So, I'm not dead. First, sorry for the no-warning disappearance. Family emergency of the accident variety - the parents involved are arguably recovered now (and thank God the kids weren't in the car), but they have young children and needed a live-in nanny for a while. Also, my niece is adorable. My nephews are slightly less so, but. Well. Boys will be boys, especially the younger ones. And they did try to behave, so points for effort. I'm still on-call just in case - brother-in-law had a pretty bad knock to the head, and while he's only missing a day or three, memory-wise, there's a watch on for complications even if they're not too likely at this point. That aside, I've completely lost track of my actual storyline for Not Quite Myths, so I'm putting this up as proof of life and going back through it to pick up my scattered thoughts. Hopefully will have something in a few days.

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Mukuro was a lot of things. Unforgiving, cruel, monster, he'd been called. But he was born to a Famiglia that used their own children as test subjects in an attempt to further their own power, people who drove him into death's arms six times (please, please, let this be the last) only to drag him back, trying to expand his power so they could use it as theirs.

(The other children suffered as he did, though not always in the same ways. When his power grew, and they could no longer control him—he destroyed them. He claimed it vengeance. It wasn't. He'd just wanted the pain to stop.)

The Northern Famiglia… they were kind, to Mukuro. Kind. He did not trust their kindness, except for Lancia's genuine heart. He was a Mist, deception incarnate, and he knew when he was being manipulated.

They wanted his power as surely as those who'd forced it upon him, and they used their truest member—the one who believed them good—in an attempt to bring him into their fold.

(He heard, one day, them speaking of the others. Disdainful, gloating that they had gotten the most powerful, that Mukuro would be theirs.)

Mukuro was no one's possession.

He wiped them from the earth, and perhaps it was cruel to use Lancia to do it, but he didn't want that one kind person to die. Lancia had shown him kindness, and life and ignorant grief were surely better than death alongside those who'd deceived him so cleanly, even if the man himself would never know.

(He had never intended to keep Lancia forever. But Ken and Chikusa, once he found them, came first. Would always come before Lancia, because Lancia had been kind but they had suffered. If he could prevent it, they would not suffer so again. And three children did not escape notice without an adult nearby, not in civilian sectors, and Lancia was… convenient. And that way, Mukuro at least knew he was healthy.)

Getting caught by and subsequently escaping the Vindice? Not something he wanted to repeat.

The Vindice's black Flames made his skin crawl the way Hell had, burned the way being dragged through planes of existence over and over and over had. He never wanted to go back.

(And then he heard about a civilian-turning-mob-heir, and thought 'Vongola' and 'power' and 'safety'. As it turned out, he wasn't exactly wrong.)

There was no regret for beating down the 'strongest' in the town, in using the Ranking Prince for his own ends. No regret for pain inflicted or using the others he'd brought with him from Vindicare. (Except Ken and Chikusa, always except them, because they were family even if he could never admit it. To admit weakness was to expose it, to leave it open to attack.)

Then he met firmly resolved eyes, and someone who was so genuine, so real, that it made Lancia's honest kindness seem cruel and deceptive in comparison. Had been shocked when the boy stood before him glowing with the Vongola's legendary Hyper Dying Will, eyes and Flame amber-clear, and then there was the bird.

(Mukuro recognized it, vaguely, from myth and legend. He'd been startled, lost focus, and then lost the fight. But when the Vindice came…

Tsunayoshi called to him, asked for him, won him from the most feared in the mafia, won him and those few he cared about with words alone, and done so with no ulterior motives. How could he not return that with the loyalty that wasn't even asked?)

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