Headcanon Post

[bestamontillado]

*-As always, any of the below is something where I am willing to compromise/flail things out with castmates if there's something different! Feel free to ping me!-* Anything in italics has come up in-game and can't really be retconned.


*-Rather obviously, Daemon Spade isn't his real name; it's the alias he picked up when he joined the Vongola - there was a period where he was playing a secret-identity game for the sake of dealing with politics on the Vongola's behalf without the people he was trying to investigate/outmaneuver knowing he was one of them. He has multiple aliases, and you'll probably hear one of those before you ever hear his real name. (Said real name is Rosario Silvestri and he loathes it with a fiery passion.)

*-The next bit about his family/childhood? Not a lot of it got outside of the family besides rumors from servants; a lot of the nasty things that happened were treated as accidents with cover stories to keep it hidden, since nobody in the family really wanted to advertise that things like that were going on, although there were occasional rumors floating around that things hadn't been accidents, and even a few that something was Seriously Not Right with Spade.

*-Born to a fairly high-ranking family on the outskirts of Florence; had one older brother who was a scourge and growing into everything he grew to hate about the aristocracy, not helped by the fact that said older sibling tended to pick on him pretty mercilessly and was favored/spoiled by their father - it was one of those situations where, at least with their father, if something went wrong it was Spade's fault and Spade couldn't really do anything right, while his brother could get away with murder. Their mother was less biased but kind of passive; she'd treated Spade decently but didn't really manage to do much about the bad situation.

This got a bit worse when some of his powers started manifesting pretty young; he'd had a lot of potential and more bad shit happen young than most people would've expected, which triggered some of it in basically uncontrolled anxiety and panic reactions. The end result was that basically, the more he hit any kind of anxiety, fear, or got upset, the more likely weird shit would start happening around him; he basically ended up causing one of the definitions of poltergeist hauntings along with some other things that're about what you'd expect of an anxiety-case small child's imagination and subconscious barfing and trying to lash out via Mist flame. Without any frame of reference for what was going on, people around him defaulted to the typical superstitions and beliefs of the day - which meant he pretty much got smacked with a range that included the Evil Eye superstitions all the way up to possessions and being not entirely human. It's probably lucky they were later in that century, since he basically missed getting burned at the stake by ten-twenty years. Needless to say, this made the abuse and lopsided treatment worse, which turned into a vicious cycle; the more he got mistreated for being "possessed" or a "demon child", the more anxiety-laden and tweaky he got, the more his powers freaked out reacting to his emotions, only it was made slightly worse since he was still clinging to the idea that he wasn't some kind of monster and no really those strange/creepy/bad things happening WEREN'T HIM, which effectively tanked any chance he had at control for that period.

This came to a bit of a head when his brother'd pulled something life-threatening, and ended up pretty badly maimed and nearly killed by an uncontrolled freakout. This made things worse and started fraying his mother's attempt at clinging to holding things together; there was a while that was kind of a blur of panic attacks and "hauntings" around him before his father tried to kill him. This ended up being another near-fatal outburst of his powers, and tipped things into a period where he was basically in a continual "It's not me" panic, which only made the manifestations worse; the family continued trying to keep word from leaking out of the household, his older brother was sent to live with other relatives in Milan for a while, and his mother's sanity started deteriorating, to the point that she did attempt to get rid of him by drowning him, which caused another near-fatal "accident".

At this point, most of the blood family was avoiding the household, and an older aunt of his that was a bit off-kilter got sent to take care of him and handle things. With everything that'd gone wrong, he finally cracked a bit, and stopped caring WHAT the powers were or about rejecting them as "not him" - he just wanted it to stop going off uncontrolled and doing damage like that, which, given that he had no better frame of reference than anything else, is where some of his er, eccentricities came up. If all the explanation he'd ever been given for it was that it was somehow demonic, well, then, it was somehow demonic, it was a part of him he couldn't make go away, so he just snapped into embracing it and trying to figure out how to make it obey him. He didn't get along well with the aunt, but they had a fairly basic "not interacting unless necessary" truce, and he was almost old enough to start being more independent, anyway. This lasted for maybe a year.

After that, he got basically handed some "busy work" things more in the city, with the ulterior motive that it meant sending him away to a smaller house they had in-city that was normally just kept for special occasions; his brother moved back into the main house but was still avoiding him, and he was plenty bright enough to know that he was basically being shuffled off where they were nominally still acknowledging him but could basically shove him that way and forget about him most of the time. He got good at politics and the social game pretty quickly, as much as it was more manipulative than him getting along with people; some of the leaked rumors meant he got a lot of whispers behind his back that nobody was quite brave enough to bring up to his face, and most of his "getting along with people" was more him being good enough at bargaining and manipulations to make his way and get what he wanted without people being able to get away with too much. (He also picked up some habits like blackmail and less clean politics, which started out as self-defense - a way to make it a "bad idea" to pull crap on him - and turned into a tool.) He ended up dabbling in some of the fringe, underground, and revolutionary movements and ideologies, which is how he met Elena - who was basically the first person to treat him like a human being in spite of being well aware of the rumors and picking up that not all of them were "just rumors".

*Rather obviously, he never did get along with the Church. He'd go through the motions in public for propriety's sake, but he'd pretty well gotten turned off on the religion in general, and it'd bled into beliefs and ideologies that wobbled between something akin to William Blake's ideas and some forms of Luciferianism. (aka, "Lucifer got a raw deal/God is an asshole".) Dabbling in the occult didn't help, either.

*He'd had a bit of an adjustment period to the Vongola - he'd gotten used to Elena being the only person that was actually decent towards him, and used to the idea that people he didn't get along with would knife him in the back at the first opportunity; as good as he was at social niceties, he wasn't good at Actual Friends, and it took adjusting past a confusion period to start wrapping his head around the idea that these people would not only know what he was capable of but accept him anyway and at least watch his back, if not be friendly and on good terms.

After that adjustment period, he was actually on pretty solidly good terms with Lampo; they worked in the same circles, were in contact a lot, and basically dealt with the aristocracy that the others were a bit separated from. It didn't hurt that Lampo wasn't exactly the sort to care that much about a lot of the general social-norms hangups beyond "things you do for appearances".

He'd also gotten along fairly well with Giotto - while there were things lost in translation sometimes, there was a lot of mutual trust and respect, and he'd ended up being someone Giotto would go to for advice or just to ramble and use as a sounding board at times. The relationship with Ugetsu was awkwardly civil/decent with a lot of confusion and not knowing what to make of him.

Knuckle never really had much of a chance given Spade's bad relationship with religion; it wasn't that Knuckle was ever hostile to him - if anything Knuckle was forgiving and tolerant enough to confuse Spade, who was used to anybody of a religious bent treating him like crap. Spade also ended up catching on that trying to get into ontological debates with Knuckle was a lost cause, which meant things pretty much settled into something where, as much as Spade knew Knuckle wasn't HOSTILE, the religious faith thing still grated on him, and led to a lot of trolling and batting at off and on.

He had an odd sort of formal-working relationship with Alaude; while they didn't end up working as closely as he did with Lampo, Alaude HAD been intelligence etc., and did end up involved in some of the same work as Spade in different directions. They never got along well, but until Spade snapped it wasn't entirely hostile.

About the worst was actually G - Spade trolled, G would get angry, Spade would do something suspicious, G would get paranoid, it was a enough of a "bicker back and forth" kind of relationship that the first time Spade got in over his head and G intervened to save him, Spade was caught off guard and surprised. It didn't help that G was occasionally a bit on the superstitious side.

Yes, the sad irony is, Spade had gotten to where he'd gotten along well with the others before things went to Hell.

*-Elena's family was NOT thrilled with her relationship with him, and did NOT like him. Odds are good they'd probably technically eloped when they'd moved into the Vongola base.

*-Elena was not nearly as much "sweetness and light and innocent fluff" as people tend to assume. After all, she met Spade in terms of running in basically revolutionary circles and ideas, and was possibly more active in such than he'd been, even, since she met Giotto first. And, as much as he wasn't as bad before he snapped, he still wasn't exactly a "good person" and was on ambivalent to hostile terms with a lot of societal norms and standards - which she was pretty clearly Okay with. She WAS one of those people that's good at seeming harmless, innocent, and fluffy, while keeping up with everything, and while she was good natured, accepting, and idealistic, she was also stable, no slouch herself at dealing with politics and word games, and not a fool.

*-After he'd snapped, he had helped pull strings to force Giotto into retirement and help Ricardo take power, however, he never really got CAUGHT or called on some of the more underhanded things he'd pulled. After Giotto retired, he took some of the more miniony sorts he had that were more "his" than Vongola and went on a campaign to get rid of the others - something that Ricardo might've caught onto, but was never technically privy to or a part of, and was where the "Traitor" reputation comes from - most likely due to Alaude's continued influence and pulling up intelligence tying him to the killings.
Spade's justification was basically acting in Ricardo's interest, to prevent Giotto's group from coming back and trying to reclaim power; in truth he was basically still riding the Scorpio-vendetta.

*-Knuckle had been the first one he'd aimed at, being fairly easily found and a simple target after retiring to one of the monasteries; there was a lot of damage to the monastery in the attack. G, who'd stayed behind to keep an eye on things for Giotto, ended up being the next target, although G got away and ended up dying to lead poisoning not long after from old wounds. There'd been an attempt on Alaude that was less something Spade was sure of than a cautious attempt; Alaude played dead, playing along in the hopes of getting a clear shot at Spade, who'd been very carefully avoiding him. Unfortunately for everyone else, Spade realized pretty quickly that they hadn't actually killed Alaude, so while word spread and all that the former Cloud Guardian was dead, Spade stayed on his toes and kept setting things up to distract Alaude away or avoid him.
He never actually found Ugetsu. When he'd gone to Japan after Giotto and Ugetsu, Giotto had basically known that most of Spade's grudge was aimed at him and that Spade wasn't likely to stop and WOULD aim at anyone around him, so Giotto had sent his family with Ugetsu with instructions to disappear, and then went off a different direction to cover their escape. Once Spade actually caught up, Giotto didn't really put up much of a fight - it didn't help that word of the deaths of most of the others, G included, had reached him.
Lampo had actually tried to fight him - a bit of a hopeless case since Lampo was by himself, although it did earn a small note of respect, as much as it didn't stop Spade from going on with his vendetta.
With most of the others dead, needless to say, Alaude was out for Spade's head on a platter; Spade had been intending to go back to Japan to make another attempt to figure out where Ugetsu had gotten to, but pretty well realized he'd have to deal with Alaude first. He'd booked a ship over to Japan and made sure Alaude was able to get on board, and then spent half the voyage hiding out, until they were good and in the middle of the ocean... at which point he challenged Alaude and went overboard with a couple of Hell rings. It wasn't a fight he ever intended to survive, and his entire plan basically was to sink the ship in a way that would take Alaude down with him.

*-He used to take issue with the "Traitor" label; as far as he's concerned, he never betrayed the VONGOLA, only Giotto. This is more uncertain now. Call him a bastard, call him a monster or a demon or a liar or a heartless son of bitch, but don't call him a traitor to the Vongola.

*-His family had a fairly old Tarot deck, one of the early ones and also one of the earlier ones with the religious imagery that became standard. As such, and having grown up knowing the history on the cards, he didn't really fall for the story about Tarot being some kind of ancient foreign mysticism; if anything, he's a little uncomfortable with them because of the religious imagery inherent in the Trumps/Major Arcana. This is a big part of why, in his fascination with cards, he tends to prefer a standard playing card deck over what we're used to thinking of as the "more occult-related" option.
He does find it endlessly amusing how subverted the original religious allegories and imagery has gotten, and that people in modern times consider Tarot decks borderline Satanic/occult, which at least blunts some of his discomfort with them.