First Attempt at Fanfiction
Title - Monster Under the Bed
Author - me~
Rating - PG13
Pairing - Slight 69D
Warnings - blood, angst, shounen-ai
Disclaimer: Characters are property of Amano
Three pale, terrified faces turn towards him, pleading for help. Despair traces every line in their all-too-young faces. He turns to see the men behind him. They lift up their guns to shoot, three quick, accurate pops. He tries to stop them, but his cries are drowned out by the screams of the children as they die. One of the men, laughing, turns and faces him. His heart stops when he sees the man’s face. Time drags on as he struggles to breathe against the tidal wave of grief and shock that threatens to drown him.
They are in a different room now. Other children, underfed and injured, huddle in groups out of an animal instinct of safety in numbers. A doctor with a patchwork face like Frankenstein leers at them. “It’s an honor to die to restore the glory of our family.” He watches another failed experiment, the child burning to death. The doctor merely makes a sound of annoyance before picking his next victim.
Fuuta’s words come back to him then. “Ranked number one boss to care for the welfare of civilians.” It rings in his ears. An accusation.
And then it is him in the body of one of the children, strapped down to a hard metal surface (easy to clean, so the elders reasoned) and in unbearable pain. His tiny spine contorted. Being shot was a mercy in comparison.
He wakes up screaming “No more!” It is loud enough that Romario runs in, convinced there is an assassination attempt. He runs his hand through his perpetually disheveled hair and manages to convince Romario that it is only a bad dream. Romario smiles and sits down on a chair beside the bed. “You used to be so scared of monsters beneath your bed, you know? I had to check every night before you’d go back to sleep.” Dino smiles at the childhood memory. “Romario…were you…did you…the Estraneo children…?” Romario’s smile becomes troubled and suspicious, an expression he had never seen on the open, smiling face before. It is a long time before he answers, and he avoids looking at his boss. “Orders, Mr. Cavallone.” Dino thinks that this is the only time Romario has called him by anything other than his first name. Romario stands up and bows, waiting for permission to leave. “I understand, Romario. Good night.” Dino falls back into an uneasy sleep.
It is the same room again, but there are no sign of the children. The adults are dead, some crumpled into a ball against the wall, others sprawled like a star on the floor. A sheet of paper floats down, a corner of the page landing in a pool of blood. The centerpiece of the macabre tableau is a young boy with mismatched eyes and midnight blue hair. He turns and smiles playfully. “Let’s erase it all. Shall we go together?” Two other children left alive join hands with him, and they walk away from the blood.
There is only darkness now, the space between the here and the now. He does not know if he is dreaming or awake.
“Haneuma.” The other man uses his title, mocking him.
“Dino is fine.”
He is no longer a child, if ever he was. Some things have not changed - the midnight blue hair and the mismatched eyes. Tonight the eyes are bright and glassy. Then a single lonely tear flows down his face, the first following the last.
And then his arms are around the thin fragile shoulders of the young man seven years his junior, hoping to offer some kind of comfort for all those lost years. Except that there is no recompense for childhood, but he in all his bright optimism hopes that there is. Mukuro’s hand comes up then, and clasps the arm around his shoulders. They are each other’s support.
Something wet is on his hand now, and he shifts to look at it. It is blood, not the salt water of tears. He realizes with a cold start that there is no pulse of a living heartbeat. The body vanishes, until there are only the mismatched eyes and the playful smile. Like the Cheshire cat, the smile is the last to disappear. There is laughter in every corner of his mind, no place bright enough to dispel the chill that falls over him and no corner dark enough for him to hide. He curls into a fetal position, but the sound goes on and on.
He is steeped in so much guilt and the belief that somewhere a tortured child exists within the sadistic shell. His men are before him now, smiling and greeting him. Then a flash of something red, and they fall en masse, hand clutching their throats in a desperate attempt to stay alive.
He gets up then, finds his whip at his side. He can't wash away the blood on his own hands, but he can obliterate his own guilt.
He does not know how long he fights until the whip slips from his sweaty palms, and Mukuro’s body presses him against a wall. A gloved hand reaches up and brushes Dino’s golden hair out of his tired eyes. His lips are crushed with bruising force until they bleed. He licks his lips with the satisfied air of a cat. “Tsunayoshi will be so disappointed when his ‘sworn brother’ tries to kill him.” Then there’s someone else in his mind, leaving him no room to exist. He realizes then that the child never existed, and this is the shadow he feared.
Arrivederci, someone whispers. Don’t pity the monster under your bed.