Chapter Text
“One day you will forget that Melanie ever existed.”
Sabina honestly could not remember the face of the person who told her this deeply ominous message. If she could recall more of the encounter in the blank white space she had inhabited only a few days ago maybe she would know what they looked like beyond the fact that they were a person that was taller than however large she had been in that moment. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if this being was a person at all. How weird would that be though? If she wasn't talking to another person who was she talking to then, a God? A demi-God? Had the being ever bothered to even say what it was anyway?
Shock it seems really doesn’t help one’s long term memory, or the ability to take things like forgetting who you are seriously. In fact, it sort of makes a person… numb. It’s almost like what one would imagine losing all sense of their body while bleeding out would feel, not physically of course but certainly emotionally. You know you’re dying, or well in Sabina’s case already dead, but the pain has stopped so the numbness to the injury is more welcome than it should be in any circumstance. It's not pleasant or comfortable, it simply is.
The point here is that Sabina at five days old knew she was going to forget about ever being Melanie, the woman she had been before all of this mess happened. And how sad is that?
Sure Melanie didn’t have the best life ever, but she was still alive. She had friends that she could turn to no matter what was going on and know that they would support her. She had a mother who she was positive would have literally killed someone with her bare hands in order to protect her. Her father was admittedly highly annoying in her eyes more often than not, but he loved her so much he never stopped calling her the nickname she had been given at only two months old. And last but not least in any sense was her little sister who was about to be mother soon enough. Melanie had never even gotten to meet her nephew, due to be born in just a few short weeks.
That life had been ripped away from her in an instant. Or at least the newly dubbed Sabina thinks it was an instant. If she was being honest, and she wouldn’t lie to herself so of course she’s being honest, Sabina did not remember the last moments of Melanie’s life. She can recall waking up and going to work and then around lunch that day everything just sort of begins to blur. Like a fade out during the end of an old black and white movie right before the credits roll the last moments of life as Melanie disappear from her memory.
And then nothing until the white room and the words “one day you will forget that Melanie ever existed”. Which is really fucking helpful advice there buddy. Sabina would take anything else you would like to impart with her at this point, but she would also super appreciate it if you would tell her what she’s supposed to even do with that information?
Sabina reminds herself to take a mental note that being snarky to the being who brought her here and may or may not be able to hear her thoughts changes nothing. No matter what she thinks in her own mind, because five day old infants can’t shout cuss words to the sky, she is still dead. Being snarky does however make her feel better, so she counts it as a win.
Then there is the fact that since waking up what she thinks may have been several days after her own death there are three things that she has become aware of, no thanks to any outside help from the ‘other side’.
1. Melanie was physically reborn.
As in literally she is once again an infant, that whole thing about being five days old a moment ago wasn’t a play on words it was literal. Being an admitted nerd who devoured any book she could get her hands on she had read many a theory about reincarnation and what it may possibly entail. Some people say that it's all based on Karma and that each new life is a building block to enlightenment. Others claimed that each life was a blank slate and a new start from the beginning of time until the end. Some say that the memories sometimes persist for the reincarnated souls entire next life, or at least part of it. She knows there were other theories that she knew, but at the moment she can't recall them. The third option though seems to be the category she's stuck in. Nothing she has ever read though prepared her for the actuality of it.
Sabina’s brain is literally small so thoughts, words, and emotions are mainly quick and fleeting. Some things remain but most filter in and out of her grasp at a moment's notice. She can not even begin to remember how many trails of thought have started and then been swiftly forgotten since she has been reborn. And even if Sabina was keeping track she highly disbelieves she would be able to remember the number. It’s annoying and frustrating to an absurd degree but at the moment there isn’t anything that she can do to fix the problem, so Sabina is stuck feeling like her brain is on the fast-forward setting of an old VHS.
She also has almost no control of her body as well just to make things worse. It is humiliating, degrading, and makes her feel weak and feeble. She can barely lift her head up for more than a moment, her muscles not strong enough to support her and no matter what she does to rectify the situation nothing works. So she is forced to look at whatever she can swivel her head to see, a lot of which was not very amusing, and also thanks to her new developing eyesight very VERY blurry. The young woman, who is now an infant, also has no control of her bladder, which yes, makes her scream and cry like a little brat. Sitting in your own shit has never been and never will be comfortable, so forgive her for doing the only thing that would guarantee a changing.
But it wasn’t all horrible either. Whenever her new mother has held her thus far she has felt warm and loved and protected. It was such a rush of emotions that Sabina couldn’t ever remember feeling as Melanie. Maybe by the time she was able to remember feeling it in her last life she was too old to feel such unadulterated affection. Or maybe that’s simply one of the thoughts that she keeps remembering and forgetting. Either way she can feel it now and it’s one of the best feelings ever. She finally understands why babies stop crying when their mother’s talk to them, it was this right here.
2. Sabina has a twin brother.
Melanie had always been the older sibling so this was something entirely new to her life as Sabina. It is equal parts wonderful and horrible. Her brother, and yes her twin was a boy if the blue blanket he was wrapped in was any indicator, was undoubtedly adorable. The hospital was either short on bassinets or just cheap but Sabina and her brother were placed in the same one. Her new eyes may be horrible but the proximity of the other infants face helped her to make out his facial features. Whenever he looks in her direction she wants to pinch his cheeks and hold him in her arms until the world stopped spinning. When she tried though she only ended up hitting him, her damn limited motor functions completely to blame, causing him to cry. Which brings about the reason why she didn’t like him all the time.
The boy was a crier. His lungs were so strong they could put a world renowned opera singer to shame. It seemed like almost anytime he wasn’t eating, shitting, or sleeping he was crying. In the past five days Sabina could count on one hand the number of hours he had been awake and not in tears or doing one of the activities mentioned above. So in the end she had woken up way too many times over the past five days thanks to his infernal screeching. A part of her prayed that the boy didn’t have colic and this was not going to be her life for the next several months.
3. Her brother’s name is Xanxus.
Okay, this part here could have been a coincidence.
No really it could have!
Surely there was a universe out there where another woman randomly named her child Xanxus! But if Melanie was never that lucky, she doubted Sabina would be either. It didn’t help her budding five day old theory that her brother had the dark hair and skin of someone who could possibly be Sicilian. Of course with her new eyesight everything was dim as shit so she couldn’t make out if his tell tale red eyes were in fact red or just brownish but eh, semantics. Also, her newly minted mother and all the other people she has seen so far seemed to be speaking in Italian.
The first time Sabina heard her mother look at the boy in her other arm and coo “Xanxus” she knew that if it was possible for infants to have heart attacks she would have had one and died again right there in her mother’s arms. As it stands now she is still alive.
At least for now.
Looking at it logically it seems like she got the short end of the stick here.
As Melanie the infant had loved Katekyo Hitman Reborn, and she knew for a fact that Xanxus didn’t have a sister. Of this she was about 99% certain, the 1% only spawning from the fact that she sometimes blinked and forgot things. The point however is not Sabina’s current memory problems, it’s the fact that the only biological family that was ever mentioned in relation to Xanxus was his mother, and she was kind of shitty. Come on, the woman sold her son to the Mafia when he was like what, 8? Maybe 9? And sure that may have put him in a position of power but as far as Melanie knew the woman never even tried to contact him even once to check in on him? Just left him with a few tears and a 'be well', if she even cried at all over losing him? Hell if Gokudera’s mom could impersonate a piano teacher to see her son once a year, knowing the wife of the man she had an affair with was in the same house as her, what the fuck is Xanxus’ mother’s problem not to do the same?
So going with the logic that Melanie is now Sabina in the Katekyo Hitman Reborn series she knew and loved as Melanie, only one solution makes sense. Sabina is going to die before Xanxus ever gets into the Vongola. A theory that depended all on the idea that her brother Xanxus and the Varia Boss Xanxus were one and the same.
Sadly the theory that she would die was also the only one to kinda made sense in an odd way, simply because if she didn’t die there was no way she was going to just let him go alone and not see him again! Sabina would kick she asses of anyone who tried to take her family away from her, it didn’t matter if the person taking him away was a Mafia Boss or not. Memories of what Xanxus would one day become not withstanding he was her family and in no universe or life will she ever abandon her family. And since Xanxus never had a sister in any kind of canon that she knew of Sabina must not be around anymore.
Not to mention had Melanie ever known how Xanxus activated his flames in the first place? Granted she hadn’t re-read the manga in like a few years before, well all of this, but still that was a formative part of his life! It was what got him adopted into the Vongola in the first place. And what would make a young child activate their flames like a family member dying? Surely the flames released in a moment of such stress would be enough to make anyone believe that he was the product of one of the strongest flame active skies.
So in a nutshell; her twin, who may or may not be Xanxus of the Varia, may or may not activate his flames when Sabina dies, which may or may not cause him to release such an outpouring of flames due to the stress that they turn into wrath flames right at the start, and that may or may not lead their mother to believe he is the Vongola Don’s child.
Imagine being simultaneously twenty-four and also only five days old and knowing you were going to die. Again.
Once again Sabina would like to thank shock for making her feel numb enough that she wasn’t crying as loudly as her newly dubbed older brother.
Regardless Sabina was in for a hell of a ride, and she wanted off right the fuck now.
A month into her new life and Sabina was still not okay with the thought of dying for a second time, and at this point a lot less numb and more in control of her own thought process. If this is what happened after death each time she was not okay with having to do this growing up thing anymore than necessary. Twice was enough, thank you very much. Not to mention she had kind of started to get attached to the Little Fusser otherwise known as Xanxus.
How had that nickname come about? Well it's pretty self explanatory. Xanxus is a small infant who cried for almost two weeks straight before finally being kind enough to give Sabina's ears a break. So a tiny crybaby was dubbed a Little Fusser.
She had loved him from the moment she saw his eyes meet hers, but that love had grown and developed every day. It turns out that whenever he stopped fussing and crying for even a moment he would smile. Sure most of it was probably gas and not directed at her in any way shape or form but he was the cutest baby she had ever seen! How could she not fall under his spell? It was not what she expected from the tough, stern, and slightly manic leader of the Varia, but then again he was an infant. It would almost be weirder if he didn’t show any joy.
Over the last month Sabina had also finally gained use of her hands. Her feet were still super hard to control for some reason, always kicking out when she even tried to move them a little bit. But her hands man, she could do some shit with those. Like touch Xanxus’ cheek when his eyes started to water in an attempt to calm him down. She couldn’t exactly shush the Little Fusser with her mouth still not obeying a single thing that she did but Sabina damn sure tried. Most of the time it didn’t work as it was just seriously incoherent babbling and spitting but when it did it was like a chorus of angels sang. Mainly because their mother wouldn’t be coming in the room.
Sabina loved her mother, but the part of the one month old that was still very much Melanie and a grown adult hated her. The woman would let both of them cry for far too long before checking up on them. They were hardly ever held close to her, the only time they ever left the crib was when they were being fed, changed, or the two hours a day they each alternated in a baby-swing. And okay they were only a month old it’s not like she could set them on the floor and walk away, but she could at least hold them. Apparently though she simply did not give that many fucks for the children she literally gave birth to. That didn’t stop Sabina from feeling happy despite herself when she heard the woman talk with her smooth silky voice. She was totally blaming it on being a baby.
Most of her days slipped by sleeping and lost in thought about who she used to be. Was her family doing okay without her? Do her friends miss her very much? What song did they play at her funeral and who had bothered to show up?
It was on the day that she turned a month old while reminiscing she remembered; she had promised to go home and spend the day with her father on the weekend after she was killed. It was going to be just the two of them, out on the boat or at the dock fishing. He would have asked about her new job in the ‘big city’ and tell her that he thought about her whenever where she lived was mentioned on the news. Melanie would have asked if anything had changed in his neck of the woods, and she can imagine his reply that nothing ever really changes. He wouldn’t have offered her a beer, knowing full well it wasn’t her drink of choice, but instead insisting that they go to the bar for lunch. His treat, just like always.
“One day you will forget that Melanie ever existed.”
Oh hell no. From now on she was going to work on remembering everything. If she had to she would catalog her life every single damn day. Melanie was a part of Sabina, and she wasn’t going anywhere!
Far beyond her reach an older man sits by himself at a dock. It's not even noon and there’s already an empty six pack of beer next to him, and he’s started his way through another. If anyone says that they see him crying he would call them a god damned liar and tell them to mind their own fuckin’ business. That however doesn’t get rid of the fact that he’s the only one on the dock and there are two fishing rods cast out into the unforgiving water.
And it’s true he doesn’t cry at the dock. He leaves the tears for when he’s home alone looking at pictures of a small girl with scraped knees smiling up at her dad proudly showing off her freshly caught fish.
Being four months old should have been more fun than being a super newborn, but it wasn’t really.
Sabina could now do a lot more things when it came to her body and mobility. She could roll over and her legs were doing her bidding! Of course they weren’t strong enough for her to stand, or even crawl, but she would take what she could get, which was really just kicking. She also was close to sitting up on her own. She wasn’t there quite yet but it was a work in progress and that was enough at the moment.
Little Fusser and her were able to babble back and forth now too. Sabina was never sure what he was trying to get across, if he was trying to convey anything at all and not just babbling randomly, but it was fun. Plus his voice was, like the rest of him, super fucking adorable.So progress wise she was pretty sure she was ahead of schedule, but that wasn’t the problem.
She was forgetting.
It wasn’t forever, at least not yet. There were days though that she forgot what the name of Melanie’s mom was, or what color her sister’s hair used to be. Was she supposed to be an aunt to a niece or nephew? Did she use to live with one roommate or two? What color were her eyes? And her native tongue even slipped from her at moments, so much so that she forgot the word for spoon once while looking directly at a spoon.
The memories came back eventually, sometimes leaving her for only hours and other times for days. Sabina can’t keep herself from crying however whenever she forgets, because what if they don’t come back that time? What if she never again remembers how it feels to run barefoot in her old backyard with her sister and her friends? Could she be herself without the knowledge of the moods of the bay she spent all of her summers on as the tide ebbed and flowed with her beneath the sun? It’s a string of thoughts that terrifies her right down to her very soul.
It even seems like she is losing things chronologically. She can remember far better things that happened in her years in high school and beyond than she can her actual childhood. Sabina knows deep down in the depths of her very being that there used to be large group of kids that she would spend her time with. That these were some of her ride or die friends right up to the end. Not all of them of course, people grow apart, but many were close enough that she considered them to be family. They spent every moment they could together for many, many, years and made so many fond memories. But yet even if she tries she can’t pick out or find any specific memory to give this feeling legitimacy. She knows in her heart, but her mind can’t prove it.
In another time and place two young women, a blonde and a brunette, are out having dinner. It’s the first time they’ve gone out in a long time and it’s different than before. The dynamic has changed, shifted, in a way that can never be repaired. They had always known that one day one of them would leave the group, but they always imagined it would be because someone moved too far away. Not like this though, they never imagined that they would lose her like this.
Being about year old is infinitely better than anything that Sabina experienced after the last year in this life.
Both her and Little Fusser, because the person shitting his pants still isn’t the scary leader of the Varia yet so she refuses to call him Xanxus, are mobile and it’s wonderful. The small apartment that they inhabit has become her stomping ground, quite literally as she makes a lot of noise when she moves. Sabina swears that she will never take walking for granted ever, ever, again. Though she was the first of the pair to get full mobility Little Fusser was right behind her. Hardly 24 hours after she had gone vertical he did the same, almost as if to say “see I can do whatever you can.” Now that the two can run around Sabina fills her days with exploring what she is able to.
Her mother’s bedroom is the only place off limits. Her mother who it turns out is some kind of ‘woman of the night.’ Each evening since her and Little Fusser had turned about three months old an older woman has come to their house as their mother leaves. This woman stays and cares for them until about dawn when their mother returns, often smelling of booze and the sweat of gyrating bodies. But there are also no bruises or the like, so she most likely has at least some sort of protection in the whole ordeal. This knowledge does not endear Sabina to her mother in any sense of the word. Perhaps she should go a little easier on her new mother knowing what she has to do to put food on the table every night, but then she simply stares at Little Fusser when he first falls out of the crib one day and Sabina can’t find it in her to give a fuck about the woman anymore. Okay so she is some kind of mid-grade whore- not on a pole or street corner, but definitely not an escort- that doesn’t excuse being a shitty mom.
So Sabina stepped up to fill the roll, well at least as much as she could get away with. When Little Fusser tried to climb onto the table she had been the one to make him stop. When he almost ate some plastic that had fallen out of the garbage she had taken it away from him and endured his angry cries. And when the Little Fusser couldn’t fall asleep it was her who held him close and rocked back and forth as much as she was physically able. Sabina knew that what she did anyone with a fucking conscience would do, it just was shitty luck their mom didn’t have one.
Speaking of mom’s Sabina was seriously beginning to forget about her old one. After a slow descent over the past year some things were just starting to blink away. For example she knows that she had a sister, and that she misses her, but the pain isn’t sharp and raw anymore. So when Sabina can’t remember if sister was named Cassandra or Cassiopia , or even Catherine it doesn’t break her world into pieces. Instead it is like she forgot to start the dishwasher, annoying but nothing too serious. And it’s not just names, it’s places she used to live, what she studied in college, what her favorite color was and her exact age when she died.
If you had told her a year ago that she would this calm and composed about forgetting all she held dear she would have tried to punch you right in the mouth. Her little arms would have failed but she would have tried! Now though, a year into life as Sabina, she is becoming more and more a part of this new world. It’s not the same as the last one, but it’s hers now and for all it’s oddities she is growing to love it. Really she just loves one person in it but, schematics.
It’s on their first birthday, which she knows only because they each get two little presents no doubt to keep them out of their mother's hair longer and a few bites of cake for the first time in their lives, that Little Fusser cements the feeling that she belongs in this world. He has a big smile on his face and there is more cake and frosting on his face then Sabina thought possible. He meets her eyes from across the floor and makes grabby hands at her, his sticky fingers curling in the air in vain. Sabina raises on ever steadying legs and makes her way over. It happens as soon as his hand makes contact with hers.
“Bia!” Little Fusser cries with a smile on his face.
Sabina had been speaking simple words for about a month, mostly to test what sounds her tongue could and couldn’t make, but Little Fusser had done no such experimentation. Regardless his first word had been her name. Hers. Not mom, or yes, or no, or up, or any other word in any language. As she hugs him as tight as her little arms can she finds solace in him repeating her name like a mantra.
Far out of the one year old’s reach there was another mother. One who loved and doted on her children, both those she had given birth to and those that she had all but adopted into her patchwork family. The older woman’s eyes are glued to a video playing of a birthday party that happened years in the past. The camera focuses on the birthday girl in question, bright yellow frosting smeared across her face from ear to ear, laughing her head off at the smiley face she had painted on her younger sister's face in the same bright frosting. The woman watches and her heart breaks even more in places she thought had healed, and begins to heal wounds that she thought would never close.
It turns out the mourning process is different for everyone, and that some people no matter how hard they try, will never stop.
“Bia. Wan.” Little Fusser says pointing at the T.V. On the screen is a blue toy truck that is about as large as Little Fusser is at the moment.
“No.” Sabina replies with all of barely one year and six month authority.
“Wan now!” He rebukes getting angry, the tell tale flush entering his cheeks. Even so young he throws the worst temper tantrums, not enjoying being told no one bit. But Sabina has no way to get him the toy as it is on the T.V. and she has no money, so this is one tantrum she can’t stop. Not that she even has a concept of money anymore really, that knowledge had disappeared only a week prior. She simply knows something stands in the way of him and his toy and she can't help him get it.
“No. Not yours.”
And then the waterworks start. Little Fussers tears rush forth as he begins to scream and pound his fists on the floor once he has fallen to the ground. His entire body thrashes as he fights to get his way against an invisible enemy. Sabina used to know what to do if something like this happened, she knows she did, but right now her mind is coming up blank. If only she had more experience with younger kids. She vaguely remembers picking up someone his size when she was just a bit bigger and singing to them, but the idea is there and gone in a flash.
Not knowing what else to do she runs to the kitchen. Mom doesn’t know that Sabina knows where the secret chocolate cookies are in the cabinet near the fridge. What kind of mom leaves them on ground level anyway? Grabbing one she hurries back to Little Fusser and shoves it at him in hopes to make him stop.
Thankfully once he sees the cookie he stops, thoughts redirected to something right there in front of him. Though the crisis is averted Sabina can’t help but think there must have been a better way to do things.
In another world a new mother sings her young son to sleep using the same melody her sister used to calm her down years ago. Her voice doesn’t sound as good to her ears, but in her mind she can hear her sister hum the melody with her. Their voices echo together in her mind, bringing forth memories that will have to be enough to last her through a lifetime without her older sister. And if a single tear slides down her cheek no one has to know.
And then on a day as ordinary as any other Sabina wakes up and is all alone in her head. There is no knowledge of bare feet on grassy hills or toes on the treated wood of a boat. Silence fills her mind in place of the melodies of silly pop songs or lullabies her mother used to sing. Long gone are any memories of long days and late nights studying and goofing off in equal measure. The only language she knows is Italian and even then it’s only as much as a toddler can truly understand.
There is no family or life beyond her little brother and mostly absentee mother.
Melanie has finally been forgotten.