V. What the thunder said
or, LIFE HAS JUST BEGUN
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Who is the third who walks always beside you? --T.S. ELIOT
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The last of the city's rainfall always came after the long chilly spell of winter. Winter was rain and sleet and sometimes a flaky kind of snow in the upper hills, but that was alright; the storms that moved across the bay like a rapidly-spreading disease brought thunder, bruising across the hills, and a steady flow of rain. It was the storms that shook the buildings, that ruined the air above and inside the opera houses, the theatres, the dim halls of the mansion.
In the days when she was away (as a child it never occurs to one that 'Bologna' and 'Florencia' and 'home' were actually cities far apart, despite the fact that they were in the same country, or that the major conservatories of the city were scattered and far from their estate) there were things he did that helped him cope. He'd pull the curtains shut tight, or lose himself in the library downstairs where the rumbling didn't sound like it would shatter the high glass windows of the house.
On many days he stayed in the music room, and practiced; terrible fingering pounding on terrible note was at least capable of being corrected, whereas the thunder droned on in an ugly, hair-raising treble. Eventually he grew to learn what the pieces his mother taught him meant in her native tongue, the language he adopted along with his new name.
In the days when the lingering scent of almonds kept him away from the music room, when his pianist's fingers became just a little bit stiffer, and now more calloused, he played on different 'music'. Gunpowder strong enough to swallow the sound of crashing rain was music to him now. The smoke that settled afterwards was the light fading of a prolonged bar that cleared away to reveal the effect of the song: trance, horror, awe.
"Who are you looking for, Gokudera?"
He likes to think he picked up strange habits along the way out of necessity. For instance, Ryohei notices that he sniffs his food before he eats it, sniffs the room when he enters it. Fastidious to the extreme, the boxer thinks, but a house of hidden poisons teaches one to be wary. Gokudera hated the whole concept of smelling, of scent, because it could not be controlled, because it was many-sided and deceitful; what was "sweet" and "breakfast" was a vicious half-sister's cover for a crime, while "saltwater" and "brine" and "old wet wood" called up places of a cramped nature, the tossing of a vexed sea.
From the old Latin sentire, to sense: a lie. In Japanese it was at least discreetly honest; the same word written differently could also refer to a rising stench. ìıÇ¢, èLÇ¢, ÉjÉIÉCÅB
Wet earth, water after the rain, pale flowers conjured up a city clawing on to what was a comfortable winter, teetering on the edge of a dreaded spring. A spring that coloured each evening bruise-violet, that took a little of what was his, every time it occurred. Playing with missing keys; while one didn't press all the keys on the keyboard to finish a song, he felt like he had been improvising all his life.
The Tenth had the curious look of someone he knew, someone he had met before, but he could not quite place. The brown eyes trained on him now, as they did several long seasons ago, on a pier in Catania, except that they were outside a flower shop, simply passing through after day of school. The pallor of petals slowed time as they erected themselves in the air; and then it seemed as if everything that moved, moved to a sound only he could hear.
Piano, piano, slowly.
"Is there something the matter? You-you've been looking over your shoulder since we stepped out a-and...are we waiting for anyone?"
It could have been for the bodyguard who chased him down from the church to the car, sluggish in his heels. It could have been for his sister, prowling, watching. It could have been for the shady deals he had the misfortune of running into, of his harsh but brotherly upbringing in the heart of Vongola gangland, it could have been for himself.
Himself, the kid he left behind with the unutterable name and the pianist's hands ("long, like candles"), who disliked thunderstorms as they roared over Naples. Memories occur to Gokudera in powerful bursts of light and sound, not quite unlike an explosion: it tore the coherence of one reality apart, completely, revealing an image that he thought he'd left to die in the abandoned rooms of his past.
To drown, in a forgetfulness that was white like poisoned milk, as incoherent as the words he used to say as a child when he could not pronounce the name of that song: Cielo blu cielo blu cielo blu. He looked over his shoulder as a storm looks over its passing, watching to see what was left of him after the rains. After the spring.
A song I thought I recognised. The right keys. Always an andantino sort of time, with andantino rains that roused the smell of the earth after its finale. A city on the hill. Terrible city. City of scent, city that sent me away. Hell. Va fa Napoli.
He cannot translate it all for the boss of course, and the Italian in the Tenth's features are literally only skin deep for now. But that was alright; so was his. From then on he was Gokudera Hayato ('haya' meant 'falcon', bird of prey, sky-sailor), Vongola trustee, now right-hand man of the next candidate for the Tenth Vongola boss.
To Tsuna, Gokudera simply shrugs and murmurs, "I...thought I saw a cat."
A smile breaks the worried Tenth's countenance, as light breaks through a cloud. "Uri, is it?"
"...Maybe."
His shoes squelched as he turned, the puddles from the last of the spring rains disturbed by his movement, shattering the reflection of blank-slate sky.
FINAL NOTES »
YES FINALLY. Sorry about this. But major influences for this was the lovely lovely music of Ryuichi Sakamoto, especially the one he wrote for "Babel", Bibo no Aozora [ › ]. If it were at all possible to insert sound as a backdrop for a fic, then this would be it. All ye easter eggs abound.
...also, Queen. And T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland".
Aozora means "blue sky", but also a metaphor for "clear skies", cloudless skies.