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cedefaci · 1 year ago

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Five Times Vongola Settimo retrieved corpses at his CEDEF counterpart’s behest, and one time he made one

Vongola Settimo had the weakest Flame of all Vongola Bosses, but his CEDEF Commander was conversely, the strongest. Little is known of the enigmatic Spada, save that he was responsible for CEDEF's assumption of codenames based on herbs and spices, and that never had the CEDEF been more bloody and more brutal than under his leadership. Together, these two men laid down the foundations of what Daniela, the legendary Vongola Ottavo, would build upon to secure Vongola's place as the undisputed sovereign over a tight-knit Alliance of Families.

And yet these men's close-knit partnership broke apart, as the pressure of Iron Prefect Cesare Mori's campaign against the mafia grew. In the end, Spada chose not to rescue his dearest friend when he was imprisoned, awaiting trial, choosing instead to save and crown his goddaughter, Daniela, instead.

A love story with an angry ghost was always doomed to end in tragedy, and yet.

“You need not wish me well.” His friend kissed his hand, the hand bereft of the Vongola Ring for the first time in more than two decades. “You have already returned love to me, when all I had was hate. For your sake, Fabio, I shall avenge thee, and see your children grow old.”

Simora di Vongola, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1

“Fabio di Vongola, your father is fallen.” Katzbalger’s face was solemn. “I, his consigliere, entrusted with one half of the authority to appoint his successor, choose you in accordance with his wishes, and so discharge my last duty to him.”

Fabio took the lacquered box from the Sixth CEDEF Boss’s hands. “It is true then.”

The round-faced man closed his eyes. “The Vongola’s reach may span the world, but there was no cure to be found for Simora, in this land or any other. He has chosen his end.”

“May he rest—Damn it!” The Rings scattered onto the carpet that was probably as old as they were. “Damn it, damn it all to hell! Father knew that he was weakening, the Alliance knew he was weakening, our enemies knew that he was weakening! It didn’t make him step down even if it caused the Vongola problems, so why the fuck did he decide that now was the time to make things right? What made him think that now was the time to put duty first? Why the fuck would he leave now?”

“Perhaps…” Katzbalger began delicately.

“No, don’t you dare try to give me his excuses, he’s an egotistical fucking bastard, mother’s been praying to every saint in the book, lighting enough candles to burn the church down, she’d have fucking built one with her own bare hands if she’d thought it would give her another hour with her husband, but his pride would rather have him die as Vongola Sixth than diminish with the people who love him!”

Fabio took a deep breath. “Tell me he at least took all those Azzarà dogs with him.”

“Not quite.” Katzbalger moved towards the door, looking pointedly at the grandfather clock that stood against the wall, “He got most of them, but Spada is cleaning up the rest. You ought to bring your father’s body home and complete your Ring, Vongola Settimo.”

Vongola Settimo. Three years later than he expected, but he had the title now. How long would it take before no one called him anything else? Fabio di Vongola. Vongola Settimo. He was no longer the disappointment, only heir because he was his father’s only son. He was the Seventh in a line that had continued unbroken for a century and a half.

“Yeah,” Fabio said, following his Intuition to his ring and sliding it on his finger, “I should. So, about this Spada—he a Rain?”

The soon to be former CEDEF Boss smiled sardonically, “Because he’s washing away the blood spilled? Nah, that’s what we all do, Rain or no. If you want to know more about him, go ask him yourself.”

The smell hit him first.

After a brief, embarrassing interlude in which he picked up the Half-Rings he had scattered on the floor and distributed them to his Guardians, they had driven to the manor where Don Vongola had made his last stand. He had then left them outside while he headed past the perimeter alone.

The smell of roast meat and gunpowder, sour piss and vomit and the stink of shit from fear-loosened bowels ripening in the summer heat, hung like a cloud in the hallway. The CEDEF agent on guard duty had to have been marinating in the stench for hours, that poor soul.

“Settimo.” The young woman saluted crisply, opened the door, and stepped aside.

Fabio acknowledged her with a nod and then headed in.

Well…

On second thought, he wasn’t sure whether he was sorrier for the girl or for himself. What had seeped through the cracks had developed into a foul but generally breathable fog, but the miasma at its source had congealed into an all but physical thing, thick and rich in the stagnant air.

He stepped over a disembodied limb and avoided the tangle of entrails spilling from its owner, shoes sticking to the ground. There to the right, a man and a woman, the man’s head at an unnatural angle, the woman’s body littered with the long, shallow gashes unique to Simora’s boomerang. Behind them, shards of bone and organs stuck to wallpaper that was liberally coated in blood and brain matter. Farther off, his father’s Flame had left a cluster of bodies unrecognizable, their clothes and hair charred and blackened, their skin covered in raised blisters, patches of pale round welts like cobblestones, some smooth, some burst and weeping clear fluid. And there, on the other side of the room, a trio of corpses pressed against a window, as if they had been struck down as they tried futilely tried to escape the room, so warped that they barely passed as human, with flecks of skin and flesh around their throats and great bites taken out of the meat of their torsos.

It was then that he decided to stop cataloguing the carnage; better to let the cleaners sort it out.

Sunlight poured in like molten gold, turning the charnel pit into an oven. His father’s body had been laid out upon a makeshift bier in a liquid pool of it, severe features softened by the gilt. Someone had combed Simora’s hair, damp with sweat, back into its usual neatness, slid his eyes shut, and folded his hands over his chest with his faithful boomerang clasped between them, as if he was a warrior-king of old, grave and grand and solemn in his repose.

What was he in comparison? The last and least, chosen only for lack of other options, the disappointing only son, no hero, no leader, more clerk than king.

“Hail, Vongola Settimo.”

Fabio turned around. The speaker was dressed in a snugly tailored black suit over a waistcoat of tell-tale indigo brocade, swinging a sword-cane with lazy grace. Just his luck, the Mist was a fucking peacock, strong enough to teleport and vain enough to show off. He steeled himself.

“I have you to thank for this mess, I presume?”

The Mist bowed, long, silver-blond hair swinging freely over one shoulder. “Spada, of the CEDEF, at your service.”

“Some service.” Fabio knelt by his father’s stiff body, where the ground was clean. “You couldn’t have gotten the Ring off before rigor mortis set in?”

“Why?” Spada asked, all mock scandalized offense, “Is it not meet that Vongola’s Heir should receive his Inheritance from Vongola’s Don’s hand?”

So speaking, he vanished the glass from the windows, letting in a tepid breeze. It did little to improve their surroundings and even less to change the fact that talking with the CEDEF agent was an exercise in forbearance.

Spada was a Mist, Fabio reminded himself, and there was always something wrong with the good ones. His own Ligurio wasn’t much better. He sat back on his heels, prize in hand. “Are you advising me, Outside Advisor?”

“Merely being conscientious.” The scent of orange flower water swirled about them as Spada joined Fabio at his father’s side. “After all, my authority extends only to this—”

He tapped the CEDEF Half-Ring on Fabio’s finger. “—and even then only when you bestow it onto me.”

A reminder. The man had not been confirmed CEDEF Commander yet.

Spada was presumptuous, insolent. But he had earned it with his casual power, exercised with breathtaking mastery, with Katzbalger’s trust, giving him responsibility over the matters of Succession, and with his encyclopaedic knowledge of law and custom, even if it was used to push the lines of acceptable conduct precisely as far as they would go.

Who, in their generation, could hold a candle to that bonfire? His father’s fingers were warmthless and stiff under his own.

Certainty was addicting, Will fed on itself. Don Vongola slid his Ring off and dropped both halves in Spada’s hands.

He had caught the Mist by surprise, and the other man’s disconcertment was supremely gratifying.

“What is this, Fabio di Vongola?” Spada counterattacked, drawling to buy time, “Such impropriety. You have not received the Sin—it is not yet time for me to take this back.”

“The giving of these Rings from one hand to another’s signifies much.” Settimo said, meeting the eyes of what could be the strongest Mist in the world, but for the Arcobaleno, “From me to you—trust. From you to me…”

“…support.” Spada concluded, “Is that what you ask of me, Vongola Settimo?”

Fabio looked down at that little twist of some unknown alloy, passed down through the generations, “With his half alone, my father enacted vendetta that shall soon shake the Underworld, but in me, the blood runs thin. I shall need its mate as well, if I am to hold my own with the sword as well as the pen.”

“If that is what you require,” Spada completed the Sky Ring and held it for Fabio to take, “Then the strength of the CEDEF is yours to command.”

Fabio accepted the offering and rose to his feet.

The sun had moved. The light was fading. It was time. “Well?” He asked, “Who shall carry my father to his final rest?”

It was the question Spada had been waiting for, as expected. The peacock of a Mist stood and struck the ground with his cane.

“Who else, but the defeated dead?” He laughed, as mangled corpses shuddered to life.

“Who else.” Fabio repeated flatly. There was always something wrong with the good Mists, and he had chosen this one of his own free will. Who else indeed. He raised his chin and joined his CEDEF Commander at the front of the ghastly pallbearer’s queue.

Currently, CEDEF codenames are based on different types of swords, from the german Katzbalger to the Roman Spada. (Yes, Daemon is just going by his surname) Fabio’s guardians, on the other hand, are named after the characters from Machiavelli’s satirical comedy“the Mandrake”.

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