Another pre-series fic today featuring Narancia angst :')

Whumptober prompts: goodbye note, neglect, 'I thought they were with you'

(Title taken from the Soul Asylum song "Runaway Train")


Runaway Train

New recruit Narancia screws up a mission and decides it might be best if he leaves Bucciarati's team. Meanwhile, Abbacchio and the others find his goodbye note and have a different opinion on the matter.

Day 24: Goodbye Note, Neglect, 'I thought they were with you'

Narancia paced around his room, holding the half-crumpled note in his hand undecidedly, reading over and over his messy scrawl, half of it scratched out. It wasn't like he wanted to do this but…maybe he had jumped the gun a little with his excitement about his new team and frankly, Narancia wasn't interested in being someplace he wasn't wanted anymore.

Part of him wanted to wait for Bucciarati to return so he could apologize to him, explain in person—the man had done so much for him it only seemed right, but he recalled Bucciarati's fury back in the hospital when he had told Narancia not to join Passione, and the thought of facing him now felt like a defeat, like Bucciarati had been right the whole time.

And Abbacchio…well. Narancia couldn't even face Abbacchio again after the screw-up earlier that had led to all this.

He'd started out so confident too, excited for his first real mission, not just running messages and collecting protection money. That day he and Abbacchio had been sent out on a real job, to retrieve an important hard drive with—probably—top secret information on it.

He had been grateful for the distraction, if he were being honest. Everything sucked lately. He couldn't do the math problems Fugo had taught him a million times, leaving the other teen to blow up at him. He'd accidently skipped a whole street of collections he and Abbacchio had gone out to do the day before, leaving Bucciarati to have to go back and take care of them himself. And…well…he already felt like shit because it was that time of year again, and it always hurt, no matter where he was or what he was doing.

So being trusted to accompany Abbacchio on a mission was a boost to his confidence and a welcome distraction.

Until everything had gone to shit and he had messed up big time.

"Okay, listen up," Abbacchio was saying. "We're going to go in and grab the hard drive and that's it."

"Got it."

"You follow my lead."

Narancia followed his lead until they were surprised by a guy who jumped out and split with the hard drive before they could grab it.

Abbacchio swore as he started to give chase but Narancia stepped forward, summoning his Stand.

"Hold on, I got this!" he shouted excitedly, and executed a strafing run with Aerosmith. The runaway cried out, stumbling as he took several bullet wounds, but he was running toward a waiting car, holding out the hard drive to the driver.

"Aerosmith!"

"Hey, wait! The drive is—"

But Narancia was only thinking about making sure the bad guys didn't run off with the hard drive and unloaded Aerosmith's guns into the guy's hand, riddling the hard drive with bullets until it burst into flames. The guy cried out, throwing it aside and leapt into the car before it sped off with a screech of tires.

Narancia grinned and whooped. "All right! Mission accomplished."

"What the hell were you thinking?"

Narancia was spun around by Abbacchio grabbing his shoulder, fury on the goth's face as he loomed over Narancia.

"We needed that hard drive, you idiot! It had vital information on it!"

Narancia shrank back. "But I…"

"And now because of you, the drive is destroyed and the only guy who might know what's on it got away. Nice one, idiot!"

Narancia tried to bite back the sudden lump in his throat, heart pounding as his elation deflated. "I…I'm so—"

"Save it," Abbacchio snarled. "Now I'm gonna have to tell Bucciarati so he can explain this to Polpo. We're gonna look like a fucking joke—next time…you know what, why do I even bother? It's all in one ear out the other with you, isn't it?"

Narancia followed him silently toward the car. He climbed in and had to fight back tears the whole ride back, feeling awful inside. Abbacchio refused to look at him or say anything, simply driving back to the apartment with a tired look on his face.

Narancia tried again to speak when they got in the door.

"A-Abbacchio, I'm really am sorry I screwed up—"

The man simply shouldered past him and went directly to his room, slamming the door.

Narancia stood there for a long moment before he too went to his room, crawling under his blankets.

He could hear when Bucciarati came home, Abbacchio greeting him stiffly before he explained what had happened.

"You gotta figure out what to do with that kid," Abbacchio snapped.

"I know," Bucciarati sighed, and Narancia felt his heart sink further at his tone. "I was afraid he wasn't cut out for it, and maybe I was right."

Another arrow to the heart. Narancia curled further into the bed.

"Do you need me to—"

"No, I'll handle the clean-up on this one. I need to go report to Polpo now."

The day's events would not stop playing over and over in Narancia's head as he stood in his room, indecision tearing him apart. He really thought he'd found a place here, but he'd thought the same thing when he'd been with his old crew too. He'd been so inspired by Bucciarati and Fugo, that he had wanted nothing more than to follow them, but maybe he didn't fit in here either. After all, who wanted a screw up around?

He finally released his pent-up breath and laid the letter down on the messily made bed.

It was better to leave.

He grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder before listening at the door. When he could hear no one up and about, he slipped out and left the apartment, walking out into the night.

XXX

Abbacchio got up early, making coffee. He winced in sympathy as Bucciarati came into the kitchen yawning, his hair still a mess. He'd been out late fixing the mission Abbacchio and Narancia had screwed up and the ex-cop was still pissed about it.

"How did it go?" he asked.

"Not quite over yet, but it won't take too much longer," Bruno murmured, gratefully accepting a mug of coffee as he checked the time. "Can you go out and finish the collection today? I won't have time for it."

"Of course," Abbacchio said. "Give me the list of places I still need to hit."

Bruno nodded and fetched the list. "Oh, and…take Narancia with you. I'm sure he's feeling bad about yesterday and an easy job will help boost his confidence."

Abbacchio sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Yeah, all right."

"Go easy on him," Bruno said. "It's…I believe his mother died around this time of year. He's been trying to hide it but I can tell he's down."

Abbacchio felt a pang of sympathy for the kid in his chest. It wasn't that he disliked Narancia at all—the kid was hyper and loud and definitely a little shit, but he was kind of growing on Leone. He honestly felt a little bad for not checking in on Narancia the day before. He knew how bad it could feel to screw up and he had been pretty unforgiving toward Narancia. But he'd spent the afternoon calming down and it looked like he might get an opportunity to talk to the kid today instead.

Bruno left after a quick breakfast and Abbacchio went to get dressed before knocking on Narancia's door.

"Hey, kid? You feel like going out today?"

No answer. Abbacchio knocked again, harder. "Narancia!"

Still no answer.

Abbacchio huffed a sigh but decided to forget it. The kid was probably sulking. He didn't have time to wait around for a sad teenager anyway. Maybe he'd coax Narancia out with pizza for lunch and have a chat with him instead.

He headed out and finished up the protection collection quickly before heading back. He stopped by their usual pizza place and picked up a couple for lunch.

Fugo was back from his own errands by then as well, drawn out with the promise of pizza.

Abbacchio headed to Narancia's room and knocked on the door. "Hey kid, there's pizza."

He waited, but there was still no answer. Frowning, Abbacchio finally opened the door, peeking inside but saw that Narancia was actually nowhere to be found. His bed was even made.

Abbacchio headed back out to the kitchen where Fugo was grabbing a slice.

"Hey, where's Narancia?" Abbacchio asked him.

Fugo gave him an odd look. "I thought he was with you. Bucciarati said you two were doing collection today."

A weird feeling started in Abbacchio's gut, leaving him no longer hungry for the pizza. "He didn't go with me, I knocked on his door this morning and he didn't answer. Did you see him at all?"

Fugo shook his head, his own brow furrowed in worry. "No."

The front door opened and shut and the two looked up hopefully, but deflated slightly when they saw it was Bucciarati.

"Ah, is that pizza I smell? I'm starving."

"Bucciarati, do you have any idea where Narancia might be?" Fugo asked.

Bruno paused with a slice halfway to his mouth looking between Fugo and Abbacchio. "What do you mean? Didn't he go with you today, Abbacchio?"

Abbacchio turned to head back to Narancia's room, stepping inside this time as he looked around, wondering, what? If the kid was hiding like a stray cat?

It was then he saw the crumpled piece of paper on the bed and bent to pick it up, unfolding it.

There were a lot of blacked out bits as if Narancia had re-written it several times, but at the bottom was a couple scrawled sentences:

"Not sure this team is the best fit for me so I decided it was best that I leave. Thanks for giving me a new start—Narancia"

Abbacchio ran back out to the kitchen. "Bucciarati!"

Bucciarati and Fugo looked over the note. Fugo swore.

"That damned idiot!"

Bruno looked worried. "I should have talked to him last night."

"It's not on you," Abbacchio muttered, tucking the note into his pocket. "I'm the one who got pissed and yelled at him."

"You're not the only one," Fugo sighed. "Where do you think he might have gone, Bucciarati?"

"I don't know, but I think we need to go look for him now before he does something he regrets. The last thing I want is for him to beg Polpo to put him with another crew. I don't want him getting into the shit some of the other teams deal with."

Abbacchio and Fugo nodded in agreement and they wordlessly headed out of the apartment, splitting up to look for their missing member.

Abbacchio found him relatively quickly to his relief, sitting on a bench outside of Libecchio with a stuffed backpack sitting between his feet.

Abbacchio crossed the street, taking a deep breath as he thought about what he could say.

When he finally stopped by the bench, he said, "What are you doing out here, kid?"

Narancia startled and looked up at him in surprise before glancing back down. "Was gonna go inside to eat but…don't have any money."

Abbacchio stepped around him to sit down on the other end of the bench. "You know all you have to do is tell them you're part of Bucciarati's team and they'll give you a meal on the house."

Narancia glanced over at him. "Yeah, but I'm not anymore, am I?" he said bitterly.

Abbacchio raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, I saw your note, but the thing is, Bucciarati actually has to okay you leaving the team and moving to another one or whatever you were planning on doing."

Narancia looked down, hands gripping the straps of his backpack. "So I screwed up again." He sighed. "Let's go back then so I can be officially fired."

"Narancia," Abbacchio caught his shoulder before he could get up. "You're not fired. Look, I'm sorry for blowing up at you yesterday, I was just pissed you didn't take a second to listen to a plan. But we've all made mistakes. You just…learn to do better the next time. You know how many screw-ups Bucciarati's had to smooth over for Fugo and me? You're not the only one. But listen." He turned to Narancia and the boy looked up at him cautiously. "This job isn't a game. It's dangerous, and next time, failing to listen to orders might get you or someone else killed. You're the one who made the decision to join Passione despite Bucciarati telling you not too—don't do something stupid and put your death on his hands."

Narancia looked down and Abbacchio cleared his throat, softening his voice slightly. "That being said, as much as I hate to admit it, I think you'll be a good addition to the team."

Narancia perked up slightly, with a small smile. "I'm sorry. I know I don't make great decisions all the time. It's just…this week hadn't been great and I'm kinda extra messed up right now, you know?"

"Yeah, I get it," Abbacchio replied before he stood, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"Come on. If you're hungry, we have pizza at home."

Narancia stood, blinking in surprise as he pulled his backpack over his shoulders. "So…that's it? I just get to go back to the apartment and eat pizza?"

"I'm not saying Bucciarati isn't going to have a talk with you, but you're not getting kicked out or anything."

Narancia's shoulders slumped in relief, before he hesitated. "Um…Abbacchio? Would it be okay to make a quick stop first?"

XXX

Narancia stopped beside his mother's grave, taking a breath before bending to place the small bunch of flowers he had picked on the way. Abbacchio stood off to one side respectfully. It was nice, actually. It had been a long time since Narancia had visited his mother's grave with anyone else. Obviously, his father couldn't be bothered to give a shit about anything, not even his dead wife—or his living son.

"I guess she probably wouldn't be proud of me, huh?" Narancia muttered. "I mean…I'm not exactly doing the best work."

"I don't know about that," Abbacchio spoke up. "I like to think it's all in how you go about it. The world is an unjust place and it's left up to you to find justice for yourself, no matter what you have to do to get there."

Narancia looked up at him, surprised. "Yeah, I like the sound of that."

He set his hand on the gravestone before pulling away.

"Ready to head back?" Abbacchio asked.

Narancia nodded and as Abbacchio started to turn away, he impulsive ran to the older man and threw his arms around him.

Abbacchio froze in surprise, but Narancia squeezed him once before pulling back.

"Thanks, Abbacchio," he said, smiling up at his new teammate.

Abbacchio huffed a breath and actually smiled back, reaching out to ruffle a hand through his hair. "Come on, kid. Let's go home."