[fic] Deliverer | Shamal-centric gen, PG
four things brought this fic about:
1. Shamal wiki entry: He claims to be infected with 666 diseases that have no effect on him due to the negating effects of each disease; if he has a disease that rapidly decreases body temperature, then he has another one that increases it, and so on.
2. Reborn once mentioned Shamal as the one who helped give birth to him. i forget where and when, but i presume this occurred sometime during the daily life arc?
3. the recent appearance of a (rather hot) shamal lookalike. um, maybe XD it's not related to the events that transpire in this fic, but it was inspiration.
4. i always go overboard with ideas. please avoid this fic if you wish to keep your canon unsullied and devoid of prefabricated angst.
takes place sometime before the Great 10YL Switch. notes at the end.
Deliverer
The door flew open. The three men in the back room of the warehouse stood abruptly, upsetting the table and the cards, coins and whiskey glasses on it. They pulled out the guns from their holsters and trained them on the person who had kicked the door nearly off its hinges.
The newcomer was standing at the doorway, dripping wet from head to toe. He was wearing a lab coat that may have used to be white, but was torn and stained in several places, the original color was no longer recognizable. He looked unshaven, haunted, exhausted to the bone. His shoulder-length hair hung lank down the sides of his face.
The men who had their guns trained on this man froze. They did not even have the presence of mind to turn the safety off, or to close their mouths while they stared.
This was the man whose throat they had slit, whose body they had dumped into the bay, two nights ago.
And, after a long pause, this man said: "I forgot my bag."
He took a step forward. The men took a few steps back. One stumbled on the chair he had overturned when he stood and fell on his backside. Their faces were all pale, but the face of the man on the floor seemed completely drained of blood.
The newcomer grunted. "You wouldn't have taken my bag, would you? It's not like you idiots would know how to use it. Can't even kill a man properly."
The man who fell cried out, waving his gun in the newcomer's general direction: "YOU'RE DEAD. YOU'RE DEAD. I KILLED YOU -"
"Oh...?"
The newcomer took another step forward. One of them fired - and missed. The newcomer had moved with lightning speed, and in the blink of an eye he was down on one knee beside the man on the floor, holding him up by a fistful of the front of his shirt.
"This look dead to you, punk?"
"Punk" was actually a funny thing to call the man on the floor, who was balding and huge and who seemed older in age to the newcomer. But the man on the floor didn't even have time to protest. He lay in the newcomer's grip whimpering like a small animal trapped in a shrinking box.
If his companions were only paying attention, they would have seen that the widening of their friend's eyes was not caused merely by fear. The vessels on their friend's face were starting to expand, turning into tiny red rivers twisting angrily beneath the skin. The newcomer let go of the man's shirt and stood, stepped back, just in time to avoid the blood that erupted from the man's eyes, nose and mouth.
It was over in a matter of seconds.
And before the man's two friends could know what was going on, the newcomer had stood, strode over to them, and... patted them on the shoulders. This, if anything, made the thugs fall deathly still. If you could move with superhuman speed, would you actually stride up to your assailants just to seem friendly?
"Now let's take it easy," the strange guy in the lab coat said in a low voice. "You're just kids. Obviously you've never heard of me."
The two men started to shudder - and not because of what the newcomer had said. The shudders turned into convulsions, and the two men collapsed.
"I'm the one you shouldn't have messed with."
The man in the lab coat kept his grip on their shoulders as they sagged to the ground.
Again he stepped back, just before the fountain of blood sprayed from the men's faces, and their convulsions turned into simple twitching, then to absolute stillness.
When all was silent, the last one left standing took a deep breath. He wiped his hands on his coat - not a drop of blood was on them, but they were by no means clean.
He looked around. Saw a brown leather doctor's bag sitting in a corner. It still had visible traces of what he presumed was his own blood on it, from when it was torn from his hands, after his throat was slit.
Too bad the men didn't throw it into the bay with him - he could really have used the mosquitoes he'd hidden away in there. That way he wouldn't have had to get his hands dirty come payback time.
He still wasn't sure who put him up for the hit - maybe an enemy of the Vongola, or someone he had personally offended. Maybe one of the women he'd "interacted with" over the past few days, even. He could probably hazard a guess after he'd had a full meal and a good night's rest... though if he'd really wanted to know, he would have left one of the men alive to tell.
Leaving well enough alone was best, he decided. Since the Millefiore came into power, there had been a bounty on the heads of everyone allied in any way with the Vongola. Basically the whole world wanted them dead.
The man in the lab coat picked up the bag and got ready to leave. Just before leaving the scene, he gave one of the corpses on the floor a light kick on one leg.
"Which gutter did you crawl out of this time?"
She was a vision in red standing at the top of the stairs - but no matter what she wore, she was a vision. And no matter what expression she had on her face, it was difficult to take one's eyes off her.
Sometimes it was easy to forget that this beauty in her early 20s was the firstborn child of Don Gesemano, shrewd businessman and broker of one of Europe's most notorious prostitution rings. Though she still resided in her father's house, she did not belong in it, or to anything that was not of her choosing.
"Bianchi, my sweet!" Shamal dropped the bag unceremoniously and opened his arms wide. "Such coarse language does not suit you! Come over here and give these tired old bones a ki - "
Instead of a ki -, what he got was a face full of pie. Normally this would be funny, if only the pie were an ordinary pie and Shamal were an ordinary clown.
Alas, the not-ordinary-in-the-slightest pie was filled with a corrosive gel, and if Shamal were an ordinary clown the flesh would have melted from the bones on his face.
Shamal's skin was unusually resistant to toxic substances. Surely the beauty knew this as well. She just had to rub it in, in a manner of speaking.
"Wash up and change into something presentable. Sawada Iemitsu has been waiting to talk to you for days." She turned on her heel and made her way out of his sight, aloof and indignant as he had gotten used to.
Shamal wiped the last traces of hardly edible material from his face, sighed and picked up his bag again. He would have gotten more than a pie in the face, he knew, if he had trailed water into the house. It was a good thing he had dried off on the way back from that side trip by the bay.
Some twenty-four years ago, he wouldn't have had anything to do with a certain young woman... but it was a special favor from Don Gesemano. He usually dealt with prostitutes, jaded women, young girls who had run out of hope (Hush, my sweet, it will all be over soon) and therefore women like her were not his specialty.
Women like her, who were pure, innocent, untouched save by one drop of poison, the drop that grew in their bellies and drained away everything that kept them safe.
As repayment for the safe delivery of her child, she had played the piano for him. He remembered sleeping well that night. He would, of course, because it was rare for him to sleep well.
He did not know why she chose the song she had played for him, of the many songs she could have played... and he knew nothing of music, could not remember the name of the piece, but he remembered looking for it long after she was gone.
He remembered her as passionate, filled with dreams and ideals... the man she loved, the perfect man, was going to leave his family and be with her and their baby forever, and they would all live together in light and love and music.
In spite of his many years of bile, he did not have the heart to tell this young one that the man she loved had wanted her dead, and her baby alive. (He had refused. "You bring them in for me to treat, not to kill, not when they don't need any mercy." It was perhaps the Don's mistake, taking her to him and not to another mafia doctor, just because he knew that when "Trident Shamal," the cold-blooded Vongola assassin, was tasked to do something, he always delivered. Somehow Shamal felt that he could not let this one go, not this one.)
The child turned out to be nothing like his mother. Or even his older half-sister, who had dutifully watched over him as he grew past infancy. He was sullen and sensitive and resentful - and why he chose Shamal, of all people, as his guardian and guide growing up, the man would never know. He supposed it was a sign that the boy was definitely NOT a good judge of character.
And in spite of the many women who walked in and out of their mansion - or, perhaps, because of them - he seemed to show no interest in the fairer sex. Which was too bad, because apparently many of them found him cute. Shamal sighed at the injustice of it all.
The child grew up, and decided early on that he was going to devote his life to a Calling, which came in the form of another boy - the Vongola Tenth, to be precise, who was roughly the same age but by no means of the same inclinations toward violence and noise.
The child who was nothing like his mother, Shamal feared, was growing up late.
Or gay.
Not that he cared, although he might have precious little to teach that one about sex.
"Are you honestly telling me that in all these years you've been alive, you've never been gay ONCE?"
Shamal glared at Sawada Iemitsu, the pervy bastard. "That so hard to believe?"
The fact was, it only became pervy when the talk turned to male homosexuality. They could talk about sex and lesbian sex over whiskey all day and neither of them would feel uncomfortable. Iemitsu had expressed his concerns about it because "Kids these days, you know" and they both knew exactly which kids he meant.
Shamal wouldn't have cared if the Vongola Tenth himself turned out gay. It was just that unlike Iemitsu, he never felt the need to discuss his own feelings about it.
"Sure I tried it once or twice." Out of boredom. Or desperation. But there was no need to give details. Besides, the details were fuzzy. "Kept coming back to the home court, as it were." He started saying that there was probably a gay immortal hanging around somewhere, it just wasn't him.
"Okay, don't get your panties in a twist," Sawada chuckled before downing a shot of scotch. Shamal shared the booze, but didn't look forward to becoming as happy. "Anyway, that has nothing to do with why I'm here. Just wanted someone to talk to about it, you know?"
Sawada needed as many opportunities as he could to talk to someone else about things that were not directly related to the mafia. Shamal knew.
The Millefiore was moving. Sawada Tsunayoshi had destroyed the Vongola rings, and things were not looking good. Safeguards had to be put in place, and in line with this, Reborn had requested to speak with Shamal personally.
"Reborn can't leave Japan," Sawada disclosed. "And the only secure means of communication we have in this part of Italy is through this house. Bianchi says you can use the setup in her room."
He meant for only one eyebrow to rise, but both of them shot up unbidden to his hairline. "Really? Bianchi's letting me into her..." He suddenly felt that scotch kicking in, if that was indeed the scotch. His face felt flushed.
"Try not to sound too happy," Sawada warned him. "She says she'll be watching you through the cameras, and if you try anything with her underwear, you're dead."
He and Reborn normally stayed out of each other's way. When two immortals find their paths willingly crossing, something big is brewing.
The first time, Reborn had asked him to train the child known as Gokudera Hayato - nothing like his mother, or his sister, or anything that was not of his choosing. Reborn had not minced words: the child needed Shamal to help him grow up quickly and to prepare for war.
Shamal did what was required of him. Now, after so many years, the boy was a man, who did not need anything he had to teach. It was time for an entirely new set of tasks.
...How did Shamal even get involved in the mafia? He could barely remember. He vaguely recalled stumbling into a gunfight and rescuing a child who was stumbling into it too, but from the opposite direction. The child turned out to be a scion of the Vongola clan, and since then he had found himself in the Vongola clan's employ and protection.
Some protection.
He was sometimes an assassin, sometimes a physician. Sometimes a researcher/lab rat. Once he was the Vongolas' willing guinea pig for their artillery research, but one can only handle getting shot in the heart (to no avail) so many times; he simply abandoned his post, and no one tried to stop him. Once he fell into the hands of what was then the Estraneo family. And he discovered exactly how much pain he could stand before going mad.
The simple truth was, it was impossible for an ordinary human like himself to live forever without going crazy now and again. Once he consciously threw himself into a raging river in the middle of a storm, knowing the rocks and the waves would tear his body limb from limb; he woke up on the shore feeling like he was filled with pain and jelly, the start of a new left forearm already growing where the old one had been ripped off.
Once he had arranged to be beheaded - through an accident, an unfortunate encounter with a steel slicer. It was truly unfortunate, for he survived the encounter. His neck healed cleanly. Suffice it to say, he was never trying that again.
And once he drank enough alcohol to kill a man five times his body weight... only to wake up in the morning throwing up the partially-digested remains of a calcified liver (a new one having materialized in its place) and a hangover that put him in bed for days.
He wasn't invulnerable. He just couldn't die.
He remembered things that the modern world would now consider ancient. He remembered being found in the streets of Baghdad with not a scrap of cloth on him, with very little memory of anything prior to this. He was called "Shamal" because the ones who found him and took him in believed he came from the north.
He remembered discovering that he was a skilled apothecary, that he could save lives as well as take them, with the medicine he somehow knew how to create. And then, to his delight and eventual horror, discovering that he wasn't growing older and that nothing could kill him. Not even the worst poisons he could concoct were strong enough to take him down - and in fact, the more of a poison he took, the less it seemed to affect him.
The holy men had decided that sometime before he had lost his memory, he must have discovered the elixir of life, and partaken of it. He fled Baghdad before he could be stoned to death (or something close to it) for bargaining with evil spirits for the recipe.
He remembered being in love. And being left behind. And not having anything to look forward to. And clinging to whatever got him through the memories, washing them off like blood on wounds that only waited to heal.
He was fully aware that he could have taken over the world, if only he knew exactly how, if he only had the inclination, and if only he wasn't in so much pain all the time. Tears, the oldest of painkillers, didn't promise instant relief. It hurt a litle, then a lot, then too much, too much - and then it didn't hurt at all.
"Shamal," the nine-year-old Arcobaleno greeted through a choppy video reception. "I apologize for troubling you."
"No trouble. In fact, I gotta thank you." Shamal wasn't sure if his wry grin got through to Japan, but he showed it anyway. "You finally got me into Bianchi's room."
A corner of the child's lips may have risen at this. "I don't think she'll let you stay there longer than necessary. So I'll be quick."
Reborn proceeded to tell the Doctor about the radiation research the Millefiore was working on. The first wave of the Millefiore attack, the Vongola spies have gathered, was aimed at eliminating the Arcobaleno, and upsetting the balance of power within the mafia families all over the world.
This first wave was set for launching in a few days.
"I'm probably going to die, Doctor." He said it with a straight face, as was forever his way. "And you'll probably need to bring me back into this world very soon."
He forwarded to Shamal a list of names and contact information - hospitals with maternity wards in the general area of Namimori, where he was going to die. Within nine months, a woman was probably going to enter one of them, heavy with child, and she was probably going to show the tell-tale signs of being ready to give birth to an Arcobaleno.
"You would know," Reborn said to Shamal. Shamal only nodded. He'd seen it too many times before.
He studied the face of the child in the video feed. Too young. The last time, in the Vongola Ninth's employ, he had at least made it to the ripe old age of twenty-seven. Once, in one of his previous lives, he had even made it up to forty-three - but who knew if and when he would ever again be as lucky.
Cursed existences were not the sole province of the Arcobaleno. Shamal could refuse. He knew the new Reborn might still survive if he wasn't around to attend to the delivery, but his presence would definitely tip the scales in the baby's favor.
And if Reborn was gone, he would have the world all to himself. He would, at last, be the only one left to suffer all of this.
"See you in the next life, Doctor," the child on the screen said, all trust and resignation.
Shamal nodded. "I'll just be around."
Reborn muttered a curt farewell, and the screen went dark.
Shamal was alone in this large, empty room filled with various scents. He closed his eyes and made his way through the exotic fragrances, threading past the traces of flora and spice until he found one particular scent.
There.
He breathed her in - Bianchi, all her passions, all her longing and her grief. Her scent, underneath complex layers of everything else.
It wasn't quite her underwear, but it was close.
He knew she was watching him through the cameras in her room, but surely she would think nothing of him leaning back into the chair, eyes shut and senses taking in as much as they could, in secret.
He didn't know why he did things like this, but he no longer questioned it. Impossible to live this long always doing things for a damn good reason.
"Bianchi, my sweet," he called into the silence, "have Rosa take a bottle of brandy up to my room and wait for me there, would you? There's my girl."
He knew she wasn't going to do as she was asked, but he had to ask anyway. He needed to laugh a bit at himself.
There was always time enough for tears in this life.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
things:
1. a few months back, i was looking up references to shamal as an immortal (because i was sure such a fic has been written... or maybe i dreamed it?) and i found an original multipart story hosted on deviantart, titled "Immortal Shamal."
i wasn't able to read much of it, but i can't seem to find it again now. maybe the author took it down? that's a shame, i think i'd like to read it more closely...
2. google taught me this: "shamal" means "north" in standard arabic. in farsi, it means "wind." it's also used to refer to a strong north-westerly wind that blows through the Gulf states, bringing dust.
3. stray idea: shamal as the Doctor...? bestest Doctor EVAR X3
that said, i cannot WAIT for the next season.
1. Shamal wiki entry: He claims to be infected with 666 diseases that have no effect on him due to the negating effects of each disease; if he has a disease that rapidly decreases body temperature, then he has another one that increases it, and so on.
2. Reborn once mentioned Shamal as the one who helped give birth to him. i forget where and when, but i presume this occurred sometime during the daily life arc?
3. the recent appearance of a (rather hot) shamal lookalike. um, maybe XD it's not related to the events that transpire in this fic, but it was inspiration.
4. i always go overboard with ideas. please avoid this fic if you wish to keep your canon unsullied and devoid of prefabricated angst.
takes place sometime before the Great 10YL Switch. notes at the end.
Deliverer
The door flew open. The three men in the back room of the warehouse stood abruptly, upsetting the table and the cards, coins and whiskey glasses on it. They pulled out the guns from their holsters and trained them on the person who had kicked the door nearly off its hinges.
The newcomer was standing at the doorway, dripping wet from head to toe. He was wearing a lab coat that may have used to be white, but was torn and stained in several places, the original color was no longer recognizable. He looked unshaven, haunted, exhausted to the bone. His shoulder-length hair hung lank down the sides of his face.
The men who had their guns trained on this man froze. They did not even have the presence of mind to turn the safety off, or to close their mouths while they stared.
This was the man whose throat they had slit, whose body they had dumped into the bay, two nights ago.
And, after a long pause, this man said: "I forgot my bag."
He took a step forward. The men took a few steps back. One stumbled on the chair he had overturned when he stood and fell on his backside. Their faces were all pale, but the face of the man on the floor seemed completely drained of blood.
The newcomer grunted. "You wouldn't have taken my bag, would you? It's not like you idiots would know how to use it. Can't even kill a man properly."
The man who fell cried out, waving his gun in the newcomer's general direction: "YOU'RE DEAD. YOU'RE DEAD. I KILLED YOU -"
"Oh...?"
The newcomer took another step forward. One of them fired - and missed. The newcomer had moved with lightning speed, and in the blink of an eye he was down on one knee beside the man on the floor, holding him up by a fistful of the front of his shirt.
"This look dead to you, punk?"
"Punk" was actually a funny thing to call the man on the floor, who was balding and huge and who seemed older in age to the newcomer. But the man on the floor didn't even have time to protest. He lay in the newcomer's grip whimpering like a small animal trapped in a shrinking box.
If his companions were only paying attention, they would have seen that the widening of their friend's eyes was not caused merely by fear. The vessels on their friend's face were starting to expand, turning into tiny red rivers twisting angrily beneath the skin. The newcomer let go of the man's shirt and stood, stepped back, just in time to avoid the blood that erupted from the man's eyes, nose and mouth.
It was over in a matter of seconds.
And before the man's two friends could know what was going on, the newcomer had stood, strode over to them, and... patted them on the shoulders. This, if anything, made the thugs fall deathly still. If you could move with superhuman speed, would you actually stride up to your assailants just to seem friendly?
"Now let's take it easy," the strange guy in the lab coat said in a low voice. "You're just kids. Obviously you've never heard of me."
The two men started to shudder - and not because of what the newcomer had said. The shudders turned into convulsions, and the two men collapsed.
"I'm the one you shouldn't have messed with."
The man in the lab coat kept his grip on their shoulders as they sagged to the ground.
Again he stepped back, just before the fountain of blood sprayed from the men's faces, and their convulsions turned into simple twitching, then to absolute stillness.
When all was silent, the last one left standing took a deep breath. He wiped his hands on his coat - not a drop of blood was on them, but they were by no means clean.
He looked around. Saw a brown leather doctor's bag sitting in a corner. It still had visible traces of what he presumed was his own blood on it, from when it was torn from his hands, after his throat was slit.
Too bad the men didn't throw it into the bay with him - he could really have used the mosquitoes he'd hidden away in there. That way he wouldn't have had to get his hands dirty come payback time.
He still wasn't sure who put him up for the hit - maybe an enemy of the Vongola, or someone he had personally offended. Maybe one of the women he'd "interacted with" over the past few days, even. He could probably hazard a guess after he'd had a full meal and a good night's rest... though if he'd really wanted to know, he would have left one of the men alive to tell.
Leaving well enough alone was best, he decided. Since the Millefiore came into power, there had been a bounty on the heads of everyone allied in any way with the Vongola. Basically the whole world wanted them dead.
The man in the lab coat picked up the bag and got ready to leave. Just before leaving the scene, he gave one of the corpses on the floor a light kick on one leg.
"Which gutter did you crawl out of this time?"
She was a vision in red standing at the top of the stairs - but no matter what she wore, she was a vision. And no matter what expression she had on her face, it was difficult to take one's eyes off her.
Sometimes it was easy to forget that this beauty in her early 20s was the firstborn child of Don Gesemano, shrewd businessman and broker of one of Europe's most notorious prostitution rings. Though she still resided in her father's house, she did not belong in it, or to anything that was not of her choosing.
"Bianchi, my sweet!" Shamal dropped the bag unceremoniously and opened his arms wide. "Such coarse language does not suit you! Come over here and give these tired old bones a ki - "
Instead of a ki -, what he got was a face full of pie. Normally this would be funny, if only the pie were an ordinary pie and Shamal were an ordinary clown.
Alas, the not-ordinary-in-the-slightest pie was filled with a corrosive gel, and if Shamal were an ordinary clown the flesh would have melted from the bones on his face.
Shamal's skin was unusually resistant to toxic substances. Surely the beauty knew this as well. She just had to rub it in, in a manner of speaking.
"Wash up and change into something presentable. Sawada Iemitsu has been waiting to talk to you for days." She turned on her heel and made her way out of his sight, aloof and indignant as he had gotten used to.
Shamal wiped the last traces of hardly edible material from his face, sighed and picked up his bag again. He would have gotten more than a pie in the face, he knew, if he had trailed water into the house. It was a good thing he had dried off on the way back from that side trip by the bay.
Some twenty-four years ago, he wouldn't have had anything to do with a certain young woman... but it was a special favor from Don Gesemano. He usually dealt with prostitutes, jaded women, young girls who had run out of hope (Hush, my sweet, it will all be over soon) and therefore women like her were not his specialty.
Women like her, who were pure, innocent, untouched save by one drop of poison, the drop that grew in their bellies and drained away everything that kept them safe.
As repayment for the safe delivery of her child, she had played the piano for him. He remembered sleeping well that night. He would, of course, because it was rare for him to sleep well.
He did not know why she chose the song she had played for him, of the many songs she could have played... and he knew nothing of music, could not remember the name of the piece, but he remembered looking for it long after she was gone.
He remembered her as passionate, filled with dreams and ideals... the man she loved, the perfect man, was going to leave his family and be with her and their baby forever, and they would all live together in light and love and music.
In spite of his many years of bile, he did not have the heart to tell this young one that the man she loved had wanted her dead, and her baby alive. (He had refused. "You bring them in for me to treat, not to kill, not when they don't need any mercy." It was perhaps the Don's mistake, taking her to him and not to another mafia doctor, just because he knew that when "Trident Shamal," the cold-blooded Vongola assassin, was tasked to do something, he always delivered. Somehow Shamal felt that he could not let this one go, not this one.)
The child turned out to be nothing like his mother. Or even his older half-sister, who had dutifully watched over him as he grew past infancy. He was sullen and sensitive and resentful - and why he chose Shamal, of all people, as his guardian and guide growing up, the man would never know. He supposed it was a sign that the boy was definitely NOT a good judge of character.
And in spite of the many women who walked in and out of their mansion - or, perhaps, because of them - he seemed to show no interest in the fairer sex. Which was too bad, because apparently many of them found him cute. Shamal sighed at the injustice of it all.
The child grew up, and decided early on that he was going to devote his life to a Calling, which came in the form of another boy - the Vongola Tenth, to be precise, who was roughly the same age but by no means of the same inclinations toward violence and noise.
The child who was nothing like his mother, Shamal feared, was growing up late.
Or gay.
Not that he cared, although he might have precious little to teach that one about sex.
"Are you honestly telling me that in all these years you've been alive, you've never been gay ONCE?"
Shamal glared at Sawada Iemitsu, the pervy bastard. "That so hard to believe?"
The fact was, it only became pervy when the talk turned to male homosexuality. They could talk about sex and lesbian sex over whiskey all day and neither of them would feel uncomfortable. Iemitsu had expressed his concerns about it because "Kids these days, you know" and they both knew exactly which kids he meant.
Shamal wouldn't have cared if the Vongola Tenth himself turned out gay. It was just that unlike Iemitsu, he never felt the need to discuss his own feelings about it.
"Sure I tried it once or twice." Out of boredom. Or desperation. But there was no need to give details. Besides, the details were fuzzy. "Kept coming back to the home court, as it were." He started saying that there was probably a gay immortal hanging around somewhere, it just wasn't him.
"Okay, don't get your panties in a twist," Sawada chuckled before downing a shot of scotch. Shamal shared the booze, but didn't look forward to becoming as happy. "Anyway, that has nothing to do with why I'm here. Just wanted someone to talk to about it, you know?"
Sawada needed as many opportunities as he could to talk to someone else about things that were not directly related to the mafia. Shamal knew.
The Millefiore was moving. Sawada Tsunayoshi had destroyed the Vongola rings, and things were not looking good. Safeguards had to be put in place, and in line with this, Reborn had requested to speak with Shamal personally.
"Reborn can't leave Japan," Sawada disclosed. "And the only secure means of communication we have in this part of Italy is through this house. Bianchi says you can use the setup in her room."
He meant for only one eyebrow to rise, but both of them shot up unbidden to his hairline. "Really? Bianchi's letting me into her..." He suddenly felt that scotch kicking in, if that was indeed the scotch. His face felt flushed.
"Try not to sound too happy," Sawada warned him. "She says she'll be watching you through the cameras, and if you try anything with her underwear, you're dead."
He and Reborn normally stayed out of each other's way. When two immortals find their paths willingly crossing, something big is brewing.
The first time, Reborn had asked him to train the child known as Gokudera Hayato - nothing like his mother, or his sister, or anything that was not of his choosing. Reborn had not minced words: the child needed Shamal to help him grow up quickly and to prepare for war.
Shamal did what was required of him. Now, after so many years, the boy was a man, who did not need anything he had to teach. It was time for an entirely new set of tasks.
...How did Shamal even get involved in the mafia? He could barely remember. He vaguely recalled stumbling into a gunfight and rescuing a child who was stumbling into it too, but from the opposite direction. The child turned out to be a scion of the Vongola clan, and since then he had found himself in the Vongola clan's employ and protection.
Some protection.
He was sometimes an assassin, sometimes a physician. Sometimes a researcher/lab rat. Once he was the Vongolas' willing guinea pig for their artillery research, but one can only handle getting shot in the heart (to no avail) so many times; he simply abandoned his post, and no one tried to stop him. Once he fell into the hands of what was then the Estraneo family. And he discovered exactly how much pain he could stand before going mad.
The simple truth was, it was impossible for an ordinary human like himself to live forever without going crazy now and again. Once he consciously threw himself into a raging river in the middle of a storm, knowing the rocks and the waves would tear his body limb from limb; he woke up on the shore feeling like he was filled with pain and jelly, the start of a new left forearm already growing where the old one had been ripped off.
Once he had arranged to be beheaded - through an accident, an unfortunate encounter with a steel slicer. It was truly unfortunate, for he survived the encounter. His neck healed cleanly. Suffice it to say, he was never trying that again.
And once he drank enough alcohol to kill a man five times his body weight... only to wake up in the morning throwing up the partially-digested remains of a calcified liver (a new one having materialized in its place) and a hangover that put him in bed for days.
He wasn't invulnerable. He just couldn't die.
He remembered things that the modern world would now consider ancient. He remembered being found in the streets of Baghdad with not a scrap of cloth on him, with very little memory of anything prior to this. He was called "Shamal" because the ones who found him and took him in believed he came from the north.
He remembered discovering that he was a skilled apothecary, that he could save lives as well as take them, with the medicine he somehow knew how to create. And then, to his delight and eventual horror, discovering that he wasn't growing older and that nothing could kill him. Not even the worst poisons he could concoct were strong enough to take him down - and in fact, the more of a poison he took, the less it seemed to affect him.
The holy men had decided that sometime before he had lost his memory, he must have discovered the elixir of life, and partaken of it. He fled Baghdad before he could be stoned to death (or something close to it) for bargaining with evil spirits for the recipe.
He remembered being in love. And being left behind. And not having anything to look forward to. And clinging to whatever got him through the memories, washing them off like blood on wounds that only waited to heal.
He was fully aware that he could have taken over the world, if only he knew exactly how, if he only had the inclination, and if only he wasn't in so much pain all the time. Tears, the oldest of painkillers, didn't promise instant relief. It hurt a litle, then a lot, then too much, too much - and then it didn't hurt at all.
"Shamal," the nine-year-old Arcobaleno greeted through a choppy video reception. "I apologize for troubling you."
"No trouble. In fact, I gotta thank you." Shamal wasn't sure if his wry grin got through to Japan, but he showed it anyway. "You finally got me into Bianchi's room."
A corner of the child's lips may have risen at this. "I don't think she'll let you stay there longer than necessary. So I'll be quick."
Reborn proceeded to tell the Doctor about the radiation research the Millefiore was working on. The first wave of the Millefiore attack, the Vongola spies have gathered, was aimed at eliminating the Arcobaleno, and upsetting the balance of power within the mafia families all over the world.
This first wave was set for launching in a few days.
"I'm probably going to die, Doctor." He said it with a straight face, as was forever his way. "And you'll probably need to bring me back into this world very soon."
He forwarded to Shamal a list of names and contact information - hospitals with maternity wards in the general area of Namimori, where he was going to die. Within nine months, a woman was probably going to enter one of them, heavy with child, and she was probably going to show the tell-tale signs of being ready to give birth to an Arcobaleno.
"You would know," Reborn said to Shamal. Shamal only nodded. He'd seen it too many times before.
He studied the face of the child in the video feed. Too young. The last time, in the Vongola Ninth's employ, he had at least made it to the ripe old age of twenty-seven. Once, in one of his previous lives, he had even made it up to forty-three - but who knew if and when he would ever again be as lucky.
Cursed existences were not the sole province of the Arcobaleno. Shamal could refuse. He knew the new Reborn might still survive if he wasn't around to attend to the delivery, but his presence would definitely tip the scales in the baby's favor.
And if Reborn was gone, he would have the world all to himself. He would, at last, be the only one left to suffer all of this.
"See you in the next life, Doctor," the child on the screen said, all trust and resignation.
Shamal nodded. "I'll just be around."
Reborn muttered a curt farewell, and the screen went dark.
Shamal was alone in this large, empty room filled with various scents. He closed his eyes and made his way through the exotic fragrances, threading past the traces of flora and spice until he found one particular scent.
There.
He breathed her in - Bianchi, all her passions, all her longing and her grief. Her scent, underneath complex layers of everything else.
It wasn't quite her underwear, but it was close.
He knew she was watching him through the cameras in her room, but surely she would think nothing of him leaning back into the chair, eyes shut and senses taking in as much as they could, in secret.
He didn't know why he did things like this, but he no longer questioned it. Impossible to live this long always doing things for a damn good reason.
"Bianchi, my sweet," he called into the silence, "have Rosa take a bottle of brandy up to my room and wait for me there, would you? There's my girl."
He knew she wasn't going to do as she was asked, but he had to ask anyway. He needed to laugh a bit at himself.
There was always time enough for tears in this life.
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things:
1. a few months back, i was looking up references to shamal as an immortal (because i was sure such a fic has been written... or maybe i dreamed it?) and i found an original multipart story hosted on deviantart, titled "Immortal Shamal."
i wasn't able to read much of it, but i can't seem to find it again now. maybe the author took it down? that's a shame, i think i'd like to read it more closely...
2. google taught me this: "shamal" means "north" in standard arabic. in farsi, it means "wind." it's also used to refer to a strong north-westerly wind that blows through the Gulf states, bringing dust.
3. stray idea: shamal as the Doctor...? bestest Doctor EVAR X3
that said, i cannot WAIT for the next season.