#(henry sees too much of his younger self in vito too)

[mdemn]

awful thought inspired by that one post: henry and/or joe slowly realizing through comments vito makes that leo was manipulating him, but they can't warn him cause he'll never believe it and he'd be furious at the notion anyway. i especially like the idea of henry being the one to kinda figure this out, because i imagine his father was a lot like leo but vito has even less reason to believe him than he would joe

henry being the first to spot vito’s response to criticism of leo as a direct, personal, attack against HIM and recognize it as the response of someone being used in a game he doesn’t realize is going on because henry himself has done (and most likely still does) the same when someone criticized his father, which i bet happened a LOT when henry first came over to america…….

henry who tells vito that leo is using him, that he doesn’t mean SHIT to leo. and vito isn’t trying to hear a single fuckin peep about it and will willingly and without much thoroughly rock henry’s shit if he keeps talking about it.

joe would know leo is a Don’t Mention topic to vito. joe knows vito better than anyone. knows how he’s always craving approval. knows vito doesn’t know the difference between being a valued team member and being used. between being wanted, needed, and being used. doesn’t know good attention from bad attention. has a father-sized hole in his heart that he’s gonna keep trying to fill until it kills him.

thank you harry i am going to be so normal about this ask.

[tommytranselo]

marty lives au

because this is stuck in my head now, here’s some thoughts.

it’s not fatal, but he does still get clipped in the hotel, and joe & vito find him bleeding in the parking deck.  vito yells at him for getting out of the car, yells at joe for letting him come along then shouts at him to take him to el greco’s, and jumps in a stolen car to chase down clemente alone.  afterwards he goes back to el greco’s to check on them, but now marty and joe are both pissed at him for losing his temper in the parking lot and vito doesn’t know how to explain that he was freaked out and it came out as anger.  he’s really glad marty’s alive, though.

marty’s never the same after the hotel.  he’s still full of energy once he recovers, but he takes things more seriously and his jokes have an edge to them that they didn’t before.  it breaks joe’s heart to see it, especially given it reminds him a lot of vito.

it reminds vito of himself, too.  he and marty actually grow a lot closer after they’ve sort of cleared the air, and at one point they have kind of a heart-to-hear (maybe after marty impulsively asks why vito dislikes him so much) where vito tries to explain to him that really doesn’t have anything against him as a person and that he sees a lot of his younger self in marty which why he’s been reluctant to have him involved with the business, because he has a lot of regrets himself and doesn’t want to watch marty make the same mistakes.  it’s questionable how much of the warning really gets through, but marty is relieved that it’s not just vito looking down on him as a stupid kid like he had assumed.

joe gets a lot more strict with him, trying his hardest to discourage him from doing shit that’ll get him hurt.  marty is more cautious now too, but now more than ever he resents being treated like a child given he survived getting shot and it felt like a major turning point for him.  joe at least manages to convince him to stay the hell away from steve coyne from now on, since he knows damn well steve won’t give a shit if he gets marty killed.

marty starts hanging around tony balls a lot and kinda becomes the old man’s little sidekick.  he sends marty on errands that’ll keep him out of trouble, teaches him how to shoot better (and more safely), tells him stories and listens patiently when he talks endlessly.  marty loves him because tony actually takes him seriously, and joe’s relieved the kid has somebody else to keep him out of trouble.

eddie, too.  he can’t fucking stand marty at first but he does feel bad for being so dismissive about him almost dying earlier now that he’s actually met the kid.  he occasionally gives him errands like tony does, but usually nothing major.  ironically, marty’s probably a better influence on eddie than vice versa.

vito and henry’s conversation in the car goes a little more like “i heard a buddy of joe’s got popped clipped in the parking lot,” and after henry finally brings up the fake mustaches, there’s an awkward pause before he asks if the kid is alright.  henry wasn’t the biggest fan of him back in ‘45 but it’s good to hear he’s alive.

henry is then horrified when he actually sees marty again and nearly the first thing out of the boy’s mouth is “holy shit, i’m as tall as you now!” to which henry indignantly replies, “hey, not quite!”  he calls henry “mr. tomasino” too, until henry corrects him.  after a while he definitely develops kind of a soft spot for the kid, but at one point marty says something about how he’s cool even if he worked for clemente, and that he heard about him saving joe’s life, and that despite everything he’s still sorry henry was out of work for so long because of them, and henry just...does not know what to do with that.

vito has to tell him what happened to henry, and even worse, to joe.  sorry for that one.

[tommytranselo]

the more i’ve thought about it the more vito’s reaction to marty’s death strikes me as odd because while he does come across as very callous, i think he’s more upset about it than he really lets on–he basically suggests as much when he says “you think the war was any different?” and he seems genuinely angry at joe for bringing marty along to begin with after vito insisted against it.  and i feel like how aggressively he blames joe might be tied up in his own guilt and feeling like maybe if he’d just pushed a little harder, joe would’ve caved and not brought marty, but also...

vito expresses regret/doubt over the path he’s gone down several times in-game, one of which was the “you ever feel like you’d be better off in a different line of work?” line in the car with henry pretty shortly after they talk about marty’s death, and joe explicitly compares the two of them at one point, to which vito snarkily responds that marty’s in for trouble if he has joe for a role model while specifically citing bad things that have happened to him since meeting joe (which...hints at a latent bitterness i think is very interesting).  so i feel like really, it’s about vito already having doubts and then seeing this kid who reminds him all too much of his younger self, and this awful dread of watching him go down the same path, only he’s worried this time it’s going to end even worse.  and it does, and he feels like they should’ve done something to stop it.