Archive of Our Own

You held the power of God in your hand and it put a tiny little crack in you. It spreads now day by day, tired little moments where your eyes glaze over and you find yourself cold like glass. When you forget to weep just a moment, when you make the call to end another life. If you are going to sit in that seat you sit, you’ve got to be detached. You’ve got to let that power of God keep its fist around your neck and you’ve got to use it right.

But you’re the son of a God, albeit a dead one. His cruelty pulses through your veins. His golden curls lace out from your own skull, sun-bleaching the dark hair of your youth. He is inevitable, he is part of you, and that blood will never ever drain from you.
There was one son of God who had found a way to be kind. But he died. That’s why he lost, you know. You cannot be too soft in this world, with all its crucifixes.

Ultimately it is true that you wanted to be him, wanted to be that golden savior. You wanted to be up there. You wanted to drain out your blood for the next generation of hungry children, so that they may never see what you have seen. You were already done for. You had seen it. You would bear the scars forever. You might as well do something good with all that pain, use the cruelty in your bones for one shining moment of good. But it didn’t go according to plan. They had died for you. You were the one who should have died, and yet it was them. How would history remember Christ if he had pulled a Disciple from the screaming crowd and nailed him in His place?

You think history may not remember him quite as kindly.

You are only sixteen, you’re looking sick in the mirror every time you peer in. You thought you could take it, that all you’d seen would have desensitized you by now but still each time a mangled corpse is brought before you to prove a “job well done”, you are brought to your knees. You try to be cruel. And it is rotting you out. Sometimes even when you try to use your abilities to give life, it’s coming out half-wrong. Your flowers are wilting and your butterflies fly sluggish and slow. Still always at your side, down on one knee, your closest confidantes. Whom you owe the greatest guilt of all. One with his shiny little pistol and the other with his snarling shadow, they look at you like you are all the goodness in the world. And they fight like hell to protect you. They kiss your hand like those hands hadn’t done what they had. You killed their family and you don’t know how they could ever forgive you. But they haven’t said a word.

It’s only that they go dead quiet when they notice those butterflies finally right out in the light. Three of them, and they never leave you alone. You don’t quite understand but it must be that what a person leaves behind holds some of their soul. In Gold Experience’s nimble hands, Narancia’s headband became a spiral-spinning monarch. That monarch now hangs at your shoulder every moment. Bruno’s hair-clips became a Marbled White, and Abbacchio’s belt became a Black Swallowtail.

It was all you could do. The idea came in a sweaty guilt-ridden fit in the sleepless delirium of night. Sometimes you regret it. What if you’d really somehow trapped their souls? That they could be in some afterlife but instead they are stuck as butterflies, servants to you the same way Mista and Fugo were? Following you around, thoughtlessly devoted. But you didn’t think it could be them. That little monarch was still just a headband after all. But it felt like Narancia, felt like he was laughing, like he was having fun when he flew at your shoulders. You did not dare to change them back. They were haunting to you; a strange sense of personality in the flight patterns they’d choose. You did not have the stomach to do anything that felt like killing them again. Your hands are bloody each time you look down before you blink it away.

When Fugo and Mista saw them for the first time, they did not ask. But they shared a look between them, a terrible loving ache. The monarch flew to land on Fugo’s folded hands. The moment you guiltily turned your eyes down to the floor, Fugo crumpled right down too. Mista was standing still but his knees had gone weak and his arms lay limply at his sides. The three of you did not know what to say at times like these. There was simply too much weight. You hadn’t said anything yet either. They had not told you you had been forgiven because you had not apologized. You just couldn’t speak. But you needed to. Now more than ever. There wasn’t any more time. When Fugo lay there crumpled on the ground, every butterfly had left their usual post at your shoulder to go to him. Mista was now crouching on the ground with his hand on Fugo’s back. It felt wrong to stand over them. You were always doing it, they were always bowing and kneeling to you. You got to your knees to face them, but before you could get any words out an ugly sob escaped your lips. The three of you are sitting there on this plush carpeted ground and there are no right words. And you are crying, you are a mess of awkward limbs and hands on faces. You are teenagers in charge of thousands of grown men with guns, you have the power of God and you can feel it trying to make you cruel. I am so sorry, you tell them. I know, Fugo says. I know, Mista says. They don’t say it’s okay, because it isn’t, but they say they will keep fighting for you because they can feel your heart. That makes you even more hysterical. You say you think you might be cruel. They point out the butterflies, they point out all the beautiful flowers you had grown for them to drink nectar from. Your office didn’t have a single weapon inside it. Not a single trophy. Just flowers, wall to wall.

You don’t have to atone for what people chose to sacrifice themselves. You know. But it feels like you really nailed them up there sometimes. You were the one who could have taken it.

We have all seen too much, Mista says. I think any of us were and are willing to die to save anybody else from having to see the same. You hate to think about this. You try your best each day not to think about them as the next sacrifices. To think of them as more willing cannon fodder. Your breath just keeps on catching. Mista, what am I supposed to do with that?

How can you accept their sacrifices? How can you grieve what has already been sacrificed in your name? How do you keep yourself alive by allowing the only people you love to take all of your hits for you? When you wanted to die?

And you did. You did want to die.
But you know how to make it sound more valorious than that. Of course you believed that the drug trade in Italy was killing people. It was rotten and wrong. You did want to be the kind of man who had saved you all those years ago, you remember him as the first kindness you’d known, ten feet tall with the sun always behind his head. Like a halo. But you weren’t stupid. You know what it means to be a member of a gang, what it means to live in that world. You liked to think you were cut from the same cloth as that man.

Violence was your mother tongue. It was spoken at home. Living among blood for so many years, you thought it was only right. Being in a gang felt right. You know what death is like. You know the night’s quiet like the back of your hand. Staring at the bedroom ceiling. No sense in crying. Nobody is going to hear. That’s just how it is, alright? All you can do is hold your nose and repeat the motions you know.

It was a way of hurting yourself, really. This is your life, this is who you are. This is what you’ve gotten, so it must be what you deserve. Forged in violence, forged alone. You were a kind and quiet child. You liked to read illustrated encyclopedias on bugs. You borrowed them from the library. One long night, your stepfather was pacing like a caged animal. Your mother still wasn’t home. The oven clock glared 8:06. He had his fist wrapped around a glass bottle screaming - backed you up against a wall asking where she’d gone, she must have told you. When had she ever told you where she was going? That would be very out of character for her. Well, aren’t you fucking mouthy. You need to watch your goddamn mouth.

He plucked that glossy book from your hands. Tore a page out. Ants. You held your tongue. You shook and didn’t say anything. Another. Beetles. Where’s that mouth, now, huh? He wants to know where that mouth is now, huh. You don’t say a word. You know how he gets, there’s no reasoning with him, no justifying yourself. He raises his voice and says you’re such a weird kid, too quiet, like you think you’re so much smarter than him, don’t ya. No, you say! Butterflies is on the floor. It’s a full page illustration. It is your favorite page. Yeah, you fucking do. No, no, you don’t. Please. Please. The fire extinguishes from his eyes, suddenly. There isn’t any reason behind it. It’s not like your pleading touched his heart or anything. It isn’t replaced with remorse, just apathy. The drunk rage comes and goes on whims. His arm goes slack, book still in his fist. This a library book? Yes, it is, you tell him. He grunts and tosses it back on the couch next to you. I’m not paying for it, he says.

The librarian is very kind about the situation, but rules are rules. You’ve incurred too many damage fees. Until you’re able to pay to replace the books you’ve damaged, you won’t be allowed to check any more out. So there go your bugs.

You are getting quite good at languages. You had to learn Italian, and scrub Japanese from your brain. No point for it anymore. But, no matter how long you’d lived in any place, you think you became most fluent in that mother tongue of violence.

Nothing to distract you in the dark now. No more books. Just sounds through the thin walls. Skin on skin. It’s either sex or violence. You’re fourteen, now. You know a thing or two.

You go to boarding school the second you get the chance. You are popular there, you are quite well liked. You are seen as a very kind boy. Here comes Giorno Giovanna. So handsome, so kind. And so smart, too. You’re lucky you don’t have a roommate or the word would get out quick just how much you stare catatonic at the wall. Everyday you think to yourself, this is not my world. And I don’t deserve it. The other students mean well but they aren’t like you on the inside. Their mothers come and pick them up every weekend to shop in the city. They come back with shiny new shoes and diamonds in their ears.

Your parents stopped sending you money to pay for boarding school a semester in. They stopped sending you letters altogether. So you’re learning to steal. It’s not like they’re going to miss it. Those tourists stumble in with pockets stuffed full of cash. Their mother tongue is comfort. You don’t feel bad, not an ounce.

You miss a lot of nuance if you’ve only been around one person speaking a language all your life. Everybody has their own phrases, quirks and twists. They accent it in their own way, usually depending on how it was spoken to them. Once you’re out in society, you become a lot more familiar with the cultural nuances of it. New slang, and the like. You’ve met quite a lot of people fluent in violence by now. By the time Luca approaches you, an edge already in his voice, you know exactly what is going to happen before it does. Sometimes you can tell by the way somebody holds their mouth what they’re going to say next. Similarly, you can tell by someone’s body if they’re going to hit before thinking. Well, he did. You got out of there.

You’re pretty surprised that someone came after you in Luca’s name. You didn’t realize he had connections like that. He was a pretty unlikable guy. But the mob look out for one another, you guess. That’s what Bruno Bucciarati tells you. He gives you a pretty good fight. You can’t believe he’s part of the mafia. You’re the closest you’ve ever been to finally getting in the door, finally losing yourself in a world where everybody speaks your same fucked-up language. That’s what you want to believe, at least. But Bucciarati leaves something to be desired. He knows all the terms. Even colloquialisms and slang. But everybody always sounds a little smoother, a little easier to believe, in their mother tongue. And this isn’t his.

When he sees that kid’s track marks, it slows him down. It reminds you of yourself. His eyes say, I’m supposed to be numb to this by now. You can see him breathing heavily, thinking: who I want to be is a man who can protect him, and all I can be is a boy who is part of what’s hurting him. He looks like a kid again, just for a second. Looks like he’s remembering when he learned a new language for the very first time, had to to be understood.

You know all about that.

It isn’t long at all until the conversation between you is that of two idealistic children, children who have been desperate for a sympathetic ear for a long while. Someone who understands. You both belong in that world of violence. You don’t have anywhere else to go. You’re both done for. But wasn’t there anything you could do for the next children? So nobody else would have to go through this? Passione ought to be men who were ten feet tall, going round and setting things right from the shadows. It ought to be the neighborhood mediator, who was kind above all else to the old women and young children he passed. We just have to translate what’s here. He agrees with you, but he is hesitant.

You’re going to kill the boss.

A heavy fist what feels like twice the size of your head hits your teeth again. Good-for-nothing kid. That glossy butterfly page in strips on the dirty carpet. Say something. I dare you.

You’re going to kill the boss.

Everything that brought you comfort, in pieces. All you were allowed to have was that familiar blood. It was routine. Say something, get punched, say nothing, get punched. It was just a matter of when. You dream about escaping. You dream about who you might have been if this had not happened. Should you be more worried that you don’t cry anymore? He says it makes you tougher. Don’t need to be such a little bitch.

You’re going to be the new boss.

It’s impossible. How could you possibly achieve that?

You’re going to be in so much danger. (Even when you’re not, you still feel like you are.)

You could die at any time. (Exactly.)

You could save a lot of people. (You just want to do one good thing.)

Bucciarati will do it.

It’s surprisingly easy to kill Polpo, really. He’s your least favorite kind of person. You see him with his expensive wines and authentic paintings, scowl without thinking to hide it. He lives in comfort. He is very, very comfortable. Not only does he live in comfort, but he deals in violence. It’s one thing to inflict violence on others when it’s what made you, but to sit in your cushy cell, never worrying about where your next meal will come from, and send kids to kill one another is a drastically different thing. You don’t experience a scrap of empathy for him. He’s dead. You’re one step closer. You feel like you’ve been in a very long dream. Your heart hasn’t been beating even. It took its last steady beat when Luca approached you, and since then your body has been locked in a panic. It’s like it can sense that this is a drawn-out act of self-harm.

That rush of adrenaline when you’re close to death.

A body will do anything to protect itself.

They love Bucciarati so much. You feel like you’re intruding on something each time you’re in the room with them. They know and love each other deeply. They have created a family, once from necessity but is now held together from true fondness. There is a fundamental difference between you and Bucciarati, you had clocked it before but it becomes glaringly obvious like this. He may be violent on the outside, may be forced to, but his heart is gentle.

You’re just the opposite. You look kind, you look sweet and gentle. Want to be, even. But you worry everyday that your true self is pure blood and bluster. Everyone is doomed to a fate, you think. You’re going to try and save the next little kid who likes bugs from falling headfirst into a bad fate, or die trying.

Whichever is fine.

Bruno wants to protect his family. He is on your side, of course. He feels quite strongly about the drug trade. It makes him sick. He saw himself the same way you see yourself, fulfilling his obligation to a life of violence that he had written for himself. Until he realized that made him just like those men he’d killed. Part of the problem. It is easy to distance yourself from things like that, easy to act immoral if you have nobody to come home to. Nobody to look in the eye. But he’d grown out of that. He had a team. And there’s children: vulnerable and big-eyed like he was. Bruno was quite preoccupied now with who he knew he could save. And he knew he was responsible for bringing them in, knew all he could do from here on in was keep them as safe as he could. A better Passione meant a better place for his team, a better place for kids with nowhere else to go. Some people don’t get to have normal lives. There has to be a middle ground, though, Bruno thinks. There has to be one somewhere, and maybe Giorno can find it.

It takes them a while to warm up to you, but once they do, it is unlike anything else. You can see how you could change like Bruno had, to become fearless for them. To be looked upon with such fervor makes you feel that whatever they thought and said was all that mattered in the world. Their admiration makes you feel like you could do anything. Their hate makes you feel like you’re home again. Leone Abbacchio’s voice is deep the same way your stepfather’s was. You can see the scars on him. Formed by violence, just the same as the rest.

He is cold to you. He won’t let you see his stand, makes you turn around. Some people keep their souls close to their chests. You aren’t allowed to see them weak. As much as you wish you could hate Abbacchio right back, you understand him. And he’s nothing like your stepfather, really. Your stepfather never once showed remorse for what he did to you. Abbacchio might as well be wearing a shirt that says, I AM FEELING REMORSEFUL. It was written all over his face. He took half a second longer to act than most people, like he was trying to predict the sequence of events. As if he was never sure when he would make the next fatal mistake.

Narancia is exuberantly in-your-face excited to have a new friend, Mista is happy to have another ear to rattle on at, and Fugo stares at you quietly with his head tilted, like he’s trying to figure you out. You’ve never been looked at with such scrutiny as with which the three of them do, and the fact that they all come out with a positive opinion vexes you.
You don’t know much about families, certainly don’t have much positive experience with the concept. But they move in tandem, same wavelength and language. They know how to bite at each other, teeth bared and drawing blood, and ten minutes later fall right back into laughing. They know how to tear someone limb from limb in a matter of moments, and get dinner just after. They know when to ignore the crying from the other room, and when to run to it. You have never felt anything like it. Warm camaraderie. Just because you’re twisted up doesn’t mean you have to be alone. There is forgiveness for every bone-deep flaw.

Bruno is dead. But it’s okay, because you fixed it, right?

It isn’t.

He isn't breathing. You don’t think anybody notices. They’ve got rose-colored goggles on when it comes to Bruno. Their savior, their leader, their capo. You can see his chest and it is still though he is speaking. Something is not right at all. You have a pit in your stomach. You couldn’t be right. It must be your mind playing tricks on you. You did something good, you saved someone good, and everything is going to be okay. He is the Messiah risen again, half-dead with the sunlight behind his head speaking as they stare with reverence.

He tells them what you’re going to do. It is what you’re going to do, of course. That’s what you want. Yeah, somebody has to do it.

You’re going to kill the boss. You’re going to become the boss.

You hadn’t in a million years expected anybody to resist. The only person who you thought might be quite unsure about it was Abbacchio, but it was inconceivable that he wouldn’t follow Bruno. Even just by observing them for a few days, it was abundantly clear. You thought the rest was a sure thing, that this was a family, they were comrades, that they stuck together.

Always in sync, same language.

Fugo isn’t coming. He’s stuttering, he’s a mess. Narancia is there with him for just a minute, it seems that him being there beside him on the pier was the glue holding him together and the second he dives into the water, Fugo crumbles. He’s yelling that they’re all going to get themselves killed, they were so, so stupid. He’s crying, you’re so stupid, you’ll never make it.

An amateur’s eye might call him cowardly, might call him selfish. But you’re not that naive. He wouldn’t be so upset from the pier if that were the case. If he just wanted to protect himself, why yell? He wasn’t on the boat. He wasn’t in danger. You can understand that he just wants to keep his family from sacrificing themselves. All he can do is sit and scream - they are unshaken in their faith in Bucciarati who is unshaken in his faith in you. You’re feeling very badly right about now. Nobody else is turning their heads to Fugo, they’re just listening with their heads turned forwards, faces strained to hide any emotion. But you swivel your head just a moment, to glance at him. He’s on his knees.

And you feel like you are leading them to their death.

You had only ever meant to take yourself to yours, hadn’t realized that you could be dragging people down. They might be speaking it quite well, but violence isn’t their mother tongue. Not all of them. They could turn this boat around. This isn’t their fight. They’ll go wherever Bruno points them. He is so in his own head about this, regressed ten years into his childhood self. It’s like he can’t see what he’s doing. You are starting to feel guilty.

Trish. There she is. She’s sleeping. You wonder what she liked as a kid.
Her dad tried to kill her today.
Your heart crunches in at the thought.

You don’t really want to die anymore. There is too much to do.
You really want Trish to be safe.

I’ll kill you, kid! Echoing off the peeling wallpaper. I’m gonna kill you for real this time! You spilled soda on the carpet. You had scrubbed it so well. The stain was hardly visible. It didn’t matter. It was never about what you really did, just about him needing an excuse. He missed his mother tongue. Playing innocent and speaking Italian is good and all for the daytime, but get a couple drinks in him and he just wants to speak without translating. His punches slur in the air. He’s falling all over himself. But he keeps saying it, saying he’s going to kill you.

You’re going to kill the boss.

Sea air. Whipping sand. Rocky cliffside. Blood. So much blood.

You’ve seen blood. It feels really different like this.

Abbacchio feels really different like this.

In death, the face goes slack. You have rarely seen Abbacchio exhibit any face other than scowling (only quiet smiles, once or twice when he thought you couldn’t see) but you’d certainly never seen him look peaceful. It makes you want to look away. You think he would be angry to be seen so vulnerable by you. You turn away. You keep your hand clasped to your mouth and don’t say a word. There isn’t anything you can say. You’re expecting Mista, Narancia, and Bruno to pick you up and throw you out into the sea. Goodbye, you would say, I deserve this completely. Please go home and nobody else dies. You can still go. I’ll take care of Trish.

They don’t even look at you. You can’t revive him. He’s completely gone. Bruno’s bleeding from the mouth from biting down so hard, trying to choose the role of strong leader over scared child. Narancia is screaming and Mista is holding him down. This practically has nothing to do with you at all. You are breaking in on something sacred. You stand off to the side and watch them huddled together. Their body language suggests not just one loss but two, empty space on either side. They don’t say anything. A really long time passes until they break. You’re still standing quite far away. Before you move on, you grow flowers around Abbacchio’s body. That was all you could do. Bruno finally looks at you, and he softly thanks you.

Later, Mista says, it isn’t your fault.

You can’t tell if he means it or if he’s just trying to keep things civil.

Guilt is eating at you.

You like Trish a lot. She’s also an outsider. You have somebody else who you can huddle next to when Bruno, Narancia, and Mista are going through something communally that you cannot understand.

Mista is sleeping in the backseat next to you when something you had tried hard to forget comes back to bite you. Bruno is very close to falling apart. Days after resurrection, Christ ascends to heaven at last, after giving all he could to earth, etcetera, etcetera. A sick cold sweat is breaking on your forehead. You couldn’t save him. You did your best and it wasn’t enough. You remember the warm camaraderie, joyful and laughing and drawing blood. You’re watching yourself tearing it apart, absolutely helpless to stop it. You glance at Mista there in the seat next to you. You don’t know what he’ll do when he loses Bruno. You think that might be the final straw that breaks his kindness towards you.

It’s weird to see somebody else in your body.
He operates it like a younger body, despite being older than you.
It’s strange to see your face lit up with so much expression, much more than you are able to naturally display. All of it is strange.

It’s even stranger to watch yourself die.

You’re crying. You save him but it’s too late.
The body is healed but the soul is gone.

It’s all your fault.

Once you get there, to the boss, after all of this learning that maybe, just maybe, you could feel more than violence, it’s all drained away. Maybe you got them killed but you could blame it all on him. You can stop translating. You can turn your brain off, resort to instinct, use nothing but violence. He is going to atone forever. For the rest of time. Violence unto violence unto violence. Death after death. You imagine he’s your stepfather, you imagine him chasing Trish with a bottle in his hand, you imagine him threatening to kill her. You imagine kids younger than you knocked out in the street. You imagine a world where Narancia, Fugo and Mista are normal kids who had never had to dump bodies in the bay. You imagine if Bruno hadn’t had to kill those men, all that time ago. You can see him and Abbacchio doing normal things, out to dinner on a warm night. But their fate’s all locked in. Too late. You did what you could do. You wonder if Bruno will smile down on a drug-free Italy, knowing he hadn’t died in vain.

You know that violence can not be ended like this. Violence can not be ended, period. Violence is a part of life, an undertow beneath everything. You can do your best, and things will still slip through the cracks. Some little boy will still be crying in his bed, somewhere.

But you’re still going to try your best.

But killing the boss wasn’t the end-all-be-all of fixing Passione. You now have to be personally responsible for his reformation. For solving each problem. That isn’t violence, it’s strategy. Politics. Logic. Languages you’re not so good with.

And most days you can’t leave your office, butterflies flitting back and forth between your shoulders and the exotic flowers lining the walls. You like it here because you are often alone. You love Fugo, and you love Mista, and you love Trish. But they make you feel nervous and guilty. You were very used to a solitary life. And you now have it ingrained in you that you are a danger to them. You don’t understand why they’re still here. They have to know you wouldn’t hold it against them if they were to leave Passione. You could only hope they didn’t fear you. They give far too much respect to you. You just want to be equals.

People happily die for their leaders.
You don’t want any more death.

Fugo knocks on the door and peeks his head in. He says he wanted to talk to you about something, and you say of course. As he comes in and sits in the chair next to you, Bruno-butterfly swoops his direction. He’s getting more used to it now, he keeps it together; holds out a finger for it to land on.

Now, this might be sort of disrespectful. As, um, a subordinate to a capo, he says.

Fugo, please, you start, and he already knows what you’re going to say.

I know, I know! That’s why I’m saying it anyway. As a friend, GioGio.

What is it?

Well, why did you want to be the boss anyway?

We had to get rid of the drugs, you stutter out, too fast.

That’s why Bruno supported you. But your heart wasn’t in it for that reason alone, he whispers.

For Trish. I wanted to kill him to protect her.

More true, but not the whole story, he presses. Fugo is pawing at the scar at the side of his mouth. Self-inflicted. His very own poison. Fugo knows a thing or two about hating yourself and you know that’s what he’s trying to get you to say.

If you have me all figured out, Fugo, I don’t know why you need me to say it.

You don’t have to say it, he says. But if you ever want to talk about it, you know, I’m your guy. He now points at the scar and gives a weird toothy smile.

Alright then, you half-laugh, out of awkwardness more than anything. But it makes you feel giddy, to be spoken to like this, to be pushed out of your comfort zone, rather than your every demand and whim being catered to exactly.

He nods and casts his eyes around, tapping his hand awkwardly on his knee. He’s looking for something to say. Or maybe he knows and he just doesn’t want to say it.

Fugo, you start. He gets the braves to say what he wants to say before you can finish.

If it isn’t okay for Mista and I to be willing to sacrifice ourselves for the cause, he says, quick and loud. Then you can’t either. Okay? No death wishes. Not anymore. We have to do better.

I don’t have a death wish, you say.

He just gives you a look. You don’t think you deserve to live, Giogio.

I think I was raised by violence, and therefore all I’ll ever be able to be is violent, you whisper. It’s just my fate.

Fugo laughs an almost-bitter laugh.

Do you think that about me?

He summons Purple Haze who sits beside him with a head on his shoulder. He is much more measured and controlled these days, though a line of drool still drips from his lips.

No, you say.

No?

Fugo, you have a good heart.
At this he balks.
I have violence baked right in the center of me. It is my core, he says.

Like your mother tongue? You ask.

Exactly, he says. That’s very apt. It’s my very first language. The one I’m best at.

Hm, you think.

Things are slowly getting better. You just have to take things a day at a time. You are trying to be more hands-off than the old boss, trying to instill a more peaceful atmosphere in Passione. There is no way to fix everything. Just one thing at a time. You do all you can do.

You spend the time you can get off in the garden. It’s your own way of grieving, your own way of memorializing the dead. It’s filled to the brim with huge brightly colored blooms and insects flitting around. Mista and Fugo spend a lot of time out there with you. Trish, too, when she can get away. You don’t really like to send them to do jobs for you. You just like it better when you can spend the day together doing calm and easy tasks. It’s a kind of peace you had rarely achieved in your life before. You know that doesn’t make you a good boss but you think you’re okay with that. First and foremost you’re still a kid and you just want to try to be happy. You lost a lot of your childhood to violence anyhow. It is nice to be in this bubble, up to your ankles in soil, pretending there’s no world outside. Pretending you aren’t still exposed to violence every single day.

Maybe the best you can do is separate them like this, have a sacred space away from what you’re sure is your fate. Perhaps violence was your mother tongue, but you hadn’t much occasion to speak it anymore. You’d like to learn Japanese again. You have distant family there, after all. You had learned quite a lot about family in recent times and its definition was far more elastic than you had previously understood. You feel you had found one for yourself at last.

And though you all once spoke violence, it wasn’t what you spoke at home anymore.