[gift fic] for mia anothermiyaw;
Katekyo Hitman Reborn! Publishing ‘verse. Future-fic, AU.
Notes: 2,253 words. Uni/Gamma. Please do not shoot me. I wanted happy and needed to contradict the sadness of this song. Besides, do you know how HARD is it to figure out a way for these two to actually be together??? *stabstabstab* Call me indulgent and fluffy.
Love is Serious Business, yo.
“These Images”
For Mia.
It took a great amount of effort to hold the girl but not crush her in his arms,
with the full force of all that pent up longing and sadness and that want for things
to go back exactly the way they used to, when they were not two but three,
a system rather than a duo.
-- izkariote, taken from here
She exits the noise of the party for the quiet of the garden. It is not that she is thinking of escape, she has long since felt the need to escape from anywhere for any reason.
No. Now it is just momentary reprieve. From the laughter and the drinking and the singing. From the smiles and the gifts and songs uttered from the mouths of colleagues and peers. From Basil’s worried gaze, from Tsuna’s well-meaning queries of whether she is alright tonight - her night. Her birthday.
It is over. Uni breathes, eyes falling half-mast as she sets her hands on the damp rail, the slightest hint of moss growing on white-painted cement tickling her fingertips. It was over long ago, that two years seems more now like two decades - a lifetime, so far away.
“Over,” she mouths as she pulls out the small, envelope that Basil had handed to her when she had first turned her wandering gaze to the open doors, to the garden beyond them.
“Be thouest gentle with it,” he had told her, that small, shy, secretive smile on his guileless face. Gentle, he had said, and now, Uni looks down at the small, flat triangular box-envelope, an equally small, butterfly-shaped card dangling from one of the points.
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom
So quoteth this humble servant the words of poet Anais Nin
to wish thee joy on this most felicitous celebration of thy birth.
Gentle, Basil had said, and now, Uni unhooks the flap; fingers gently lifting it to uncover a small, dark, silent form pressed between fine powder-paper.
Now, Uni recalls the trials of the years before she’d achieved her own freedom and she smiles - hesitant - as she lets the envelope fall away, folded paper the metaphor to her once-invisible cage. Smiles, as she lets the beautiful sleeping butterfly come slowly to life in her carefully cupped palms.
I am grateful to Byakuran-sama for his patience and his teachings, from whom without, I would not have learned the measure of my own strength.
She recalls, how it had been the longest ten minutes of her life. The hardest fifteen steps she had even taken out of that cold, oppressive presence - away from the smile that seemed deadlier than any knife, any broken shard of glass, any promise. The longest time her heart had held itself together before she finally ran across the street, heedless of incoming traffic, to fling herself into Basil’s arms to cry, cry hard for what she had won and what she had to sacrifice to win it. For how long it had taken, how hard letting go seemed.
It was very good doing business with you, Byakuran-sama. I hope that we might continue to do so, even if my path now takes me elsewhere.
She recalls further back, how silence had been a double-edged sword. How it had been the spear she had chosen to impale herself upon in order to slay the dragon of her mistakes. How silence had become her weapon of choice long after Gamma had finally had enough, had gone away from her, leaving her all but wretched and devoid of any sunshine or life. How silence had won her the freedom that Basil had urged her to claim.
Silence had veiled all her intentions, all her plans so that Tsuna - giving, patient, kind Tsuna - had been able to lure him away, had been able to help her acquire her shares by buying them from her; had helped by giving back when everyone else she’d come to know had only taken, taken everything away.
She recalls, how a year after she’d walked away from Millefiore, Tsuna had told her about how a tribe of Native Americans continue believe that if a person whispered their wishes to butterflies before setting them free, that those same butterflies would carry the wish to heaven, offering these to the gods.
Uni doesn’t know if she believes such silly superstitions, but she does believe that Tsuna does and how maybe, maybe if only for a night, she can believe through Tsuna the way most people around him seem to do.
*
Uni feels the tiny wish flutter away, wings unfolding, straining for an eternity before taking flight, the suddenness of its departure so much like the space between two heartbeats. Inside, she can hear the deliberate weight of Gokudera’s fingers on the piano chords as Chrome finally gives in to Dino’s earlier pleas to sing just this once, just tonight.
Your fingertips across my skin
The palm trees swaying in the wind
Images
You sang me Spanish lullabies
The sweetest sadness in your eyes
Clever trick
When Uni closes her eyes, she is young again, small but happy as she races across the water. The sun is hot but hardly harsh, bright, bright light washing the shore, making the grains stark, making them pure and white. There is sand between her toes and sea salt in the moisture of her eyes, but she does not mind. There is nothing to mind here.
All that really matters is that she is running, that she is free. All that she needs is the piece of string that strains against the wind. All there is, is this: this moment, this time, this memory - her mother calling her name back to the rented cabana, Gamma standing in the shade, the beach towel in his hands open and ready to receive her.
Well, I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
She finds her way back to the arch, one arm crossing over her stomach so that her fingers curl around her other elbow, while her shoulder presses against the beam. She scans the room with the lights now down and low so that only candles flicker on the tips of half-burned wicks, illuminating the faces of those gathered and silent. By the baby grand, Chrome continues, lost in the blossom of a yellow rose cupped in one palm while the notes continue to fall with aching precision and patience.
We walked along a crowded street,
You took my hand and danced with me,
Images
And when you left, you kissed my lips;
You told me you would never, never forget
These images
No…
Uni thinks back now to her childhood: to her mother, to the man she learned she was too old to allow to be her father. To everything that had been, to everything that she wishes now could have been.
She does not close her eyes. Instead, she lets them go half-mast once more so that the flames blur and bleed into long, horizontal lines of light that quiver as her eyes threaten tears. Tears that taste of oceans now lost, oceans from a life long past its time.
*
It is late when they all turn in for the night, the shadows of those she is thankful to call friends going gently into rooms, quiet and still. Only the crickets are left to sing their songs while the moon settles on a bough of branches and leaves.
In the silence of the garden, Uni continues to hear the song hours after Gokudera has laid the last note to rest. For a moment she wonders if someone else is singing, only to realize sometime after that it is only the echo of it resounding in her chest, reverberating in her bones so that when she lifts her hands her fingers quake as though from cold on this warm and humid night.
I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
So you're gone and I'm haunted
And I bet you are just fine
Did I make it that easy to walk right in and out
Of my life?
It is too late, she knows. It is too late as it often is with the mistakes people make and regret. She rises then from the stone bench to make her way back up, up towards the rooms, to her room; her empty, quiet room.
“You shouldn’t be up this late,”
She stills at the voice, thinks: Ghosts. Ghosts haunt this place. Haunt me. But the shadow moves to reveal a face, a body, a man; and while the eyes are tired and he appears older than he did six years before, there is no mistaking the way Uni feels her heart trip, stumble and fall at his feet.
She is unsure if she says his name aloud, or if her lips merely move to shape it but he smiles and says: “You’ll catch a cold, Princess.”
In a breath, he is at her side, his hands awkward for lack of practice. It has been too long since he played the role of protector, of pseudo-father-figure, of her knight in dented armor. “I’m sorry I got here late.” He tells her, offering his arm as they make their way up the terracotta steps. “I didn’t think I’d make it.”
“You should rest,” he interrupts without fail before she can say his name, as if allowing her to do so might make him real, might make him stay. “You should sleep. It’s really late. I can’t stay very long but I’ll wait for you until morning. We can have breakfast, go for a short drive. I haven’t been here in years, not since your mother insisted we splurge for your seventh birthday. Who knew, twenty years ago that this place would still be standing-”
“Stop it.” She pulls away then, wrenching her arm from his side.
“Princess.”
“Gamma, stop.”
Is it so hard, she wonders? Is it so hard for him to see, he who has been watching her for as long as he has. Is it, she asks, so hard for him to see that I am looking right back?
“Princess…”
“Uni.” She tells him, teeth clenched and bared, like a terrified little creature backed into the furthest corner with nowhere else to go. “I’m not Princess, Gamma. I’m Uni. Uni.”
She steps close then, hoping to bridge the space between, her eyes searching his. For months now since an associate casually mentioned catching sight of him at an airport, Uni has wondered whether it had all been an illusion of the mind, that flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, that just-missed look of love; wondered if it had some fabricated comfort she’d dreamt up to survive in the cut-and-dry world of Millefiore. Perhaps there was nothing to search for in Gamma’s eyes, nothing but the love that bound him to her mother, a woman whose face others told her often enough she now wore.
“I’m Uni.” She tells him again, one hand coming up to curl over her fluttering butterfly heart, nearly crushed when he replies, “I know that,” when he smiles, “I know.”
“Is it so hard,” she starts, unable to finish as her body moves of it’s own accord, weight moving to the tips of her toes; her hands clutching the fabric of his shirt with the same desperate ferocity that she had when she’d clung to her kite’s tail all those years ago, right before the wind had taken it away and over the waves.
“Is it?” She asks again; letting go now, letting herself feel, her head bowing low until his fingers skim the curve of her cheek, applying gentle pressure to lift her face to his.
*
They make love in the darkest hours before dawn, slow and bittersweet, tangled in sheets smelling of lavender and sea. He is hesitant at first, more afraid than she, when they step past the door, falling almost dreamlike into bed, eyes locked and all-too aware of each other.
Ghosts, Uni thinks again as she pulls his face down to hers. Ghost haunt this place. Haunt me.
They trade almost-kisses and cautious shifts of the body, as if too much pressure on either side might cause one or both to break. But as she watches him trail kisses along her bare shoulder, the heat from his body mingling with the heat of her own strangled breath, Uni finds the strength to pull, to push to hold and whisper: “See me, Gamma. Be with me,” against his ear.
*
Dawn wakes her slowly, its tendrils warming the small of her back, the nape of her neck. It makes her burrow deeper into her sheets, fingers seeking the chill trapped beneath the pillows. She does not want to move, to rise, not just yet.
Outside, the sound of children laughing float on the sigh of waves, the whir of a motor. Inside, she curls her body around the nearest pillow, inhaling the remnants of him, of the night, of the shadows.
Princess, he had said. You will always be my princess. Always, he had said, always; and she had held him closer, kissed him harder, wanted him more than she thought she ever could.
“Princess,”
Goosebumps rise in response to his touch, to the feel of his mouth gentle against her ear. “Princess, it’s late. You need to eat.”
Uni, wake up.
Notes: 2,253 words. Uni/Gamma. Please do not shoot me. I wanted happy and needed to contradict the sadness of this song. Besides, do you know how HARD is it to figure out a way for these two to actually be together??? *stabstabstab* Call me indulgent and fluffy.
Love is Serious Business, yo.
“These Images”
For Mia.
It took a great amount of effort to hold the girl but not crush her in his arms,
with the full force of all that pent up longing and sadness and that want for things
to go back exactly the way they used to, when they were not two but three,
a system rather than a duo.
-- izkariote, taken from here
She exits the noise of the party for the quiet of the garden. It is not that she is thinking of escape, she has long since felt the need to escape from anywhere for any reason.
No. Now it is just momentary reprieve. From the laughter and the drinking and the singing. From the smiles and the gifts and songs uttered from the mouths of colleagues and peers. From Basil’s worried gaze, from Tsuna’s well-meaning queries of whether she is alright tonight - her night. Her birthday.
It is over. Uni breathes, eyes falling half-mast as she sets her hands on the damp rail, the slightest hint of moss growing on white-painted cement tickling her fingertips. It was over long ago, that two years seems more now like two decades - a lifetime, so far away.
“Over,” she mouths as she pulls out the small, envelope that Basil had handed to her when she had first turned her wandering gaze to the open doors, to the garden beyond them.
“Be thouest gentle with it,” he had told her, that small, shy, secretive smile on his guileless face. Gentle, he had said, and now, Uni looks down at the small, flat triangular box-envelope, an equally small, butterfly-shaped card dangling from one of the points.
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom
So quoteth this humble servant the words of poet Anais Nin
to wish thee joy on this most felicitous celebration of thy birth.
Gentle, Basil had said, and now, Uni unhooks the flap; fingers gently lifting it to uncover a small, dark, silent form pressed between fine powder-paper.
Now, Uni recalls the trials of the years before she’d achieved her own freedom and she smiles - hesitant - as she lets the envelope fall away, folded paper the metaphor to her once-invisible cage. Smiles, as she lets the beautiful sleeping butterfly come slowly to life in her carefully cupped palms.
I am grateful to Byakuran-sama for his patience and his teachings, from whom without, I would not have learned the measure of my own strength.
She recalls, how it had been the longest ten minutes of her life. The hardest fifteen steps she had even taken out of that cold, oppressive presence - away from the smile that seemed deadlier than any knife, any broken shard of glass, any promise. The longest time her heart had held itself together before she finally ran across the street, heedless of incoming traffic, to fling herself into Basil’s arms to cry, cry hard for what she had won and what she had to sacrifice to win it. For how long it had taken, how hard letting go seemed.
It was very good doing business with you, Byakuran-sama. I hope that we might continue to do so, even if my path now takes me elsewhere.
She recalls further back, how silence had been a double-edged sword. How it had been the spear she had chosen to impale herself upon in order to slay the dragon of her mistakes. How silence had become her weapon of choice long after Gamma had finally had enough, had gone away from her, leaving her all but wretched and devoid of any sunshine or life. How silence had won her the freedom that Basil had urged her to claim.
Silence had veiled all her intentions, all her plans so that Tsuna - giving, patient, kind Tsuna - had been able to lure him away, had been able to help her acquire her shares by buying them from her; had helped by giving back when everyone else she’d come to know had only taken, taken everything away.
She recalls, how a year after she’d walked away from Millefiore, Tsuna had told her about how a tribe of Native Americans continue believe that if a person whispered their wishes to butterflies before setting them free, that those same butterflies would carry the wish to heaven, offering these to the gods.
Uni doesn’t know if she believes such silly superstitions, but she does believe that Tsuna does and how maybe, maybe if only for a night, she can believe through Tsuna the way most people around him seem to do.
*
Uni feels the tiny wish flutter away, wings unfolding, straining for an eternity before taking flight, the suddenness of its departure so much like the space between two heartbeats. Inside, she can hear the deliberate weight of Gokudera’s fingers on the piano chords as Chrome finally gives in to Dino’s earlier pleas to sing just this once, just tonight.
Your fingertips across my skin
The palm trees swaying in the wind
Images
You sang me Spanish lullabies
The sweetest sadness in your eyes
Clever trick
When Uni closes her eyes, she is young again, small but happy as she races across the water. The sun is hot but hardly harsh, bright, bright light washing the shore, making the grains stark, making them pure and white. There is sand between her toes and sea salt in the moisture of her eyes, but she does not mind. There is nothing to mind here.
All that really matters is that she is running, that she is free. All that she needs is the piece of string that strains against the wind. All there is, is this: this moment, this time, this memory - her mother calling her name back to the rented cabana, Gamma standing in the shade, the beach towel in his hands open and ready to receive her.
Well, I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
She finds her way back to the arch, one arm crossing over her stomach so that her fingers curl around her other elbow, while her shoulder presses against the beam. She scans the room with the lights now down and low so that only candles flicker on the tips of half-burned wicks, illuminating the faces of those gathered and silent. By the baby grand, Chrome continues, lost in the blossom of a yellow rose cupped in one palm while the notes continue to fall with aching precision and patience.
We walked along a crowded street,
You took my hand and danced with me,
Images
And when you left, you kissed my lips;
You told me you would never, never forget
These images
No…
Uni thinks back now to her childhood: to her mother, to the man she learned she was too old to allow to be her father. To everything that had been, to everything that she wishes now could have been.
She does not close her eyes. Instead, she lets them go half-mast once more so that the flames blur and bleed into long, horizontal lines of light that quiver as her eyes threaten tears. Tears that taste of oceans now lost, oceans from a life long past its time.
*
It is late when they all turn in for the night, the shadows of those she is thankful to call friends going gently into rooms, quiet and still. Only the crickets are left to sing their songs while the moon settles on a bough of branches and leaves.
In the silence of the garden, Uni continues to hear the song hours after Gokudera has laid the last note to rest. For a moment she wonders if someone else is singing, only to realize sometime after that it is only the echo of it resounding in her chest, reverberating in her bones so that when she lifts her hands her fingers quake as though from cold on this warm and humid night.
I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
So you're gone and I'm haunted
And I bet you are just fine
Did I make it that easy to walk right in and out
Of my life?
It is too late, she knows. It is too late as it often is with the mistakes people make and regret. She rises then from the stone bench to make her way back up, up towards the rooms, to her room; her empty, quiet room.
“You shouldn’t be up this late,”
She stills at the voice, thinks: Ghosts. Ghosts haunt this place. Haunt me. But the shadow moves to reveal a face, a body, a man; and while the eyes are tired and he appears older than he did six years before, there is no mistaking the way Uni feels her heart trip, stumble and fall at his feet.
She is unsure if she says his name aloud, or if her lips merely move to shape it but he smiles and says: “You’ll catch a cold, Princess.”
In a breath, he is at her side, his hands awkward for lack of practice. It has been too long since he played the role of protector, of pseudo-father-figure, of her knight in dented armor. “I’m sorry I got here late.” He tells her, offering his arm as they make their way up the terracotta steps. “I didn’t think I’d make it.”
“You should rest,” he interrupts without fail before she can say his name, as if allowing her to do so might make him real, might make him stay. “You should sleep. It’s really late. I can’t stay very long but I’ll wait for you until morning. We can have breakfast, go for a short drive. I haven’t been here in years, not since your mother insisted we splurge for your seventh birthday. Who knew, twenty years ago that this place would still be standing-”
“Stop it.” She pulls away then, wrenching her arm from his side.
“Princess.”
“Gamma, stop.”
Is it so hard, she wonders? Is it so hard for him to see, he who has been watching her for as long as he has. Is it, she asks, so hard for him to see that I am looking right back?
“Princess…”
“Uni.” She tells him, teeth clenched and bared, like a terrified little creature backed into the furthest corner with nowhere else to go. “I’m not Princess, Gamma. I’m Uni. Uni.”
She steps close then, hoping to bridge the space between, her eyes searching his. For months now since an associate casually mentioned catching sight of him at an airport, Uni has wondered whether it had all been an illusion of the mind, that flicker of uncertainty in his eyes, that just-missed look of love; wondered if it had some fabricated comfort she’d dreamt up to survive in the cut-and-dry world of Millefiore. Perhaps there was nothing to search for in Gamma’s eyes, nothing but the love that bound him to her mother, a woman whose face others told her often enough she now wore.
“I’m Uni.” She tells him again, one hand coming up to curl over her fluttering butterfly heart, nearly crushed when he replies, “I know that,” when he smiles, “I know.”
“Is it so hard,” she starts, unable to finish as her body moves of it’s own accord, weight moving to the tips of her toes; her hands clutching the fabric of his shirt with the same desperate ferocity that she had when she’d clung to her kite’s tail all those years ago, right before the wind had taken it away and over the waves.
“Is it?” She asks again; letting go now, letting herself feel, her head bowing low until his fingers skim the curve of her cheek, applying gentle pressure to lift her face to his.
*
They make love in the darkest hours before dawn, slow and bittersweet, tangled in sheets smelling of lavender and sea. He is hesitant at first, more afraid than she, when they step past the door, falling almost dreamlike into bed, eyes locked and all-too aware of each other.
Ghosts, Uni thinks again as she pulls his face down to hers. Ghost haunt this place. Haunt me.
They trade almost-kisses and cautious shifts of the body, as if too much pressure on either side might cause one or both to break. But as she watches him trail kisses along her bare shoulder, the heat from his body mingling with the heat of her own strangled breath, Uni finds the strength to pull, to push to hold and whisper: “See me, Gamma. Be with me,” against his ear.
*
Dawn wakes her slowly, its tendrils warming the small of her back, the nape of her neck. It makes her burrow deeper into her sheets, fingers seeking the chill trapped beneath the pillows. She does not want to move, to rise, not just yet.
Outside, the sound of children laughing float on the sigh of waves, the whir of a motor. Inside, she curls her body around the nearest pillow, inhaling the remnants of him, of the night, of the shadows.
Princess, he had said. You will always be my princess. Always, he had said, always; and she had held him closer, kissed him harder, wanted him more than she thought she ever could.
“Princess,”
Goosebumps rise in response to his touch, to the feel of his mouth gentle against her ear. “Princess, it’s late. You need to eat.”
Uni, wake up.