Archive of Our Own ^beta

Marco was a perfect mafioso..

Not that this small subculture of crime would ever understand how he was perfect. Where every act of inanity was treated seriously. Where acts of the insane were brushed aside like an unwanted cough drop from the deep depths of a pocket. It was truly terrifying what kind of place had been allowed to thrive, if only because of what ‘FLAMES’ were.

If these FLAMES didn’t exist, Marco was sure there would have been more men like himself.

Resourceful. Unknown. Unstoppable.

Unstable.

Marco took pride in the fact that he left no one uncounted for. By consequence, there was no one to spread  rumors about what he had done. Compared to other (somehow famous) mafioso, Marco was considered weak. Marco often wondered if anyone had ever bothered to know him (or did he not let himself be known? Perhaps it was the result of past occurrences of being ‘known’ that led him to where he was now).

Using the concept of ‘strength’ to compare people was a fallacy that Marco could no longer concede to. Marco did not place people in a totem pole and place the ‘strongest’ or most important at the top. Marco had met too many people that should have died in scenarios that had seemed impossible. Marco himself was one of those people.

He had gone through that trial by fire more than once. More times than any one person should have.

Marco was a man whom even death avoided (well, not ‘Marco’ himself. The silence was coming for Marco—only a few hours left). But Marco did take his own ‘steps’ to avoid it when he found the will to do so. Marco didn’t always have the will to not stack the deck in his favor when he went about his business. But so far, even when he let himself be careless—the tea cup of his life did not shatter. Not completely.

In total, strength was an ideal that most of these strange mafioso used to create a ‘pecking order’ amongst other Mafioso. And within that subset group was a smaller and more selective group of ‘FLAMES’. Of the Flame actives. Most days Marco didn’t even understand how he got where he ended up. But Marco had ended up here.

Most days he regretted it.

Other days he just didn’t care.

Marco had walked through the door that had been held open for him. Despite the warning.

[[It’s dark on the other side,]]

Marco ran his fingers from behind his ears to down his throat. Eyes up at the endless sky above him. Nights in the countryside were almost magical. It was places like this that miraculously continued to bring him peace. Marco never felt complete when away from nature.

[[and madness is waiting.]]

Marco wanted to say that everything had clicked in to place the first time he stepped foot on Italian soil. But it wasn’t true. This madness had started long ago in America. Back before he learned how to change his accent on a whim.

When he connected.

When he harmonized.

Before he even knew what Harmony was, it had begun then.

Marco had started this chrysalis even before he became an officer. Every step since then was a slow change. A metamorphosis started by himself and forced to finish by hands outside of his own.

It had all led him to here. To what he had become. Beyond his own reckoning.  

(Did no one wonder why, even when he was considered the ‘weakest’, that no assassination attempt or coercion ever worked? ... well, it would appear that some coercion worked, but only as he allowed it to. And that was the difference. Not that they could tell the difference… not that they even wanted to know the difference.)

It had taken years—but Marco had had a lot of time to probe and eventually uncover the not so perfectly hidden past of the people he had surrounded himself with.

Not even the sordid history of the World’s Greatest Hitman was beyond Marco’s reach.

No, their pasts were not as erased as they might assume, to people with money and connections like Marco had. With an ability like Marco had.

Then again, Marco had come to find that people, especially mafiosos, were full of assumptions. Their strength came with the unwarranted sense of superiority. And that blinded them to many, many things. It had blinded Marco too, once upon a time.

One slash to the gut was more than enough (the Glasgow grin was entirely his own fault, truly, after that) for Marco to know that these men and women were not like himself. They weren’t used to bitter failures and painful longings—or even bitter longings and painful failures. They weren’t used to being denied, of doing everything possible and still losing. No, it was seemingly ‘destiny’ that these individuals never truly failed (and damn the world for letting them succeed).

In short, the Arcobaleno were people that Marco considered, in some way or form, clinically insane.

(Marco wasn’t excluded from that diagnosis, either.)

Marco let out a sigh and popped in one wireless ear bud after another with a hum. Technology sure had come far, and he was only around to see it at such a nice middling age because of the curse.

Although even with that benefit to the curse, some things were hard to let go. The weight of his ancient iPod with it’s Bluetooth attachment was familiar to his hand (because he could never bring himself to ‘upgrade’—when the little piece of ancient technology failed, Marco had taught himself to fix it, in ways that he couldn’t fix himself), and Marco thumbed through his playlist. He wanted a song to get him through what was going to come next. Even as Marco focused on this, he still mused over the Arcobaleno.

It was his favorite fixation, after all. The case study that the Arcobaleno were. It was fascinating that so many flamboyant personalities could come together in times of great need and work together to make the most terrifying things happen. If Marco was still in law enforcement, it would be these people that he would have tried to hunt down and bring to justice.

(And just look at Marco now—he had looked in to the abyss. And the abyss had crawled in to his hollows and taken root. It had taken decades, but the inevitability won out. As it always did.)

With his playlist selected, Marco tucked the iPod in to the breast pocket of his jumpsuit. The secret one placed just inside the zipper that he had stitched by hand for things best kept hidden. Marco zipped his leather jumpsuit back up to under his chin, tucked the zipper under the designated flap, and patted the spot.

Marco then proceeded to wrap up his fingers and his knuckles. Support for what was to come. Layers of flexible bandages and athletic tape. Marco might have FLAMES, but that didn’t mean he could let this nonsense go to his head and not prepare himself and overly abuse his body more than it already had.

He looked to the bag at his feet and fetched his ear guards. The cups clamped down over his ears and the world went silent. The pressure of being squished tightly made his stomach queasy, but it was not a new sensation. With his ear protection in place, Marco stretched leather gloves over his hands. It felt too tight but just right at the same time.

Often, Marco felt too tightly confined in his own skin.

Then the plastic splatter suit. Which he zipped up as well. A swimming cap over his hair tucked it all in to place. And over that... well, it was always strange, but Skull soon added the plastic splatter guard that was used in biological laboratories and forensics.

He looked ridiculous. (Marco hated it—but he had only ever learned from the best, and the best wore this. No trace, not even a speck of skin cells to connect him with what he was about to partake in. Not that any skin could come off after it was caked down with plastic and makeup and glue that was far better than any plastic surgery that he could get—an ever changing face for an ever changing man—)

Another reason why no one was going to live beyond this night, because Marco hated to seem more ridiculous than he had to. Only the Arcobaleno got to see him like that.

Everyone else got this. 

Marco hummed along to his music.

He liked to think he had come a long way. But in reality, he was as unstable as he had always been. He hallucinated frequently—but it was more the result of a shattered psyche than his brain on fire. (It was hideous, how self aware he could be at times.) Marco, mentally, was the same as he had always been.

Physically?

Little was left that connected him to where he had started.

The first thing he had done was laser hair removal. Jaw. Arms. Legs. Everything but his eyebrows and the hair on his head.

It hadn’t been enough. Marco had wanted to erase what he had been.

Next was the bone surgery.

Marco had gone a step further than most, but no more than he had had to do to free himself. He had shaved his jawbone. Made his face narrower. He sanded his cheek bones. Special surgeries to elongate certain elements. And that was just to his skeleton.

His flesh had seen more knives on the that metal table than Marco even knew how to count.

(Marco had erased himself to such lengths that the other Arcobaleno had never bothered to do. Because they had never been weak, they didn’t understand what desperation could push a man to do. He was himself was himself was himself—and the he who he had been before existed as only a phantom could exist now. Which, essentially, was not at all.)

Narrowed his eyes. Enunciated his double lid. Shrank his nose. Made his ears smaller. Brought his hairline forward.

By the end... Marco had been a brand new person.

(And then he had learned the craft of changing his face with plastic and make up and additions—the man with the ever changing face, he considered himself. A new face for different tasks. Secrecy at its best.)

Even with that, DNA and fingerprints were always a problem. So he coated his hair in gel. He slathered on the make up that further changed his face. He wore gloves and jumpsuits all the time. All that was left to lose was skin cells, urine, and saliva; these things could identify Marco to what he had left behind.

... Marco had made a point (most of the time—when he actually didn’t want to be caught) to take precautions before a mission.

Before he pushed his sanity to the brink (or over it), he prepared.

Marco slung four rifles across his back. One ammo belt followed around his shoulders. And then the second belt around his hips. Two pistols stuck in to his boots.

(Thinking of the past was a daily ritual before a mass murder. Oh—look at how far I have come! A great dawn rising!)

After all, Marco liked to remind himself how far he had fallen.

(And how much he had—)

“My angel,” a voice breathed into his ear, he cultured voice almost drowned out by the music. “You only fall so you may rise again.”

(—risen again.)

Marco ached and burned in equal measure.

(And fall and rise and fall and rise and—)

It was just his own mind raging at itself.

After all, Marco knew exactly where his Sky was. The same place he had been for the last several decades. Slowly growing old and decrepit in the cage that had been made just for him. That Marco had placed him in. Placed him in, and returned him to.

His Sky was getting exactly what he deserved.

And Marco still thought of that man every day. (He ached and burned and longed—)

After all, no one had loved Marco as much as that man had loved Marco.

Not even Marco himself loved his own self so.

As Marco reached down for his next weapon, he reached inside to what had been there all his life—but he had not mastered or even recognized until much later in life. It felt like clenching his gut and keeping it clenched, and then spreading it to the rest of his body. He hardened himself to the soon to be inhuman amount of weight. With a small heave, Marco hauled up his experiment of the night.

When he had left his old life behind, he had had to change hobbies as well. While Marco will always remember and ache for the sounds of the stream with bitter fond nostalgia... this life that he was leading now was not the place for it. Instead, he had turned to a more productive past time.

Hand made bullets.

Self made guns.

And here was the most recent efforts of his hobby. A half sized punt gun, which also still fired 2 gage shells.

If he had been literally anyone else, Marco would not have created this beast. As it was, the gun was still as tall as he was (which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t that considerable but average across many nations). If Marco had been anyone else, this gun would have wrecked him the moment it fired. But Marco wasn’t just anyone, and Marco was just the right mix of unstable to stay within his limits in the least suicidal way as possible for him.

(After all, he wasn’t chasing his Sky anymore. He could save himself just fine. Marco wasn’t the type to throw himself away anymore!)

Marco fished for the proper shell and loaded up the mobile punt gun. The clank and groans were felt more so than heard, and was all the more satisfying for it.

He was ready.

The trek through the woods was lovely.

His arms didn’t ache when he arrived at the estate he was going to erase from existence.

This wasn’t a hit, but something more personal.

Marco slowed his trot as he got close, and eventually moved to ghost to the tree line that edged the estate that was nestled deep in the Italian countryside.

Four cars—luxury BMW—parked in front of the row of five large garage doors. Bright lights came through the large windows that showcased the kitchen centered in the middle of the back of the building. Four floors above ground. Extensive gardens and fountains. All very well lit.

The light did not stop Marco from making his rounds around the mansion. No alarm was raised. No one saw him.

(No one was looking—they would come to regret that. For however short of a time that Marco would grant them.)

Lights from the little basement window, no bigger than the width of the hand and just about half buried under artful hedges burdened with flowers blackened under the moon lit sky.

Marco stayed low on his journey back to the cars and carefully he walked amongst them. He peered in to open windows and observed loose bullets left behind on seats, coupled with crumpled beer cans and a few nicer suits hanging up in the back of one of the cars.

“It is in poor taste to treat luxury so heavy handed. These are not men of high status. These are carpet baggers, clawing for the prestige of the old rich but unable to cast off the habits of the poor.” Marco monologued in his head as he reached in to one car and pulled out the keys from the ignition.  Marco then dropped the keys to the ground. Carefully he nudged the key ring under a different car. Far enough where it wouldn’t be seen. Only one car of four had such a serendipitous gift to Marco.

Now, he turned toward the mansion.

Closed his eyes.

And let the pendulum swing.

“Are you ready Steven?”

One… Two…. Three…

“Uh huh...”

Four… Five… Six…

“Andy? Yeah.”

Five… four… three… two… one…

“Alright fellas, lets go!”

The song thundered in Marco’s head and promptly swept him away. A perfectly synced moment in time. Marco used the music to step in to someone else’s metaphorical skin so as to distance himself even more from what he was about to do. What he couldn’t help doing at this point.

What he couldn’t live without doing.

The Abyss grew.

The hollows inside expanded.  

“Oh it’s been getting so hard,” the song continued along in Skull’s ears as he knelt between two white BMWs. The chrome wheels reflected Marco like a mirror, even in the poor light that clawed against the dark. The cars were perfectly aligned to face the front entrance. And just beyond the frosted glass and mahogany wood was one of many of the main support beams of the house. Marco checked the punt gun one last time before properly bracing his body.

This was going to be deafening, but he would live. He had taken precautions. “Living with the things you do to me, my dreams are getting so strange...” Marco placed his finger over the trigger and lightly pulled it back. Not yet all the way, but so close. ”I’d like to tell you everything I see...”

He inhaled and held his breath.

1… 2… 3… 4… 5…

Exhale.

Exhale everything that made him moral. That made him just. Everything that made him human.

Only Marco remained.

Marco exhaled , and knew he just needed to wait for the right moment. To line up his music. “Oh, I see a man at the back as a matter of fact, his eyes are as red as the sun! And the girl in the corner let no one ignore her, ‘cause she thinks she’s the passionate one!” Marco cocked his head to the side and ignored the feeling of being stretched—of his own person trying to push the pendulum back and bury this false personality away. This playlist belonged to Marco, not to him.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

But that was okay. This was good music for himself as Marco-as-himself.

“Oh yeah! It was like lightning! Everybody was fighting! And the music was soothing, and they all started groovin.”

If Marco was a LIGHTNING, this might have been more ironic.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah!” Marco pulled the trigger.

The shell launched straight through the frosted glass doors and briefly disappeared from sight. Even through his ear protection, he could tell by the ringing that his hearing would be shot for a while. Even with his flames hardening his body it still felt like someone had taken a hammer to his bones inside of his meat-suit. And that was just from the gun.

The earth seemed to quake in protest to the shell itself.

The building bent inward, like an enthusiastic punch to the gut.  

Marco let the punt gun drop. His fingers still wavering within the shock waves.

“And the man in the back said everyone attack, and it turned into a ballroom blitz!” Marco hopped up to his feet, his ears ringing and his shoulder aching like he had taken a fall from a cliff side. The BMWs were all shrieking. Marco couldn’t hear the cars over the ringing in his head, but the lights were telling enough. Marco was only a little unsteady on his feet, easy to compensate.

Marco casually unslung a riffle, unlocked the safety, and quickly stalked toward the building. At every small movement he immediately pointed and fired.

People poured out of entrances he had marked earlier.

Some were clean. Some were bloodied. Some were covered in gravel dust. Most stumbled blindly out.

None made it far.

This was an erasure, after all.

Marco was rather good at this.

The abyss’s maw opened all the wider behind Marco’s eyes. Shapes danced in the corners of his eyes. If he looked at them directly, they would dance away. Something with form he was not allowed to look directly at.

But that was typical. Nothing to worry about. Even if they took on the forms of faces—Marco was free to shoot them.

Skull casually mouthed along with the words to the song that he was mostly remembering rather than hearing at the moment.

“And the man in the back is ready to crack as he raises his hands to the sky! And the girl in the corner is everyone’s woman, she could kill you with a wink of her eye!”

He must have paced around for some time. Casually firing off bullets in to the building and the building’s multiple entrances. He even shot in to dark, empty windows. Even in to the dark depths of the basement through the little window.

Eventually, Marco stopped his patrol.

They could be waiting him out rather than getting in to a firefight.

Too bad Marco was more prepared than that.

“Oh yeah! It was electric! So perfectly hectic! And the band started leaving ‘cause they had all stopped breathing!” Marco’s ears gave a few feeble pops, and the song warbled its way back in to existence.

Great.

Time for stage two.

Mark cut the brake lines on all of the BMWs and pulled them in to the wreck of the building. With the vehicles all shoved up as close as possible (and even a little bit on top), Marco promptly cut the fuel lines.

As expected, full tanks.

He found a bucket easily enough, and one tank he used to liberally splash on the ruins of the mansion.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah! And the man in the back said everyone attack, and it turned into a ballroom blitz!” These upstarts shouldn’t have crossed that moral line. Shouldn’t have been so terribly rude, saying the things that they had.

This almost family had looked in to the abyss and then had opened up their hearts and minds to it in ways that even the mafioso typically don’t.

Superiority was earned. Some could boast, like Reborn. Or some could be like Marco, anonymous.

Marco pulled a lighter out of it’s brand new package. Custom made in a nowhere town in Russia. Indian steel. No finger prints. Marco idly flicked it and got an orange flame.

Marco juggled the flame back and forth as he watched the little window that led to the basement.

“Oh yeah! It was like lighting! Everybody was fighting! And the music was soothing... And they all started grooving...”

Marco could see a pale face.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah! And the man in the back said everyone attack, and it turned into a ballroom blitz!” Marco let the pendulum still as he shivered. The flame held aloft in his hands

Marco did not use flames. But he knew how to deviate even when like this.

Two arms dotted in black under the moonlight reached out from that window. Small and girl thin and childlike. Marco didn’t know if he was hallucinating, or they were really there. “And the girl in the corner said boy I want to warn you, it’ll turn into a ballroom blitz!”

But it wasn’t going to change things.

“Ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz!”

This was his dance, after all.

“It’s—it’s a ballroom blitz!”

This is my design.

Marco threw the lighter in to the thickest part of the oil and stepped backwards until his heels bounced against the punt gun he had left in the dirt.

A dragon roared to life, and Marco could easily feel the heat of it through all of his protections.

He dropped a hand to his belt.

Marco still had 12 more shells for the punt gun.

He inhaled sharply through his nose, and the scent of burning entered through him. His eyes raised to the velvet sky. Absently he noted another song come to life in his ear.

12 more shells hanging heavily from his belt. The building was still half standing.

It wasn’t even a debate.

He closed his eyes briefly and imagined the sound of the stream.

… and regretfully he turned it aside.   

Kneel. Reload. Check. Shoulder. Fire.

Kneel. Reload. Check. Shoulder. Fire.

Nothing would survive him.

Marco had learned from his mistakes, after all.

He fired all shells in to the building. When he ran empty, he set the punt gun back in to the dirt. He placed the three spent rifles with it. He took the last one with him and proceeded to walk around the property. For those who had ran the furthest Marco kicked them on to their backs and watched their chests.

If they were breathing, he put a single bullet in their heads.

Some had been active enough to look at Marco. Their lips moved. If they begged, Marco couldn’t hear them.

(He had taken precautions, after all. He learned from his mistakes.)

It was long before dawn by the time he had spent all of his bullets. And collected all of his empty bullet casings. Marco had brought the nylon sack for a reason. Everything accounted for. He dragged every body in to the flames and set the dry grass on fire around the house.

With that, well, he picked up his guns and walked away. Back to his duffle in the woods. He disassembled his guns, packed away his casings and ‘murder suit’. With that, he packed up his ‘camp site’ and walked until the sun kissed the sky.

He reached the forgotten dirt road and sat down on his motorcycle.

Marco drove for six hours before he reached his ‘home’. Purchased by one Marco Piazza to fix up and create a country home. Marco parked his motorcycle in the garage and entered the house. The path leading from the half depilated cabin’s garage to the main and still working bathroom was covered in plastic. Marco stripped and deposited everything in to a plastic clean bag.

He ripped off his prosthetic face pieces. The plastic that shaped his nose in to something beak like. He removed the tape that narrowed his face. He placed all of this in a smaller clean bag. He peeled off the caked makeup and the glue. Everything was removed as he ripped ‘Marco’ off and threw him away.

In the shower he scraped off his loose skin cells and shook himself clean.

He poured bleach down the drain when he was done.

He slipped in to a new jumpsuit and boots. He gelled his hair in to attractive spikes and shaped his new face. His prosthetics flattened his face and gave him a more half-Asian appearance. Subtle and familiar and a little different every time he placed this persona on. (He always laughed inside of his head when the Arcobaleno gave him longer looks after he changed something small about his face. He avoided pictures, he didn’t give the Arcobaleno anything to compare his face to other than the certainty that his face was wrong-wrong-wrong.) He glued it down and let it dry before caking his face in zinc white. He coated his eyelashes with mascara to glue them down and caked the skin around his eyes with enough dark purple to give himself ‘panda eyes’.

His reflection smiled at him. He couldn’t feel his face much anymore. A lot of nerves to his face had been lost over the years. He used his fingers to manipulate his mouth in to a grin that was less manic and more friendly before he artfully painted his lips in black cherry.

He laughed to himself, modulating his voice higher to an almost obnoxious degree and sang to himself to place his accent to somewhere between American and French.

He batted his eyes at the mirror.

“I have returned!” Skull called as he rolled his spine and his shoulders. Folding himself back in to shape. Skull beamed at himself in the mirror and bounced on his toes before he happily packed away his personal supplied in the overnight bag he had left in the corner for the things that he was to keep. Skull gathered all of his things and brought the disposable ones in to the bedroom.

The bed was occupied.

Skull took a moment to look at the man prone on the bed.

It was too bad that Marco was a diabetic.

(Too bad for Marco that Skull knew how to play this perfectly.)

Skull eyed the IV he had attached to the man’s arm, and noted that the bag attached was almost empty. Skull touched his lips with his leather gloves and inspected the shape of his mouth. Smiling unnaturally wide once more.

Well… there was no one here to see it. Skull ignored the grin as he reached out and removed the IV and medical set up. He threw it all in to the burn bag. He instead took out his supplies of crystal meth. Skull threw the crystals around the nightstand and a bit on Marco as well. Skull then set up a burner on the nightstand and turned on the hodgepodge gas tank it was jerry rigged to. Skull took the lighter he used to burn the estate and cheerfully encased it in Marco’s loose hand, firmly pressing fingerprints on to the smooth metal.

“There, all set up.” Skull clapped his hands, paused, and pushed his hands together like a prayer.

He shivered, and from his lips spilled the words his Sky once spoke to him.

“He looks normal. Nobody can tell what he is.” Skull echoed the words as he gazed upon the face of the man prone on the bed. Still breathing. But never to wake up again, Skull would assure it. Skull reached out and caressed one anonymous finger down the man’s neck to the bite that rested there. The indents small. A small bite from a small mouth.

Skull wrinkled his nose at Marco and shook out his hands. The lingering chill that was Marco was something Skull was going to make a point to shake off. Skull might know Marco so intimately, but there was the fact of the matter that Marco himself was not worth knowing. He had merely been convenient in the moment. A retired hitman of certain... tastes... had made him an easy target. 

His temperament had been an easy thing to borrow. The cool aloofness of a man who had murdered more than most.

Skull shook his head (Marco was not worth knowing, and Skull was happy to shake him loose) and carried his bags to the garage. He then looked to the dog bed that was left in the garage. He focused on the form there. Still and silent and large eyes upon Skull’s form.

Perhaps Skull should modulate his smile. But it was much too late now.

Skull was always better with animals than children anyway.

“Come,” Skull summoned the child, and the boy unfurled tanned limbs and gingerly stood up. The boy’s eyes were bruised inside and out.

Skull beckoned him ever closer, until the naked boy stood within arms reach. Skull reached out and placed a hand on the boy’s head. The boy did not flinch.

“What’s your name,” Skull asked, his voice cracking through his boisterous façade and falling in to pattern with a person from long ago. A chrysalis life he had burst free from. The change in tone had been noted by the boy, who raised his eyes from Skull’s boots and to his face.

“… Sergei.” The boy whispered.

“And how old are you, Sergei?”

“… maybe nine.”

“… do you have anywhere to go home to?”

“…. No, signore.”

“Hm…” Skull dragged a gloved hand through the boy’s crusted black hair and pondered the problem. It would be easier to kill the child and place him within the home with Marco. Perhaps that was God’s plan all along, to throw this child in Skull’s path to meet an early end. For Skull to place a candle in some no-name church for a boy whose name was Sergei.

But Skull did not exist to play god.

Neither did he actively try to defy God. That was more Hannibal that he was.

Skull stroked the boy’s hair again.

“Do you want to die, Sergei?”

“… No, signore.” The boy croaked. The boy’s hands trembled at his side. Skull watched as the boy’s chest seemed to shiver in response to the sudden panic.

Skull cocked his head to the side and pulled back his hand, and watch a handful of tears paint clean lines down the boy’s face. The gasping of breaths seemed to seize the child’s body, but he did not attempt to run. He dutifully stood in place and watched the floor under his naked toes.

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes, signore.”

“Do you think he put you here to die?”

“… I… I… I…” The boy shivered, and Skull could feel something in his chest rising in response to the boy’s struggle. Skull took in a deep breath through his nose, and knew that it wasn’t a physical sensation he was picking up. No, this was something a bit more mystical.

A bit more like… Flames.

Skull reached out again and took the boy’s chin and jerked it up.

“Look at me,” Hannibal commanded through Skull’s mouth. Something primal rose to the surface in the boy, and those eyes locked in with Skull’s.

The sunlight caught the glossy orbs and reflected orange.

A Sky, then. Not active. But close.

It would be better to put a bullet in Sergei’s head.

But Skull could feel Hannibal’s own claws in his lungs. Lips pressed to the shell of his ear, teeth invading his mouth and words in his eyes. “How strange that such a fine creature ended up here within the uncouth grasp of a man who stepped above his station. I am sure that young Sergei would flourish very well in a proper environment.”

Skull let Sergei’s chin go, but the child did not look away.

The boy no longer shivered. He seemed to not even breath. The stillness itched to a likeness closer to Abigail that Skull questioned the boy’s status of life as reality. It would not be the first time, after all. The glow in the boy’s eyes shinned brighter.

Skull’s trigger finger itched.

The claws in his heart clenched.

“Wouldn’t it be… interesting… to see where young Sergei’s feet will lead him?”

Well, Skull couldn’t deny the empirical data on the life of a Sky.

“How about we make a deal then, Sergei.” Skull offered.

Sergei seemed to breath after a long absence. The tears had dried up. The boy’s face looked too young and his eyes looked too blackened. As if the hand of god could no longer touch his soul. Skull could understand—he knew that deals with Hannibal was akin to shaking hands with a devil. But Skull didn’t think he could stop himself from channeling this.

Like a flood, it was as if someone had stepped in to his skin and Skull needed more time to build the dam to stop the tide.

“I offer you a chance to bloom. A place to live, a school to succeed at—a future career… if you take to a knee and swear fealty to me. On your life and soul, you will do all that I ask of you, no matter the task.” Skull raised a gloved hand and pressed his fingers to his own lips. He was still grinning. Too much teeth. Under Skull’s fingers his mouth twisted into something more severe and formal. Something more… Hannibal.

Polite and distant.

The boy trembled.

“… how many people have promised you that?” The boy asked.

“Many have promised, very few have I accepted. It is a special honor.” Hannibal promised. He reached out and ghosted a hand over Sergei’s bony shoulder. “Very few understand the human condition as intimately as you do. I am sure you have felt the chill of terror and the unbearable weight of knowing the inevitable.  You want to live, and I can see that.”

The boy inhaled, his hands opening and closing as he fixated on Hannibal.

“I offer now an opportunity to live,” Hannibal offered.

“… why?” The boy asked, still as the surface of a lake.

Hannibal chuckled, “do you not believe that you deserve to live?”

Silence.

Skull shuddered as he successfully pried Hannibal’s next few words from his mouth. Finally secured the dam in place and shoved Hannibal back down where he belonged. Skull shifted and stretched his body, satisfied with the multiple cracks of his bones in the silence.

“Come along then, Sergei. If you want to die, you can go inside.” Skull offered as he collected his things and stored them on his motorcycle. Everything was swiftly packed away and Skull soon settled his bike on the road outside of the cottage.

Skull went inside and swiftly yanked free the plastic that he had placed down. Curled it up in to his arms.

He went into the bedroom and turned up the knob of the burner until the flame arched high. He helpfully stuck a needle in Marco’s arm, and then tipped the burner on to the carpeted floor.

Skull cheerfully exited the house and shoved the plastic in to the burn bag.

Sergei stood silently next to the bike as Skull ignored him to reach in to his keep bag and produce a shirt. He offered it to Sergei.

The boy didn’t take it until most of the house engulfed itself in to flames. Sergei pulled the shirt over his head and watched it fall to his thighs. Sergei silently ran his hands down the sides of his own body through his shirt.

“There were five other boys. Their pieces were buried in the garden.” Sergei whispered.

Skull didn’t reply as he moved and sat on his bike. His helmet soon came up and he buckled it in to place. The visor was still up, and he could hear Sergei just fine. “I never learned their names. We weren’t supposed to talk.”

Skull reached out and pulled the boy’s arm until Sergei moved and climbed in to the small space between Skull and the seat.

“… do you feel like you should know them?”

“… Yes, signore.”

“Then once you learn how, you can find them again.” Skull said, “you might even be good at it.” Skull turned the key in the ignition.

Skull pondered Sergei as he went to the closest town, drove through it and arrived at the next town over. He filled his tank and took Sergei south. Eventually they arrived in the suburbs in front of a modern home.

Skull took Sergei by the arm to the front door and rang the bell.

The woman that opened the door had a face scarred by acid and a limp. She didn’t say anything (couldn’t say anything) as she opened the door wider. Skull let go of Sergei and pointed the boy inside. Sergei didn’t move for a long moment before he walked inside the home. He stopped in the doorway and looked to Skull over his shoulder.

“I am sure you understand the consequences if you don’t uphold your end of the bargain.” Skull said, voice muffled by the helmet.

Sergei nodded anyway.

“I’ll take it now.” Skull laced his voice with steel.

Sergei shivered in place for a few long seconds before he turned. His lips were white lines on his face before he shifted and lowered himself to one knee.

“Repeat after me, Sergei.”

The boy nodded.

“I swear on my faith that I will, from now until death, be faithful to my lord.” Skull spoke, and waited for the boy to echo it before he continued on. “I will never cause him harm, and accept his acts of good faith. I will not answer my lord with deceit nor with violence, but will come to his call and enact all he could wish from me.” Skull closed his eyes and let out a little sigh when the boy finished.

Skull knew it was only simple words. A formal ceremony.

But Sergei would remember this.

“Should my lord ask of it, I will lay down my life, physical or metaphorically, upon his wish.” Skull hummed, “This, I swear.”

“Good. You may go,” Skull waved the child away. Sergei silently stood and disappeared in to the house.

Skull glanced to the woman and knew he had no need to speak or command her. Like Sergei, she belonged to him as well. Skull turned on his heel and returned to his motorcycle.

For the drive back to the Arcobaleno mansion, Skull slowly pieced himself together until the patchwork that was Skull was firmly in place. It was almost like returning home, and Skull was as comfortable as could be within this person-suit. The mansion being within nature made the ache seem not as mighty.

He pulled the key from the ignition and set his helmet on a handlebar. With the silence, Skull tilted his head back and listened for the distant stream in the distance. He inhaled deep and counted his heartbeats and felt relatively at peace.

With this feeling, Skull entered the mansion. He nimbly stepped around the trip wires near the door, not wanting to play with the others just yet. He found the actual staircase (not the false one) and silently locked himself away in his room. He dropped his bags on the floor and bargained with himself to finish up later.

Skull shimmied out of his shoes and jumpsuit and sprawled himself across his bed. He checked his wall to wall aquarium and found Oodako peacefully drifting. All was well, and Skull grabbed his phone to take the time to scroll through his social media.

The number 1 trending topic was enough to stop his heart for a few beats.

HANNIBAL THE CANNIBAL IN THE WILD!

Skull watched the screen go dark under his numb fingers.

After some time of letting the quiet roar in his head pulse through his body, Skull unlocked his phone and clicked the article. Most of it didn’t register.

Well…

…. Another personal assignment, then.

Skull wondered what Hannibal would make of him now. Would the man be able to even recognize what he had become? Skull was no red dragon—he was something even greater.

He snorted and locked his phone before rolling on his back on the bed. Skull stared at the ceiling and to the plastic glow stars he had stuck there. A gag gift from Reborn when the man had felt charitable and felt the need to be insulting at the same time.

Skull thought they were neat. He had always wanted some when he was a child.

(My freedom, then, you would take that from me?)

Skull closed his eyes and let the pendulum swing.

(Do you believe you could change me, the way I’ve changed you?)

Skull raised his gloveless fingers and pressed them against his lips. He was still smiling.

This was inevitable.

He couldn’t wait.