#can you tag it itabros if one of them is a sister now?

[netherzon]

Fichi secchi

Forgive me, I have no idea if this is in character at all. Actually I’m pretty sure it isn’t. It’s based loosely on a story my grandmother told me about my own family when they were immigrating. Supposedly my great-great-grandmother really did try to smuggle a bunch of stuff into the U.S. and did get detained for many hours, and they still didn’t get the figs, and somehow I turned that into a 3000 word Ita-siblings fic

also I did maybe an hour of historical research tops for this please don’t base any of your understanding of the early 1900s immigration process on this, second also I implied the Roman gods actually existed just roll with it

There was excitement all around her as they finally sailed past the famed statue. Ten days of sailing was practically nothing for someone like her, but there were many human families traveling on the boat, and their relief was palpable. She watched mothers and fathers comforting their seasick children, promising that it would be over soon. 

Almost everyone on the boat had come out to see Libertas in her patinaed glory. They ooh-ed and ahh-ed, and told their children how she was a Roman goddess. Felicia was a little less impressed, but she remembered the real thing. Even Francois wasn’t old enough for that. His design felt like a cheap imitation. She would’ve told him so if he’d bothered to ask her, but he also would’ve cried about it. That’s probably why he didn’t.

She smiled fondly when she saw her anyway, if only because she could feel her people around her celebrating in their hearts.

She still hadn’t decided if she wanted to see America (the personification) on this trip. They had been cordial in the past, but they didn’t often have a reason to speak to each other, and some of the things she’d heard in the last couple of decades concerned her. Whether or not he was really trustworthy mattered a lot more now, when she and her brother had only just been united, and suddenly Romano ran off to live with somebody else. Someone only a couple hundred years old. Someone they hardly knew besides the stories other European nations told about him. The ones that made him sound more like a myth. Felicia was too old to fall for the positive ones, and Italy was not powerful enough to ignore the bad ones.

At least she didn’t have to decide yet. She’d made it clear to her brother that she wanted the first night of her visit to be for family. The rumors about America’s appetite she found completely believable. She wouldn’t have a problem with that under any other circumstances, but she didn’t want to share the gifts she was bringing for Romano. They were small enough as it was. There were limits to what she could hide in her skirts.

The size of the items, that is. Not the number of them.

As they pulled into the docks and the inspection officers came aboard she smiled more widely. Her skirts were heavy, as heavy as her whole suitcase. The more she thought about it the more she realized how tired her legs were. Now that the path to land, and her brother who she could cajole into carrying her things for her, was visible, she was as eager to get off the steamer as everyone else. 

While they were being split into different lines she searched along the docks. Romano had a habit of being late. Felicia did too, but she didn’t decide when the boat arrived. If she was forced to be on time, her brother should be too. A little bit, she hoped that he would want to be. That he had also missed her, maybe.

The line moved forward. She kept looking, eyes bouncing more rapidly between people in the crowd that had come to greet their ship, until—

“Papers, miss?”

She turns to the two men in front of her. One of them is young, barely 18 looking. The other is middle-aged, in that hazy portion of a human’s lifespan where nations as old as Italy have a hard time telling their age. They’ve seen too many humans look too different at the same time. After a point, she doesn’t trust anything about their aging to be consistent, “Oh, I’m not here to stay, only to visit my brother.”

Their expectant faces don’t change, “We still need to see your papers, miss, for the record,” one of them holds out a gloved hand.

She doesn’t even bother to hide her eye roll, “I miss the days you could row your boat anywhere, and if anyone was waiting for you on the beach you could just stab them,” she grumbles as she digs through her belongings.

She doesn’t wait to see how the humans react to her words. She misses the look the young one sends the other man, and how the other man shakes his head. Don’t ask, his face says. The younger one accepts this. They both shake their heads, mystified.

Women, the young one thinks to himself.

Catholics, the older one thinks at the same time.

“Aha!” Felicia exclaims, and straightens, clutching the piece of paper her government had given her specifically for this journey. She hands it to them, triumphant. The young one brings out a notebook. 

“And you said you were here to visit your brother?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s his name?”

“Romano Vargas.” (it was last time we spoke)

“Where does he live?”

“Here in New York City.” (More or less)

“Well,” the older man turns to the younger one, “that’s all the questions I can remember. Did we miss anything, Junior?”

Felicia puts on the sweetest face she knows when Junior glances at her. It makes him blush, “I, no, not that I can think of, Mr. Miller sir.”

Mr. Miller seems highly amused by Junior’s embarrassment, which Felicia is thankful for. The less attention on her, the sooner she can leave, and the less likely they’ll be to find the goodies she’s smuggling into the country.

“Alright then,” Mr. Miller turns to Felicia, and she makes sure to smile as brightly as she can, “it seems you’re free to go, miss,” he emphasizes with a pointed look towards Junior and a distracted tip of his hat in her direction. She nods back politely, relieved, I’m so close.

She reaches down to pick up her suitcase—

Clunk

Something shifts in her skirts. She can feel a bottle swing against her knee before knocking against the deck.

There is activity all around them, but absurdly the noise seems to echo. Junior and Mr. Miller look at her questioningly. She makes the mistake of freezing, too. Now there’s no way to pretend the noise didn’t come from her.

She lowers her face again. Curls of her hair partially obscure her eyes. 

“Um,” she says, worrying at her lip, “it's, this is embarrassing,” she can’t meet their eyes, “I have a wooden leg, you see, sirs. There was an accident when I was young,” the noise didn’t sound like a wooden leg on a wooden deck, anyone with enough experience would be able to tell. Hopefully they won’t have that experience. 

She glances up to see them pitying her.

Mr. Miller sighs deeply, “So that’s why a young lady as beautiful as you is still unmarried, the world is so cruel sometimes.” Junior looks heartbroken. 

She nods along. Pretends to hide her face some more in shame. Her mind is made up now. She is going to see America on this trip, and when she does, she’s going to slap him. 

That’s the last thought she has before she straightens up, and the sack of pistachios she had hidden in a false pocket in the third layer of her skirt spills out onto the deck beneath her. It attracts the attention of other officers on the deck, but not enough to draw them over.

Out of all of them only Junior seems genuinely surprised. Mr. Miller just pinches his nose, mutters something about “why is it always the pistachios? I’m allergic to pistachios” before grabbing Felicia’s suitcase and marching down the gangplank, convinced that she has no choice but to follow him now that he has all her belongings.

Junior doesn’t even move. His face is pale. His eyes are painfully wide. Felicia shoves as many of the loose nuts as she can in her pockets, then turns to him with concern.

“What’s the big idea? You look like you just watched me give birth live on deck,” she huffs.

“Did you??” is his incredulous response. 

She’s going to slap America twice.

She sees her brother for the first time at the end of the gangplank. She greets him from a distance with a huge grin, and he crosses his arms with the usual grumpy pout, no doubt expecting her to run and hug him, and he’ll pretend not to like it. That’s what they usually do. Sometimes she even believes he really isn’t happy to see her.

Moments like these ease her fear, as Mr. Miller blows a sharp whistle to tell her to keep moving. Romano’s grumpy face is replaced with actual confusion as she points, and then turns in the opposite direction from him.

There is a small building down the dock that Mr. Miller is waiting at. It isn’t until they are inside, down the hall, and into a different office that she thinks to throw any of the things in her pockets to her brother, before they get confiscated. She had carried them on her person for a full week, had modified all of her clothes to have hidden pockets for everything that made her homesick when she left Italy, but when it counted the most she let it slip through her fingers. The pile of things they discover grows, and the feeling of failure with it.

It takes two whole hours for them to search her luggage and her clothing. The pistachios they take. The bottle of olive oil and the olives they take. The Marsala wine and marzipan and ceramic pine cone she’d visited Sicily to get, they take. The soppressata they take. 

She’s most distressed when they discover the bottles of sambuca she’d kept in a false compartment in her suitcase. She had to get Ludwig’s help designing it, and to do that she had to find a “not-smuggling” reason why she wanted a hidden compartment. She had to lie to her friend and tell him she was embarrassed about the inspection officers seeing her underwear, and now she didn’t even get to give the sambuca to her brother.

It takes another two hours for them to question her.

She wants to find the indignation to vow to slap America three times, but at this point she’s just tired. 

Romano is sitting, leaning against the building when she finally makes it out. He jumps up when he sees her.

“Felicia! Are you okay?” he asks frantically. His hands clutch her shoulders tightly as he looks her over, “Did they hurt you? I swear if they hurt you—”

She waves a tired arm, heavy carrying the thick coat she brought to protect her during the journey over the ocean. “I’m fine, fratello,” she manages to smile a little too, something she’s proud of, “just take me to wherever you’re staying, I want to put all this stuff down finally.”

Her brother doesn’t look convinced, but it’s useless to argue with her. She holds out her coat in an obvious manner.

“This is when you’re supposed to offer to carry my things for me,” she teases.

Romano narrows his eyes at her, and grabs her suitcase instead. Which is fine. They both know that’s what Felicia was asking for. Romano just likes to be contrary.

“So,” Romano begins on the walk over, “I know you said you wanted tonight to be family only,”

“I don’t like where this is going…,” Felicia warns.

Romano waves a dismissive hand at her, “Don’t worry about that, I didn’t invite Alfredo.” 

Felicia blinks. She hasn’t heard Romano use America’s human name before.

He continues, shrugging sheepishly, oblivious to her surprise, “but I figured we have more family than just the two of us…”

Romano stops suddenly and walks up the steps to a building on their right. It’s plain bricks, with the fire escapes slinking down the side like many of the other buildings she’s seen so far. It doesn’t particularly stand out in the landscape, but then Romano turns to her, and the smile he has on his face is so sweet, and so rare. If this place makes her brother so happy, then she loves it a little already.

“It’s nice to see you again, sis” he says, before he throws open the door.

Inside is warm, and full of life. Felicia immediately smells at least five different things cooking. There must be twenty or more people talking, drinking, moving in and out of the kitchen, as Romano raises his voice to full volume.

“HEY!”

When everyone turns to them Felicia suddenly realizes. The humans all have tears in their eyes, as though she was their sister, too. They couldn’t possibly know why they feel that way about her, but she does. She knows. There are tears in her eyes too.

“I told you my sister was coming!” Romano puffs up proudly, and the room bursts into another flurry of activity. People come up to hug both of them. Everyone is speaking and smiling and laughing.

“You took so long, we thought you got lost!”

“It’s good you’re back, you’re just in time actually!”

“And why didn’t you tell us she was so pretty?”

“I told you she has a boyfriend, Antony,” Romano says.

“Yeah, an I got a wife,” Antony shoots back automatically, “don’t mean your sister ain’t cute.” He spreads his arms wide to demonstrate his innocence.

Small talk continues from there. How’s your wife did that cousin ever find a job my nephew has a new girlfriend “but he’s embarrassed to tell his parents, isn’t that adorable?” Aunt Giana smiles at everyone squeezed in around the too small table.

There’s food from all over Italy, and so much of it there isn’t room for their plates anymore. They have to balance them in their laps as they eat. It is then that Felicia relays the story of her morning. The things she had planned on bringing as gifts. How many pockets she had sown into her clothes to hide things (18). They laugh along at her deception, they boo Mr. Miller and Junior when she is found out.

“Protestants,” cousin Sofia rolls her eyes, her twin sister Claudia nodding along, “whoever heard of a little cured meat hurting anybody?” 

“Wellll, I can think of some meats…,” Claudia pauses significantly, and laughs when her sister swings an elbow at her in retaliation.

Everyone is stuffed by the time dessert rolls around, but the atmosphere is comfortable. This feels like the most she’s ever seen Romano smile. Felicia is usually a happy person. It’s not difficult for her to find things to be grateful for. 

But some kinds of happiness are transcendent. 

While their human companions are distracted by some other in-joke, she leans towards him, voice low to avoid prying ears. There are a million things she thinks about asking. Is this why you left? Were you lonely at home, even with me? Is there any hope you’ll come back soon?

In the end, she decides against all of them.

She wraps an arm around Romano in a half hug, the kind that’s open and affectionate. “We should do this more often,” is all she says.

Romano doesn’t lean away, and she knows he agrees.

They sit like this for a moment, absorbing the atmosphere in the room. The bonds of love they can feel between and for their people. When Felicia does pull away, it is only so she can announce one last surprise.

“Anyway!” she interrupts the room. Romano looks up at her, confused. She grins. It’s not the gift she would’ve picked, if she’d known she could only have one, but it could have been worse too.

“I know I told you all that they confiscated the gifts I wanted to bring you, but” she holds out a hand, and everyone leans in with anticipation, waiting as she roots around in the mess of fabric she’s wearing for her contraband.

“THEY DIDN’T GET ALL OF IT!” She holds up the small bag of dried figs as triumphantly as Libertas holds up her torch. 

Everyone cheers with excitement. It’s not much for all of them to share, but they’ll make due anyway. Someone grabs a plate and a knife to cut them up. Someone else brings out the wine, the kind they save for only the most special occasions. 

It was the best half of a dried fig she’s ever had.

Omake:

"You’re sure you’re okay?” Romano asks again later, while they are sitting out on the fire escape.

“Si si,” she says, “those guys are very bad at their jobs. They didn’t even notice I have a dick.” She turns to her brother, grinning widely.

Romano leans against the fire escape’s railing and raises an eyebrow, “Oh? I’ll tell Alfredo they deserve a raise then.”

Felicia throws her head back and laughs. Nobody passing on the streets below even glances in their direction.

“Hey, do you think he’d be able to get that stuff back?”

“Maybe?” Romano holds out his hands, “If they haven’t thrown it away. But even then he’d have to go get it himself, and by the time he comes back he’ll have sampled all of it.” In the dark its hard to read his expression, but Felicia doesn’t hear the bitterness she would expect from him in those words.

She’s feeling warm enough from wine and figs that her own response is fonder than she intends it too, “Will you let him know if he eats any of it on the way over, I’ll slap him three times instead of two?”

Romano doesn’t miss a beat hearing that his sister already has two reasons to slap his new boss-friend-roommate-possiblylover-thing, “I will, but he’ll just say—” Romano imitates America by standing up straighter and smiling with all his teeth “—‘seems fair, I accept your terms’ and do it anyway.”

Felicia stands up straighter herself. The wide smile is less unnatural on her face, “Seems fair, I accept these terms,” she gets a snort from Romano in return.

“You just want your salami back,” he says before he really thinks about the words coming out of his mouth. It’s a struggle, but Felicia holds out on laughing until she sees the realization appear on her brother’s face.

“The soppressata! I mean the soppressata!” he backpedals, as Felicia bursts into uncontrollable laughter.