Chapter Text
Reborn has lived his whole life without attachments, free and independent. A hitman of his calibre has got no time for commitments, and neither is he interested in settling down.
He has briefly entertained the thought of creating a family with his fated, but twenty years of pain-free living has him chucking that idea out of the window and into the Venice waters.
It's for the better, actually. To have no soulmate, to have no weaknesses.
There are plenty of people in the world who do not have an intended, and numerous others who have found theirs but decided not to pursue a relationship.
It's fine, Reborn thinks, watching his two teammates bicker affectionately with one another. Colonello, who is not part of The Strongest Seven, but has all but barged his way in because he refused to separate from his soulmate. Lal sighs sufferingly, but the happiness in her eyes is clearly visible. The others are too self-centred to make space for another, too busy with their own lives to pursue their soulmate; Reborn thinks he's one of them.
It's fine, Reborn also thinks, when adult hands turn into that of an infant's, and mortality gives way to a fixed point in time.
Arcobaleno, they are named. Bearers of the pacifiers, protectors of the trinisette.
It is his price to pay for hubris, his penance for arrogance.
Try as he might, Reborn accommodates. The difference in depth perception is jarring, and so is adapting to his lisp and motor skills, but doable nonetheless. Amongst the seven of them, he is the first to get used to his new body.
Eight, if he includes Luce.
His feelings for the lady are complicated, to say the least. A Sky that was nearly his, a Sky whom he trusted, a Sky who betrayed him. It's distasteful, in any case, watching her actions that follow the betrayal. Luce, who would rather pass down the curse to her unborn child than bear it herself.
To think he once thought of courting her as an element.
Morbid option aside, he doesn't have much hope for this bleak situation, and one betrayal is a number too many. Verde and Viper both insist on finding a cure still, but perhaps he is already jaded. Reborn resigns himself to fate and lets time pass him by.
Seconds after the clock strikes twelve on his umpteenth birthday, Reborn stills. He knows; he feels. The phantom pains of another, a tug on his heartstrings.
It's not fucking fine, Reborn thinks. Bereft of the choice to love, to cherish and to hold; to rob his soulmate of that choice, to instil the probable notion that his soulmate is unloved and alone. He who can feel the pain of another, but they can’t.
Reborn hates the Arcobaleno Curse.
Most of all, he hates himself.
Time stops, but the world moves on.