the body of the man who killed everyone he loves, the body of the man who killed him.
He used to hate it, used to hate looking at himself, used to hate himself. He accepts it now. It is what it is. He can't change it but he can keep on living. He can grow old.
So Bruno tends to Passione and he tends to the flowers and he talks to his family as they sleep.