just another marriage made in heaven, [baccano!, ladd/lua] Title: Just Another Marriage Made In Heaven Author: logistika_nyx Fandom: Baccano! Pairings/Characters: Ladd/Lua, Claire, Luck, Isaac, Miria Rating/Warnings: M A/N: Based on some old north Italian fables mushed together. Ended up much more like a strange moral fable than a fairy tale, but I just had to roll with it. Theme: Myth and Folklore #44: Fairy Tales
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There was a married couple who could not get a child. They prayed and begged God for a child, and after many years they were gifted with the perfect daughter. She was modest and well mannered, so pious and polite. She was also very beautiful, with her hair the color of wheat and her skin white like ricotta.
After so long without a child her parents wanted grandchildren, so as soon as their daughter was old enough they invited the young sons of their distant relatives to come wooing. Their good intentions were foiled by their daughter's perfect modesty. No matter how hard the young men tried to coax a laugh from her lips, Lua, for that was their daughter's name, would sit silent and blushing and stare only at her little hands clasped in her lap. If any of these boisterous boys thought to compliment her beauty or grace, she would respond in a gentle whisper that everyone had to strain to hear, 'I beg of you, sir, we should not be vain when no beauty lasts beyond death, or even a few years.' If any a man thought to compliment her modesty, she would respond in a voice so little that even the mice laughed at her, 'I beg of you, sir, I dare not hope for anything, for we can take none of it with us and I couldn't bear losing anything.'
So it was that even a year of trying, the despairing couple could see no sign of grandchildren at all. The story of their troubles reached one of the grandfathers of the Russo family. 'Hey, you giudei,' he said to them, 'I hear you have a daughter you can't marry off. One of my cousins has a son who's twenty five, can you believe! – and he also won't get married. He says to me, "eh, padroni, you get me riled up with all your talk, I don't need a wife to make me happy, I've got a gun!" Whoever heard of such a thing! I don't know what to do with him!'
And so an unlikely husband was found for lovely Lua. Ladd Russo was a beautiful young man, bright and blonde as though a god of the old country had been made flesh. The couple were very pleased and thought fondly of how beautiful their grandchildren were going to be.
Soon came the day when Ladd came to greet his bride-to-be. Lua's family put on a great dinner with everything from the old country, even wine bought from the Camorra. Ladd brought all his friends, but only he was allowed to sit beside Lua. Lua said nothing and only looked down at the floor, but Ladd laughed enough for both of them and drank a great deal of wine. Right in the middle of the dinner Lua's father hissed: 'Lua, go down to the cellar and fetch more wine. My son-in-law's glass is nearly empty!' And he gave her the flagon to refill.
Lua went to the cellar with a long face, not at all befitting that of a soon-to-be bride. She placed the bottle under the cask, opened the tap and waited for the bottle to fill up. While waiting, she started thinking: I'm going to be married, and in nine months I'll have a son. He'll become a big man just like his father, and everyone will expect me to be happy but how can I be happy when I know that one day he'll die! His father will die too, and I will die, and maybe our son will get to watch us die or maybe we'll have to watch him die, he might sicken from something, or another padroni of the Camorra will kill him…oh, how can I ever be happy when I know the ending to every story? We're all going to die!
At that Lua burst out crying as she had never cried before.
The tap was still open and the wine ran all over the cellar floor, staining the white of her dress to a perfect bloody red. Upstairs, Ladd still had no wine. 'Where's Lua?' Ladd cried, 'my glass is half empty when it should be half full!' He laughed at his own joke, and all his friends around the table laughed with him. In the meantime Lua's father turned to his wife and said: 'Go on, go see where she is. Maybe she's fallen asleep, stupid girl.'
Lua's mother went down to the cellar and found her daughter in the middle of a flood of tears and wine. 'What's the matter? What happened?'
'I started thinking,' Lua said, 'nine months after I marry this man I'll have a son, and I'll probably name him after Papa, and even after all of that my son will die because we're all going to die and oh Mama, I was so afraid—' but just then Lua looked up. Through the wine fumes, eyes full of tears and the flickering light of the lantern Lua saw her worst nightmare: her mother's face looked like that of a skeleton. 'Mama you're dead too, oh God help me!' Lua ran to the corner and shrieked and wept. Lua's mother wept as well, tugging at her hair as any a mother would do if her daughter started screaming if she came near.
Meanwhile upstairs Ladd still waited for his wine and his wife. 'I'm sorry,' Lua's father said, 'I don't know what those women could be doing. Perhaps they both had a stroke, I'll go and see.' And he left, leaving Ladd Russo and all his friends in the dining room.
Down in the cellar he found the two women wading through the wine, weeping like newborn babies. 'What in God's name has happened?'
'Husband,' Lua's mother cried, 'she's gone mad, she says I'm dead, and that she's dead; she says our beloved grandson is dead before he's even been born yet, oh, what are we to do?'
Lua also wailed and tore at her hair. 'We're all going to die,' she cried, 'we're all going to die!'
Lua's father went to the wine barrel and closed the tap, and tried in vain to calm down his wife and his daughter. The hems of his trousers were wet with wine, and secretly he wept more for the waste of good wine than for the waste of good women.
When nobody returned, Ladd stood up and said, 'So what kind of stroke is this that takes down two women and a man in a cellar, hey boys?' He made a gesture with his hand in the air that could have been a very lewd kind of stroke, or it could have been the motion of a man cocking an imaginary gun. Ladd laughed, and all his men laughed too. 'Let me go and see.' Off he went, down the stairs.
Hearing all their wailing and weeping, Ladd stuck his head around the corner and shouted, 'What the devil's come over all you to start wailing like that?' And he was thinking: aiee, what a noise, and I haven't even got my gun out yet!
'We're all going to die,' Lua beseeched Ladd; 'She tells me I'm dead,' Lua's mother wailed; 'Such a waste of good wine,' Lua's father wept.
At first Ladd thought they were joking, but realizing they were serious he started to laugh until his eyes ran with water to match their tears. 'Oh God, this is too good,' he said, 'I always figured you were all a bit stupid but never this stupid! So you know you're going to die? It's just my luck to get mixed up with you lot, I almost think I want to pack up and leave!'
He almost did leave then, all three of them wallowing in their wine, but Ladd liked to finish a thought once he had it. He drew out his great gun, and the wailing and bemoaning of the husband and wife grew exponentially, while Lua went very silent. It would have ended then, but Lua threw out her hand and met Ladd's eyes and said, 'I beg of you, sir, please don't kill me, I'm so frightened.'
'Frightened of what?' he asked, curious. 'Of my gun?' He showed her the mouth and the barrel, the engraving on the shaft, the style of the trigger. 'It's just metal and mechanics, carissima, it's nothing to be frightened of.'
'I beg of you, sir, but I'm not frightened of the gun,' Lua said.
'Is it me?' Ladd stood straight and squared his strong shoulders, beaming. 'Are you frightened of me?'
'Oh no,' Lua said, 'you're so bright and beautiful, I couldn't be frightened of you.'
Ladd was getting bored by then, but any a young man liked to be complimented. He spoke gently. 'But what then, Lua? What are you frightened of?'
'Of death itself,' she said. 'I am so scared, I dare not hope for tomorrow, or for a new dress, or for a son or a daughter, or even for you, sir, even for a husband, because death will come and take it all away from me; I've been so scared and now all of a sudden it's here, and I'm terrified!'
'Oh, how irritating, you're expecting death every single moment of the day.' Ladd frowned, because he only liked to kill people when they least expected it. 'That's no fun at all! You need to get over this ridiculous fear of death before I can kill you!' Ladd waved his gun. 'After all, it's just a part of life, and nothing to be afraid of. See?'
And so saying so, Ladd shot both of Lua's parents right there, and the cellar was silent. After that, he left the house and never once looked back.
Lua looked at her parents lying still in the cloudy red wine, and thought: I have to learn how to overcome my fear of death.
Lua went upstairs and put on a clean dress, because the one she was wearing was covered with blood and wine. She walked through her city until she came across an alley where a young man with red hair was balancing on a slack rope, high up in the sky. 'Hello, sir,' she called, nervously, for she was not much in the habit of talking to strange men. 'Aren't you afraid you'll fall?'
'Will you laugh at me if I fall?' the young man called down to her. 'You probably wouldn't, you look too polite, piccolina, but maybe inside you would laugh. Maybe I should fall, you look like you need to smile more.'
'Oh no, don't fall,' Lua cried, 'because if you fall from that height you know you'll die.'
But the young man fell anyway, and at the last second he caught the rope so he hung from one hand. He dropped to the alley and did a great tumble-turn and a handstand, and a twist and a flip until he stood on his feet, without injury. He bowed like a gentleman. 'Oh, piccolina, still no smile for me? That's a shame.' The young man with red hair kissed the back of her hand. 'I'm not afraid of dying or of being dead. If I die, the world will end, and nothing will matter at all after that. So why waste time being afraid?'
Lua thought: that's one man who's not afraid of dying, but I'm still afraid. And so she continued on her way.
Lua found many men as she searched, but it seemed every man was afraid of death, some even more than she was! Some of them prayed to avoid death, some spoke to foreign gods and devils, some of them even dreamed up stories about living forever, and elixirs of youth and immortality. Lua grew very tired of searching. At last she thought to look inside the library, where men already dead once wrote about death, and she found a serious young gentleman reading a book. 'Hello, sir,' Lua whispered, so quietly, not because she was in a library but because she hated to interrupt a man at his work. 'If I may ask, are you reading about death because you're afraid of it?'
The serious man put aside his book. 'No,' he said, thoughtfully, 'I'm reading about it because I like to know how other frightened men have written about death. Sometimes fear can be a very beautiful thing.'
'But how can you not be afraid?' Lua asked. 'There could be such pain, or it could come on you all unexpected, or it could be long and lingering and create much suffering…'
'I think you're confusing death with dying,' he said. 'We might have no control over death, but we do have control over how we go about dying. If it comes quickly, ah, well then we've been lucky, or we take luck into our own hands and put a bullet where it matters. But I don't care about the dying. I'm interested in what comes after, because we can never know the truth of it until it happens. The way a man will fabricate facts to avoid his fear is fascinating.'
Lua thought: that's the second man who's not afraid of dying, but I'm still afraid. And so she continued on her way.
After a very long time searching Lua had nearly given up hope. She went into a church to pray for guidance, and that she might live another day. Inside the church she found a man and a girl, kneeling side by side and praying with such fervor Lua was surprised, for she thought only she ever prayed so intently. 'Excuse me,' she asked them, 'are you praying for your lives too?'
'Why?' The man leapt to his feet, startled. 'Has someone taken them away while we had our eyes closed?' And the girl said: 'Oh no, I really liked my life! How could someone steal it away like that, that's so mean!'
'Did you take my life?' The man asked Lua, suddenly suspicious. 'I don't see anyone else around to be stealing away my life.'
'N-no,' Lua stuttered, 'I don't want your life, I can barely hold onto my own.'
'Such a shame,' the girl murmured, 'I love my life so much I can hardly imagine not having it!' On her heels the man said, thoughtfully, 'Who's trying to take your life away from you? Can we stop them for you?'
'No,' Lua said, 'no one's trying to, I'm just afraid that I'll lose it when I least expect, and so I expect to lose it all the time.'
'But that's so boring!' the man cried. 'Life is supposed to be unexpected, I wouldn't have it any other way! How can you be scared of that?'
'But I'm not afraid of living,' Lua said, 'I'm afraid of death. Aren't you afraid of death? Isn't that why you were praying?' Indeed, she could think of no other reason to speak to God except about living another day.
'We've got no time to be afraid,' the man said, 'not of death or of policemen or of missing a train. We were praying to say thanks for the wonderful sunset!' The girl nodded, but then said, 'If you're so afraid of death sneaking up on you, fine lady, why don't you just make an appointment?'
'Exactly,' the man said, 'just like going to the doctor's!'
'Oh, I'm terrified of doctors,' the girl agreed, 'they prod and poke, and they're horrible.' 'All amateurs,' the man said, 'not experts at all.' The girl nodded and continued: '…but if I've made an appointment at least I know when a visit is coming so I can be sure not to go.'
And that, Lua thought, was the third man she met unafraid of death, and also the first girl.
After some thought Lua made her way to her husband-to-be's house and knocked on the door, but he was out on his family's business. She wandered and listened, spoke and begged until she finally found where Ladd was. She made her way through the building and past all the bodies to find where he stood, one foot on the chest of a police officer like a cavalieri stands over a fallen stag.
'Hello, carissima.' His blood was high like a hunter's, and he was very happy to have a beautiful woman witness to his strength. 'Come to look your fears in the face?'
But Lua said: 'If you please, sir, I'm not afraid of death any more.'
'Hmm.' Ladd held her chin and looked her in the eye. 'It's true. It's good you've come back to me, because I want to marry you now. Where were you?'
'I was learning how to be fearless,' Lua said.
Ladd laughed and laughed. 'I've always said if you look far enough you'll find something worse. What was so horrible about what you learned that you come running back to me?'
'I found some people who aren't afraid of death,' Lua explained, 'but even for them death will always be unexpected. But with you, I know death is coming for me. I know how it's going to come, and when, and so I can't be afraid of it. You're still going to kill me, aren't you? I'll marry you, because I'll never fear death again. You will promise to kill me, right?'
'Ah, shit,' Ladd said happily, 'of course I'll promise to kill you, but if you're always going to expect me to kill you, then I can't kill you then, can I? It's no fun at all if you're expecting it!' Ladd kissed her and said: 'Just as long as you know that on the day you stop expecting me to kill you, that'll be the day that you die.'
'I know,' Lua said. For the first time in her life Lua smiled, and she was content. But because Lua never stopped expecting death, Ladd never killed her.
And so Ladd and Lua lived just like everyone else did, right up until they died.