Chapter 4
“The lackey did what?” asks Renato dangerously.
“He bolted out of there as soon as you left,” growls Colonnello. “I thought it was suspicious that he hadn’t said a word, kora.”
“You can’t honestly have expected him to stay,” observes Fon, blinking.
The martial artist is serenely feeding fruit to his animal companion, still thinking over his own decision.
His nephew is tracking his movements on the other side of the room, probably hoping to corner him into a fight. Luckily, Kyoya’s Sky leads him and his other Guardians away, more preoccupied by the need to ready the Vongola mansion for the Arcobaleno’s prolonged stay. Don Nonno would have to be informed at the very least. According to Viper, he was on vacation for the month. It was a strange decision, considering he hadn’t abdicated yet. The transition from a Don's rule to his heir's was a difficult time, hardly appropriate for a trip to Greece.
Oh well. It wasn’t his business.
Viper disappears from sight too, announcing that they would inform Xanxus of their decision to stay and meet the Sky. Their voice is impossible to read but there is a strange anticipatory edge in it that makes Fon believe they’re looking forward to this unusual Courting.
“What do you mean by that?” asks Lal, in the kind of tone that suggests she’s trying to stop herself from snapping. She and Colonnello agreed to be the first ones to meet with Harry after he wakes up. Since she’s already met the aforementioned Sky and liked him enough not to leave, it’s pretty obvious she already considers him hers. That Skull decided to abandon ship when his refusal means the unstable Sky will be deprived of a Cloud Guardian must seem unacceptable.
Fon looks at her evenly.
“Considering the way we’ve treated him, did you think he actually wanted to be shackled to us again?”
The others fall silent, pondering. Fon turns back to feeding Lichi, still wrestling with his own decision.
Fon doesn’t need Harmonisation. The Hibari clan is his home no matter how little he visits, and he’s always been good at controlling his own Flames.
He’s never needed a Sky to lay rest to his Storm. Luce had made him want it, sure, but her betrayal hadn’t hurt so much as it stung. He’d known manipulative Skies and met several in the Triads, he knew it was a possibility.
Harmony wasn’t always a fairy tale, despite the popular novels circulated in the international mafia community.
Sometimes it was a shackle made soft by the soothing quality of the Sky’s Flames, sweet despite the bitterness of having to pledge loyalty to an organisation you don’t believe in.
Sometimes it was a mould one had to force themself into so they could be what the Sky needed from them or chafe under the impossibility of the task.
Fon thinks about Kyoya, whom Tsunayoshi was terrified of for the better part of their Courting. Kyoya had to file his fangs and abandon his territory to follow after a Sky whose reluctance to do anything was well-known within the mafia world.
While Fon would always be grateful to Tsunayoshi for breaking the Arcobaleno Curse, it didn’t mean that he approved of his nephew’s choice of Sky.
But Harry was a civilian, this kind of concern didn’t apply to him. More than that, Reborn and Verde adored him. Fon hasn’t met him yet, but the strength of their bond is obvious to anyone who knows how to read a Sun’s Flames. Reborn’s warmth is no longer scorching and abrasive, seeking to burn anyone who got too close. He never needed a Sky; his control was as impeccable as Fon’s. But the previous bite of his Flames suggests that he might have wanted one.
The question is, does Fon?
***
Harry hears before he sees Renato arrive with three of his companions.
He straightens up on his hospital bed, way fancier than anything he’d seen before. He pushes his glasses back on his nose and folds his hands on the sheet covering him, cursing that his first meeting with more Arcobaleno has to be done while he’s more rumpled than usual and still a little shaken by his previous ordeal.
Verde promised to arrange a meeting with Talbot so he could ask about the Stone, but he still hated that Dumbledore’s manipulations had derailed his first meeting with his Guardians’ associates. He still doesn’t know what to think of them picking new Guardians out for him, but it’s still better than the option of having Famiglias present him with potential candidates and trying to bind him to them.
He recognises the two Rains who helped him earlier, but he can’t focus on the newcomer; he is more preoccupied with his Sun’s murderous expression. Harry’s Flames stir in disquiet.
Verde pauses in his readings.
“What happened?” asks his Lightning Guardian.
“A little disagreement with Skull,” says the shorter Rain —Lal Mirch, he remembers—, which makes Renato’s Flames roil in fury. “No matter,” she adds with a warning look at Harry’s Sun.
Harry is curious, but he knows better than to push.
Instead, he introduces himself to the only stranger in the room —which turns out to be named Fon, and whose Storm Flames are coiled into himself in a mesmerising whirlpool— and invites the four Arcobaleno to sit beside him.
At the same time, he curls his Flames around Renato in an attempt to soothe him. The man blinks, surprised. Harry smiles a little smugly. He worked the trick of how to control his Flames better with Verde earlier. He has the Rains to thank for that. The thought makes his Sky reach out to the two of them and he tries to hide how much he likes that they lean towards him.
Harry has always flinched at contact, no matter how well he’d learnt to hide that reaction. The Dursleys had seen to that, and the very physical threats he’d faced during his years at Hogwarts hadn’t helped him unlearn it. Ron and Hermione were extremely tactile, but they’d learnt to mind his boundaries. They never grabbed him from behind and always made sure he could see where they touched him.
When his social circle had expanded, his other friends had taken their cues from them. Sirius and Molly had too, despite the helpless fury and guilt it caused them. Harry has made peace with the fact that despite how helpful his loved ones had been, his childhood would leave permanent scars on him. Scars he’s learnt to live with, but still there nonetheless. The fact that Flames just allow him to reach out to the deepest part of someone without touch is both incredible and daunting.
“So you’ve decided to stay?” he asks, wincing at his own bluntness. “I mean, even if I’m… like this.”
“What do you mean by ‘like this’, mio Cielo?”
Harry grimaces. Renato isn’t a fan of his self-deprecating tendencies.
“Discordant,” he explains. “Even if I did end up with a full set of Guardians, there’s no guarantee that my Flames will ever fully stabilise.”
“It’s highly unlikely,” protests Verde who seems as displeased as Renato by the idea. Considering the way the hitman bristles, it’s saying a lot. “There is every chance that a balanced set of Guardians will be enough to—”
The wizard raises a hand to stop him.
“I trust your diagnosis, Verde. I understand that replacing my snapped bonds will probably make my Flames stop reaching out to my previous Guardians. I’m just saying that my issues are not only Flame-based, they’re also psychological. I have PTSD. It’s not going to go away, and it affects me as much as the Discordance does. It might keep affecting my Flames. I don’t want people to Harmonise with me without being fully aware that it’s a risk.”
Renato and Verde’s lips twist, but they don’t protest. Fon looks at him curiously, no doubt wondering where the PTSD could come from. Harry is aware of how he looks. He’s barely twenty, from a relatively peaceful country and yet he has the eyes of a veteran. It’s probably pretty far from the innocent civilian he expected.
“You’re trying to scare us off, kora,” says Colonnello indignantly. “But you’re not the only one who’s seen war!”
“Nello’s right. Outside of the fact that both of us have military backgrounds, the Mafia world is violent. We know pain and death and the worst sins of men. I don’t know what you’ve lived through but if there is anyone who can understand you, it’s us.”
Harry blinks.
Verde mentioned that before, hadn’t he? The Mafia world is full of survivors. As he looks at the two Rains and their soothing Flames, he can see it. Their eyes are soft as they gaze back, but there is an unmistakable hardened edge he’s only seen in the DA. It’s also present in Verde’s tense shoulders when Harry peers at his notes and the way they relax when he asks about his work without judgment, in the way Renato hides his expression under his hat and uses words like blades when he feels even a little bit threatened.
He’s around people who understand fighting for their lives. His Flames tentatively spread closer to them. Colonnello’s expression is triumphant as he takes Lal Mirch’s hand in his.
As the bond clicks into place, Harry notices that the feel of Lal Mirch’s Rain is a little different, her Flames a little different from her —lover?— partner’s. Orange meets blue, and Harry invites them home.
Suddenly he smells petrichor, feels condensation like on the windows of Gryffindor’s tower, the glow of morning dew on the Quidditch pitch. He takes a shuddering breath.
The rush of Harmonisation overcomes them, but it’s not enough to make Harry forget about the curious feeling Lal Mirch’s Flames left over him. Where Colonnello was a warm and steady downpour, his partner is more nebulous, like a monsoon. It’s calming nonetheless, but peculiar. He tilts his head a little and lets himself see. What he thought to be shades of blue reveal themselves to have intertwined streaks of indigo and purple.
“I didn’t know you could have multiple Flames. It’s pretty,” he says without thinking.
The woman chuckles.
“Glad to hear it.”
And she explains what happened to her Flames the night they were cursed. They both tell her more about themselves, Verde and Fon pitching in with anecdotes about his two new Guardians. Harry doesn’t bother to hide his contentment. He curls his Flames around them in a gesture that could only be seen as possessive, but it is only met with bright smiles and the soothing wash of Rain Flames over him.
Renato is suspiciously silent.
Harry glances at him sometimes, but his Sun’s expression remains hidden under his fedora. The wizard reaches out with his Sky and is met by a reassuring stroke of Sun Flames, but the hitman still doesn’t speak. So Harry initiates contact. He bites his lip and grasps Renato’s wrist, pulling his hand in his lap. Forced to release his grip on his hat, Harry’s Sun reveals the widening of his eyes followed by the soft curving of a smile dancing on his lips.
The wizard resolutely does not blush and asks Fon about his work in the Triads. The man obligingly replies, glancing at them with an amused quirk to his brow. He does not comment. Verde simply rolls his eyes, used to Harry’s burgeoning crush on his Sun Guardian. As Renato shifts their hands so he can take Harry’s palm to his lips, Colonnello makes a choked sound.
“You—”
“So. Fon. Have you decided to stay with us?” asks Harry loudly, before instantly regretting it. Is he really asking a stranger if he wants to Flame Court him? “It’s just. You mentioned you had things to attend to so…er.”
“I had not taken a decision until now. I will admit I have never looked for a Sky and it is mostly curiosity that led me to agree to meet you. I do wonder why you are so willing to associate with a bunch of criminals,” comments Fon. “Surely the company of murderers should put you off.”
Harry understands why the man is asking. It is from a place of concern, mainly, a sympathy for the poor civilian dragged into the Mafia world. Still, the question grates.
“I am a civilian in your terms, but I am a murderer too. I killed my first man at eleven. The last time I took a life was a bit more than two years ago. I sacrificed myself to take my parents’ murderer with me to the afterlife. I lived to tell the tale, he didn’t. You could argue that the people I killed were bad men, but that’s not why I killed them. I did it to save myself.”
He pauses.
His Guardians are pressing on the bond, looking for any sign of Discordance. But Harry doesn’t have a guilty conscience.
His issues don’t stem from the death of Voldemort, or any Death Eater who might have crossed his path at the wrong moment. What he regrets are not the ones who died by his wand, but those he wasn’t able to save. Cedric. Sirius. Remus. Fred. Even Dumbledore.
“The environment I grew up in was not kind. It left me with quite loose morals. I don’t care that Ren— Reborn kills for a living. I care that he’s happy, and safe and that he comes back to me when he’s done. It’s the same for any person I love.”
“Spoken like a true Sky…” murmurs Fon. “I think I’ll stay, at least a little while.”
***
Renato forgot what love felt like.
His mother loved him, he knew, but she was a former sex worker and Mafia doctor, she had neither time nor patience for heartfelt declarations and soft touches. Her way of showing she loved him was to teach him how to hold a gun and how long it took to suffocate a man.
It was poison in his soup to build immunity and other attempts to make sure he’d survive long enough to make a name for himself. She’d known the potency of his Flames meant he would be hunted, so she made him a hunter. Only once she was confident that he would live did she teach him how to heal. And even that was done with a care he had to decipher after the fact.
He knows Shamal had received more affection than he ever did from his mother when she picked him up from the streets and taught him what she knew. But he’d never begrudged her that. Shamal had the privilege to be soft.
Ezechiele Renato Morea was the World’s Strongest Sun. Gentle hands would only seek to strangle him.
Luce proved his mother right. After her betrayal, Renato held onto the belief that he would never let someone show their care so openly close to him. But his Dame-student shattered that idea.
His gentleness was not a weapon, but a shield. Still, Renato was too entrenched in his own ways to change the way he treated Tsuna.
His own Sky, though… from the day they met, Renato realised that he’d have to learn soft touches to keep his Home. Harry shattered when not handled with care. So he had to learn to curb his natural instinct for violence, learn what made his Sky tense and his Flames shiver. He didn’t always get it right, but —as much as it pained him— with Verde’s help, they were making progress. Colonnello and Lal’s recent additions were also a blessing.
But Renato was just a man. He made mistakes. Emboldened by Harry’s declaration of love and the content purr of his Flames post-Harmonisation, he’d had a slip of the tongue.
“The lackey?” repeats Harry, stilling at his side. He snatches his hand away from the Sun like he’s been burnt.
“Mio Cielo, I—”
“You expected him to bond with me when I Harmonised with people who call him a lackey like he’s beneath them?”
Harry shudders and looks at his Guardians like he has never seen them before Renato feels his heart lurch in his ribcage. The temperature drops and before the hitman can reach out to his Sky, and explain himself, Harry disapparates.
***
The Great Skull de Mort has no intention to stay anywhere near the Arcobaleno.
He doesn’t even know why he came back.
There was nothing for him there except sneers and ridicule. He was led back to them by the same cursed curiosity which has led him into the Mafia world all those years ago, surely. Because he hoped… he doesn’t know.
But he refuses to think that the Arcobaleno and him are meant to stay together. Not with the way they treated him. If he wanted to keep being beaten down, he would have stayed in foster care instead of hightailing it out of there, leaving behind the burnt husk of his group home and an empty box of purple hair dye. He never came back to England, not even for a show. Now he’s an adult and while he’s not as powerful as the others, he can handle himself. He refuses to be shackled.
And yet.
He stops his bike and looks back at the Vongola mansion, where a Sky Harmonises with two Guardians in the hospital wing.
He gazes at the imposing grounds and hesitates. As he does, the Flames he could still sense in the distance brutally vanish from the mansion, signalling the disappearance of the Arcobalenos’ Sky.