Reborn Fanfic: Only With The Heart
Title: Only With The Heart
Author: lifelink
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2700
Parings: Bianchi/Gokudera (past Bianchi/Reborn, Bianchi/Romeo)
Warnings: Incest
Summary: Amor tutti fa ugualli. Bianchi and all her love.
Notes: Written for pen_over_fist and based on her prompt for the yuri_exchange , with many differences. Please excuse any inconsistencies in Bianchi's character as I have never written her before. Title from the quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Bianchi remembers this about Mistress Gokudera:
The way her hair had glittered in the wind never as sun pale what Bianchi had grown up knowing or as dusk dark as the outsiders barely on the edges of her world-
The way her eyes would sparkle when she laughed, almond shaped and as bright as the leaves on the roses that would tear at the woman's dress as she danced in the dirt, uncaring of all the custom which Bianchi had become so accustomed to-
The way her fingers could press down own the ivory keys of any piano and, with one touch, cause the room to still in attention- until she couldn't anymore and the pain bid her to clutch at her red stained blouse just to know she was still all there.
Yet, perhaps the clearest thing she can ever recall is being six, curled up next to the woman who may as well have been a stranger for all that Bianchi saw of her in the short years their lives would overlap, and just- listening. To the rise and fall of her chest, to the steady tones of her heart, to the melodic cadence of her words.
“Midas,” She had said back then, smooth and true, “was a king who wanted the world and instead was left with nothing. He wanted happiness in the only way he knew how, yet ignored love and possibility on his way to achieving it. Everything he touched turned to beautiful gold, and in such a way he was cursed to never be able to touch.”
Her hand twirling through Bianchi's hair is warm and smooth, and only later will Bianchi realize the vague shake in her flesh along with just what it would mean, so she relaxes with out even realizing she had tensed at the common tale.
“But all fables have happy endings, Bianchi, you must understand, and he regains his normalcy to return it all back the way the world had been. Even without his prayers, it would have all come to an end, for the universe does not let harm continue indefinitely. Whether with his death or by the disappearance of his power, nothing such as that could ever permanent. This is not simple wishful thinking or misguided hope, but fact, my beautiful girl.”
The rest of the story is static, mere white noise in her child memories, yet it still surprises Bianchi just how much she remembers of that cheerful woman and her sad smiles and her predictions that Bianchi was sure would never come true.
-
Everything she touches turns to poison.
Bianchi is seven and can already see the cracks beginning to form. Her brother flinches whenever she sets her gaze upon him and her father is caught in memories, ignoring her to stare at his youngest child's messy hair.
She spends most of her time is the kitchen, trying to perfect the recipes and show her love for the people who are most important to her in this world. Her cooking never turns out right, though no matter how much she tries. The first time she tastes it, her throat burns and closes such that it is all she can do to lay herself against the cold floor stones until the cooks arrive for supper.
However, even if all this is doomed to fail, this is her darling brother for whom she is working, her distant father who locks himself away with photo albums, and in such a way she continues. Bianchi stops being able to taste at one point, long after many of her creations have settled like dead weight in her stomach. At that point she can only tell by the smell and look. Still, she is certain that she must being getting better every day, somehow closer to her goal after all this time.
The first time Bianchi creates something beautiful, it is storming, wind scattering around all the beautiful petals on the roses that her sibling loved, and she packages up the cookies with all the emotion she knows. He is sitting on the steps when she finds him, chin resting on his knees just gazing into the grey.
“Here.” she says smiling, because this time Bianchi knows that she has finally gotten something right.
He doesn't accept at first, merely takes a look into her eyes and notes the smile on her lips before nodding. Later he will learn, but this is only the beginning and he still believes all her words to be true.
The cookies break easily under his teeth and Bianchi can hear them cracking above the rain. In that same moment, she watches him fall. There is blood bubbling from his lips, waking tiny lines on his chin and pudding in the creases of his lips.
She learns afterward that she will never be able to make people happy with her meals and that the most she can do is keep them safe, even if it involves hurting them.
This is her love
-
It's Tsuna who suggests it in the beginning, that the two of them should try to get along.
Bianchi isn't sure what to do with his words, isn't even sure it's probable anymore, that her brother would be able to her in the eyes unflinching.
And somehow, once her brothers pleas have silenced and her waverings have calmed, they end up here, watching each other from across the counter.
The first thing they try is cooking, Bianchi's talent and failing.
“Cooking is an art.” Bianchi tells her brother amidst the hiss of her pan hitting stove flames. “You have to put love into it or else it won't work. The same dish will taste entirely different depending on the feelings you have while working.”
She can already see it turning purple at the edges with her poison curse, and she wonders if she was wrong, if no amount of love will ever change her creations to anything but dangerous.
He's whisking at a cake batter, just the perfect consistency at just the perfect speed, but a dark scowl has lit on his face, and watching him she loses track of her sauce for just a bit and the steam blinds her vision white. It's better this way, she thinks, not bothering to wipe away the clouds from her now eternally present goggles, for everything in her domain turns to poison and she can't risk it now, not with him.
Still, when it's all done and her pasta writhes like worms on her plate under a bright poison miasma, she stares out of the corner of her eye at the lack of risk in her brother's accurate baking and knows she can not live any other way but truly.
-
The second time they meet, Reborn holds a gun to her forehead and bids her to talk.
The alley is covered in trash and decay, lifeless human waste on which the rats with their bulging eyes will feed. Dirty water is soaking into the edges of her pants where she kneels in front of this small fighter.
Reborn grinds the metal harshly into her forehead, and that motion leaves her eyes to continue gazing upward, into his shadowed face.
“I will not ask again, why are you following me, Vongola child?”
There had been a bar, in a city just north of her family home, that Bianchi had been prone to visit when nostalgia hit her. She is an assassin now, not their beautiful daughter who could do nothing but try to keep strong even in misfortune. Not the one who's touch broke everything she loved, because this was a solitary life and it wouldn't matter how fast her world could crumble if she had nothing left to hold.
She had met him there, that eternal boy, and talked with him for hours, powered by alcohol as the night wore on.
He hadn't touched his glass, she would realize when morning light drove a wedge into her mind, yet it isn't pity which drives her to him in the coming weeks. She admires him, this man who had given up so much of his adulthood and could still live better than she, who only had to reach out her hands for the things she wanted, even if they could never want her back.
Which is why, when she can once again feel deep beat of her heart instead of simply cold metal, Bianchi realizes this must be love as well.
And so, she smiles, ready to face her end and tells him that.
-
His fingers are delicate like this, swift and supple like she has never seen them before, but still as strong as the setting sun that blinds Bianchi even through her plastic shields.
“Music is about the future.” Her brother tells her to the tune of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. “It's about creating something and changing the way people look at you. About being noticed, remembered.” But he isn't looking at her when he says that, only at his abstract goals without though of how he has already gained them.
Bianchi lives in the past, in those tiny caresses of love that her brother used to give her before he knew who she was, in the soft way Reborn's voice washed over her the first time they met, in Romeo's roses, in the only recipe she had ever made which hadn't ended in ruin. All she's trying do do now is bring a glimmer of that back.
She only really knows one song well, that mistress' soft tones that she had heard as a child, and still can't play it without mistakes. The base beats a rapid tempo to a slow, slow song and Bianchi plays with a reckless abandon, disregarding tempo and dynamics in favor of the way it makes her feel.
When she opens he eyes, the sun has set and the look in her brother's eyes in unreadable. All she has is hope that she may have reached him somehow, like nothing else has before.
-
Her relationship with Romeo is dysfunctional at best.
Their hours are divided between electric fighting and ignoring each other completely. Still, Bianchi knows that, no matter how bad this get, in this man she has found her match. They are the same type, her and Romeo, an both believe in love as the highest thing in the world.
He buys her roses after every fight, scraping together the remainder of his funds for fantastic bouquets of fresh petals. This is his apology and every time Bianchi accepts it, because she sees the rough thinning of his shirts that he sometimes doesn't have enough money to replace- because she sees the way he smiles is just a little sad every time her hands her flowers, as if he knows this is the time that she runs- because, no matter the fight, she knows it to be sincere.
Now, the spring air is wafting through the windows of their tiny apartment and outside she thinks she can hear the faintest strains of music. The world is peaceful and Romeo is standing nervously on the front step with that same look he always has after the storm has passed. She takes the roses from his hand and leans over to press her lips against his cheek.
Bianchi thinks she'll make him something special for dinner.
-
It takes them over like only the best battles can, a challenge they have never been able to meet or a wound that Bianchi had never before truly felt could close.
Paper litters the ground like a fake Christmas wonderland between the two of them and Bianchi watches her brother touch the back of a ballpoint to his chapped pink lips, almost unconsciously. Their poetry is nothing but empty words that they can not seem to make connect with the other. Her's is in fluid Italian and of love in all it's forms, his is jagged Japanese about loyalty to the end of time.
They're arguing now, the way all of their interactions always turn at some point, these fights that she can not help but get herself involved in if this is the best she will ever get. A headache is starting at the base of her skull, throbbing away to her heart and this person who can make it beat.
Writing is about unity, she thinks, the cohesion of different forces as they meander towards a common goal. Yet, all she can see is this road falling away beneath their feet, never being able to settle into a constant form and suffering for it.
So she lets her mind clear, though it is more difficult than she remembers this ever being (she and her brother are similar people in that regard, though she keeps her storming emotions closer to her insides), and lets herself take a step back.
If this won't work then they only have to try something else.
-
More than anyone else, she loves her brother.
Everything she does is for him, somehow, even if he casts her away. Bianchi is resilient, she doesn't need to be coddled and if these are the facts of life then she will accept them. However, she would never give up anything without a fight, not while she still believes there to be hope.
So she puts on her goggles and lets the strap dig into the skin of her cheek where an indent is already starting to wear away into permanent pink. (Her skin wrinkles in this place first, but she finds she does not truly mind. A warrior must live with the tales their scars tell.)
Bianchi doesn't mind protecting him like this for now, hiding her love in plain site behind her obsessions. She will do everything possible to keep him smiling, even if it means breaking him to build him stronger from the ground up, even if it means letting him cry now so that his tears won't flow later.
Even if it means not touching him, lest she taint the joy in those eyes.
-
Art is something neither of them know much about.
Bianchi holds the brush steady, dipping the end into her bitter oils and bringing it down in fast strokes across the canvas, letting colors bleed together into the edges of form.
She's not particularly talented with paint, and her still life is recognizable but lacking substance.
She wonders what this skill is about, if not her mercuric emotions or his swift logic.
It is in his brush strokes that she finds her answer. Where she is accurate in each placement of marks, he is wild with fire, like hurricane winds. His works are nothing but the pure feeling that she puts into her cooking, her music. This is his love, she realizes, this passion that sees through his world and reduces it numbers.
For this is neither of their talents and thusly the one thing they can truly do together and, in it, be able to understand the other.
Her brother's hand brushes his cheek as he leans back, a splash of yellow coating it like warpaint or dames' make-up and, under the flickering florescent light, makes her remember just how beautiful he is.
It is all in her imagination, she knows, but not even common sense can stop her now. She has lived her whole life breaking the things she desires such that she has never truly learned to be as free as this boy who shackles himself willingly.
She has a just for the impossible, for people who can never love her, if only because she has hope that one day her touch will bring joy, and changing anything less simply wouldn't mean as much as this.
And so, gently she leans over and licks the smear of yellow from his cheek, trailing down to his lips to whisper his name in hot breath, to kiss him with all the sweetness of her poison lead and all the love she will ever be able to give.
Because, no matter her consequences, this single touch was worth it all.
Author: lifelink
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2700
Parings: Bianchi/Gokudera (past Bianchi/Reborn, Bianchi/Romeo)
Warnings: Incest
Summary: Amor tutti fa ugualli. Bianchi and all her love.
Notes: Written for pen_over_fist and based on her prompt for the yuri_exchange , with many differences. Please excuse any inconsistencies in Bianchi's character as I have never written her before. Title from the quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Bianchi remembers this about Mistress Gokudera:
The way her hair had glittered in the wind never as sun pale what Bianchi had grown up knowing or as dusk dark as the outsiders barely on the edges of her world-
The way her eyes would sparkle when she laughed, almond shaped and as bright as the leaves on the roses that would tear at the woman's dress as she danced in the dirt, uncaring of all the custom which Bianchi had become so accustomed to-
The way her fingers could press down own the ivory keys of any piano and, with one touch, cause the room to still in attention- until she couldn't anymore and the pain bid her to clutch at her red stained blouse just to know she was still all there.
Yet, perhaps the clearest thing she can ever recall is being six, curled up next to the woman who may as well have been a stranger for all that Bianchi saw of her in the short years their lives would overlap, and just- listening. To the rise and fall of her chest, to the steady tones of her heart, to the melodic cadence of her words.
“Midas,” She had said back then, smooth and true, “was a king who wanted the world and instead was left with nothing. He wanted happiness in the only way he knew how, yet ignored love and possibility on his way to achieving it. Everything he touched turned to beautiful gold, and in such a way he was cursed to never be able to touch.”
Her hand twirling through Bianchi's hair is warm and smooth, and only later will Bianchi realize the vague shake in her flesh along with just what it would mean, so she relaxes with out even realizing she had tensed at the common tale.
“But all fables have happy endings, Bianchi, you must understand, and he regains his normalcy to return it all back the way the world had been. Even without his prayers, it would have all come to an end, for the universe does not let harm continue indefinitely. Whether with his death or by the disappearance of his power, nothing such as that could ever permanent. This is not simple wishful thinking or misguided hope, but fact, my beautiful girl.”
The rest of the story is static, mere white noise in her child memories, yet it still surprises Bianchi just how much she remembers of that cheerful woman and her sad smiles and her predictions that Bianchi was sure would never come true.
-
Everything she touches turns to poison.
Bianchi is seven and can already see the cracks beginning to form. Her brother flinches whenever she sets her gaze upon him and her father is caught in memories, ignoring her to stare at his youngest child's messy hair.
She spends most of her time is the kitchen, trying to perfect the recipes and show her love for the people who are most important to her in this world. Her cooking never turns out right, though no matter how much she tries. The first time she tastes it, her throat burns and closes such that it is all she can do to lay herself against the cold floor stones until the cooks arrive for supper.
However, even if all this is doomed to fail, this is her darling brother for whom she is working, her distant father who locks himself away with photo albums, and in such a way she continues. Bianchi stops being able to taste at one point, long after many of her creations have settled like dead weight in her stomach. At that point she can only tell by the smell and look. Still, she is certain that she must being getting better every day, somehow closer to her goal after all this time.
The first time Bianchi creates something beautiful, it is storming, wind scattering around all the beautiful petals on the roses that her sibling loved, and she packages up the cookies with all the emotion she knows. He is sitting on the steps when she finds him, chin resting on his knees just gazing into the grey.
“Here.” she says smiling, because this time Bianchi knows that she has finally gotten something right.
He doesn't accept at first, merely takes a look into her eyes and notes the smile on her lips before nodding. Later he will learn, but this is only the beginning and he still believes all her words to be true.
The cookies break easily under his teeth and Bianchi can hear them cracking above the rain. In that same moment, she watches him fall. There is blood bubbling from his lips, waking tiny lines on his chin and pudding in the creases of his lips.
She learns afterward that she will never be able to make people happy with her meals and that the most she can do is keep them safe, even if it involves hurting them.
This is her love
-
It's Tsuna who suggests it in the beginning, that the two of them should try to get along.
Bianchi isn't sure what to do with his words, isn't even sure it's probable anymore, that her brother would be able to her in the eyes unflinching.
And somehow, once her brothers pleas have silenced and her waverings have calmed, they end up here, watching each other from across the counter.
The first thing they try is cooking, Bianchi's talent and failing.
“Cooking is an art.” Bianchi tells her brother amidst the hiss of her pan hitting stove flames. “You have to put love into it or else it won't work. The same dish will taste entirely different depending on the feelings you have while working.”
She can already see it turning purple at the edges with her poison curse, and she wonders if she was wrong, if no amount of love will ever change her creations to anything but dangerous.
He's whisking at a cake batter, just the perfect consistency at just the perfect speed, but a dark scowl has lit on his face, and watching him she loses track of her sauce for just a bit and the steam blinds her vision white. It's better this way, she thinks, not bothering to wipe away the clouds from her now eternally present goggles, for everything in her domain turns to poison and she can't risk it now, not with him.
Still, when it's all done and her pasta writhes like worms on her plate under a bright poison miasma, she stares out of the corner of her eye at the lack of risk in her brother's accurate baking and knows she can not live any other way but truly.
-
The second time they meet, Reborn holds a gun to her forehead and bids her to talk.
The alley is covered in trash and decay, lifeless human waste on which the rats with their bulging eyes will feed. Dirty water is soaking into the edges of her pants where she kneels in front of this small fighter.
Reborn grinds the metal harshly into her forehead, and that motion leaves her eyes to continue gazing upward, into his shadowed face.
“I will not ask again, why are you following me, Vongola child?”
There had been a bar, in a city just north of her family home, that Bianchi had been prone to visit when nostalgia hit her. She is an assassin now, not their beautiful daughter who could do nothing but try to keep strong even in misfortune. Not the one who's touch broke everything she loved, because this was a solitary life and it wouldn't matter how fast her world could crumble if she had nothing left to hold.
She had met him there, that eternal boy, and talked with him for hours, powered by alcohol as the night wore on.
He hadn't touched his glass, she would realize when morning light drove a wedge into her mind, yet it isn't pity which drives her to him in the coming weeks. She admires him, this man who had given up so much of his adulthood and could still live better than she, who only had to reach out her hands for the things she wanted, even if they could never want her back.
Which is why, when she can once again feel deep beat of her heart instead of simply cold metal, Bianchi realizes this must be love as well.
And so, she smiles, ready to face her end and tells him that.
-
His fingers are delicate like this, swift and supple like she has never seen them before, but still as strong as the setting sun that blinds Bianchi even through her plastic shields.
“Music is about the future.” Her brother tells her to the tune of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. “It's about creating something and changing the way people look at you. About being noticed, remembered.” But he isn't looking at her when he says that, only at his abstract goals without though of how he has already gained them.
Bianchi lives in the past, in those tiny caresses of love that her brother used to give her before he knew who she was, in the soft way Reborn's voice washed over her the first time they met, in Romeo's roses, in the only recipe she had ever made which hadn't ended in ruin. All she's trying do do now is bring a glimmer of that back.
She only really knows one song well, that mistress' soft tones that she had heard as a child, and still can't play it without mistakes. The base beats a rapid tempo to a slow, slow song and Bianchi plays with a reckless abandon, disregarding tempo and dynamics in favor of the way it makes her feel.
When she opens he eyes, the sun has set and the look in her brother's eyes in unreadable. All she has is hope that she may have reached him somehow, like nothing else has before.
-
Her relationship with Romeo is dysfunctional at best.
Their hours are divided between electric fighting and ignoring each other completely. Still, Bianchi knows that, no matter how bad this get, in this man she has found her match. They are the same type, her and Romeo, an both believe in love as the highest thing in the world.
He buys her roses after every fight, scraping together the remainder of his funds for fantastic bouquets of fresh petals. This is his apology and every time Bianchi accepts it, because she sees the rough thinning of his shirts that he sometimes doesn't have enough money to replace- because she sees the way he smiles is just a little sad every time her hands her flowers, as if he knows this is the time that she runs- because, no matter the fight, she knows it to be sincere.
Now, the spring air is wafting through the windows of their tiny apartment and outside she thinks she can hear the faintest strains of music. The world is peaceful and Romeo is standing nervously on the front step with that same look he always has after the storm has passed. She takes the roses from his hand and leans over to press her lips against his cheek.
Bianchi thinks she'll make him something special for dinner.
-
It takes them over like only the best battles can, a challenge they have never been able to meet or a wound that Bianchi had never before truly felt could close.
Paper litters the ground like a fake Christmas wonderland between the two of them and Bianchi watches her brother touch the back of a ballpoint to his chapped pink lips, almost unconsciously. Their poetry is nothing but empty words that they can not seem to make connect with the other. Her's is in fluid Italian and of love in all it's forms, his is jagged Japanese about loyalty to the end of time.
They're arguing now, the way all of their interactions always turn at some point, these fights that she can not help but get herself involved in if this is the best she will ever get. A headache is starting at the base of her skull, throbbing away to her heart and this person who can make it beat.
Writing is about unity, she thinks, the cohesion of different forces as they meander towards a common goal. Yet, all she can see is this road falling away beneath their feet, never being able to settle into a constant form and suffering for it.
So she lets her mind clear, though it is more difficult than she remembers this ever being (she and her brother are similar people in that regard, though she keeps her storming emotions closer to her insides), and lets herself take a step back.
If this won't work then they only have to try something else.
-
More than anyone else, she loves her brother.
Everything she does is for him, somehow, even if he casts her away. Bianchi is resilient, she doesn't need to be coddled and if these are the facts of life then she will accept them. However, she would never give up anything without a fight, not while she still believes there to be hope.
So she puts on her goggles and lets the strap dig into the skin of her cheek where an indent is already starting to wear away into permanent pink. (Her skin wrinkles in this place first, but she finds she does not truly mind. A warrior must live with the tales their scars tell.)
Bianchi doesn't mind protecting him like this for now, hiding her love in plain site behind her obsessions. She will do everything possible to keep him smiling, even if it means breaking him to build him stronger from the ground up, even if it means letting him cry now so that his tears won't flow later.
Even if it means not touching him, lest she taint the joy in those eyes.
-
Art is something neither of them know much about.
Bianchi holds the brush steady, dipping the end into her bitter oils and bringing it down in fast strokes across the canvas, letting colors bleed together into the edges of form.
She's not particularly talented with paint, and her still life is recognizable but lacking substance.
She wonders what this skill is about, if not her mercuric emotions or his swift logic.
It is in his brush strokes that she finds her answer. Where she is accurate in each placement of marks, he is wild with fire, like hurricane winds. His works are nothing but the pure feeling that she puts into her cooking, her music. This is his love, she realizes, this passion that sees through his world and reduces it numbers.
For this is neither of their talents and thusly the one thing they can truly do together and, in it, be able to understand the other.
Her brother's hand brushes his cheek as he leans back, a splash of yellow coating it like warpaint or dames' make-up and, under the flickering florescent light, makes her remember just how beautiful he is.
It is all in her imagination, she knows, but not even common sense can stop her now. She has lived her whole life breaking the things she desires such that she has never truly learned to be as free as this boy who shackles himself willingly.
She has a just for the impossible, for people who can never love her, if only because she has hope that one day her touch will bring joy, and changing anything less simply wouldn't mean as much as this.
And so, gently she leans over and licks the smear of yellow from his cheek, trailing down to his lips to whisper his name in hot breath, to kiss him with all the sweetness of her poison lead and all the love she will ever be able to give.
Because, no matter her consequences, this single touch was worth it all.