Author's Note: Revised 5/17/15
Hope you like the new version xp I know I do~
I actually really enjoyed writing this. There will be a part two later on down the line.
It was the night of October 13th, 1930. The midnight air is crisp, fresh but thick with a dense fog that blocked out the moonlight and the street-lamps that illuminated the streets of Venice. It was quiet but occasionally, in the alley-ways, one could hear animals scuffling in the sewers or street-rats looking for food in the garbage bins behind various restaurants.
In the house of a young Mafia affiliated business man lay a woman he had chosen to bare his offspring—the woman was probably no older than sixteen or seventeen years of age and an orphan as such was common in times such as these—lay on the floor, writhing, gripping and screaming as she forced out the child of a monster.
"Breathe, young mistress, just breath." The mid-wives urged. "Now, on three, I need you to push… one… two… three!"
Her screaming escalated as her body convulsed. Her hair was long black, dark as pitch and soaked with sweat. Curls lace through her naturally layered hair and her eyes were gold, piercing and cat-like. Her pupils dilated to their full width and almost, almost, changed the color of her eyes to black. Her body slumped back and her chest heaved while the mid-wives work and fuss over the baby she has just delivered—a boy with straight black hair—as he began to cry. It was a shrill sound but the woman, Celestine, enjoys knowing that her baby is alive.
All too soon, is the celebration cut short. Celestine's breathing begins to slow and one of the caregivers is attempted to wake her before she can meet the face of her maker. "Lady Celestine, Lady Celestine! Please, milady, you must open your eyes!"
As if sensing the distress, the child began to scream in agony.
All the while, as this is happening, a man—his hair is brown but his eyes are dark green with specs of silver rimming around his pupils—kicks open the door. "Where is he?" He asks calmly, through the commotion.
"You cannot see them! The young mistress is still givin—gah!" The woman guarding the door screamed when the man's foot lashed out and connected with her abdomen. Her body lurched before she stops moving altogether—the kill is fast. The kick had broken her spine. Hearing the shrill cry from the child, the man opened the door to the room that the woman he had chosen laid. "Celestine," The man greeted the thoroughly exhausted women. "Where is my child?"
The woman's yellow eyes snapped open and she glared furiously at the man. "You will have nothing to do with my boy! I will make sure of th—ah!" She screamed, curling over to nurse her now empty abdomen that throbbed painfully.
The scent of blood and birthing fluid was still thick in the air but the man never paid any of it his mind state, choosing only to stare deceitfully calm at the woman laying still in agony. "I bedded you and gave you my seed to produce an heir. If you wish to have anything to do with the child, you will tell me where he is or so help me—!" Whatever he's going to say is cut off by a gunshot that reverberated throughout the household. Behind him stood a woman with long, flowing white hair and glowing crimson red eyes. She was dressed rather scantly for this time frame—her shirt is only half the length it normally would be and the pants she wore were leather and they hugged her frame like a second layer of skin—but Celestine knew through some instinct that she was only sent here to kill the man that now lay bleeding on the floor.
Before she can thank the woman, however, Celestine felt her body spasm painfully. The mid-wives were in the next room, tending to the screaming child and dressing him but the ones that chose to remain there attempted to sooth her. "Lady Celestine will die." The woman spoke in a deep timbre, low and seductive but easily gentle. "Her heart has ruptured and this time frame lacks the technology needed to repair it. The only thing you can offer her is a painless death."
The white-haired beauty stepped forward and put a clawed—she wasn't but with as long and sharp as her nails were, she might as well have been—hand over her forehead in-between her eyes. Celestine's golden yellow eyes narrowed slightly before blanking out. She slumped forward but the woman was careful enough to catch her and lay her back in the bed.
"That's terrible…" One of the two women tending to the birth-mother's aide whispered.
"Terrible as it may be, the fool of a man didn't think to check her medical records before taking her. Her body was slowly collapsing into itself. She was not expected to live through the span of her pregnancy. I awaited her death so that I could send them both to the grave and not have to worry about the child but quite obviously, I made the wrong decision." The silver haired woman looked down at the mid-wives. The killer stood and the midwives gave her a wide birth. "Where is the child?"
"Y-you aren't going to kill him are you?" One of them asked, horrified.
"No." They let out a sigh of relief. "But you are going to believe that I did."
"Wh—?" The midwife began before she fell to her knees.
Red eyes flashed and the rest of the midwives followed. They knelt there, staring blankly into space. "When I release you, you will tell everyone that Zanna Obscura has struck again. You will tell them that it was she who killed the Don and the wife before she gave birth." The white haired woman snapped and their heads cleared. In the same motion it took to disperse the spell, she flicked a match and dropped it on the ground.
Pulling the cloak so that the child and she would be protected from the icy fog, Zanna Obscura took off into the night with a sleeping child in her arms. "Tonight, you died." She whispered after stopping at an inn for the night. "But I brought you back from the ashes so you could be reborn."
Reborn.
Renato.
"Renato. My son, Renato. Do not make me regret my decision later on, little one. I do not want you to know the pain of abandonment but I am not above leaving you somewhere if you get in my way."
The child was fast asleep. Zanna sighed. "What am I to do?"
When Renato was six, he was far more intelligent than other kids his age. In order to get him to sit through school (which he claimed was boring and under-thought), she taught him how to work with projectiles. It would be quite some time until they would figure out his Element.
He knew about her night-job, knew that it would call her away and he was not allowed to come with, but he wanted to.
She could only shake her head and sigh. "Keep your hands clean until you are old enough to understand the implications of what you are saying."
He didn't understand. When he told her that, she rolled her eyes.
"Wait until you're older." She repeated.
Needless to say, Renato hadn't got that either.
"Don't you have any friends at school?" Zanna asked Renato who was grouchily eating his cereal.
"I have one friend. She's a bit weird though."
"Oh?" She wasn't so foolish as to ask if he was interested in girls yet. The last time she had, Renato had shot her the most disgusted look she had ever seen. She'd never seen someone look so offended and disgusted at the same time. His expression clearly read what the hell would I need a woman for? It had taken her a while to get over the expression. She was kind of thankful that she caught it on camera.
"She likes to pretend she's a boy."
"I did that when I was little. People look down on women," Although why was beyond her. Women did most of the hard work. Temptresses they may be, man would not exist if a woman was not there to carry him to term.
That is a luxury you will never have, a snide voice told her. Zanna gasped and dropped the plate she had been cleaning. Renato looked up at her curiously. She shook her head. "It's nothing." She said, answering his unspoken question. "It's nothing." She repeated.
She knew Renato didn't believe her. If she was honest, she wasn't sure if she believed herself.
She was gone.
Renato swiped his arm over the vanity that his teacher, his mother, liked to sit at and write in that ratty old journal.
The journal…
Renato stood up, angrily wiping his eyes. She had told him that if anything happened to her, to take that journal to Vongola Settimo. They would offer him a place. The two of them were well acquainted—although his teacher refused to tell him how well.
He didn't know how but something told him that his teacher was never coming back. He had expected her to be gone but he had not expected her to be gone this long. It was almost a week before Renato decided to go into his teacher's room.
Her room had been completely wiped.
Someone had took her… and he was going to use the Vongola to find her.
Sun Guardian.
She wanted him to become the Vongola's Sun Guardian. The incredulity made him want to laugh hysterically. Or cry. Or both. He didn't know anymore. They would put him in a training program that would last the course of four years. In that time, he would learn how to preform the duties of the Sun Guardian and he would finish schooling. At the end of which, if he did not have his diploma, they would have one forged for him. After that, he and Daniella were expected to…
Ah.
...consummate an Elemental bond… with Daniella.
Vongola traditions were so fucked up.
It would take him a few years to realize that that was why his teacher sent him there.
He was assigned a solo mission.
In order to preserve what was left of the Vongola's funds, he was being ordered to take half of Don Al Capone's hidden treasure and convert it into liquid assets that would be directly deposited into the Vongola's treasury. He was ordered to do so by any means.
It didn't take him long to find his means.
Don Al Capone had not kept his hands as clean as he appeared. He had a daughter that he kept hidden from the public view—a daughter that had taken quite a fancy to Lorenzo Goodwing (Reborn's alias). For a while, the two of them danced a mockery of a lovers' dance… until she shot him.
She had stood over him and laughed. "You are the first person to get this close to my daddy's treasure. That means I won't send you back empty handed—if only because I'm feeling a little sentimental." She threw her house keys at him and he fought the urge to grunt when the metal made contact with the bullet wound. "The storage locker I rented has your half of the treasure. Take it and leave because if I ever see your face again, I will kill you."
He had not been the only one after the treasure, he realized belatedly as he was bleeding out. She had been on to him the entire time and had used him as a scapegoat. The only reason he was walking away with his life was because she truly had felt something for him.
That thought did not make returning to Daniella easy but in the end, she was the one who had his loyalty, not her.
When Daniella had fallen ill, Renato could feel his heart shattering all over again. Their reign had been a short one but they had spread their message loud and clear throughout the mafia.
Leave innocence out of it.
Renato knew that her little bastard child would ruin it. He liked manipulating people too much, liked pitting people against each other. Renato would not stay with the Vongola after she passed. When he told his brothers in all but blood this, they understood as he expected they would.
He did not stay to watch her die, instead throwing himself into his work until the day of the Coronation when he healed his wounds, dressed in his finest suit and presented what had once been theirs to the new generation.
Daniella died the very next night and her Guardians were nowhere to be found—not that anyone expected them to be. Only Renato remained in constant contact with the Vongola, although he no longer did missions.
Instead, he just let himself drift as a freelance.
It was just easier that way.
He wasn't expecting to see her—someone who remembered him from his child. The two of them had run into one another at the fishermen's marketplace in Venice and had caught up.
Andreas Calidori was very unique but she had a fierce sense of loyalty and a fire that could not be put out by ordinary means. When they were younger, she liked to cut her hair short and wear pants like a boy would and that had cost her dearly. When their village had been invaded by soldiers, she had been taken. He had not seen her after that.
Until now.
He was glad to see that she grew out of her tomboyish habits. When he told her that, she laughed. "Being married can make any woman want to take care of herself."
That was how he met Colonnello the first time. Andreas found his jealousy amusing but Renato found it irritating. As if he'd make a pass at a married woman…
But she had invited him to live with them and the blonde was fun to piss off…
He should have known his peace would not last.
That reprimanding thought only strengthened when he watch Andreas fall after being struck in the head by a bullet that was meant for him.
Tsuzukeru.
Thanks for reading~!