The Shock
Fon first sees her on Wednesday, as he walks past the patisserie close to where he is stationed.
He is in Paris, France, sent by the Chinese Triads to steal a Rembrandt from the Louvre. It’s one of his last missions. Just a few more and he can go back, back to his apprentice, back to his family, back to home and peace-
(-as much peace as is possible without harmony, without acceptance, with a gaping hole in his flames, his soul, his very being, that reminds him at every second that he has nowhere to belong to, no true place to call home-)
- away from the bloodshed that is characteristic of his chosen… lifestyle.
He is posing as a three-year-old boy named Bise who just moved in with his parents from Marseilles, his father stationed here by the company he works for, and his mother delighted because she has always wanted to live in the capitol. He has not yet been registered in any of the local schools, mostly due to his parents putting it off until the last minute, so his mother attempts to make up for it by taking him to visit the Louvre, the most expansive museum in the country, as a sort of substitute education until everything is settled.
It is quite useful that the woman playing Bise’s mother is a mist flame who can successfully disguise Fon’s distinctive Asian features, making him appear entirely European.
As part of his cover, Fon visits the local patisserie every Thursday and buys a strawberry confectionary. That he actually enjoys strawberry confectionaries is an added bonus, although he still prefers the red bean buns from his native country.
It is when he passes said patisserie that he spots her, sitting gracefully by the window, blowing gently on her cup of tea.
She is beautiful, Fon supposes; high cheekbones with an aristocratic curve, inky black locks piled haphazardly yet elegantly atop her head, delicate fingers wrapped around a teacup that she brings up to her rosy red lips, but he has met, seduced, and bedded some of the most beautiful women in the world and such a flimsy thing as physical appearance holds little to no sway over him anymore.
No, it is not her beauty that catches his eye.
It’s the veritable sea of flames surrounding her.
Orange flames.
The woman’s flames are a beautiful, vibrant orange, so much so that they nearly take his breath away. They wrap around the woman lovingly, wisps of it caressing her cheek, invisible to all of the civilians surrounding her. The flames are dense, so large and powerful that they cannot be contained by her aura alone, instead diffusing through the patisserie shop so that to Fon’s eyes the entire room is tinted a warm, glowing orange. So strong is the allure of the flames, the charisma that they emanate like flowers emanate perfume, that Fon, steady, reliable, immutable Fon, finds himself taking an involuntary step towards the patisserie.
The sky flames are powerful, mesmerizing… and completely untrained.
Impossible.
Even should the woman be a civilian - which she undoubtedly must be as no self-respecting famiglia would allow one of their skies to brandish their flames like that, especially unguarded - with flames like that some mafioso must have caught sight of her at some point and dragged her into his famiglia, whether she liked it or not.
And even if she had small flames, even if her flames were merely a candle’s worth of fire, she would still be snatched up because her flames are orange. They are sky flames and sky flames are the equivalent of royalty in the mafia. They are so prized that even a handful of sky flames are considered more valuable than an inferno of flames of any other kind, rightly so because they are so very rare. Only through them can all the elements work cohesively together, can they unleash their true power.
So Fon cannot understand how this civilian woman can have lived her life without being taken and submerged in the darkness that is the mafia. The only possible explanation is that she has been living on some deserted island all her life, and only recently moved back to civilization in the last week or so.
It is so unexpected, so impossible a situation that Fon momentarily blanks as to what to do. Despite his time in the Triads, he has managed to retain a bit of his compassion, although not as much as he leads others to believe. It seems cruel to leave this young, untrained sky to the mercies of the next mafioso that should stumble upon her, but what other option does he have? He is currently on a mission for the Triads, and while he has managed to get along well with his coworkers, his “mother” and “father”, they would not hesitate to report the presence of this young sky to the Authority should he bring any attention to her. He could, he supposes, hide her away in one of his many safe houses, perhaps. It would be easy to ditch his companions. A plan begins to form in his mind. His mission is nearly over anyway, so he could merely hide the woman away for a few weeks, report to the Authority, then go back for her with none the wiser…
Fon quickly shakes his head. Ridiculous. The woman’s sky attraction is a fearsome thing indeed, to affect him so strongly despite them not even being in the same room. Unfeeling as it may be, she is not Fon’s responsibility. As an unbonded storm he instinctively feels protective of skies, some archaic desire to prove to them that he’d make a good guardian, but he has a mission and does not have the time to aid everyone he chances upon. Besides, none but the most despicable and irreverent of famiglias would truly dare mistreat a sky, after all, and perhaps the next to find her might be able to give her a proper set of guardians.
Of course, she’d undoubtedly be used and be forced to do things against her will for this famiglia, but when aren’t people being used or manipulated somehow?
All of this goes through Fon’s mind in the scant few steps it takes for him to walk past the patisserie window. It is not a Thursday, and although it is unlikely that it will unduly jeopardize his mission if he were to enter the patisserie on a different day, he is one of I Prescelti Sette, and they are perfect at what they do. Even a powerful sky such as this - and he still cannot believe she has been left unguarded, where are her guardians? – cannot make the strongest storm jeopardize his mission. There will be no change to his routine- he will only enter the patisserie on Thursday. Tomorrow.
If his steps falter ever so slightly upon seeing the woman in the patisserie, then it is merely because he is the three-year-old Bise, and children are prone to occasional bouts of clumsiness.
With a last discrete glance at the woman and her beautiful, roaring sky flames, Fon is momentarily grateful for the glass that separates him and her. He does not need to feel the flames brush along his skin, feel them instinctively reach for his own storm flames only to come across the most powerful crimson inferno in the world and retreat, incapable of bonding with him, as has happened so many times before.
No, Fon has no desire to feel the flames against his skin, to be reminded of that which he does not have.
Which he cannot have.
.
.
.
Fon senses her as soon as he enters the patisserie.
He knows beforehand that she’d be there, having spotted her from the window before entering, sitting at the exact same table she had been at the previous day.
It is how he stops himself from reacting when stepping into the flame-saturated sweet shop, nothing betraying the strange, giddying feeling of powerful sky flames brushing against his skin except for a slight widening of the eyes.
Reaching into himself, Fon firmly erects his shield, protecting his flames from the allure of the uncontrolled sky flames. With a slightly deeper than normal breath, he centers himself, distancing himself from his turbulent emotions and regaining his calm. He thinks of the last time he has had to resort to such exercises – he can’t quite remember. Truly, the strength of this woman’s flames is impressive if they have managed to agitate him, even if so minutely.
With a peaceful smile on his face and empty platitudes on his lips, Fon approaches the display of cakes, taking his time to look them over, for all the world just a child with no worries but what cake to buy next.
Despite his practiced nonchalance, however, Fon watches the woman from the corner of his eyes.
So focused had he been on her flames, so lasting an impression had they made that he is momentarily surprised by her beauty. Closer to her now, he has to admit she is truly a lovely figure. Dark, lustrous hair and long eyelashes, deep, viridian eyes complemented by a light, long-sleeved green dress that accentuates her small waist and gently swells at the hips, ending just beyond her knees. Had the situation been different, and had he retained his adult body, Fon would have been tempted to woo her. Certainly, he knows that Reborn, regardless of the woman’s flames (or marital status, really), would have already been well on his way to seducing and bedding the woman.
More pressing, however, than her appearance is the fact that she’s staring at him, tense and unblinking, and has been since he first came into her line of vision.
For a second, he thinks she might recognize him somehow, but that’s impossible. There is no way she would recognize him if she isn’t part of the mafia, which she truthfully cannot be when she’s a sky flame with no guardians in sight. Twice now he has seen her, and twice he has not felt any flame-actives in her vicinity. No guardian would allow their sky to walk into the streets unaccompanied, especially a sky with such clearly powerful, untrained flames.
Fon then wonders if she can sense his storm flames somehow, subconsciously attracted to him as her sky flames seek out potential elements. It is possible, he supposes, but he does not think it would merit such single-minded intensity, such focus. She should feel slightly drawn to him, not unable to stop staring at him.
As Fon asks the patissier to box up a strawberry cake that he had mindlessly pointed to, he feels a soft tendril of flame playfully brush along the edges of his core, coaxing his own storm flames out, as though inviting them to play.
His flames have just enough time to start responding, following the orange tendril into visibility, before Fon violently pulls up his barriers, keeping the orange flame out and his storm flame in.
His storm flames burn in protest, but Fon’s will is absolute and the walls stay firmly in place.
Fon is tempted to think the woman did it on purpose, except she still seems frozen still by something, and there is no disguising the wild, untrained quality of her flames. Fon would be surprised if she even knew she possessed flames at all, although how she has managed to live as a civilian up to this point is still a mystery.
Again, a soft orange tendril brushes against the hard walls he has erected around his core. Its allure is strong, Fon has to admit, the strongest he has ever felt. For a second, just a moment, Fon allows himself to bask in the warmth, the acceptance that that orange tendril promises. Allows himself to entertain the notion of having a Sky, of finding true peace and acceptance, of finding home. Allows himself to close his eyes and just imagine being bonded, of feeling that immutable connection with another being.
Ridiculous.
Fon is not so foolish as to set himself up for disappointment once more. He and the rest of the Arcobaleno have long resigned themselves to being too powerful for a Sky. If even Luce, the old Sky Arcobaleno, the strongest Sky - although how she was a Sky with such traitorous ways is beyond him - was unable to fully bond with them, what hope did any others have?
The Arcobaleno had all certainly tried, some of his fellow elements would never admit to it. Enough skies had wished to have one of Il Prescelti Sette as one of their guardians that they were certainly not lacking in options. Even Vongola’s heirs, before their untimely deaths, had approached each Arcobaleno at least once in an attempt to bond.
Some skies had tried to woo them into bonding, others, more cocky, had tried to impose their sky flames and force a bond (after which they were promptly eliminated), but none had been successful. Whether the skies were family, friends, lovers- none of that mattered. Even when the Arcobaleno themselves had tried to start the bonding process from their end, carefully reaching out towards a sky’s orange core, their flames quickly overwhelmed that of the sky’s, nearly extinguishing the orange flame, making bonding impossible.
Fon has made peace with this. He has found acceptance within himself, and while it is not the same as having a Sky, he knows he deals with it better than his fellow Arcobaleno.
(Well, at the very least he channels the despair of the void in less unhealthy ways. Only the occasional murderous or suicidal urge, really.)
So Fon ignores the woman and her beckoning flames, pays for his pastry, and leaves the shop.
Dreams and hopes are for the young or the foolish, and Fon is neither.
He ignores the sad wilt of his storm flames as he walks farther and farther away from the woman.