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Brood of a New Age

2.

Sentences in Italian are marked with ^...^ .

Luca was nervous.

It was the first time he was flying. And then a long-haul flight with a more than valuable cargo down in the hold.

The check-in alone had taken forever and even if it had calmed him down to see through his porthole window how his transport box with the currently petrified gargoyles was loaded (God forbid that his cargo came into another airplane and flew to God knows where without him!), he was nauseous by the thought of being ten thousand meters in the air. What must it be like for the gargoyles tonight, he thought. After all, they had wings and the air was their element. And later they would wake up in a crate, knowing and perhaps sensing that they were high in the air and not allowed to move from the spot so as not to be discovered.

He was less worried about his lady of the heart. But for a moment it occurred to him what would happen if Fiore panicked, or rather raged, and blew up the crate, smashed everything in the cargo hold, and then ripped open the cargo hold hatch to finally be airborn again. Then the plane would crash with him and all the other humans, and they would all either die on impact with the concrete-hard surface of the water or drown in the Atlantic Ocean-just like Fiore and Eva, because he didn't think a gargoyle could fly that far to reach land anywhere. The Atlantic was a big watery grave 95 percent of the trip. Luca put a hand over his mouth and tried to push back the nausea. And yet he wasn't even in the air yet.

^"Scusi signore. Is everything all right?"^ asked the stewardess, whose arrival he hadn't noticed because for minutes people had been pushing their way through, loading hand luggage into the upper compartments, unloading it again, rearranging it, going to the toilet one more time, or simply chattering to each other across seats and rows of seats.

He nodded and made an effort to smile.

^"Of course. It's just my first time flying and I'm a little antsy,"^ he admitted, and the stewardess' smile widened, too, though it seemed somehow fake.

^"Well, you're in luck. Here we have someone else flying for the first time today." ^

She stepped aside and gave a view of a child. An adorable girl with a cherubic face that was tanned by the Italian sun but still flawless except for a beauty mark on her cheek below her left eye.

Gentle dark brown, almost black waves framed her face and flowed over her shoulders. Everything about her was delicate - from her arms wrapped around a gray stuffed bunny with big floppy ears, to her pink backpack dangling from her arm, to her white dress that was so full of bows and lace that it just HAD to be uncomfortable, the white tights, and the snow-white patent leather shoes that were almost certainly brand new from the shoe box. She looked like every Italian man dreamed of his and her child, his and her daughter.

Italian men wanted daughters as beautiful and pure as virgins (so that they would remain virgins forever, even after they had become mothers themselves as adults!) and spoiled these girls with pomp and impractical dresses even to the point that poorer men went into debt for them.

Italian women, especially the aunts and grandmothers loved to stage their nieces and granddaughters like mannequins especially on special occasions so that all the women, men and most of all the tiresome relatives could see how perfect their own child was and how well-behaved this one girl could keep her little dress in the best condition where other children scuffled, threw dirt and were just uncivilized savages. It was duty, joy and competition to give EVERYTHING for your child and let everyone else see that. Yes- Italians were not the most child loving nation in the world for nothing. Luca had never been particularly fond of children - atypical among his countrymen - but even he felt a silly grin on his lips at the sight of the little doll come to life - until his eyes fell on the card hanging around a ribbon around the girl's neck. Alone traveling minor was written on it.

^"Bambina,"^said the stewardess gently, leaning down to the child, ^"-this uncle is also flying for the first time. Your seats are next to his. I suggest your bunny sit between the two of you, then it can comfort him too, and you sit on the aisle so I can see anytime if you have a problem. Is that okay with you?"^

The girl nodded and briefly laid her chestnut brown eyes on him before shyly lowering them, climbing to her seat on the aisle and tentatively placing the bunny next to Luca.

After the stewardess had fastened the child - she gave Luca a look that seemed friendly but clearly said that this rabbit was forbidden to switch places with the child during the flight and should the girl show even a hint of discomfort about the adult stranger near her, she and the other boarding personnel would be there to do God knows what with him. Luca swallowed nervously and slid awkwardly in his seat. Yes, he knew what he looked like. A big bald thug who looked like he had broken his nose and his cheekbone. Which he had. Both even several times - first by his activity as a semi-professional boxer in his youth and most recently his nose four months ago when Rocco had stomped him into the ground, although he had also been able to land some good punches. He really wasn't the person anyone would want to sit their child - or even a foreign child, especially such a wonderfully sweet little girl - next to. But he suspected that it would look even stranger if he now acted as if they were stuffing living crabs into his underpants by putting the child next to him. Nobody did that on purpose. It was a coincidence that the child's seats (it had two seats?) were next to his - that was simply how the bookings were made. So, in an effort NOT to look like a fucking child molester who had something to hide - although he really did have TWO things to hide down in the cargo hold - Luca reached out his hand, smiled at the child who had just been strapped in by the stewardess and said:

^"I am Luca De Santis. I am a detective from Naples and I work for the Polizia di Stato in the Commissariato Vicaria Mercato. I'm in New York visiting relatives and flying for the first time and I'm terribly nervous,"^ he babbled, trying to reveal so much about himself within earshot of the stewardess and the rows of seats surrounding him that there would be no doubt at all that he was anything but an anonymous pervert but instead a respectable servant of the Italian state. Even if, after the disaster in the Della Marra case, in which so much remained unexplained in his report, he had taken months of "vacation" and a police psychologist had also confirmed to him that he should go "far away" to "gain distance". It probably also helped that he was caught between the fronts of the "gang war" between Della Marra and an enemy gangster boss, which had also hurt him psychologically so much that he had shed a few tears during the interrogation of his colleagues. He had never considered himself a good actor, but maybe that was just part of being Gargoyle's confidant, and everyone had believed him that he would be unfit for work for the next months. Finally his hand, after being held out for a few seconds under the stewardess's icy gaze, was grasped by the girl - briefly and delicately little fingers disappeared within his.

^"I'm flying for the first time, too,"^ said the child with a ladylike, reserved smile that would sweep away all young men in ten years at the latest. The stewardess seemed a little more reassured, assuring Graziella again that she would be kept in mind and only had to call out if anything - ANYTHING - was wrong, then she was gone. Luca exhaled in relief. He, his seatmate - the rabbit, and the child spent the next few minutes in silence. The detective briefly thought about what it would have been like for him to fly in an airplane as a child. He-almost any child-would have vied for the seat by the window. Seeing the world from above, soaring above the clouds. An ancient dream of mankind. But Graziella seemed different. She looked around, watching the people who were still boarding, who finally all took their seats after the crew had announced their departure, listening to the chief steward's explanations of how to handle the breathing masks hidden in the compartments above each seat and the life jackets under each seat, should they be needed. But although she seemed a bit jittery, it didn't seem to be because of the flight. She seemed stiff and anxious to remain stiff, smiled little, often looked blankly, and generally seemed introverted.

Okay, thought Luca - with such a child he could survive the trip. Not a whining, whimpering bundle when he already felt like a whining, whimpering bundle.

After uncounted minutes, a jolt- not even a particularly strong one- went through the plane. He pressed his fingernails into his armrests and watched with an anxious heart as the plane began to move and taxied across the runway. Very slowly at first, taking a turn, then picking up speed on a straight stretch. The sound of the engines grew louder. Luca stared out of his window, expecting every second that this bird - weighing tons and physically impossible to fly! - would take off. Should he lower the blind? No - he had to see when it was going to take off to be able to judge when he had to scream. There - Luca was tense from tiptoe to neck - he suddenly felt something soft on the back of his hand. Perplexed, he turned his head and saw that the girl had put her hand on his even if she had to lean quite a bit to the side to do so. The ear of her rabbit was between his and her skin as if it had been drilled into the girl that she was not allowed to touch anyone. The girl looked at him pityingly but said nothing and Luca said nothing as he grabbed the rabbit's floppy ear and held on to it just as the child held on to it when the plane lost contact with the ground and his stomach was pulled down as they ascended. He didn't look out the window. He looked only at his hand clutching that piece of cloth for comfort. But it was working. The feeling of nausea and worry didn't go away, but they were manageable. And then the plane stabilized and Luca De Santis saw only absorbent cotton clouds and blue- oh so blue sky above. He took a deep breath and exhaled again, sending a push prayer to the sky. He hoped the worst was over. And he did it with the help of a stuffed rabbit.

He let go of the ear as one of the stewardesses, after the sign that everyone was allowed to unbuckle and move around in the plane had lit up again, made a check and also asked the girl if everything was all right.

The child nodded again with that inhibited smile and then leaned stiffly back in her seat.

The detective leaned toward her now and said as quietly as he could in the plane's small beehive:

^"Thank you for helping me just now."^

She gave him a look that was delightfully smooth and perky, triumphant and engaging, and that showed she was more - so much more than a doll.

^"That wasn't me. It was Grigio."^

Luca looked at the rabbit and grinned. ^"The name suits him. Thank you, Grigio."^

^"You don't have to thank him. He's not alive,"^ the child said precociously, being completely serious.

No, not a doll. A real personality who would give her parents a hard time someday, at the latest when the boys were lining up at her door, Luca thought with amusement, thinking about how old the girl might be. Maybe eight. But she was very delicate - so could be a year younger or older.

The next hours of the flight passed halfway pleasantly and quickly. Luca ordered an orange juice from the boarding staff - basically he felt more in the mood for a beer, but by God he wouldn't drink alcohol next to a child traveling alone and give the impression that he was building up courage for whatever. Then he studied some of the reading material he had brought with him. Mostly American magazines, which he had bought by the dozens over the last few months, not being picky, and in addition to his New York guidebook, he also looked through some Time magazine and InTouch US issues, as well as Sports Illustrated (How could Americans be so obsessed with American football when there was REAL football! - or soccer as they called it).

The Time Magazine, which had the events around the Gargoyle with some other books he packed to his "fellow travelers" in the box in addition with two water bottles, a few sandwiches and a flashlight because he did not assume that even Gargoyle eyes with so little light as down there and locked in their transport box without light source would be able to read.

In fact, there were two editions. The one from last December after the gargoyles were discovered in New York. And the one from a few weeks ago with the latest events. Hard to believe that a Gargoyle, and even the biggest and scariest - Goliath - had been arrested by this Gargoyle Task Force, imprisoned and put on trial by the state! WITHOUT a charge - but to determine ... to decide ... to judge whether he (whether Gargoyles in general) had sentience. Sentience, conscience and intelligence and thus could be granted human rights.

Luca had been seething with anger when he first read this newspaper article in May. How could they! How could ANYONE doubt that! These arrogant people, these self-absorbed Americans! And yet ... he had wondered, after his initial anger had faded, how such a thing would have been handled in Italy. Italy with its long history of uprisings, fascism (he knew that many old Italians still had a bust of Mussolini standing around) but also the Resistance and the opposition to the Nazi regime. And Luca had to admit to himself that if a Gargoyle clan had been discovered in Italy, he couldn't be sure if they would have had the option of a trial there. Whether they would not have been killed or smashed beforehand by concerned citizens or a national police force. Luca had never asked what had become of Eva's and Fiore's family - their parents ... but the fact was that there was no knowledge about Italian Gargoyles. Luca had checked that in the last months. He had made one or two train trips, to northern and southern Italy. And from the green mountainous villages in the tri-border area to the bone-dry heel of the boot, he had found no clues, no stories, no rumors, not even legends. No gargoyles - no strong gothic culture at all. Instead, religion, mafia, popular culture. Perhaps three things that had killed the gargoyles in Italy.

Madly (in typical American fashion), after witness interviews and after the Gargoyle Goliath himself had been allowed to speak in court (and boy, how he had spoken - his speech had been published in every newspaper and magazine), he had been released. Under the condition that they were not allowed to leave their protectorate. As if they ever would, Goliath had made it clear that normal gargoyles were very loyal to their territory. Now, in numerous further negotiations, the current pending toleration status of the gargoyles and their rights and duties within human society would have to be clarified. How much could Gargoyles be integrated into the community? Where exceptions had to be created, where they had to bow to stricter rules. All this would need YEARS to be sorted out. Currently, this new intelligent, extremely rare race was almost like a endangered, protected species ... this comparison disgusted Luca, but it was probably the best that could have been achieved in a single court case for a gargoyle. Even if the gargoyle's lawyer had been a badass.

And what his Eva had taken with excitement and happiness and Fiore had taken with disbelief and suspicion had only raised dozens more concerns for Luca. If his two charges broke out of their box tomorrow night in America, they would just NOT be able to march through the streets like humans. Fiore anyway, he would threaten anyone who looked at him foolishly with a beating. Gargoyles were in danger precisely BECAUSE their legal status was not clearly clarified, they were not yet officially accepted nationwide. Luca didn't know anything about American law, but New York was just one tiny state out of many. Wouldn't it require - dunno - congressional approval, or a presidential decree? And even with that, gargoyles would still be in danger for a long time if they showed themselves in public. So their mission had not changed - not by the recent events. Their search had to take place in secret. It would be too easy if he could just walk into a police station to other detectives, for example the GTF, and ask to be taken to the gargoyles' place of residence, because he had two new family members in the back of his truck.

When Luca started to feel a bit queasy from looking down all the time in the afternoon, he was more interested in the movies that were shown. Although Eva and even the quickly annoyed Fiore learned faster than he did, he never thought he would raise his bumpy scholastic English to this level in such a short time that he could watch foreign movies without subtitles. There were great Italian and American movies on the screens on the plane but they wisely avoided box office hits like Independence day. Movies where a lot of stuff blew up and Air Force One narrowly escaped a firestorm were not something anyone wanted to see on a plane trip. But when the Nutty Professor came on in English, Luca was happy to watch it and the child chuckled a few times as well, which probably meant that she spoke some English herself. The weather was stable and when the cloud cover finally cleared in the afternoon, Luca could just see the plastic seas of the Spanish south before the Atlantic Ocean stretched out below them. Where Luca's stomach had settled and he hungrily accepted dinner and placed it on his unfolded table, the child declined the dinner and instead requested a bottle of water from the airline trolley that was pushed down the aisle every few hours.

^"Aren't you hungry?"^ he asked, concerned and mentally at his own nausea a few hours ago.

The girl, who so far, unlike most of other kids, had shown no signs of boredom, which quickly expressed itself in annoying hyperactivity and fidgeting around. In fact, she had barely moved in the last few hours. She looked up from her book. An old book he had read himself as a boy about a man and his duck who set off on a trip around the world, seeing numerous places and having adventures. Not really girly literature.

Briefly, the child seemed to think about what to say to him. Then she returned her gaze to the book and said softly, ^"I'll eat later."^

Luca woke up because he was cold. And because his neck hurt like hell. He had fallen asleep and now he saw through his viewport that it was deepest night - a razor-sharp crescent moon illuminated only faintly individual clouds and deep down a black infinity of water. So his travel companions were awake down in the cargo hold. And obviously well-behaved so far since there was no commotion on the plane. Luca turned his head and saw the child eating. If one could call that eating. The girl had taken out of her pink backpack a small plastic box which she now put close under her face and munched one of the crackers out of it like a bunny as if she would face the death penalty if she lost even one crumb.

Luca stirred, his aching limbs cracked. No, such a flight was not pleasant - almost an ordeal. He briefly looked around in the cabin. Pleasantly, the main lighting for the evening had been turned off, and it was up to the travelers to turn on the small lamps above their seats - which only a few had done. Most people were asleep, many with blankets spread over them, curled up or stretched out as best they could without taking too much space from their fellow passengers sitting behind them with their seat backs folded back. The dimness of the plane was almost soothing.

The girl had stopped munching and he felt her eyes on him as he reached up to fiddle with the knobs on the vent. The thing had to be set too cold. But obviously it couldn't be turned any warmer. Maybe the vent had to make a cooling chamber out of the interior of the plane-he didn't know.

Sighing, he turned to the girl who had taken another cracker and was again eating it as slowly and carefully as she could.

^"Please tell me you ate something decent while I was asleep,"^ he whispered, and she looked up again. Then back to the cookie in her hand, then back to him.

^"I don't need much,"^ she said, and everything about her tone, to her word choice, to her facial expression was just wrong and revealed the lie.

^"I'm sure the stewardess will make you a snack if we ask her really nicely,"^ Luca said and the child shook her head vehemently that her adorable soft curls were dancing.

^"I mustn't get my dress dirty,"^ she said, and that was now the truth of her motives.

^"But the flight is very long. Are these crackers supposed to be all you eat?"^

She smiled at him and her smile was tired and somehow patronizing as if she didn't want to bother explaining something he wouldn't understand anyway.

^"Nonna said I have to look pretty when I meet my papà and his family,"^ she said after a few moments.

^"Oh, you're flying to New York to see your papà? That's a long trip. Does he work there?"^

Again the child seemed to think about her answer while she plucked at the plastic foil that surrounded the next cookies. Then she smiled at him-almost as if challenging him-and said:

^"Yes. Now that mamma is dead, Nonna said he should take care of me as soon as he is out of prison."^

Luca's smile fell from his face. Something that did not fail to catch the child's eye.

She smiled wider and handed him the next two-pack of crackers.

^" Would you open this for me, Signor De Santos?"^

^"Yes- yes of course,"^ he mumbled, opening the package the child had struggled with a bit earlier and handing it back to her. While she pulled out a cookie and ate it bent over again, Luca couldn't help but stare at her. This angelic little creature flew thousands of miles only to be taken in by an ex-con after the death of her mother?

^"What-what did your papà do?"^ he asked hoarsely, and the child shrugged without looking at him.

^"Nonna said he made bad choices. But it won't happen again. And I'm not alone with him either. There's a grandpa I don't know, I hope he's nice because Nonna's husband - my mamma's papà - was dead before I was born but the other kids always said that most grandpas are very nice. And I also have an aunt and a great uncle- that is the uncle of my papà - and they have a big house and a lot of employees and I'm sure I'll make a lot of friends because I also had a lot of friends in Limatola even if some of them weren't so nice to me because my papà was last with us when he made me in mammas belly and they said I was a half orphan. But I beat Roberto up when he said that again - really hard in front of everyone and since then the others have left me alone. At that time I was not a half-orphan. I am only now a half-orphan where mamma is no longer there and papà and all the others will take care of me. After all, his family has kept in touch with Nonna and they have always sent money and I'm sure everything will be fine and exciting and beautiful in America. We didn't have a TV but at Viola's I watched Mamma ho riperso l'aereo - Mi sono smarrito a New York and that was great. "^

Luca nodded open-mouthed throughout the narrative. If the little girl had been a suspect, his detective heart would have rejoiced at her verbal outpouring, but as it was, everything she said made him uncomfortable. A dead mother. An asshole of a jailbird father who had probably only been on vacation in Campania, had impregnated an innocent girl and then had run away and now he and his family, who until now had apparently not given a fuck about the girl, were supposed to take care of her? It might be that they had sent money to the girl's mother and grandmother to keep them quiet and out of a crude sense of honor. But that basically meant nothing. He would have liked to ask the child if she already knew where she would live and then he would have tried to get his American colleagues to visit her there from time to time, so that this bunch knew that they were under observation and had to treat the girl well. Apart from the fact that the child would get a culture shock in New York because he himself had once been in Limatola. It could hardly be said that life in the picturesque mountain village between ranges of hills of two nature reserves prepared one well for the big wide world and a big American city. On the other hand - if you looked past her angelic getup (which may have been forced on her by her grandma in hopes of winning over this deviant kin) she didn't seem daft and was apparently quite strong-willed and bold (Italian girls didn't beat up boys - not usually.). Maybe the kid could take care of herself. He fervently hoped so.

Apparently introverted again, the girl slowly munched on her crackers. He assumed she had suddenly become talkative on the subject not because she wanted to reassure the detective next to her but because she found the thought of being put in front of a whole new family frightening and wanted to reassure herself. At least her face had alternated between excitement and that underlying desperation that people often display when they have no idea what to expect.

It had not escaped him, however, that the child had not said what her papà had done. She probably didn't know herself. Rarely did adults brag to their children about their bad deeds, but the girl didn't seem to care about that either. He hoped, he prayed, that she would really be all right, wished her a good appetite (since she was obviously suppressing her hunger as she must have been drilled into her) and pushed past her with stiff legs to go to the bathroom and get two blankets for himself and the girl.

.

Attention spoilers for the comics!:

At this point it's important to say that I've been thinking for a long time whether to write the story now or wait until half a year from now when the Dynamite comics are out and it's clear how the trial for Goliath will turn out.

We're on comic number six and, of course, a lot of things are unclear. (Is Antoinette Dracon screwing over Broadway and was the drone thing a set-up she knew about? Is Dino Dracon being kicked out of the family or is everyone in cahoots at the end? How does Demona come into play? )But I'm SO impatient and I'm just knitting the story after the trial as I hope or imagine it (including what happens to the Dracons).

A lot of it will be wrong, one or two things will be right (can it really be in a comic that is still under Disney protectorate that Goliath is not allowed to speak at the end and is not released and Gargoyles get at least a halfway recognized status? The storyline with the Dracons is much more unpredictable).

I think everything that deviates from the comics from now on can be forgiven at this point - it is fanfiction and must primarily serve my own storyline - period.
(Off topic Fangirl voice: And that look Lexington gave Broadway in the sixt issue after he asked how that long-distance thing with Staghart was going! AHHHH screech- that look was SO SWEET and grateful and familiar and I need to adjust the Lexington/Nathaniel storyline in the third book to reflect that at least Broadway knew very well that there was something between Lex and Amp. Hihihi)

The book the child was reading was Mister Master by Donatella Ziliotto. And the movie title Mamma ho riperso l'aereo - Mi sono smarrito a New York translates as Home Alone 2 - Lost in New York. Grigio (the name of the bunny) means Gray.