[fic] The Piper's Promise 3/3 - END
done now! sorry if the whole thing turned out to be horribly OOC. i am just really, really glad to finally get this story idea off my chest XD;
the ever-talented beanclam has made gorgeous artwork for this fic, and YOU MUST SEE IT. SERIOUSLY. DON'T EVEN READ THE FIC ANYMORE, JUST LOOK AT THE LOVELY ART ♥♥♥
this is the last part. part 2 is here.
part 1 is here.
III. Mukuro
It was too late when Mukuro realized he should not have done this so soon. Even if the young guardian did not have much time left, he could have waited another day.
Just searching for Yamamoto Takeshi's deepest, dearest desires had been difficult. At best, the boy's delusions of grandeur were limited to becoming a baseball MVP. It didn't even involve the mafia. Or rising to the top of any kind of ladder, just so he could step on other people's heads.
No. It wasn't anything so common or simple. His deepest, dearest desire was this:
A fine summer day. A day with no clouds in the sky. And a festival quarter that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see.
There were games, rides, food and trinkets everywhere one looked. There was something to eat or play with or just plain like. It might have been the happiest and most colorful place ever imaginable - everyone was smiling or laughing, and there was always loud, lively music playing.
Mukuro wove through the intricate mess he had pulled out from inside Yamamoto Takeshi's mind. He was impressed, in a way - he had no idea that the boy's idea of "heaven" was so detailed. Very few people knew exactly what kind of world they wanted to have if it was their last day on earth.
This wonderland was Yamamoto Takeshi's last day: a festival that had no end.
This was definitely not a world that Rokudou Mukuro would consider familiar. It was even more childlike than the kinds of paradise that children actually imagined.
Where would one find the boy who had invented this?
He would be on the move, of course. It was well into that neverending day when Mukuro finally found him - and only because he had finally stopped to rest. The teenager in the guise of his five-year-old self was sitting in a shaded area all by himself, kicking his feet in the air, hugging a gigantic teddy bear.
Mukuro followed Yamamoto Takeshi's memories to this point: He had just won a teddy bear in a ball toss. Everyone had crowded around to see the small boy win the biggest prize. It was bigger even than he was, but his father had carried it for him, while his mother had held his hand.
His parents - both of them - had been with him all throughout. The pair of them were off to the rides now, enjoying themselves without him - exactly as he had wanted.
Mukuro walked up to the boy. The boy smiled up at the young man all in black, and it was different from the last time. This time, the boy was happy. This time, he wasn't alone; he was with people he loved, who loved him back, who were family.
Family. The word leapt out of his thoughts. Mukuro noted it down as he greeted: "This is a good place."
The boy only smiled wider. Then looked past the tall youth's shoulder at something in the distance - perhaps his parents waving to him? Another new game that he wanted to play?
"You want to stay here, don't you, Takeshi?"
The boy looked like he didn't want to answer this question, at first. His large brown eyes lost a little of their mirth, and he looked at a lot of other things besides the young man.
Mukuro felt himself growing weaker. He was already considering leaving the child here for another day. It was not his loss, but a day of rest for Mukuro might mean eons in the make-believe place. He might as well leave the boy for dead.
However, as if he knew this, the boy took a deep breath and replied "Unnm. Nope!"
Mukuro's smile faded. "No? Why not? You can stay here for as long as you like. Isn't this what you want?"
As if in answer, the boy hugged his teddy bear tighter, as tight as his little arms could go. But he stayed like this only for a moment. With dignity and care, almost like an adult would, he set the toy aside.
"Tsuna needs me," the boy said, meeting Mukuro's gaze head-on. "He needs a good right-hand man."
For a second the illusionist froze. Something was wrong.
The happy child leapt off his seat, all but bounced toward the young man all in black. His little yukata changed patterns, colors, before Mukuro's gaze, and it was just one of the many distractions that beset Mukuro as he realized it shouldn't have taken so much from him to get to this point.
And yet it was happening. His illusions were breaking down, and he had barely felt it. He was certainly feeling it now - the closest sensation an ordinary person would feel was that of a heart attack coming on.
"Niichan!" the child called from closer to the ground, beckoning with his hands. "Here, over here!"
What the hell else was there to do? Mukuro knelt before the child. The child rushed forward, looking eager to tell a secret into his Niichan's ear.
But when he got there, the child only wrapped his arms around the older boy's neck.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Mukuro made the mistake of closing his eyes as the boy said this, and in his perception, the boy's voice had changed back into that of his teenage self. The arms around his neck weighed heavier - belonged to someone older, in a flash.
He dared not open his eyes until this felt right again, until it felt like something he could control.
This was wrong.
This was wrong.
It shouldn't have taken so much...
***
Then again, he should have known.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in the mist-filled waiting room. The illusions were gone. But he wasn't alone.
"You're still here." Mukuro was the first one to speak.
"I was waiting." Yamamoto greeted him with a wide grin.
He was his almost-grown self again, crouched down to better talk to the boy stretched out in front of him. Any longer, Mukuro thought, and he would start feeling like he was the one in the hospital, seriously injured and out of commission, while people talked about, around and at him.
"Let me guess," Mukuro groaned as he sat up. "You couldn't get out."
Yamamoto let out an embarrassed chuckle. "Well, at least I wasn't bored!" He stretched out his legs. "She was here, you know... Chrome, I mean."
Was she. Mukuro didn't find this unusual. Chrome sometimes came with him on his excursions in finding the children. She had met Manami, had even played with her sometimes.
"She said she sensed that you were tired," Yamamoto continued, "so she came to me. She didn't know how to take me out of this place yet, but she could at least keep me company while you slept.
"I asked 'Why?' and she said 'Mukuro-sama is working his ass off to save you. You must be worth it.' " Then he laughed. He was the type to laugh at his own jokes, too. "Well, she didn't say those words exactly... but you're a real bad influence on her, you know that?"
Mukuro bowed his head. Chrome was his masterpiece. His Galatea. The vessel for his heart. He could only corrupt her. "I know," he simply answered.
"You know what else she said?" Yamamoto kept on. "She said - inside all of us is a dying will. It's stronger in some, and weaker in others, but we all have it. And for most of us, it's only at the end of our lives that it ever really 'wakes up.' That's when it creates a final illusion - because we're all scared of sliding into nothing. Are you going to hell? Are you going to heaven? It's your dying will that creates heaven or hell for you. It gives you whatever fate you want."
It was clear enough that Yamamoto Takeshi didn't understand all of what he was saying. He said them anyway, studying Mukuro's face for any confirmation. (Too bad - and not just because Mukuro was naturally impossible for any ordinary human to read. The truth was simply not that easy to capture in so few words.)
No need to bother with illusions with this one, Mukuro said to himself; he was built to feel, not to comprehend. And even if Chrome told him everything she knew, she didn't know much. His secrets, his plans for the future, were safe.
"She told me about the kids." Mukuro looked at him, when he said this. The smile on his face had taken on a shade of something reluctant - what was it? Admiration? Pity? "When they join the other kids in that meadow... they don't come back, do they?"
The bright meadow... the threshold of no return. Mukuro still remembered finding Yamamoto Takeshi there, small and forlorn and quiet. And above all, ready to leave the waking world for good.
"That's why you created that meadow in the first place - it's so the kids have a place to go. So they don't... will themselves into a bad place. Because it's hard for kids who never had it easy to even imagine what 'heaven' is supposed to be like."
Mukuro wanted to laugh at the absolute certainty in the other young man's voice. But he found that he couldn't. Perhaps he was still too tired...
"You think too highly of me, Vongola." What the hell, Mukuro could spare the kindness to state the obvious. "I happened to save a few children during my evening strolls... that doesn't mean I'm a saint."
"You saved me," Yamamoto pointed out. "And you didn't have to. You could've been out saving other people too. But why kids? And why only the ones who've been hurt bad?"
At this point Mukuro could have said something, or at the very least just killed the happy bastard here and now, just to bring an early end to this conversation.
But he knew Yamamoto was telling the truth. He could spew some random lie about children having stronger dying will flames than adults, or being easier to use while their flesh was still tender - but at the heart of all his deceptions, there was a reason.
A reason why he only sought the ones who had been damaged, traumatized, forsaken by their own.
"I don't understand why you do the things you do, but..." A pause. An unusually thoughtful look. "...What if we can save them together? All the kids in the world? The two of us?"
It was more than a what-if. And it was certainly nothing Mukuro expected. It made him hold his tongue for a good while.
"What do you say? All it needs is teamwork. I take the daytime. You take the night."
"Fool," he chuckled. Takeshi didn't chuckle. Was Fool being serious, Mukuro wondered? All this talk about saving all the children in the world, when he almost died while saving just one?
"I like kids," the Rain Guardian said in a conversational tone. "They're like blank slates, you know? You just have to keep them safe, and they'll change the world someday."
"You don't know how much trouble you've caused me, Vongola," Mukuro murmured. Suddenly Yamamoto was silent, all attention. "You didn't want to wake up, did you? That was why you wouldn't heal fast enough, why your illusion took so much out of me. If I hadn't lost control back there, you would have stayed."
He would have stayed - safe and happy with Mother and Father. Five years old forever, in a celebration that never ended. It was something he wanted more than life: something that made up for his mistakes and losses. Mukuro was almost disappointed; it was an all-too-normal thing to go back to a favorite point in time, so that one could feel like nothing bad ever happened, and all one's sins have yet to be committed.
The guileless smile turned sad. "I've screwed up," Yamamoto said softly. "In everything. Not just a couple of times. And I'm going to screw up again." In the waking world, he would not have said this much. It was only here and now, when no one else was listening, and when the only other person in sight wasn't turning him away, that he could talk. "I'm sick of feeling like that - like I'll always be useless, no matter how hard I try. And I forgot - that there are people who'll accept you, no matter how many times you screw up."
Yamamoto ducked his head: a gesture of humility, of gratitude.
"You're family too, right?"
Mukuro looked at him then, and didn't see the Rain Guardian of the Vongole. Not an enemy or a comrade capable of draining his energy and forcing his hand - but a brown-eyed child named Takeshi who, for an eternal second, didn't want to let go of a teddy bear he had won.
"If you and I... if we can work together, with Tsuna and Gokudera and the rest. The things you want - maybe the truth is, we want them too. Maybe we're all the same -"
"I have nothing in common with mafia scum," Mukuro said without bile, to his own surprise.
"Hey, we're the good guys!" Yamamoto responded, backing up a little. "And you came through for me. I think that means you're a good guy too."
"That's enough." Mukuro's red right eye started to glow - but if Yamamoto noticed, he gave no sign. "I wasted my time with you, but now I'm done. I only said I would try to find you and take you back because I made a promise."
Mukuro got to his feet.
"You know the best thing about promises, Vongola?"
Yamamoto got to his feet as well. For the first time, his face registered alarm.
"I can break mine whenever I want."
He grabbed the boy by his collar and stepped up, so their faces were close together. There was nowhere else for the Rain Guardian to look but deep into the eyes of the Mist Guardian. Before Yamamoto could reach up to try and push Mukuro away, the light in that right eye had grown stronger, brighter, and Yamamoto could see nothing but the color of blood.
"Look closely, Takeshi." Mukuro's cold voice and smile melted into Yamamoto's consciousness. "I'm going to show you a magic trick."
***
Mukuro-sama!
Mukuro turned. He was making his way out of the waiting room, where he had stayed long after he had sent Yamamoto Takeshi out of his realm, back into the arms of his precious famiglia. They must be hovering over him now, Mukuro said to himself, asking him stupid things, like how he was feeling, if he was all right, if there was anything they could get him.
He would give them stupid answers, and laugh, and he would be able to do it all without difficulty; such was the nature of the gift Mukuro left with him before they parted. It would not be long before Yamamoto would heal completely, without help from his illusions; Mukuro's powers did not heal, but they helped the body heal.
Since that business was concluded, and he had adequately rested, it was time for him to attend to other important things. That was when he heard his name being called.
"Mukuro-sama!"
He saw her then, coming toward him out of the mist: the pretty six-year-old who had gotten him into this mess in the first place.
He let her wrap her arms around him; it was her standard greeting. She would grow out of it soon enough, he thought numbly - the time would come when she, too, would have to do his bidding.
She, too, will change the world someday.
"He's all right!" she crowed. Unable to contain her excitement she clutched at the hem of his shirt, jumped up and down as she spoke. "Oniichan is all better! You did it! I knew you would!"
Mukuro laid a hand on her head. "I promised, didn't I, Manami?"
"Yep! You did!" For a moment, she looked confused about something. Then she out and asked: "Mukuro-sama, Oniichan said... he said his offer stands. What does that mean?"
Mukuro allowed himself a brief chuckle.
"My thanks for telling me that, little one. Now there is something I must do. Stay here if you must, but be good."
After a final pat on the head, he disengaged himself from her and left her standing alone in the mist. Puzzled and just a little hurt, just a little lost, the child watched her first messiah fade from her sight.
An "offer"... in retrospect, Mukuro said to himself, as he made his way into the void of souls, toward a familiar flame, it really wasn't funny. It was a genuine proposal. Then again, Mukuro told himself, it wasn't likely he was going to come across many such things in his lifetime... so he might as well laugh at it. After all, it was part of the cosmic joke that had bound him to this hapless famiglia to begin with.
"I take the daytime. You take the night."
Indeed.
***
On the other side of the world, a schoolteacher named Benedetto Greco had dozed off in his armchair, with a small boy on his lap and a storybook open on his knees. He was roused when he felt the book being taken away.
His first half-awake thought was that it must have slid to the floor. He was already reaching down to where he supposed it should have been, when he realized that the book was not on the floor as it should have been - and that the room was suddenly shrouded in mist. Moreover, there was someone else in the mist, casting an ominous shadow over Benedetto and the child fast asleep against his shoulder.
" 'The Pied Piper,' " the tall young man all in black said, one gloved hand flipping through the pages of the storybook he was holding. "Good story. Great character. Can't say much about his fashion sense, but love what he did at the end."
The sight of the young man's glowing red eye shocked Benedetto fully awake. His first reaction was to trap the sleeping child in his arms, hold him protectively close.
"You," he said feebly to the young man all in black, "haven't come to take him away, have you?"
Yes, I have, the young man was almost tempted to say, if only because he wanted to see the dread on the schoolteacher's face turn into fear and then defiance. Benedetto was not a fighting man; it would certainly be entertaining.
"You can't." Benedetto shook his head over and over. "You mustn't! He has the mind of a baby - "
"It's not his mind I need." Though Benedetto shrank from him, attempting to keep the boy out of his reach, one could only sink so deep into a cozy old armchair.
With a gentleness that surprised and at the same time frightened Benedetto, a gloved hand brushed some strands of hair back from the sleeping boy's forehead.
"Guido seems to be in better health. Well done, Benedetto. I made no mistake in choosing you."
Then the young man stepped back, giving the schoolteacher time and space to compose himself, to believe that yes - the black-clad stranger was only here to follow up on little Guido's progress. Nothing more.
The child stirred in his arms, and Benedetto immediately loosened his hold, imagining that it was the tight embrace that had awakened the poor thing. Benedetto rocked the child back and forth without leaving the chair. His eyes were pleading when he looked up at the young man again.
"I," he reluctantly began, "I have to speak very slowly to him, and even then he does not always understand. His brain has been damaged by malnutrition and beatings - he can't comprehend the simplest of texts. Basic calculation doesn't make sense to him. Will he always be like this...?"
"If I say yes, will you give him up, or love him any less?"
Benedetto did not hesitate to shake his head.
The young man smiled at him. "As I thought."
There was something in that smile that chilled the kindly schoolteacher to the bone, made him cringe at the memory of human blood and entrails strewn all over a certain room. It also made him think, for some reason, that this mysterious young man, who came to him in his dreams (for this was certainly a dream. No other conversation would feel so significant) was capable of so much more than he was allowing Benedetto to witness.
He was, for example, capable of "fixing" Guido. Of making him think and act like a normal nine-year-old child. Except he did not wish to do it, and in fact would benefit from not doing it, so he would not trouble himself to go so far.
...But Benedetto had no evidence to support these notions. Nor did he know why they occurred to him in the first place.
The young man set the storybook down on a nearby tabletop. Then he turned again to the man in the armchair.
"Benedetto," he said in a voice that did not command, or intimidate, for once. "When you tell this story to children... do you tell them the Piper is a hero, or a villain?"
The schoolteacher swallowed. Did anything important hang on this question? It certainly felt like it. So, like any honest person would, he placed his faith in the idea that the truth was the only thing that could get him off the hook.
"Neither," Benedetto Greco answered. "I tell them he's only human."
The young man didn't say anything for a while. There was no expression on his face. Benedetto imagined a range of emotions - loneliness, amusement, sorrow, dismay - flash across the young man's eyes... but if it ever happened, it happened in the space of a heartbeat, and was done.
"You needn't worry," the young man promised. "You'll have him for a long time."
Then he vanished into the mist. Only then did his shadow lift.
----------
just for kicks, have one of the songs i was listening to while writing this: [ The Verve - Save the World ]
the ever-talented beanclam has made gorgeous artwork for this fic, and YOU MUST SEE IT. SERIOUSLY. DON'T EVEN READ THE FIC ANYMORE, JUST LOOK AT THE LOVELY ART ♥♥♥
this is the last part. part 2 is here.
part 1 is here.
III. Mukuro
It was too late when Mukuro realized he should not have done this so soon. Even if the young guardian did not have much time left, he could have waited another day.
Just searching for Yamamoto Takeshi's deepest, dearest desires had been difficult. At best, the boy's delusions of grandeur were limited to becoming a baseball MVP. It didn't even involve the mafia. Or rising to the top of any kind of ladder, just so he could step on other people's heads.
No. It wasn't anything so common or simple. His deepest, dearest desire was this:
A fine summer day. A day with no clouds in the sky. And a festival quarter that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see.
There were games, rides, food and trinkets everywhere one looked. There was something to eat or play with or just plain like. It might have been the happiest and most colorful place ever imaginable - everyone was smiling or laughing, and there was always loud, lively music playing.
Mukuro wove through the intricate mess he had pulled out from inside Yamamoto Takeshi's mind. He was impressed, in a way - he had no idea that the boy's idea of "heaven" was so detailed. Very few people knew exactly what kind of world they wanted to have if it was their last day on earth.
This wonderland was Yamamoto Takeshi's last day: a festival that had no end.
This was definitely not a world that Rokudou Mukuro would consider familiar. It was even more childlike than the kinds of paradise that children actually imagined.
Where would one find the boy who had invented this?
He would be on the move, of course. It was well into that neverending day when Mukuro finally found him - and only because he had finally stopped to rest. The teenager in the guise of his five-year-old self was sitting in a shaded area all by himself, kicking his feet in the air, hugging a gigantic teddy bear.
Mukuro followed Yamamoto Takeshi's memories to this point: He had just won a teddy bear in a ball toss. Everyone had crowded around to see the small boy win the biggest prize. It was bigger even than he was, but his father had carried it for him, while his mother had held his hand.
His parents - both of them - had been with him all throughout. The pair of them were off to the rides now, enjoying themselves without him - exactly as he had wanted.
Mukuro walked up to the boy. The boy smiled up at the young man all in black, and it was different from the last time. This time, the boy was happy. This time, he wasn't alone; he was with people he loved, who loved him back, who were family.
Family. The word leapt out of his thoughts. Mukuro noted it down as he greeted: "This is a good place."
The boy only smiled wider. Then looked past the tall youth's shoulder at something in the distance - perhaps his parents waving to him? Another new game that he wanted to play?
"You want to stay here, don't you, Takeshi?"
The boy looked like he didn't want to answer this question, at first. His large brown eyes lost a little of their mirth, and he looked at a lot of other things besides the young man.
Mukuro felt himself growing weaker. He was already considering leaving the child here for another day. It was not his loss, but a day of rest for Mukuro might mean eons in the make-believe place. He might as well leave the boy for dead.
However, as if he knew this, the boy took a deep breath and replied "Unnm. Nope!"
Mukuro's smile faded. "No? Why not? You can stay here for as long as you like. Isn't this what you want?"
As if in answer, the boy hugged his teddy bear tighter, as tight as his little arms could go. But he stayed like this only for a moment. With dignity and care, almost like an adult would, he set the toy aside.
"Tsuna needs me," the boy said, meeting Mukuro's gaze head-on. "He needs a good right-hand man."
For a second the illusionist froze. Something was wrong.
The happy child leapt off his seat, all but bounced toward the young man all in black. His little yukata changed patterns, colors, before Mukuro's gaze, and it was just one of the many distractions that beset Mukuro as he realized it shouldn't have taken so much from him to get to this point.
And yet it was happening. His illusions were breaking down, and he had barely felt it. He was certainly feeling it now - the closest sensation an ordinary person would feel was that of a heart attack coming on.
"Niichan!" the child called from closer to the ground, beckoning with his hands. "Here, over here!"
What the hell else was there to do? Mukuro knelt before the child. The child rushed forward, looking eager to tell a secret into his Niichan's ear.
But when he got there, the child only wrapped his arms around the older boy's neck.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Mukuro made the mistake of closing his eyes as the boy said this, and in his perception, the boy's voice had changed back into that of his teenage self. The arms around his neck weighed heavier - belonged to someone older, in a flash.
He dared not open his eyes until this felt right again, until it felt like something he could control.
This was wrong.
This was wrong.
It shouldn't have taken so much...
***
Then again, he should have known.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in the mist-filled waiting room. The illusions were gone. But he wasn't alone.
"You're still here." Mukuro was the first one to speak.
"I was waiting." Yamamoto greeted him with a wide grin.
He was his almost-grown self again, crouched down to better talk to the boy stretched out in front of him. Any longer, Mukuro thought, and he would start feeling like he was the one in the hospital, seriously injured and out of commission, while people talked about, around and at him.
"Let me guess," Mukuro groaned as he sat up. "You couldn't get out."
Yamamoto let out an embarrassed chuckle. "Well, at least I wasn't bored!" He stretched out his legs. "She was here, you know... Chrome, I mean."
Was she. Mukuro didn't find this unusual. Chrome sometimes came with him on his excursions in finding the children. She had met Manami, had even played with her sometimes.
"She said she sensed that you were tired," Yamamoto continued, "so she came to me. She didn't know how to take me out of this place yet, but she could at least keep me company while you slept.
"I asked 'Why?' and she said 'Mukuro-sama is working his ass off to save you. You must be worth it.' " Then he laughed. He was the type to laugh at his own jokes, too. "Well, she didn't say those words exactly... but you're a real bad influence on her, you know that?"
Mukuro bowed his head. Chrome was his masterpiece. His Galatea. The vessel for his heart. He could only corrupt her. "I know," he simply answered.
"You know what else she said?" Yamamoto kept on. "She said - inside all of us is a dying will. It's stronger in some, and weaker in others, but we all have it. And for most of us, it's only at the end of our lives that it ever really 'wakes up.' That's when it creates a final illusion - because we're all scared of sliding into nothing. Are you going to hell? Are you going to heaven? It's your dying will that creates heaven or hell for you. It gives you whatever fate you want."
It was clear enough that Yamamoto Takeshi didn't understand all of what he was saying. He said them anyway, studying Mukuro's face for any confirmation. (Too bad - and not just because Mukuro was naturally impossible for any ordinary human to read. The truth was simply not that easy to capture in so few words.)
No need to bother with illusions with this one, Mukuro said to himself; he was built to feel, not to comprehend. And even if Chrome told him everything she knew, she didn't know much. His secrets, his plans for the future, were safe.
"She told me about the kids." Mukuro looked at him, when he said this. The smile on his face had taken on a shade of something reluctant - what was it? Admiration? Pity? "When they join the other kids in that meadow... they don't come back, do they?"
The bright meadow... the threshold of no return. Mukuro still remembered finding Yamamoto Takeshi there, small and forlorn and quiet. And above all, ready to leave the waking world for good.
"That's why you created that meadow in the first place - it's so the kids have a place to go. So they don't... will themselves into a bad place. Because it's hard for kids who never had it easy to even imagine what 'heaven' is supposed to be like."
Mukuro wanted to laugh at the absolute certainty in the other young man's voice. But he found that he couldn't. Perhaps he was still too tired...
"You think too highly of me, Vongola." What the hell, Mukuro could spare the kindness to state the obvious. "I happened to save a few children during my evening strolls... that doesn't mean I'm a saint."
"You saved me," Yamamoto pointed out. "And you didn't have to. You could've been out saving other people too. But why kids? And why only the ones who've been hurt bad?"
At this point Mukuro could have said something, or at the very least just killed the happy bastard here and now, just to bring an early end to this conversation.
But he knew Yamamoto was telling the truth. He could spew some random lie about children having stronger dying will flames than adults, or being easier to use while their flesh was still tender - but at the heart of all his deceptions, there was a reason.
A reason why he only sought the ones who had been damaged, traumatized, forsaken by their own.
"I don't understand why you do the things you do, but..." A pause. An unusually thoughtful look. "...What if we can save them together? All the kids in the world? The two of us?"
It was more than a what-if. And it was certainly nothing Mukuro expected. It made him hold his tongue for a good while.
"What do you say? All it needs is teamwork. I take the daytime. You take the night."
"Fool," he chuckled. Takeshi didn't chuckle. Was Fool being serious, Mukuro wondered? All this talk about saving all the children in the world, when he almost died while saving just one?
"I like kids," the Rain Guardian said in a conversational tone. "They're like blank slates, you know? You just have to keep them safe, and they'll change the world someday."
"You don't know how much trouble you've caused me, Vongola," Mukuro murmured. Suddenly Yamamoto was silent, all attention. "You didn't want to wake up, did you? That was why you wouldn't heal fast enough, why your illusion took so much out of me. If I hadn't lost control back there, you would have stayed."
He would have stayed - safe and happy with Mother and Father. Five years old forever, in a celebration that never ended. It was something he wanted more than life: something that made up for his mistakes and losses. Mukuro was almost disappointed; it was an all-too-normal thing to go back to a favorite point in time, so that one could feel like nothing bad ever happened, and all one's sins have yet to be committed.
The guileless smile turned sad. "I've screwed up," Yamamoto said softly. "In everything. Not just a couple of times. And I'm going to screw up again." In the waking world, he would not have said this much. It was only here and now, when no one else was listening, and when the only other person in sight wasn't turning him away, that he could talk. "I'm sick of feeling like that - like I'll always be useless, no matter how hard I try. And I forgot - that there are people who'll accept you, no matter how many times you screw up."
Yamamoto ducked his head: a gesture of humility, of gratitude.
"You're family too, right?"
Mukuro looked at him then, and didn't see the Rain Guardian of the Vongole. Not an enemy or a comrade capable of draining his energy and forcing his hand - but a brown-eyed child named Takeshi who, for an eternal second, didn't want to let go of a teddy bear he had won.
"If you and I... if we can work together, with Tsuna and Gokudera and the rest. The things you want - maybe the truth is, we want them too. Maybe we're all the same -"
"I have nothing in common with mafia scum," Mukuro said without bile, to his own surprise.
"Hey, we're the good guys!" Yamamoto responded, backing up a little. "And you came through for me. I think that means you're a good guy too."
"That's enough." Mukuro's red right eye started to glow - but if Yamamoto noticed, he gave no sign. "I wasted my time with you, but now I'm done. I only said I would try to find you and take you back because I made a promise."
Mukuro got to his feet.
"You know the best thing about promises, Vongola?"
Yamamoto got to his feet as well. For the first time, his face registered alarm.
"I can break mine whenever I want."
He grabbed the boy by his collar and stepped up, so their faces were close together. There was nowhere else for the Rain Guardian to look but deep into the eyes of the Mist Guardian. Before Yamamoto could reach up to try and push Mukuro away, the light in that right eye had grown stronger, brighter, and Yamamoto could see nothing but the color of blood.
"Look closely, Takeshi." Mukuro's cold voice and smile melted into Yamamoto's consciousness. "I'm going to show you a magic trick."
***
Mukuro-sama!
Mukuro turned. He was making his way out of the waiting room, where he had stayed long after he had sent Yamamoto Takeshi out of his realm, back into the arms of his precious famiglia. They must be hovering over him now, Mukuro said to himself, asking him stupid things, like how he was feeling, if he was all right, if there was anything they could get him.
He would give them stupid answers, and laugh, and he would be able to do it all without difficulty; such was the nature of the gift Mukuro left with him before they parted. It would not be long before Yamamoto would heal completely, without help from his illusions; Mukuro's powers did not heal, but they helped the body heal.
Since that business was concluded, and he had adequately rested, it was time for him to attend to other important things. That was when he heard his name being called.
"Mukuro-sama!"
He saw her then, coming toward him out of the mist: the pretty six-year-old who had gotten him into this mess in the first place.
He let her wrap her arms around him; it was her standard greeting. She would grow out of it soon enough, he thought numbly - the time would come when she, too, would have to do his bidding.
She, too, will change the world someday.
"He's all right!" she crowed. Unable to contain her excitement she clutched at the hem of his shirt, jumped up and down as she spoke. "Oniichan is all better! You did it! I knew you would!"
Mukuro laid a hand on her head. "I promised, didn't I, Manami?"
"Yep! You did!" For a moment, she looked confused about something. Then she out and asked: "Mukuro-sama, Oniichan said... he said his offer stands. What does that mean?"
Mukuro allowed himself a brief chuckle.
"My thanks for telling me that, little one. Now there is something I must do. Stay here if you must, but be good."
After a final pat on the head, he disengaged himself from her and left her standing alone in the mist. Puzzled and just a little hurt, just a little lost, the child watched her first messiah fade from her sight.
An "offer"... in retrospect, Mukuro said to himself, as he made his way into the void of souls, toward a familiar flame, it really wasn't funny. It was a genuine proposal. Then again, Mukuro told himself, it wasn't likely he was going to come across many such things in his lifetime... so he might as well laugh at it. After all, it was part of the cosmic joke that had bound him to this hapless famiglia to begin with.
"I take the daytime. You take the night."
Indeed.
***
On the other side of the world, a schoolteacher named Benedetto Greco had dozed off in his armchair, with a small boy on his lap and a storybook open on his knees. He was roused when he felt the book being taken away.
His first half-awake thought was that it must have slid to the floor. He was already reaching down to where he supposed it should have been, when he realized that the book was not on the floor as it should have been - and that the room was suddenly shrouded in mist. Moreover, there was someone else in the mist, casting an ominous shadow over Benedetto and the child fast asleep against his shoulder.
" 'The Pied Piper,' " the tall young man all in black said, one gloved hand flipping through the pages of the storybook he was holding. "Good story. Great character. Can't say much about his fashion sense, but love what he did at the end."
The sight of the young man's glowing red eye shocked Benedetto fully awake. His first reaction was to trap the sleeping child in his arms, hold him protectively close.
"You," he said feebly to the young man all in black, "haven't come to take him away, have you?"
Yes, I have, the young man was almost tempted to say, if only because he wanted to see the dread on the schoolteacher's face turn into fear and then defiance. Benedetto was not a fighting man; it would certainly be entertaining.
"You can't." Benedetto shook his head over and over. "You mustn't! He has the mind of a baby - "
"It's not his mind I need." Though Benedetto shrank from him, attempting to keep the boy out of his reach, one could only sink so deep into a cozy old armchair.
With a gentleness that surprised and at the same time frightened Benedetto, a gloved hand brushed some strands of hair back from the sleeping boy's forehead.
"Guido seems to be in better health. Well done, Benedetto. I made no mistake in choosing you."
Then the young man stepped back, giving the schoolteacher time and space to compose himself, to believe that yes - the black-clad stranger was only here to follow up on little Guido's progress. Nothing more.
The child stirred in his arms, and Benedetto immediately loosened his hold, imagining that it was the tight embrace that had awakened the poor thing. Benedetto rocked the child back and forth without leaving the chair. His eyes were pleading when he looked up at the young man again.
"I," he reluctantly began, "I have to speak very slowly to him, and even then he does not always understand. His brain has been damaged by malnutrition and beatings - he can't comprehend the simplest of texts. Basic calculation doesn't make sense to him. Will he always be like this...?"
"If I say yes, will you give him up, or love him any less?"
Benedetto did not hesitate to shake his head.
The young man smiled at him. "As I thought."
There was something in that smile that chilled the kindly schoolteacher to the bone, made him cringe at the memory of human blood and entrails strewn all over a certain room. It also made him think, for some reason, that this mysterious young man, who came to him in his dreams (for this was certainly a dream. No other conversation would feel so significant) was capable of so much more than he was allowing Benedetto to witness.
He was, for example, capable of "fixing" Guido. Of making him think and act like a normal nine-year-old child. Except he did not wish to do it, and in fact would benefit from not doing it, so he would not trouble himself to go so far.
...But Benedetto had no evidence to support these notions. Nor did he know why they occurred to him in the first place.
The young man set the storybook down on a nearby tabletop. Then he turned again to the man in the armchair.
"Benedetto," he said in a voice that did not command, or intimidate, for once. "When you tell this story to children... do you tell them the Piper is a hero, or a villain?"
The schoolteacher swallowed. Did anything important hang on this question? It certainly felt like it. So, like any honest person would, he placed his faith in the idea that the truth was the only thing that could get him off the hook.
"Neither," Benedetto Greco answered. "I tell them he's only human."
The young man didn't say anything for a while. There was no expression on his face. Benedetto imagined a range of emotions - loneliness, amusement, sorrow, dismay - flash across the young man's eyes... but if it ever happened, it happened in the space of a heartbeat, and was done.
"You needn't worry," the young man promised. "You'll have him for a long time."
Then he vanished into the mist. Only then did his shadow lift.
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just for kicks, have one of the songs i was listening to while writing this: [ The Verve - Save the World ]