[fic] "The World As It Should Be," Squalo-centric gen
this is how i treat a great piece of filipino literature: i use it in fic ^^;
disclaimer: i really, really love this poem (read the full piece here) and i'm sure other people do too and i'm really sorry but i had to do this. the idea's been percolating for so long and tonight it demanded to be poured out.
i know the poem talks about a "she," but when you hear the words "or that he left her aureoled in flame", isn't squalo the first person that comes to mind??
...don't deny it D:
The World As It Should Be
It was a sacrilege, the neighbors cried,
The way she shattered every mullioned pane
To let a firebrand in.
He made fun of his teachers, he messed up campus property, he fought with other students on a regular basis, he got raving drunk on school grounds, he threw all his books into the fountain and he peed on the school founder's statue. These were just some of the things that Squalo Superbi should have been expelled for.
But he was a Superbi by blood. His father was the head of the Superbi family, which stood in firm allegiance with the powerful Vongola family. And he was spoken for by Dino Cavallone, his classmate, firstborn of the Cavallone don. These were everything that kept Squalo Superbi from being expelled.
His teachers rebelled constantly against being forced to put up with him, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time before he left school on his own. Only his father's stern presence kept him from going anywhere. But as Squalo Superbi grew older and wilder, people were sure not even that would be enough to hold him down.
Dino Cavallone couldn't say that he and Squalo Superbi were friends, exactly. Their families were very closely tied, as all the families connected with the Vongola clan were, and boys of the same age from such families tended to find each other in the same small spaces, whether they liked it or not.
Squalo Superbi was often at family meetings or social functions - a few steps behind his father, and just a few steps ahead of his father's bodyguards. He often came with a scowl and a snarl, complained loudly that he was bored, then stomped out with great fanfare in the middle of a discussion or event. Everyone knew he was going to get hell for it later; the head of the family that prized itself for fostering world-class assassins did not tolerate misbehavior, especially not from a blood member. But the kicks and blows and curses never ended his lifelong habit of walking out on formal affairs.
Beside his father, the young Squalo Superbi looked frail - slim and silver-haired, exactly as his mother was. But there was no denying the eyes. Those were Superbi eyes, eyes that sought power. Eyes that tolerated nothing but the way reality should be.
In the exclusive school they attended, Dino Cavallone shared some classes with Superbi Squalo, but the classroom was not where they most often met. They met outside, while Dino was slacking off and Squalo was steering clear of some disciplinary committee or other.
Often Dino would find Squalo either training with his sword, or reading a book. And when it was the latter, Squalo made a show of hiding the book or throwing it away.
"What do we have for today?" Dino asked, lazily smiling because he really didn't have any other expression for the other boy.
"Nothing," Squalo snapped. Dino caught a closer look at the cover between the boy's long fingers: it was an old book of poetry from around the world.
They were not friends, but there was one true thing Dino Cavallone knew about him: Squalo hated to study, but he loved to learn. He loved reading about history, old wars especially. Like any other boy, Dino supposed, starry-eyed at stories about heroes and villains, conquerors and kings - though his thirst for knowledge was certainly not limited to that.
He would say that one needs to educate oneself in order to become a stronger fighter, and a stronger person - though that was true, that was beside the point.
"You've been reading that book for a week now," Dino pointed out, amused. "It's not even required for class."
"I'm not reading this for class." He threw the book off to a short distance, to show it meant nothing to him. "Only whiny idiots like you want to please your damn teachers."
"What, me? Study?" Dino chuckled.
They were not friends, but they found themselves in each other's company as often as if they were. For Dino, not being pushed away at every opportunity already meant they shared a sort of bond - especially for someone like Squalo Superbi, who fascinated him.
Squalo claimed to choose all his paths in life, but his destiny hung over him like a sharp unyielding sword. He would never find happiness, but he would always search for it.
It would take Dino Cavallone many years before he could think of all those reasons, and figure out exactly what about the sight of the silver-haired boy made him sad.
"If you're not going to use it for school, what are you going to do with all the stuff that's in your head?" Dino asked.
His question was met with a huge, predatory grin.
"Take over the world," Squalo answered, "what else?"
***
They tried in vain
To understand how one so carved from pride
And glassed in dream could have so flung aside
Her graven days,
He was ruthless, murderous, wild - after all of this, he was still not considered a blight on the Superbi family's name. No one wondered why.
It was common knowledge in the underworld that the Superbi family favored the strong. Skilled fighters were given their choice of jobs, on top of prestige and wealth, while less skilled fighters were treated as no more than cannon fodder. If you respected discipline, honor and strength above all else, your place was with the Superbi. They would protect you, give you everything you want and nurture the killer in you - all you had to do was throw away your heart and put your life in their hands.
And Squalo's victims were proof that the boy had all of the things the Superbi family treasured. They were killed in honorable duels observed by mafia swordsmen through the generations. They were killed neatly, with great skill, and with little waste. They were killed without mercy.
Genius, no less. Except Squalo had no authority to kill.
He was a teenager who had dropped out of school and run away from home, to embark alone on a journey to become the strongest living swordsman in the world. He had not allowed himself to be raised according to the traditions of his family - had not risen in rank as any honorable Superbi would, until he was ready to represent the family in games of skill.
As such, he certainly did not have the authority to challenge other swordsmen to duels, even if he did not present himself as a member of the Superbi family. The other swordsmen agreed to his challenges because they knew him, and besides being known as a magnificent punk, he had also built up a considerable reputation independent of the by-laws of the Superbi clan.
But it was only a matter of time before the families decided that enough was enough; he was little more than a child, and Squalo Superbi must be brought home. A one-armed swordsmaster named Tyr, who was then head of the Varia, sought him out, rounded him up with the help of the Vongola's finest, then brought him back, all as instructed.
Tyr stood with the heads of the Vongola and Superbi clans as the fate of the boy named Squalo was being decided. He studied the boy with the power-hungry eyes, memorized every small movement of his wiry body.
"Do you understand why you've been brought before this council today?" the Vongola Ninth asked, in his perpetually calm and gentle voice.
"I wasn't able to kill you all first," the boy sneered. After that he was taken away - not just yet to the medium-security Vindice prisons, but to a holding cell that was nearly as secure. If that had not happened, at one point he would have yelled loudly that he was bored, then walked out of the gathering on his own.
The boy's father did not say a word to object when his son was being taken away. Did not even blink.
The heads of the involved families met to discuss what must be done about the little rogue. He was strong, and the mafia needed a strong fighter. But how to keep him in line? For clearly, not even the years of methodical beatings he received from his father were enough.
It was Tyr the Sword Emperor who proposed the most viable plan. This was the one true thing he knew about Squalo Superbi: He was intolerant of weakness, in himself and in others. He tended to train himself into exhaustion, or until he had mastered a specific technique, whichever came first. And so, he had more control over his young body than many of the others Tyr knew.
His skill was carved in his many scars, his controlled movements, his intent glare - and most of all, in the way he consciously kept from trembling in conditioned fear, when he was brought before his father again.
Tyr said he a good use for Squalo's intolerance of weakness. So, at his recommendation, young Squalo Superbi was placed in the Varia as a trainer. He would be under Tyr's command, and while Tyr lived to keep an eye on him, his skills would be further refined, and he would not be allowed to misbehave.
Of course, this plan relied on the Sword Emperor living to keep an eye on him.
They would ask him later how he could do it to his own teacher - the man who had saved him from being thrown to the Vindice prisons, where he deserved to languish. The man who had taught him everything he knew about the sword, so that he may add it to his own pool of knowledge.
Why did he do it? Was it simply for the title of Sword Emperor? Was he truly a monster?
Oh, he would gloat about it - how he, a stripling, had beaten one-armed Tyr, greatest swordsman alive and fierce leader of the fearsome Varia. How he would insist that they had fought in a clean and proper duel, even if his opponent clearly had the advantage of age and experience.
- And it would be the truth. He had challenged Tyr to a duel, and Tyr had accepted. The battle had been close, very close, but he won.
The Sword Emperor would not have agreed if he had not thought that the battle was going to be fair.
It was over. Now Squalo was free. Now he no longer needed to coddle the milksops that made up the lower ranks of the Varia, no longer needed to play at patience and calm, when he knew he was stronger even than the best swordsman that the revered Vongola family could find.
He no longer had any reason to stay. He had no obligation to explain. And he had no qualms about speaking ill of the man who had trained him, now better known as the man who had died by his sword. After all, he was ruthless, murderous and wild - a killer without a heart, or so he was recognized.
The first thing he did when he left the Varia was to cut off his left arm. He would say later that it was to better understand Tyr's excellence with the sword, the techniques of the only man ever to have almost beaten him - but it would forever be a strange reason.
Squalo charged into his next several duels still bleeding and howling with pain and rage. It seemed then that he would never stop winning.
***
or why she dared profane
The bread and wine of life for some insane
Moment with him. The scandal never died.
He had not suspected that on that night, only one of many empty, ordinary nights, his life was going to change.
The dive had an Italian noun as its name: in these dark corners of the world, it was a covert sign that the owner had ties with the Italian mafia. Otherwise they would name it something more generic, like "Lady Luck" or "Denny's."
By the time Squalo had arrived, the chaos was ending. A man was standing alone in the middle of a sea of bodies, some dead and some barely breathing. He glanced over at Squalo standing by the doorway. And for the first time in his life, Squalo found himself rooted to where he stood.
The man was tall, broad-shouldered, lean - he did not look at all like a mafioso, though he certainly looked like he could deal as much chaos as if he were. Mafia moved in small circles all over the world, and if the man was indeed mafia, it was no surprise that he and Squalo would find themselves standing together in the same out-of-the-way plot of land, whether they liked it or not.
The man had dark hair and dark eyes, like Squalo's father did - but in those eyes burned something that he had been looking for. He did not know he had been looking for them before now.
At that moment, the young Squalo Superbi was filled with a feeling he would never be able to describe, not in his entire life. It was the first and only time such a feeling would come to him. He felt it most distinctly as remembering something he thought he had long lost, in his seemingly endless quest for perfection. It was the end goal, the final objective - the reason for a lifetime of restlessness.
It robbed him of sleep. He regretted over and over the precise second when he stepped out of the way just so the man could walk past him. Unhurried, the taller, older man made his way into the stunned crowd that had gathered outside the bar. The crowd had parted for him, scattering in all directions, and to Squalo it seemed he had shone in his isolation, brilliant with something blazing from within.
He was like a demon from a storybook, something that existed above and beyond human understanding. Fire and spirit burned up the spaces in which he moved, and his every word, every movement etched itself deep into the young Superbi's imagination.
Squalo should not have let the man go. And so he spent the next few days tracking him. He had picked up the talent of sniffing out targets from years of hunting them down in order to challenge them to duels.
(In the streets, they would call it "stalking." In the Varia they would call it "surveillance.")
It was not terribly difficult to find him, anyway. It seemed he was always in some sort of trouble. Usually he would start it, and usually he would finish it, knocking down his opponents with pistols or bare hands.
The man had no technique whatsoever when killing. He was not an expert marksman, even if he boldly carried his pair of pistols around in broad daylight. He just pointed and shot. He killed to get people out of his way - fast, efficient, messy as hell.
Squalo was captivated.
Finally, one day, this man faced several hitmen from the Sicilian mafia. Squalo found himself wondering why the Varia had not been sent in. If this exceptionally difficult bastard had troubled any of the Sicilian families, shouldn't the Varia be deployed?
But there was no time to mull it over. The man was facing a grim situation, surrounded by five elite soldiers all at once. Clearly he needed help. And clearly Squalo had to get in there and save the man's ass.
The man took one look at the silver-haired teenager who had drawn a sword out of nowhere and jumped into the fray - then proceeded to ignore him completely. They never worked together to get out of that bind: Squalo had his targets, the man had his.
And when the fight was over, the man simply started walking away.
Being brushed aside annoyed him, certainly... but for some reason, Squalo wasn't in the mood to bite the man's head off, the way he would do to any other ungrateful stronzo. He somehow felt that if he and the man came to blows, he would lose -and the greatest swordsman in the world couldn't understand why or how he knew that for sure.
"What do you think you're doing?" the man asked over his shoulder.
Squalo, who never minced words, answered, "Following you. Got a problem with that?!"
The man said nothing and never looked back over his shoulder again.
Thus Squalo Superbi threw away his heart and put his life in the hands of a complete stranger.
***
But no one guessed that loveliness would claim
Her soul's cathedral burned by his desires
Or that he left her aureoled in flame…
It was probably where the whole thing was headed to begin with.
This was what Squalo said to himself, as he lay alone inside a medium-security prison cell in the Vendicare, every inch of his body in agony. He had not fully recovered from the battle for the Vongola rings... but he was guessing he wasn't exactly put in this place to recuperate.
The Vindice never killed - although they sometimes sentenced their captives to fates worse than death. It depended on the severity of the crimes, and on how unpopular the criminal happened to be at the moment.
If "worse than death" was what was waiting for him at the end, Squalo said to himself, so be it.
Squalo Superbi had done what he had set out to do, which was to serve the man called Xanxus with everything he had. More than that, it was to serve what Xanxus stood for - the world he had seen reflected in the raging files of the man's soul.
Even if his dream was ground to dust, he had seen reality as it should be. It was a world of heroes and villains, conquerors and kings.
And he was, in the end, a Superbi.
Despite himself, he wondered what his own father must think of him. He had lived as a Superbi should live, giving his all in pursuit of strength. Someone had stripped him of the title "Sword Emperor" in a fight in which he'd had all the advantage. It was by no means a bad ending.
Then the door opened.
His first instinct was to attack whoever came in. But the weight of the complicated shackles on his arms and feet reminded him that it was futile. He forced himself to remain calm and still, regulated his breathing to seem as if he'd fallen asleep.
A familiar voice greeted him. He did not answer. There were more than one people inside the room, but he sensed that none of them was a threat.
Someone set a chair down beside the pallet he lay in. Someone else sat down on it. This someone spoke to him, in the voice that had greeted him first.
"Well, Squalo. What do we have for today?"
Squalo kept his eyes shut. One of the downsides of being in a medium-security cell was that you were still allowed high-profile visitors, and there was no guarantee that any of them would be a welcome sight.
The visitor spoke on and on as if he didn't care if Squalo was listening. Clearly he was there for the noble purpose of keeping Squalo updated on his teammates in the Varia, the Vongola brats, the goings-on in the outside world. The people who had entered the cell with the visitor maintained a respectful silence while he spoke, unacknowledged.
The visitor was Squalo's age, but there was a familiar lilt in his voice, and through Squalo's closed eyes he could still see that boyish lazyass smile. He spoke of Squalo being pardoned, of being considered for an official position in the Varia. It wasn't clear what position it would be exactly - but since he already had extensive field experience, it was likely a command post.
Then, after an eternity, one of the other men in the room whispered "Boss, it's time to go." The visitor stopped speaking. Squalo could sense him standing up, and the chair being drawn back and out of the cell.
"I found this among my old school things," the visitor said to him. "I think it belongs to you."
Squalo felt the visitor place something light on the bed beside him.
When the visitor was gone, and the footsteps had faded, Squalo finally opened his eyes again. He turned his head toward the gift he had been left: an old book of poetry from around the world.
Both his arms were restrained, but his one good hand was free to move its fingers. He picked up the book and turned the yellowing pages until he found a particular passage, which brought back a hint of a feeling he thought he had long lost:
And seeing nothing but her blackened spires,
The town condemned this girl who loved too well
and found her heaven in the depths of hell.
disclaimer: i really, really love this poem (read the full piece here) and i'm sure other people do too and i'm really sorry but i had to do this. the idea's been percolating for so long and tonight it demanded to be poured out.
i know the poem talks about a "she," but when you hear the words "or that he left her aureoled in flame", isn't squalo the first person that comes to mind??
...don't deny it D:
The World As It Should Be
It was a sacrilege, the neighbors cried,
The way she shattered every mullioned pane
To let a firebrand in.
He made fun of his teachers, he messed up campus property, he fought with other students on a regular basis, he got raving drunk on school grounds, he threw all his books into the fountain and he peed on the school founder's statue. These were just some of the things that Squalo Superbi should have been expelled for.
But he was a Superbi by blood. His father was the head of the Superbi family, which stood in firm allegiance with the powerful Vongola family. And he was spoken for by Dino Cavallone, his classmate, firstborn of the Cavallone don. These were everything that kept Squalo Superbi from being expelled.
His teachers rebelled constantly against being forced to put up with him, and everyone knew it was just a matter of time before he left school on his own. Only his father's stern presence kept him from going anywhere. But as Squalo Superbi grew older and wilder, people were sure not even that would be enough to hold him down.
Dino Cavallone couldn't say that he and Squalo Superbi were friends, exactly. Their families were very closely tied, as all the families connected with the Vongola clan were, and boys of the same age from such families tended to find each other in the same small spaces, whether they liked it or not.
Squalo Superbi was often at family meetings or social functions - a few steps behind his father, and just a few steps ahead of his father's bodyguards. He often came with a scowl and a snarl, complained loudly that he was bored, then stomped out with great fanfare in the middle of a discussion or event. Everyone knew he was going to get hell for it later; the head of the family that prized itself for fostering world-class assassins did not tolerate misbehavior, especially not from a blood member. But the kicks and blows and curses never ended his lifelong habit of walking out on formal affairs.
Beside his father, the young Squalo Superbi looked frail - slim and silver-haired, exactly as his mother was. But there was no denying the eyes. Those were Superbi eyes, eyes that sought power. Eyes that tolerated nothing but the way reality should be.
In the exclusive school they attended, Dino Cavallone shared some classes with Superbi Squalo, but the classroom was not where they most often met. They met outside, while Dino was slacking off and Squalo was steering clear of some disciplinary committee or other.
Often Dino would find Squalo either training with his sword, or reading a book. And when it was the latter, Squalo made a show of hiding the book or throwing it away.
"What do we have for today?" Dino asked, lazily smiling because he really didn't have any other expression for the other boy.
"Nothing," Squalo snapped. Dino caught a closer look at the cover between the boy's long fingers: it was an old book of poetry from around the world.
They were not friends, but there was one true thing Dino Cavallone knew about him: Squalo hated to study, but he loved to learn. He loved reading about history, old wars especially. Like any other boy, Dino supposed, starry-eyed at stories about heroes and villains, conquerors and kings - though his thirst for knowledge was certainly not limited to that.
He would say that one needs to educate oneself in order to become a stronger fighter, and a stronger person - though that was true, that was beside the point.
"You've been reading that book for a week now," Dino pointed out, amused. "It's not even required for class."
"I'm not reading this for class." He threw the book off to a short distance, to show it meant nothing to him. "Only whiny idiots like you want to please your damn teachers."
"What, me? Study?" Dino chuckled.
They were not friends, but they found themselves in each other's company as often as if they were. For Dino, not being pushed away at every opportunity already meant they shared a sort of bond - especially for someone like Squalo Superbi, who fascinated him.
Squalo claimed to choose all his paths in life, but his destiny hung over him like a sharp unyielding sword. He would never find happiness, but he would always search for it.
It would take Dino Cavallone many years before he could think of all those reasons, and figure out exactly what about the sight of the silver-haired boy made him sad.
"If you're not going to use it for school, what are you going to do with all the stuff that's in your head?" Dino asked.
His question was met with a huge, predatory grin.
"Take over the world," Squalo answered, "what else?"
***
They tried in vain
To understand how one so carved from pride
And glassed in dream could have so flung aside
Her graven days,
He was ruthless, murderous, wild - after all of this, he was still not considered a blight on the Superbi family's name. No one wondered why.
It was common knowledge in the underworld that the Superbi family favored the strong. Skilled fighters were given their choice of jobs, on top of prestige and wealth, while less skilled fighters were treated as no more than cannon fodder. If you respected discipline, honor and strength above all else, your place was with the Superbi. They would protect you, give you everything you want and nurture the killer in you - all you had to do was throw away your heart and put your life in their hands.
And Squalo's victims were proof that the boy had all of the things the Superbi family treasured. They were killed in honorable duels observed by mafia swordsmen through the generations. They were killed neatly, with great skill, and with little waste. They were killed without mercy.
Genius, no less. Except Squalo had no authority to kill.
He was a teenager who had dropped out of school and run away from home, to embark alone on a journey to become the strongest living swordsman in the world. He had not allowed himself to be raised according to the traditions of his family - had not risen in rank as any honorable Superbi would, until he was ready to represent the family in games of skill.
As such, he certainly did not have the authority to challenge other swordsmen to duels, even if he did not present himself as a member of the Superbi family. The other swordsmen agreed to his challenges because they knew him, and besides being known as a magnificent punk, he had also built up a considerable reputation independent of the by-laws of the Superbi clan.
But it was only a matter of time before the families decided that enough was enough; he was little more than a child, and Squalo Superbi must be brought home. A one-armed swordsmaster named Tyr, who was then head of the Varia, sought him out, rounded him up with the help of the Vongola's finest, then brought him back, all as instructed.
Tyr stood with the heads of the Vongola and Superbi clans as the fate of the boy named Squalo was being decided. He studied the boy with the power-hungry eyes, memorized every small movement of his wiry body.
"Do you understand why you've been brought before this council today?" the Vongola Ninth asked, in his perpetually calm and gentle voice.
"I wasn't able to kill you all first," the boy sneered. After that he was taken away - not just yet to the medium-security Vindice prisons, but to a holding cell that was nearly as secure. If that had not happened, at one point he would have yelled loudly that he was bored, then walked out of the gathering on his own.
The boy's father did not say a word to object when his son was being taken away. Did not even blink.
The heads of the involved families met to discuss what must be done about the little rogue. He was strong, and the mafia needed a strong fighter. But how to keep him in line? For clearly, not even the years of methodical beatings he received from his father were enough.
It was Tyr the Sword Emperor who proposed the most viable plan. This was the one true thing he knew about Squalo Superbi: He was intolerant of weakness, in himself and in others. He tended to train himself into exhaustion, or until he had mastered a specific technique, whichever came first. And so, he had more control over his young body than many of the others Tyr knew.
His skill was carved in his many scars, his controlled movements, his intent glare - and most of all, in the way he consciously kept from trembling in conditioned fear, when he was brought before his father again.
Tyr said he a good use for Squalo's intolerance of weakness. So, at his recommendation, young Squalo Superbi was placed in the Varia as a trainer. He would be under Tyr's command, and while Tyr lived to keep an eye on him, his skills would be further refined, and he would not be allowed to misbehave.
Of course, this plan relied on the Sword Emperor living to keep an eye on him.
They would ask him later how he could do it to his own teacher - the man who had saved him from being thrown to the Vindice prisons, where he deserved to languish. The man who had taught him everything he knew about the sword, so that he may add it to his own pool of knowledge.
Why did he do it? Was it simply for the title of Sword Emperor? Was he truly a monster?
Oh, he would gloat about it - how he, a stripling, had beaten one-armed Tyr, greatest swordsman alive and fierce leader of the fearsome Varia. How he would insist that they had fought in a clean and proper duel, even if his opponent clearly had the advantage of age and experience.
- And it would be the truth. He had challenged Tyr to a duel, and Tyr had accepted. The battle had been close, very close, but he won.
The Sword Emperor would not have agreed if he had not thought that the battle was going to be fair.
It was over. Now Squalo was free. Now he no longer needed to coddle the milksops that made up the lower ranks of the Varia, no longer needed to play at patience and calm, when he knew he was stronger even than the best swordsman that the revered Vongola family could find.
He no longer had any reason to stay. He had no obligation to explain. And he had no qualms about speaking ill of the man who had trained him, now better known as the man who had died by his sword. After all, he was ruthless, murderous and wild - a killer without a heart, or so he was recognized.
The first thing he did when he left the Varia was to cut off his left arm. He would say later that it was to better understand Tyr's excellence with the sword, the techniques of the only man ever to have almost beaten him - but it would forever be a strange reason.
Squalo charged into his next several duels still bleeding and howling with pain and rage. It seemed then that he would never stop winning.
***
or why she dared profane
The bread and wine of life for some insane
Moment with him. The scandal never died.
He had not suspected that on that night, only one of many empty, ordinary nights, his life was going to change.
The dive had an Italian noun as its name: in these dark corners of the world, it was a covert sign that the owner had ties with the Italian mafia. Otherwise they would name it something more generic, like "Lady Luck" or "Denny's."
By the time Squalo had arrived, the chaos was ending. A man was standing alone in the middle of a sea of bodies, some dead and some barely breathing. He glanced over at Squalo standing by the doorway. And for the first time in his life, Squalo found himself rooted to where he stood.
The man was tall, broad-shouldered, lean - he did not look at all like a mafioso, though he certainly looked like he could deal as much chaos as if he were. Mafia moved in small circles all over the world, and if the man was indeed mafia, it was no surprise that he and Squalo would find themselves standing together in the same out-of-the-way plot of land, whether they liked it or not.
The man had dark hair and dark eyes, like Squalo's father did - but in those eyes burned something that he had been looking for. He did not know he had been looking for them before now.
At that moment, the young Squalo Superbi was filled with a feeling he would never be able to describe, not in his entire life. It was the first and only time such a feeling would come to him. He felt it most distinctly as remembering something he thought he had long lost, in his seemingly endless quest for perfection. It was the end goal, the final objective - the reason for a lifetime of restlessness.
It robbed him of sleep. He regretted over and over the precise second when he stepped out of the way just so the man could walk past him. Unhurried, the taller, older man made his way into the stunned crowd that had gathered outside the bar. The crowd had parted for him, scattering in all directions, and to Squalo it seemed he had shone in his isolation, brilliant with something blazing from within.
He was like a demon from a storybook, something that existed above and beyond human understanding. Fire and spirit burned up the spaces in which he moved, and his every word, every movement etched itself deep into the young Superbi's imagination.
Squalo should not have let the man go. And so he spent the next few days tracking him. He had picked up the talent of sniffing out targets from years of hunting them down in order to challenge them to duels.
(In the streets, they would call it "stalking." In the Varia they would call it "surveillance.")
It was not terribly difficult to find him, anyway. It seemed he was always in some sort of trouble. Usually he would start it, and usually he would finish it, knocking down his opponents with pistols or bare hands.
The man had no technique whatsoever when killing. He was not an expert marksman, even if he boldly carried his pair of pistols around in broad daylight. He just pointed and shot. He killed to get people out of his way - fast, efficient, messy as hell.
Squalo was captivated.
Finally, one day, this man faced several hitmen from the Sicilian mafia. Squalo found himself wondering why the Varia had not been sent in. If this exceptionally difficult bastard had troubled any of the Sicilian families, shouldn't the Varia be deployed?
But there was no time to mull it over. The man was facing a grim situation, surrounded by five elite soldiers all at once. Clearly he needed help. And clearly Squalo had to get in there and save the man's ass.
The man took one look at the silver-haired teenager who had drawn a sword out of nowhere and jumped into the fray - then proceeded to ignore him completely. They never worked together to get out of that bind: Squalo had his targets, the man had his.
And when the fight was over, the man simply started walking away.
Being brushed aside annoyed him, certainly... but for some reason, Squalo wasn't in the mood to bite the man's head off, the way he would do to any other ungrateful stronzo. He somehow felt that if he and the man came to blows, he would lose -and the greatest swordsman in the world couldn't understand why or how he knew that for sure.
"What do you think you're doing?" the man asked over his shoulder.
Squalo, who never minced words, answered, "Following you. Got a problem with that?!"
The man said nothing and never looked back over his shoulder again.
Thus Squalo Superbi threw away his heart and put his life in the hands of a complete stranger.
***
But no one guessed that loveliness would claim
Her soul's cathedral burned by his desires
Or that he left her aureoled in flame…
It was probably where the whole thing was headed to begin with.
This was what Squalo said to himself, as he lay alone inside a medium-security prison cell in the Vendicare, every inch of his body in agony. He had not fully recovered from the battle for the Vongola rings... but he was guessing he wasn't exactly put in this place to recuperate.
The Vindice never killed - although they sometimes sentenced their captives to fates worse than death. It depended on the severity of the crimes, and on how unpopular the criminal happened to be at the moment.
If "worse than death" was what was waiting for him at the end, Squalo said to himself, so be it.
Squalo Superbi had done what he had set out to do, which was to serve the man called Xanxus with everything he had. More than that, it was to serve what Xanxus stood for - the world he had seen reflected in the raging files of the man's soul.
Even if his dream was ground to dust, he had seen reality as it should be. It was a world of heroes and villains, conquerors and kings.
And he was, in the end, a Superbi.
Despite himself, he wondered what his own father must think of him. He had lived as a Superbi should live, giving his all in pursuit of strength. Someone had stripped him of the title "Sword Emperor" in a fight in which he'd had all the advantage. It was by no means a bad ending.
Then the door opened.
His first instinct was to attack whoever came in. But the weight of the complicated shackles on his arms and feet reminded him that it was futile. He forced himself to remain calm and still, regulated his breathing to seem as if he'd fallen asleep.
A familiar voice greeted him. He did not answer. There were more than one people inside the room, but he sensed that none of them was a threat.
Someone set a chair down beside the pallet he lay in. Someone else sat down on it. This someone spoke to him, in the voice that had greeted him first.
"Well, Squalo. What do we have for today?"
Squalo kept his eyes shut. One of the downsides of being in a medium-security cell was that you were still allowed high-profile visitors, and there was no guarantee that any of them would be a welcome sight.
The visitor spoke on and on as if he didn't care if Squalo was listening. Clearly he was there for the noble purpose of keeping Squalo updated on his teammates in the Varia, the Vongola brats, the goings-on in the outside world. The people who had entered the cell with the visitor maintained a respectful silence while he spoke, unacknowledged.
The visitor was Squalo's age, but there was a familiar lilt in his voice, and through Squalo's closed eyes he could still see that boyish lazyass smile. He spoke of Squalo being pardoned, of being considered for an official position in the Varia. It wasn't clear what position it would be exactly - but since he already had extensive field experience, it was likely a command post.
Then, after an eternity, one of the other men in the room whispered "Boss, it's time to go." The visitor stopped speaking. Squalo could sense him standing up, and the chair being drawn back and out of the cell.
"I found this among my old school things," the visitor said to him. "I think it belongs to you."
Squalo felt the visitor place something light on the bed beside him.
When the visitor was gone, and the footsteps had faded, Squalo finally opened his eyes again. He turned his head toward the gift he had been left: an old book of poetry from around the world.
Both his arms were restrained, but his one good hand was free to move its fingers. He picked up the book and turned the yellowing pages until he found a particular passage, which brought back a hint of a feeling he thought he had long lost:
And seeing nothing but her blackened spires,
The town condemned this girl who loved too well
and found her heaven in the depths of hell.