Maiza - Y. >:) (Idk why I love Maiza crying so much lmfao)
cw: implied/referenced child abuse.
Maiza often forgets his own birthday. After over two hundredyears, it’s kind of irrelevant, isn’t it? Every now and then it occurs to himthat he doesn’t know his exact age and he has to subtract 1685 from the currentyear to remember.
But he does find himself remembering Gretto’s birthday everyyear, which is even more ridiculous than dwelling on his own. Gretto will neverbe two hundred and some years old. Gretto will never be older thanseventeen.
This year, though, that counterargument only leaves himdevastated and morose. It is the middle of the day, and Maiza is supposed to beworking, but instead he is sitting at his desk with his hands pressed over hisface, his shoulders shaking with the thought of how desperately he failed hisbrother two hundred years ago.
Maiza is so absorbed in the task of keeping his tears quiet—evenif he can’t quite stifle them entirely—that he doesn’t hear the footstepsrushing down the hallway. So when the office door bursts open, he jumps andswivels the chair away from the door, reaching frantically for his glasses withone hand while wiping his eyes with the other.
The footsteps stop in the doorway.
“Maiza?”
It’s Firo. Maiza remembers what he is to Firo—a mentor, anolder brother figure, someone to rely on—and at last manages to stop his sobs.He pulls a smile back onto his face so that he can be sure it comes through inhis voice, too, and reaches preemptively for the file on the casino. “Hello,Firo, did you need something?”
“Yeah, I wanted to take a quick look at the costs for thenew machines... Uh, I’m sorry to burst in on you, Maiza...”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Discreetly, Maiza wipes his nose and eyes with ahandkerchief. He’s going to have to turn and face Firo, and it’s going to beobvious that he’s been crying, and that’s just how this is going to go. It’d bedisrespectful to Firo to stay turned away.
But before he can start to turn, Firo pipes up from behindhim again, his voice quiet.
“Maiza? Are you all right?”
Maiza hesitates. He could tell the truth, he supposes. Firodoesn’t much like to be brushed aside—understandable, as few people do.
And yet—
He turns at last, the smile on his face pleasant andnoncommittal. “I’m fine, you just caught me in the middle of an embarrassingattack of hay fever. The costs for the new machines, you said?”
“Yeah...”
As Maiza rifles through the file, Firo approaches the desk—butdespite all his earlier urgency, he still seems subdued as Maiza locates thepage in question. He takes out a pencil and notebook and jots down the figuresMaiza has for him but doesn’t speak except to say a quiet, “Thanks.” Then, ashe rifles through the notebook absently, he takes a deep breath.
“That was an excuse Gretto used to use a lot, wasn’t it?”
Maiza freezes.
“The hay fever thing,” Firo clarifies, his eyes averted. “Whenyour dad had been picking on him, stuff like that.”
Maiza’s heart is pounding much harder than it ought to. Hecloses the file and then clenches his hand into a grounding fist. “I suppose itis,” he agrees, knowing that his smile has become fragile. “I’d... forgotten,actually, that that’s something I first heard from him.”
“It sounded familiar,” Firo says by way of explanation, ormaybe apology.
“Of course. It’s not surprising that it would awakensomething in your memory.”
Especially today, he doesn’t say. If Firo hasn’t madethat connection, Maiza doesn’t want to force it onto him. Firo shouldn’t haveto know any of this.
There is an awkward silence. Firo hovers, scratching theback of his hand and looking around the room. But just as Maiza’s openinghis mouth to reassure him that he’s just fine, Firo speaks again.
“You used to say, ‘Hay fever doesn’t leave bruises,’ andlook after him.”
The memory, almost forgotten, blooms in Maiza’s mind:dabbing the cut on Gretto’s cheek with a warm, damp cloth. Sending away theservants and curling his lip, letting loose his real opinion of their fatherin unambiguous terms. That crass bluster is something Firo’s never seenfrom him—not Firo himself—and it’s a bit embarrassing that he knows thatpart of Maiza’s past now.
But Firo’s smile isn’t a mocking one, or even a smirkat a shared secret. There’s something awkward about it, something embarrassed—butcompassionate, too.
“He really appreciated when you did that,” he mumbles,meeting Maiza’s eyes and for just a second wearing a brighter smile.
Maiza catches his breath, tears threatening at his eyelidsagain, but he manages to smile back.
thegoldenhigh replied to your post “someone: my experiences in therapy weren’t helpful every scrub...”
THIS! Honestly this is a big part why I’m afraid of trying to go to therapy, like what if it doesn’t work for me? Or I have to go through several therapists because none of them help? Stuff like this makes me afraid people not take me seriously if I have a negative experience with therapy
as someone who’s had ~16 different therapists and psychiatrists over the years, a lot of them are full of shit. the important thing is to find some way to build a better, more meaningful life while coping with whatever it is that’s causing you trouble. if therapy helps, that’s great, but if it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.
In a quiet moment after chaos, Maiza tells Ronny what’s troubling him.
Months ago, @thegoldenhigh offered art trades, and I expressed interest immediately but boy howdy has life been busy since then! But I finally finished this. It's set riiiight after the end of 1933--so, within the same time and place as Maiza calling Ronny out for parting the clouds for Maria. Just a few minutes after that.
[Content warning: there's a really brief instance of suicide ideation late in the fic, but it gets tamped down pretty quick.]
Read on AO3
By the time Ronny and Maiza finished their sandwiches, the restaurant had calmed down a little. Ronny leaned over and spoke quietly. “It looked like Firo was feeling a little better than he was after that business with the dominoes. You talked to him?”
Maiza sent him a reproachful look. “Ronny.”
“I didn’t look, don’t worry,” the demon said, not offended by the suspicion in Maiza’s eyes. “He was distressed enough that even you picked up on it; I couldn’t have missed it if I’d tried. Was it something about Szilard’s memories?”
Maiza hesitated, and then sighed. “Yes,” he said, and didn’t break his friend’s confidence beyond that. “It seems like he has them under control, though. Still, I do worry…”
“Hm?”
With a wave to Lia, Maiza ordered two coffees before he spoke again. Truthfully, Ronny could probably guess what was on his mind without him saying it; but he did always insist that Maiza voice his worries when they began to overwhelm him. So it had been for two hundred years. Ronny had been his only real companion—the only person who knew who he really was. But now there was Firo too, and the rest of the capos had an inkling, and after two years he still wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.
“It should have been me who devoured Szilard,” he said at last. “Firo shouldn’t have to deal with any of this.”
The corner of Ronny’s mouth quirked up fondly. “Maybe so, but don’t underestimate Firo. He just made it out of a pissing contest between Huey Laforet and Nebula unscathed. I’d say he’s more than capable of handling whatever the world throws at him—and that includes the corner of the world you and I hail from, not just the seedy underbelly of New York.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Maiza said. “But he should be able to devote his mental energies to his own business, not spend his days wondering if Szilard’s memories are ever going to creep up on him. That should be my burden to bear.”
“And could you bear it?”
Maiza raised an eyebrow at Ronny’s question. It cast doubt onto Maiza’s capabilities, and Ronny seemed conscious of its harsh edge; his smirk had faded away for a purely analytical expression.
“You’ve spent two hundred years stewing over Szilard, wondering when he would catch up to you and hating yourself for provoking the massacre aboard the ship—your words, not mine, and I will remind you again that Szilard bears the full responsibility for his own greed. But no matter. I wonder, how would you feel about yourself if the mind of the man who killed your brother was housed in your own? If you had his memories inside of you rather than Firo, would you be able to set them aside like he does? Or would you dig into them, trying to discover what lay at the root of his greed, what might have satisfied or stopped him?”
Ronny’s knowing eyes never left Maiza as he spoke, and Maiza felt pinned in place like an insect on a card.
“Firo is able—and in fact eager—to resist looking into Szilard’s memories precisely because he entered these matters as an outsider. I doubt you’d be able to detach yourself in the same way, Maiza.”
Ronny concluded his argument there, obviously confident in his point. But before Maiza could open his mouth to respond, Ronny looked over his shoulder and held up a hand.
“Hold that thought; Lia wants to bring us our coffees.”
“Ah, yes.”
Maiza turned a smile towards the waitress as she ducked her head and placed their mugs in front of them, clearly aware of what a serious conversation she had stepped into. Working for the Camorra as she did, she was probably accustomed to encountering such intense discussions and disregarding them, but Maiza still regretted putting her in the awkward position. He would thank her personally later.
With a smile and a little bow, Lia withdrew, and the two capos took their first sips of coffee. She had flavored the coffees just as they liked them—three sugar cubes for Maiza, and one spoonful of cream for Ronny—without even being asked. Maiza appreciated it even as he felt a wisp of misplaced guilt. The Martillos were unbelievably good to him.
Ronny was the first to lower his mug. “Did I offend you?” he asked.
Maiza took another sip of his sweetened coffee, thinking, and then shook his head. “No, I’m not offended. I’ve never really thought of it all that way, but I think you’re right to say that having Szilard’s memories myself would be terribly unhealthy for me.”
“Of course. I do my best to always be right,” Ronny said, a hint of arrogance in his voice and his lazy smirk. “Well, no matter; while I already am being blunt, I’d like to ask you one more question on the subject.”
Maiza raised an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”
“I predicted most of your response to Szilard’s death and its aftershocks correctly, but there’s just one thing that strikes me as strange. It seems to me that you’ve never asked Firo anything about Gretto, is that right?”
Ronny’s eyes had that analytical edge to them again, devoid of his usual amusement or even any particular warmth. Maiza froze for a moment, and gave an awkward cough.
“Ronny, has anyone ever told you that you are completely tactless when you get curious?”
“Mostly you, once every few years or so,” Ronny answered, the amusement coming back into his face. He waved his hand to dismiss his question. “Well, no matter. It’s just something I wondered, but you know I won’t make you answer if it’s too much. And don’t worry, I won’t pry into your mind, either.”
“No, it’s not too much,” Maiza said with a little shake of his head. “It’s fine. You’re right, I haven’t asked Firo anything about Gretto. Part of it is that I just feel like I’ve missed my chance… Firo knows so much more than his own knowledge now, and perhaps if we’d sat down back in 1930 and talked about it, we could have revised our relationship around that new knowledge. But Firo never expressed any interest in doing that, so our relationship has continued like before.”
Ronny nodded over his coffee. “That seems to suit both of you well,” he said. A brief pause, and then: “You said that was part of the reason.”
“Yes, just part,” Maiza agreed. Then he sighed. Ronny was probably right to question him; after two hundred years, it was time to start talking about this. But the words were still heavy in his mouth. He wasn’t sure where to begin.
Ronny watched him struggle to speak for a moment. “It must be a complicated matter,” he remarked.
“Well… I’m not sure it is, actually.” Maiza sighed and clutched his hands around his coffee. The warmth seeping out of the mug did nothing to comfort him as his thoughts took shape. “This might just be a simple, commonplace feeling that all brothers have.”
“Oh?”
“The truth is, I have no idea whether or not my brother loved me.” Heaving a sigh, Maiza raised his eyes to stare at nothing. “I suppose we weren’t close, as far as brothers go. Not even as close as I am to some of the Martillos. There was a gulf between us, and I bear the lion’s share of the blame for creating it.”
“How so?” Ronny asked.
“I knew what a useless bastard my father was. I should have stepped up and taken care of Gretto after Mother’s death. Instead I fought against my father by… well.”
“Leading a band of juvenile delinquents,” came Ronny’s dry voice.
“Exactly.” Remembering his time with the Rotten Eggs, Maiza shook his head at his younger self’s foolishness. “My anger and desire to rebel may have been understandable, but the way I dealt with them helped no one, least of all my timid younger brother. Father always bullied Gretto, and I was too busy harassing the townsfolk to stand up for him.”
Ronny listened in silence as Maiza gave another sigh.
“Then Dalton whipped me into shape, but instead of rethinking what I’d been doing, I lost myself in studying alchemy. I told myself I was doing it to spite my old man, but honestly, I was just obsessed. For four years straight, I thought of almost nothing else.”
Ronny shrugged. “That’s not at all unusual for alchemists,” he pointed out. “Dalton was like that too. He almost certainly still is.”
“Yes, he certainly didn’t discourage my obsession. But…”
He hesitated there, his face solemn. Ronny filled in his pause: “You regret it now.”
“More than regret it,” Maiza said slowly, trying to find the words to describe the awful, hollow horror he felt about this matter. “I… despise that I spent four years of my life like that. It was worse than a waste of time; I have to think that in some ways it was actively destructive to the person I could have been. If I could erase a period of time from my life, I’d keep the Rotten Eggs nonsense and erase my dabbling in alchemy without a moment’s hesitation.” Then, remembering who—and what—he was speaking to, he gave his head a little shake. “I’m sorry, Ronny. That must be a terribly rude thing to say to you.”
“Maybe it is, but no matter.” Ronny’s eyes were keen, but there was a sympathy in their depths. “You have plenty of reason to regret where it led you… and where it led your brother.”
“Yes.” Maiza closed his eyes. The grief he had felt that night had never really healed, not in the two centuries he’d spent waiting for Szilard and not now that Szilard was gone. “Gretto and I—we spent time together on the ship, more time than we’d spent together in many years. We talked; I saw him trying to be brave and trying to understand what was happening, despite his unfamiliarity with alchemy. I thought we could get back the years we’d lost. I even thought we could be a team, practicing alchemy together. Maybe even open a workshop in the New World, far from the demands of nobility that had never sat comfortably with either of us.
“But Gretto… he was never as interested as I was. I was still in the throes of what I’d learned—what I thought I could do—and I wanted him to be as excited as I was, but it always made him nervous. And instead of talking to him about that, I told myself that the more he came to understand, the more comfortable he would become. I thought that immortality would help him feel invulnerable. I thought it would make him invulnerable.”
He remembered standing over his brother’s bed and seeing the empty nightclothes.
Helplessly, he confessed, “I was wrong.”
It would have been fair if that mistake had cost him his own life; but instead it had cost the life of his brother. Maiza hunched over the bar, clenching his hands around the coffee mug with all his might. These weren’t thoughts he usually let himself dwell on in public for exactly this reason: because when he let one in, the rest followed, crowding his heart with everything he’d ever done wrong. For a moment his old, miserable hope that someone would devour him flared again, and he did his best not to remember what had always been so seductive about it—
With a solid crack, the ceramic of the mug gave way between his shaking palms, shocking him out of his misery. But in a split second—before the hot coffee could even splash onto his hands—he felt the ceramic shift and unconcernedly reform itself. The mug was unharmed. Without a word, Ronny reached over and picked it up by the rim, moving it away from Maiza’s reach. Then he sighed and, after a brief hesitation, draped his arm loosely over Maiza’s shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he said, a quiet vulnerability in his voice. “I overstepped, asking you about your brother right now. It wasn’t my intention to hurt you.”
Maiza’s instinct was to protest; he trusted Ronny, trusted his insistence that Maiza talk about his fears rather than keeping them bottled up inside. But there was humility in his eyes, and that was rare enough to make Maiza think that the apology was too serious to brush off. Instead, he exhaled, his shoulders relaxing slightly under his friend’s arm. He leaned towards Ronny and let his eyes close as the embrace—by some miracle—began to wear away the storm of self-hatred raging inside of him.
After a few minutes like that, Ronny began to speak.
“They say ‘to err is human,’ don’t they?” he asked. “You humans are allowed your foolishness, no matter how far-reaching the effects of that foolishness may be. You’re not the first one to have made a deadly mistake, and you won’t be the last. But you are one of very few with the unfortunate ability to dwell on that mistake for centuries after it was made. Personally, I wouldn’t encourage you to do so; I don’t believe that the ability to condemn yourself for hundreds of years translates into a requirement that you do so. If you must condemn yourself, then I suggest at least asking yourself whether your brother would have forgiven you by now. From what you’ve told me of him, he certainly doesn’t seem like the type to hold a grudge for two centuries. —But no matter.”
Maiza had to admit that that much was true; a memory surfaced in his mind, of Gretto aboard the Advena Avis. His eyes had been worried as they ate together, but there had been something else, too: an eagerness to listen. A desire to rebuild the relationship that had fallen by the wayside as they’d lived their too-different lives.
At the very least, they hadn’t been the eyes of someone who hated his older brother.
As a little more of Maiza’s tension wore away, Ronny spoke again. “Do you know what Isaac and Miria believe about good deeds and bad deeds?”
Maiza raised one eyebrow. “Isaac and Miria?”
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s actually not a bad thought, and not unique to them, either.” A fond smile twitched at the corner of Ronny’s lips. “They think that the bad deeds you do can be balanced out by doing good deeds. If people think you’re a good person, then you must be one.”
Despite himself, Maiza gave a little chuckle. It still had a self-deprecating air to it. “I don’t know if it quite works that easily,” he said.
“No, maybe not,” Ronny admitted, “but you’re surrounded by people who think you’re a good person, Maiza. Do you think Isaac and Miria are wrong about you? Are Yaguruma, and Pezzo and Randy? Would you insult Molsa’s judgment, and mine?”
The warmth in Ronny’s words made something quiver in Maiza’s chest. He clasped his hands together like a prayer and bit his lip against the tears forming in his eyes.
Ronny moved his hand across Maiza’s back once, and then spoke one final time, softly and with finality. “Would you look at Firo, who regards you as the older brother he’s never had, and tell him that he’s wrong to admire you? I think you would do him a disservice if you did… but no matter. My point, Maiza, is that you have a family here. I’m not asking you to let us replace the family you lost, but at least let yourself be a part of what you have now. We care for you. We won’t let you carry these burdens alone anymore.”
For a moment, Maiza was utterly speechless. Then he took a deep breath, and—
“…Heh.”
He couldn’t manage much more than that, and he couldn’t tell whether the sound was a chuckle or a faint sob that accompanied the tear that slid down the bridge of his nose. He lifted his glasses to press his fingers against his eyes. For a moment, as Ronny’s arm tightened around his shoulders, he felt his burden lighten, felt himself supported by his friends. For a moment, he let himself believe that he didn’t have to carry everything alone. Then he exhaled, and he still believed it.
It was just a moment—but maybe it would be more than that, on and on into an unending future.
