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Dad’s gone.
He’s gone, and it’s like freedom. Everything is easier to deal with, from tests at school to broken bones. Even the air is easier to breathe when Dad isn’t stealing any of it.
Mom’s breath hisses in, and Iemitsu pulls back the iodine-soaked cotton ball. “Sorry, sorry!”
“No, that’s how you know it’s working. It’s okay! I’m ready now.”
The public explanation for what happened to Mom is that she fell on a broken water glass. It’s even true. It’s just that the glass ended up on the floor the same way Mom did—Dad threw them both.
Still—just minor cuts on her arm. This time. And Iemitsu’s only got bruises. Nothing broken. No embarrassing hospital visits. Not so bad.
“Hold still,” Iemitsu says, reaching for the tweezers. “There’s some glass in there. It’s gonna hurt.”
Mom closes her eyes and clenches her teeth. Iemitsu tries to be as gentle as possible.
He’s fifteen. He’s a man by now; he ought to be protecting his mom. If he weren’t worthless, this would never have happened. If he weren’t worthless, he’d have killed his dad already.
“God, Mom, if you’d bleed less, this’d be a lot easier.”
“I’ll try to get that under control,” she says, laughing. They smile at each other briefly before Iemitsu goes back to work.
So why haven’t I killed him? he wonders, trying to dig a clear shard of glass out of a mess of blood. Am I that much of a coward?
No, that’s not it. It’s not. It’s just that every time things start to get really bad, Dad leaves. Right when he goes too far, right when he’s broken a bone or made someone bleed—he disappears. And then Iemitsu flies into a rage and beats the shit out of some random kid at school, which isn’t fair…but he can’t seem to stop himself.
He never gets around to killing Dad because the bastard always runs too fast.
“Mom. Stop moving around.”
“I’m not moving around.”
“You are so!”
“Am not!”
“Which one of us is the kid here!?”
Dad’s gone, and it feels like freedom. But it’s not.
He always comes back.
* * *
Dad’s home.
Iemitsu would ignore it if he could, but there’s no way. Dad fills the house, the garden, the walk to school. Like a weight on his back. Like static electricity.
He showed up out of the blue like he always does, drunk off his ass, like he always is. It’s not a totally normal visit, though—this time he has two guys in tow, both better dressed than him. Not yakuza; some random foreigners. Mom looked at them with big, scared eyes when they came in. Iemitsu knew exactly what she was thinking because he was thinking the same thing: Oh hell, we’re outnumbered. The usual two to one now three to two.
But it hasn’t worked out like that. These guys—they’re not on anybody’s side, which is a relief. Iemitsu’s still got no idea why they’re here, but then nobody makes a habit of discussing Dad’s shady business shit with Iemitsu.
The one guy’s a little younger than Dad. He’s like, sprightly. Got wild hair and twinkling eyes, wears funny suits like he thinks he’s on a yacht. Weird guy.
Better than the other one, though. The other guy doesn’t have an age Iemitsu can pin down. He’s tall and skinny like a runner, and wears a fedora and suits that are black with intent. And he’s always got this little smile. He creeps Iemitsu right the fuck out.
Still, weird though they are, they haven’t hurt things any. On the other hand, Iemitsu reflects, they haven’t helped.
Iemitsu is perched in a tree in the back garden, prodding at the distressingly squishy bruise under his ribs and hissing. You have to hand it to the son of a bitch. He never leaves a mark where it’ll show.
Which means that even drunk and raging, Dad has enough calculation in him to cover his own ass. A real sweetheart, Dad.
One of the neighborhood cats skulks into the garden, looking for scraps. Iemitsu shies a broken branch at it. Stupid little bastard should know better than to come around when Dad’s home.
“Now, now,” says Dad’s sprightly buddy out of fucking nowhere. “Don’t lash out at random.” He smiles earnestly. “You should lash out with purpose, Iemitsu.”
“What, like at you for acting like you know me?” Iemitsu snaps back, because letting Dad’s kind of people know they’ve freaked you out is a quick way to a beating, and Iemitsu’s had enough of that for one day.
The creepy guy in the hat chuckles. And where the hell, Iemitsu wonders, did he come from?
“You can call me Timoteo,” the sprightly one says, as if Iemitsu wants to call him anything. “And this is Reborn.” Creepy guy tips his hat.
Introductions, then. Uh, okay. “I’m Sawada Iemitsu. But you know that because you’re living in my house, right?”
“Oh, no!” Timoteo gives him a very weird look. “We understood that that would be an imposition. We’re staying in a hotel, of course.”
“You don’t know how many people are sleeping in your house?” Reborn laughs.
“I mind my own business, okay? Obviously you guys don’t get how that works.”
“Mm, well. In a manner of speaking, you are our business,” Timoteo murmurs.
“So young to have such a rap sheet,” Reborn adds with an annoying smirk.
“We’ve known your father for some time, and feel a bit…ah, responsible for your upbringing.”
“I didn’t even know he had a kid.” Reborn looks bemused. “I mean, really. Your mother seems so sensible. How did it happen?”
Great. They’re like the funny guy and the straight guy. “Shut up about my mom.”
“Oh?” says Timoteo. “But not your father?”
“Look, you—”
“Sorry for doing this,” Reborn interrupts, “when we’ve barely been introduced.”
Then he moves so fast he’s a blur, and Iemitsu doesn’t figure out what’s happening until everything starts to go black.
By that time, there’s not much he can do about it.
* * *
He blinks his eyes open to see Reborn smiling down at him. Like nothing. Like he didn’t just whack Iemitsu upside the head for no freaking reason. Like they’re friends. Iemitsu turns his head and sees white sand, beach, palm trees. Shit, where the hell are we?
He’s had nightmares like this.
“There,” Reborn announces happily. “Mission accomplished.”
Iemitsu turns back to Reborn’s weird, smiling face, and wonders if this crazy son of a bitch is actually any older than he is. He knocked Iemitsu on the head and freaking abducted him, and now they’re on some—what?—tropical island? And Reborn clearly thinks this is the funniest thing that’s happened all year. Grinning like a little kid. What the hell?
“You…you left my mother alone in the house with that—that—” You can’t say bad things about your family in front of strangers even if your family’s fucking worthless, that’s just the way it is. “With my dad!”
“Oh no.” Reborn tips his hat. “I killed your father before we left. And I explained things to your mother. So you have nothing to worry about.”
Nothing to worry about.
Your father’s dead. You have nothing to worry about.
Your father’s—
“You killed my dad,” Iemitsu repeats blankly, voice echoing oddly in his ears.
“I was paid to.” Reborn’s gaze goes distant. Cold. It’s the first time Iemitsu’s seen him without a smile, and it’s fucking terrifying. “Besides,” Reborn muses quietly, “he was a disgusting man.”
“He was my dad,” Iemitsu insists, though he’s not sure how he should be feeling, in view of that. Angry? Scared? Grateful? Reborn came out of nowhere and killed his dad. And yeah, someone needed to, but it was none of Reborn’s fucking business.
It was Iemitsu’s business. It was something he was always going to do. It was what he was for, and now it’s just…done. The whole world feels like it’s made of two-dimensional props, like everything he thought was real is bullshit. What the fuck am I good for now?
“Yes,” Reborn agrees, frowning slightly. “He was your father. It was really your job to kill him. But the Ninth felt you were too young.” Reborn shrugs dismissively. “I was younger than you when I killed my father.”
“I’m not too young! And you didn’t kill him for me!” Iemitsu all but screams.
“Hm?” Reborn turns, eyebrows up in surprise. “No, of course not.”
“Then why—why did you—? And who the hell are you? And how’s Mom going to eat now!?”
“We’ll provide for your mother.”
“Why? Who are you!? I thought you were supposed to be Dad’s friends!”
“Ietsuna’s friends? Not at all,” Reborn says, shocked. “Business associates, at best. Or at least we were until he started skimming off the top. We only agreed to work with him in the first place because of his family connections.”
“…Family connections?”
“Yes.” Reborn’s voice takes on a narrator’s cadence. “He was an 8th generation descendant of the first boss of the Vongola family.”
“The Vongola family?”
“And you’d be the ninth generation, to match the ninth generation boss.”
“What the hell is the Vongola family?”
“My employer.”
“Your employer. Who paid you to kill my dad.”
“Mm. My employer felt a certain obligation there.”
“Your employer felt obligated to kill my dad.”
“My employer felt obligated to take care of you. Your father was an obstacle.”
Iemitsu’s mouth drops open. An obstacle. He’s standing in front of a guy who treats human beings like broken furniture. It’s a scene from a goddamn horror movie. At least Iemitsu had personal reasons to want the fucker dead!
But…shit, is that actually better? Does Iemitsu have a right to bitch at the guy who came in and took care of this problem for him? Does a kid who’s been plotting his dad’s murder for years have rights to anything? It’s not like he doesn’t know how fucked up that is. Even if his dad was a waste of space, even if he couldn’t see any other way out.
If he were a decent person, he’d be sad about his dead father, if only a little. He’s definitely upset, confused, horrified. But not sad. Not at all.
He’s going to hell.
“Okay, what do you want from me? Because I don’t believe for a second that you killed a guy just cuz you felt bad for his kid.”
“I told you that wasn’t why,” Reborn says scornfully.
“Ah, let me take it from here, Reborn,” says Timoteo, last seen seconds before a lunatic KO’d Iemitsu. “Thank you for your hard work.”
Reborn tips his hat respectfully, then wanders off , disappearing into the waving green fronds of the tropical plants on this tropical fucking island that still hasn’t been explained to Iemitsu’s satisfaction. “Are you Reborn’s boss?” Iemitsu demands.
“That’s right!” Timoteo beams. “I’m the ninth boss of the Vongola family.”
“Uh huh. The hell is the Vongola family? And how does it work that my dad was apparently part of your Vongola family, and you guys killed him anyway?”
“He betrayed us, Iemitsu,” Timoteo says with a friendly smile that will give Iemitsu screaming nightmares for months to come. “People who betray mafia families rarely live long.”
“Mafia families,” Iemitsu repeats blankly. He knows precious little about the mafia, apart from a vague impression that they’re a lot like Italian yakuza, only with fewer swords and more explosives. “Are you holding me hostage or something? It won’t do any good. Mom’s totally broke and nobody else gives a shit.”
Timoteo sighs, disappointed. “Iemitsu. We’re not holding you hostage.”
“You killed my dad and abducted me, why wouldn’t you be holding me hostage? The hell do you want from me!?”
“Very brave, aren’t you?” says the father-murdering mafia boss guy. “Well, my young lion, I’d like to offer you a job.”
* * *
People freak out about murder, Iemitsu thinks, because they’re always making it complicated, when actually it’s really, really simple.
There are guys who want you dead, and guys who don’t. If they don’t want you dead, you leave them alone. If they do want you dead, you get them before they can get you. Sure, there are gray areas with people who want you dead but aren’t gonna do anything about it, and people who don’t want you dead, but’ll kill you to protect someone else. Those are tricky. But way more often, it’s totally straightforward.
If a guy points a gun at you? Kill him. He threatens your boss? Kill him. He steals your business, your livelihood? Kill him.
Iemitsu’s a Vongola assassin, and he’s good at his job. One of the best. He took to the Italian language and the art of assassination with equal speed and ease.
Vocabulary, grammar, dialects.
Chemistry, anatomy, target practice.
Within a year, he has a reputation. Within two, he’s a legend.
A legend, it occurs to him, who could challenge Timoteo. If he had any interest in being boss, that is. Luckily for Timoteo, he doesn’t.
“Luck,” Reborn says, “has nothing to do with it.”
“Why? Cuz you’ll whack me like you did my dad if I get above myself?”
Reborn stares him down. “Yes.”
Nice to know where you stand in the scheme of things, yeah? Because Iemitsu is a legend, but Reborn is the kind of monster ghost stories are made of. They call him Reborn, Iemitsu hears, because he once got disarmed, stabbed twice, shot three times, and he still came off the ground and ripped his opponent’s throat out with his bare hands. And the fucker doesn’t even have a limp to show for it.
Iemitsu once campaigned for people to call Reborn ‘Rasputin’ instead, but it didn’t fly. The only one who laughed was Reborn, and that doesn’t count. Hahaha! Shut up or I’ll kill you. It wasn’t quite the reaction Iemitsu was going for.
People have no sense of humor.
Anyway, after that little chat with Reborn, Iemitsu snags a job in CEDEF, putting himself firmly out of the running for boss. He doesn’t want anybody getting confused and thinking he might want to overthrow the Ninth. Not as long as Reborn’s alive, anyway, and that bastard’s gonna outlive them all.
CEDEF is a good organization. Less supervision than the Vongola. Fewer people to answer to. Less bullshit, generally. It might just be Iemitsu’s ideal job.
He’s been in CEDEF for four years when his mother gets sick. Terminally sick. She’s young for it, but then, she’s had a pretty brutal life. The boss gives Iemitsu as much time in Japan as he needs, or can stand, to take. Timoteo sends money. He even sends fruit baskets, for Christ’s sake.
“I wouldn’t have expected this,” Mom says, laughing roughly, marveling over a fig like she’s never seen one. “Not from those people you work for.”
Iemitsu just shakes his head in response. Family is important, Reborn had told him. Reborn, the man who killed his own father. And Iemitsu’s.
“They must like you,” she goes on thoughtfully. “Do you…like working for them?”
Does he like working for them? The men who killed his father, saved his mother, gave him purpose and a career? Like has never entered into it. “It’s a job.”
“A good job?”
Iemitsu shrugs. “I’m good at it.” It’s one of the most damning condemnations of his character: he’s a natural when it comes to organized crime. A natural who was raised by his dad and trained by Timoteo and Reborn. It comes far too easy, this lifestyle of his.
Mom’s face twists, and she looks down and fiddles weakly with some of the tubes connected to her. “I’m glad,” she whispers.
Iemitsu puts a hand over hers to stop the fiddling. That’s enough about his life. “The girl from across the street weeded your garden today. I’ll take you out there tomorrow morning. It looks good.”
“Oh—you mean Nana? Isn’t she a nice girl? So thoughtful!”
Actually, Iemitsu suspects that Nana loves gardens, and any excuse to expand into a new one is a good excuse. He wouldn’t exactly call it thoughtfulness. But that’s okay; she is a nice girl. And she cooks. “Yeah. You’re pretty lucky in your neighbors.”
Mom turns her hand over to give his a weak squeeze. “You’re the one who picked the house. It’s thanks to you.”
No. Reborn picked the house. Iemitsu had been in Palermo that week, teaching some fresh fish the basics of bomb building. But Reborn had insisted to Iemitsu’s mother—to everyone—that Iemitsu had been the one to pick it. He’d insisted so often and so loudly that Iemitsu suspects he believes it himself by now.
It’s what the truth should have been. It’s better than true. Iemitsu smiles for his mother, and wishes the truth would actually behave the way Reborn thinks it does.
* * *
Iemitsu’s mother dies in June, when her garden is at its most beautiful. Iemitsu has her burned with hundreds of flowers.
He spends the next year seeking out as many dangerous missions as possible. Bombings, quiet assassinations, espionage. By the time June rolls around again, Iemitsu has killed twelve men and ruined a hundred more.
His boss congratulates him, pats him on the hand, and orders him back to Japan. Iemitsu refuses. The boss asks Timoteo for help. Timoteo sends Reborn, who knocks Iemitsu out and puts him on a plane. Iemitsu finds this typical of their relationship. He also wonders about the logistics of getting an unconscious person on a plane, but not quite enough to actually ask.
Iemitsu doesn’t get how the boss can run CEDEF, advise Timoteo, and still find time to micromanage the personal lives of his men. It’s weird.
* * *
Iemitsu settled his mother’s estate, such as it was, soon after the funeral. She left everything to him, of course. She didn’t have anyone else. So the house, the garden, the eight hundred inexplicable, tiny, porcelain model horses—they’re all his.
He left Japan without even bothering to sell the house. He expects it’s a wreck by now—left empty and untended for an entire year. He would never have come back if Reborn hadn’t forced him. He doesn’t want to see what time and his neglect have done to his mother’s house.
Which is why it’s such a surprise to find it well-tended, clean, and…occupied.
This is when he properly meets Nana the gardener for the first time.
“Oh, it’s you!” she cries happily when she opens the door. “Hold on just a second, and I’ll be out of your way. I thought you’d never come back!”
This effectively undermines every reaction Iemitsu might have had to a random stranger living in his mother’s house. All he’s left with is, “What…?”
“After six months, I really started to worry! It’s such a beautiful house, and no one living in it—no one paying the electric bills or keeping the heat on, and it was winter. I was sure the pipes would burst in the walls. Think what a disaster that would have been! So I decided to move in until you came back; Mrs. Sawada gave me a key, you know.”
Actually, he’d had no idea.
Nana’s bustling around the house as she talks, throwing things into one of five boxes in the middle of the living room. Boxes that have apparently been there the whole time she has. After a few minutes of that—while talking continuously about bills, garden maintenance, pipe insulation—she tapes up all five boxes, then stands with her hands on her hips, smiling proudly.
“There!” she announces. “I thought I could get out of your hair in under ten minutes, and I was right! Um…would you mind helping me move these to the sidewalk? I’ll call a taxi.”
“I thought you lived across the street,” Iemitsu says, dazed.
“You remembered! That’s right, I used to. But my parents moved, and, well. I stayed here. I can afford to rent a place, though. I’ll work something out, don’t worry.”
He’s inclined to worry. Her relationship with her parents doesn’t sound very promising, and these boxes contain, apparently, all of her worldly possessions. And she’s proposing that he dump her and said possessions onto the sidewalk without so much as a five yen coin. It doesn’t sit well with him, for some reason.
“Just…sit down for a second. Sit down, and maybe…” What the hell. He wanted to get rid of the house, didn’t he? “You know what, unpack. Just, you keep the house. I’ll sign it over to you. Honestly, it’ll be a weight off my shoulders. I haven’t lived in Japan for years.”
“But don’t you need the house?” She looks upset now. She looks upset that someone is offering her a free house, what the hell?
“Why would I?”
“Because you’re a spy,” she tells him seriously.
He’s starting to think that marching to a different drummer doesn’t even cover this. “…Not exactly.”
“Don’t be difficult.”
“What, you want me to be a spy?”
“That would be so exciting!”
Okay. So she’s sweet, but demonstrably insane. Doesn’t change the fact that she’s taken really good care of the house. “Fine,” he allows. “Because of my top secret spying activities, the details of which are classified, I can’t stay in Japan for more than about a week at a time. It would be a real help if you would look after the house—which doubles as a safe house. By doing this, you will aid not only me, but also your country.” He thinks he might’ve heard that in a movie once.
“Oh!” Nana claps her hands together, overjoyed. “I’d be honored!”
Uh huh. So he can’t tell her the truth about anything, but that…doesn’t matter? “Right,” he says.
* * *
“Marry her,” Paulo Chiavarone demands imperiously six months later. “Marry her right now before she gets annoyed.”
Iemitsu has always sworn he won’t marry. He watched his father for years, he knows his own temper, and he knows he has no business with a family. Besides, it’s only been six months. “I’m not getting married,” he mutters.
“Oh yes, you are, my poor dear fool. You’re all but married now. You think about your Nana constantly, you call her every day, she’s already taken over your house. Congratulations! Love is a beautiful thing!”
“Not when I’m the one doing it, and keep your voice down, you idiot. Anyway, I’ll annoy her, like you said. She’ll give up on me.”
“Do you not listen to the things you tell people with your own mouth? I’ve never met the woman, and even I know she won’t give up. She’ll be annoyed. As a married man, I tell you that you don’t want to know what that’s like. You will get married, Sawada. There’s an easy way and a hard way.”
Iemitsu sighs and tries to think of a way to impose logic on this conversation. He doesn’t meet with a lot of success, which is no surprise, because lately he’s been having trouble convincing himself.
When it comes to Nana, even the firmest self-directed lectures have no effect. She’s just so upsettingly…perfect. Nothing he does surprises her. At one point, she unearthed a cache of his guns (illegal, highly illegal in Japan). He waited for her to scream, cry, call the cops.
Instead, she blinked. “Wow,” she said. “Can you teach me how to shoot one? Oh, but,” a slight frown, “I guess there isn’t really a sneaky way to practice around here, is there?”
She’s always calm. She refuses to hear the details of his job. She understands him incredibly well, and pretends that she doesn’t. And he understands her.
He’s got no hope of being strong about this, but he stubbornly persists in fighting. It’s for her benefit, whether she knows it or not.
“I’m not getting married,” he hisses to Paulo. Paulo rolls his eyes, but doesn’t answer because he’s distracted by the sound of a key in the lock.
Paulo is standing to the left of the door. He steps back and aims his .45 at it as the key sticks and someone curses on the other side. Iemitsu is sitting on the floor, pillow behind his back, feet braced on either side of the doorway, aiming upward with a far less subtle AK-47.
The key finally catches, the tumblers fall into place, and Iemitsu opens fire.
Happily, this interruption does derail further conversation about his love life.
* * *
Iemitsu tries explaining to Nana that he’ll always spend a lot of time away from Japan. She’s not bothered; claims she accepts his spying duties as necessary. He tries avoiding her, thinking that should be easy enough. It doesn’t work, though, because she somehow manages to acquire Paulo’s number, and abruptly there is no place on earth that’s safe. Last and most desperately, he tries to warn her off. That backfires pretty spectacularly.
He ends up married. Of course he does. Paulo is always right; that’s what makes him so damn annoying.
At least, Iemitsu tells himself, at least we won’t have any kids.
* * *
“Honey? What time is it there?”
“Nana! Are you okay? Why are you in the hospital, is—is everything okay? Should I—?”
Gentle, amused laughter. “Who told you I was here? Everything’s fine. I was going to wait to call you until morning your time, but…it would be nice if you could come home soon. You should meet your son.”
Iemitsu clutches the phone in a death grip and sways a little. “Son?”
Raucous laughter from behind him. Someone pounds him on the back, someone else props him up so he won’t fall over. There are cheers.
“Son,” Nana confirms. “His name is Tsunayoshi. When are you coming home?”
Paulo wrenches the phone out of Iemitsu’s hands. “Mama!” he cries happily into the receiver. “We’ll buy this man of yours a drink and get him on a plane by tomorrow. Leave it all to me! Have someone meet him at the airport, though, because I’m looking at his face, and I’m seeing a man not capable of such a complicated thing as finding his own house.”
Paulo’s first child was born a few years ago. Dino. Sweet-tempered, cute, always cheerful. His father’s pride and joy and near-obsession. Destined to be a mafia boss.
Paulo’s wife got hit by a stray bullet at eight months and Dino had to be cut out of her. This means the kid has the unusual privilege of being able to say that his mother died before he was born. Well, he does if anyone ever tells him that story, which Iemitsu hopes to God no one will. Just like he hopes Tsunayoshi will never find out what his dad was up to the night of his birth.
Iemitsu moves to rub his eyes, but looks at his hands and thinks better of it.
“Tell your wife you’ll see her tomorrow,” Paulo orders, handing back the phone and giving him a stern look. So Iemitsu does. He tries to sound more happy than dazed.
He hangs up the phone and gazes around the building, full of his celebrating colleagues and the corpses of their enemies. Iemitsu had called in a panic from an Abbinate clan warehouse, irrationally convinced that his wife had been in the midst of a medical emergency while he’d been busily killing other women’s husbands.
The phone is bloody, now, to match his hands—Paulo’s hands—the hands of every man in the room, including the dead ones. Iemitsu called his wife from a slaughterhouse and learned he had a son.
It’s all wrong, everything about it is wrong. Sawada Iemitsu, father. It doesn’t fit nearly as well as Sawada Iemitsu, assassin.
“Ah, Sawada, don’t let your wife see that face. She’ll throw you right back out into the street.”
Iemitsu focuses on Paolo, who’s being uncharacteristically serious. “She sees everything anyway,” he explains.
Paulo grins. “My wife also saw everything!” he announces proudly, only a little wistful. “But she was a wonderful woman, and I got points for trying. So try.”
Iemitsu closes his eyes, breathes in the warm, copper-soaked air, and feels sick. “I’ll try.”
Paulo claps him on the shoulder, almost sympathetic, but not quite. “Stop whining,” he orders. “Be a man.”
Iemitsu laughs helplessly.
* * *
“You have a kid?” Lal Mirch looks betrayed by the world. “You? A kid? Aren’t there laws against people like you breeding?”
Iemitsu shrugs. “There probably should be.”
“Mm,” Oregano murmurs from behind the shield of her book. “Eugenics programs are much-maligned.”
“You weren’t supposed to agree with me,” Iemitsu points out.
“Mm,” she says.
“So, what, you gonna groom him to be a tiny capo or something?” Lal asks. “Because you suck at just about any other kind of interaction with kids.”
“My son will not be in the mafia,” Iemitsu vows, trying not to think about the way other vows in his life have gone. “And you don’t have a leg to stand on with the kid thing.”
“Uh, yeah I do. Because I didn’t breed, and you did!”
“Lal, dearest,” Oregano says calmly, flipping a page. “Your blood pressure.”
Timely interruption. Otherwise, Iemitsu might have said something like, You’d breed if you could get Colonello to hold still long enough, and then he would have died on the spot. Instead, he goes with the safer and more neutral, “You’ve still got plenty of time. You can’t hold it over me until you’re fifty.”
“Hah! Like you’ll be alive then! Bet your kid the capo will’ve killed you already.”
“He’s not going to be in the mafia.” If he says it enough different ways, it’ll come true, right? “Anyway, there are worse ways to go.”
Lal eyes him with deepest scorn. “You’re not right in the head, Sawada. Know it.”
He knows it. “Again. You don’t have a leg to stand on, Lal.”
“Don’t fight,” Oregano says, and chucks her book violently in their direction.
It is possible to break bones with a hardback book. Iemitsu hadn’t known that until he met Oregano. Let it never be said that a life of crime is not filled with learning.
* * *
“Promise me.”
Iemitsu owes the ninth Vongola boss his sanity, his freedom, and his life several times over. There’s almost nothing he doesn’t owe the man. There’s almost nothing he’d refuse him.
“No.”
The Ninth sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “If I had any other options,” he says.
“You have three.”
“Hm. You don’t count Xanxus, then?”
Iemitsu gives him a look so scornful that Lal would be proud.
“Yes, well,” Timoteo sighs again. “It’s unlikely the question will ever arise.”
The Ninth has an eerie ability to see what’s coming. Almost prophetic. Iemitsu doesn’t want his son within a thousand miles of the Ninth’s prophecies, let alone as close as a promise. “My wife would never stand for it.”
“Ask her.”
“No.”
“If you’re sure she won’t stand for it, what’s the harm? Better yet, why don’t I come visit? I’ll ask her myself. I still haven’t met little Tsunayoshi in person.”
“You are such a bullshit artist, it’s unbelievable.”
Ninth beams happily, faking childish innocence like the professional he is. “True, Iemitsu. That’s why I’m still alive.”
“I’ll come along,” Reborn throws in before Iemitsu can muster a response.
“Why?” Iemitsu demands.
Reborn smiles up at him. Reborn has managed, by this time, to get himself cursed to baby size. So has Lal. Their lives are now officially bigger freak shows than Iemitsu’s, which is comforting, in a way. But it will never become normal for Reborn, of all people, to smile up at him. “I like children,” Reborn says.
Right. Reborn did train Iemitsu, seemingly pretty happily, and Iemitsu was a certifiable brat. In fact, the Ninth usually dumps the youngest new recruits on Reborn. For instance, he’s recently stolen little Dino from school and put Reborn in charge of his training. Reborn really must like children.
“Why?” Iemitsu asks more thoughtfully.
“Hm.” Reborn tips his hat down until his face is invisible. “Children haven’t lived much. Limited experience, limited ability to hide things. It’s possible to know everything about a child within a week, and from there, it’s no challenge to keep up. Adults are harder to know, even if they’re not actively trying to hide things. Which they always are.” Reborn tips his hat and head back and stares directly at Iemitsu with those new, alien black eyes. “I can’t trust what I don’t know.”
Interesting. For his part, Iemitsu often fervently prays that he will never, ever learn what Reborn’s childhood was like. He prefers not to know. “Gotcha.”
He’d also prefer not to take Reborn home with him. In an ideal world, he’d be taking Paulo instead, to act as a buffer between Nana and Timoteo.
Paulo is neither the best nor the worst of the dead people Iemitsu knows, but he is the most missed. He had no agenda when it came to Iemitsu; he’d meddled in Iemitsu’s life purely for the fun of it. He’d been a friend, not Family. Iemitsu hadn’t realized how much he needed that until he lost it.
Theirs is a dangerous profession, of course. If you’re lucky, you survive to be thirty; anything beyond that is borrowed time. If you’re lucky, you die by getting shot, in the head by preference. The kids, the non-affiliated lookouts and expendables, they call it dying like a man. It’s what they hope for.
Paulo wasn’t lucky; the expendables must pity him. Some members of the Russo family tied him down, dumped gasoline over him, and set him on fire. An ugly way to die. Undignified. Lots of screaming.
Iemitsu and Reborn spent the seven months after it happened hunting Russos down and destroying them. Too late, of course.
As it stands, Paulo is dead and so is every last Russo. All that’s left to prove they existed is a cute kid with an ever-increasing number of flame-themed tattoos. What purpose did any of it serve? Iemitsu doesn’t know anymore.
“Introduce me to your wife,” Reborn says. “She ought to know who I am; I’ll be the one to tell her if you get yourself killed. But your son doesn’t need to see me. I’ll watch from a distance.”
Iemitsu sighs. He’s an open book to Reborn, all right. “No comment?” he asks Timoteo.
Timoteo just smiles.
* * *
Home exerts a strange power over almost everyone, it’s a fact. Paulo once held forth on the subject at some length, as they were packing the corpses of illegal Chinese immigrants into a container to be shipped back to China.
Iemitsu can’t remember who they’d annoyed badly enough to get stuck with that job. Someone really vindictive, apparently.
Iemitsu had made an offhand comment about how strange it was that these people had broken all kinds of laws to get themselves to Italy, had lived in Italy, in some cases, most of their lives, and yet they’d paid an absurd amount of money to be shipped back to China once they were dead and it made no everloving difference.
How, he wondered, could China still be considered home? And why did it matter?
“Your homeland is your mother,” Paulo informed him loftily. “And a man is always connected to his mother. She gives birth to him, raises him, teaches him to be who he is. Of course she’s never forgotten. That’s why.”
“Paulo, have you ever left Italy for more than a week?”
“You are missing the point. This man—” Paulo gestured to a corpse that was much the worse for wear. Iemitsu wished he hadn’t. “This man wants to dissolve back into nothing in the same ground he rose out of. The same ground as his ancestors. What’s so hard to understand? Look at his face!”
“Paulo, Jesus Christ. He hardly has one.”
“Exactly! His face is being stolen by Italy! This is wrong, you must see this!”
Iemitsu distinctly did not see this. Not at all, and his rational mind still doesn’t understand it. But as much as Paulo didn’t have any authority on the subject whatsoever, as much as his explanation made no logical sense, he still seems to have been absolutely right.
Japan has never become less than home. No matter how long he’s away, it’s still the country Iemitsu feels most comfortable in. When he lands in Narita, it feels like for the first time in months, years, however long it’s been—he can relax.
Perversely, he finds the comfortable feeling uncomfortable. He can’t stop himself from letting down his guard a little when he’s home, and that terrifies him.
In Japan, it turns out, Iemitsu has a tendency to forget how dangerous Timoteo is. He tends to treat him like a kooky uncle, rather than the manipulative serial killer he is in truth. Iemitsu knows better than to think that Timoteo didn’t plan for that.
Tsunayoshi, on the other hand, seems quite dubious about the situation in general and Timoteo in particular. Apparently he has better sense than either of his parents.
“Your husband is being very stubborn,” Timoteo tells Nana lightly, sprawled on his belly, pushing a toy truck around in front of Tsuna. Tsuna is watching him with wary eyes, ignoring the truck.
“He is stubborn, it’s true,” Nana laughs. “But what’s he being stubborn about this time?”
“Well, I offered young Tsuna a job with my company.” Iemitsu loves how company rolls so easily off his tongue, the shameless old fraud. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Tsuna?” Tsuna stares silently. “When you’re much older, of course! But Iemitsu won’t hear anything of it.”
“It’s a dangerous job,” Iemitsu grits out. “And Tsuna’s not suited for it.”
“He’s not even six years old, dear,” Nana says, smiling. “How can you tell he’s not suited?”
Well, he doesn’t routinely beat up his fellow kindergartners, for one thing. “He isn’t. Trust me.”
Timoteo has finally coaxed Tsuna into halfheartedly playing with the truck, though his attention is still mostly on the stranger. Unfortunately, he’s starting to look more fascinated than afraid. It’s the effect Timoteo usually has on people.
“There’s good money in it,” Timoteo goes on. “Same line of work as his father! And his father, of course, has a fearsome reputation.”
Nana beams happily. Iemitsu suspects she’d still be beaming even if she knew that his reputation is for swift, merciless retribution. He sighs. “It’s not for everyone, Nana. It’s brutal work, and most people don’t—”
“Oh, but he’s still so young. Can’t we wait? Let’s wait and see what kind of man he grows into. You can decide then, when you can discuss it with him. You wouldn’t make decisions about his life without asking him, would you?”
Actually, he would. You don’t so much ask people to join the mafia as you make sure they have no other options. It’s the last thing a decent man would want for his son.
“I’m only asking you to keep the possibility in mind, Iemitsu,” Timoteo puts in smoothly, eyes on Tsuna, who’s offering him a toy airplane. Tsuna hasn’t spoken a word since Timoteo walked in the door. Where did he learn to be so cautious? “Don’t refuse me outright. The situation might not arise, but if it does—tell me you’ll consider it then.”
Iemitsu exchanges a glance with Nana. She shrugs at him, thoughtful, but not worried. That’s only because she doesn’t know Timoteo the way Iemitsu does. Iemitsu closes his eyes and breathes in. “I will.” Two nails in a coffin. “But nothing starts until you tell me. I reserve the right to refuse if I believe it will destroy him.”
“Understood,” the Ninth murmurs.
Nana sighs, stands, collects the plates and bustles them away to the kitchen. Timoteo and Tsuna both watch her go.
Tsuna catches Timoteo’s hand and says, “Mama will maybe bring a snack.”
So Timoteo’s won Tsuna over, too. Fantastic.
* * *
“I’m sorry to keep you from home so much, my lion,” the Ninth says as Iemitsu walks him to the gate. It’s very like him to apologize for one of the few things he’s done that doesn’t require an apology. “Your family is charming.”
Iemitsu shrugs. “Not your fault.” And if there’s one God’s honest truth in all this fucking mess, it’s that Iemitsu has no business raising a child. If he spends too much time with Tsuna, he starts acting exactly like his own father. Well, with one exception. Iemitsu’s dad always ran away once he’d taken it too far. Iemitsu does at least manage to run sooner.
“Your wife is a very understanding woman.”
His wife, who’d thrown herself bodily between him and his tiny son when he was about to backhand the boy over nothing, the first and only time he’d stayed home so long. His wife, who’d held him while he shook and gasped and tried to explain. His wife, who’d let him run away to the airport the next morning with a bright smile and a warm hug and no complaints. His Nana.
“You have no idea.”
* * *
There’s a little boy in CEDEF headquarters. Reborn led him to the boss’s office—Iemitsu’s office, now—by the hand. The kid had to stoop to make that work.
Some Shimon fragment killed the former boss last year. Iemitsu took care of that (what a mess), and as punishment for his sins, ended up boss himself.
No one argued about his new status. Not even Lal, which is depressing. She hardly argues about anything anymore; the Arcobaleno disaster shattered her confidence. Iemitsu’s starting to worry that she’ll never argue again.
The promotion also means that Iemitsu is the new outside advisor to the Vongola. Therefore, at least in theory, Timoteo will now listen to his recommendations.
Ha ha. Ha.
All the promotion means to Reborn, obviously, is that Iemitsu is the one responsible for any broken little kids in his territory. The privileges of power, wow.
This kid is a wreck, a disaster. Iemitsu knows the look: dead parents, dead friends, no home to go back to. He saw the same look in a mirror, once upon a time. The difference is, this kid also has the look of a duckling desperate to imprint. It takes people that way sometimes.
“Why the kid?”
Reborn smiles. “You two will get along.”
Iemitsu looks at the kid. The kid looks at the floor. He’s around Tsuna’s age.
Timoteo thinks he’s subtle, but actually he’s just a jackass. “I don’t need this right now, Reborn.”
Reborn opens his mouth, but the kid, showing a marked lack of common sense, cuts him off. “Sir,” he says. “I know I don’t…look like much, but I. I’m very young? People aren’t afraid to talk in front of me because. They think I don’t listen. But I listen.”
Interesting. “Yeah? What do you know about me, then?”
“Iemitsu Sawada, head of CEDEF, friends with Vongola Ninth, friends with the assassin Reborn, scary but fair unless you threaten his people in which case just scary. Has been associated with the Vongola since he was fifteen, mysterious circumstances. Has a wife in Namimori in Japan as well as one son, but people don’t know that because the assassin Reborn kills anyone who finds out, except for me, because he thought I could be useful.”
The kid stops and gasps for air. No wonder; he delivered that whole spiel without pause. Wow. Well, alright. Maybe Iemitsu could use an obedient little recording device, come to that. He may not know what to do with kids, but he does know how to treat his men.
…So Reborn kills anybody who finds out about Nana and Tsuna, does he?
Good.
“Fine, kid,” Iemitsu says. “You win. Your name’s Basil, okay?”
The kid looks up for the first time—wide-open, sweet face, shattered eyes. “But my name is—”
“Basil.”
He blinks a few times, then smiles. “Okay, boss. I’m Basil.”
“Training is going to suck. I’m just letting you know that right now.”
“I don’t mind!”
Reborn is smirking. He is not gracious in victory. Or defeat either, actually.
* * *
Iemitsu has spent a grand total of five years in his son’s company the day the Ninth calls in his debt. Tsuna probably only clearly remembers a year or two of that time. Iemitsu remembers even less; he spent most of it drunk.
That’s something he has over his dad. He’s a happy drunk, not a mean one.
“Are you going to…hm. Invoke your right to refuse?” the Ninth asks. He knows perfectly well that Iemitsu won’t refuse, but he might at least have the grace not to rub it in.
There’s no point in refusing now. The mafia won’t destroy Iemitsu’s son. Tsuna grew up fatherless, knowing that no one would protect him. Nana is a wonderful woman, but she never was especially intimidating.
There’s no easier target than a boy who believes he’s alone and defenseless.
No, the Vongola won’t destroy Tsuna. Even in absentia, Iemitsu’s managed to arrange for Tsuna to destroy himself.
“I’d like to send Reborn,” Ninth says in the quiet tone of one making funeral arrangements over the body of a person who isn’t quite dead yet. At least he understands what it is he’s doing.
Reborn, Iemitsu’s criminal big brother. Possibly the world’s deadliest living creature. Merciless, too—if he’s ever felt a glimmer of remorse in his life, he’s surely never let Iemitsu see it.
Reborn loves children. He’s good with them. It’s bizarre.
Iemitsu closes his eyes. “Do it.”
Tsuna, forgive me.
* * *
Nana seems a little worried, but at least she’s having fun pretending she doesn’t know anything. It’s like I’m a spy, too, she says, and laughs.
Iemitsu, sadly, is having less fun. “How’s my son doing?” he says into the phone.
“You are a most peculiar man,” Reborn says thoughtfully, and hangs up on him.
Iemitsu sighs at the dial tone. The dial tone is indifferent to his plight. “I swear to God,” he mutters to no one, “that bastard gets weirder every year.”
The thing is, Nana used to be able to tell him absolutely everything about Tsuna. Now all she can tell him is, The usual, and then he was whisked away by Reborn and his interesting new friends, and I didn’t see him again for six hours. At which point he was covered in blood, most of which was apparently not his own. Are you sure this is a good idea, dear?
No. In short, no.
* * *
“How’s my son?” Iemitsu demands of the phone. And is met with a lot of crackly, international-call silence.
“Are you pretending you care again?” Dino responds in his own sweet time, the little snot. “Stop it. It’s creepy.”
“Look, orphaned wonder, parents almost always worry about their kids, even the crappy parents. How is my son?”
Another long pause. “He’s being trained by Reborn. I think the word for that is tormented. Otherwise, he seems fine. Like a good kid. Nothing like you. I’m a little unclear on whether you’ve ever actually met him.”
Like many things Dino says, this smacks of a Paulo lecture. The kid hardly remembers his father, and yet they’re eerily similar in many ways. A fact that terrifies Iemitsu every time he notices it. Nature, nurture, dangerous possibilities.
“Shove it up your ass, Dino. I can’t wait until you have kids. We’ll have this talk again then.”
Iemitsu enjoys the hell out of the pause that follows, because this one is hilariously awkward. Dino’s probably wondering if Iemitsu somehow managed to miss how flamingly gay he is. Hey, whatever, he could still have kids. “It’s not biologically impossible,” Iemitsu concludes aloud. Then he hangs up.
There is one way in which Dino’s not like his father at all. He’s much, much easier to screw with.
* * *
Everything seemed to be going well. Yes, Iemitsu’s son was training to lead a criminal organization, but, as far as Nana could tell, he was more or less enjoying it. Meanwhile, the mafia world was staying obligingly calm. Business as usual, no fireworks. Timoteo hadn’t even come up with any especially bizarre ideas for a while.
Iemitsu should have known better than to trust any of it. Like an idiot, he let his guard down, and now everything has gone to shit. And like many other fuckups in recent history, this one centers around Xanxus.
Ninth should have let Reborn kill Xanxus after Cradle. Instead, he had one of his bleeding heart moments, and forbade it. But fine. To leave Xanxus alive is one thing; weak, but forgivable. To allow Xanxus to lead the Vongola is another thing entirely. It’s unacceptable, and if Timoteo weren’t out of his goddamn mind, he would know that.
He always knew it before.
Something stinks here. Iemitsu would suspect a plot, but it’s too subtle for Xanxus—or at least it’s too subtle for the Xanxus Iemitsu knew. But hey, maybe he spent all his time on ice brooding this up.
Or maybe leading CEDEF has driven Iemitsu paranoid and delusional. Could be.
Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether these are really Timoteo’s orders or not. He wanted Iemitsu’s son as his successor? He’s got him. He made the mistake of talking Iemitsu into it, and now it’s done, no backing out. Whether it’s good for Tsuna or not, this is the only way for the Vongola. Xanxus would destroy the Vongola.
The choice between Family and family. It’s a choice Iemitsu made years ago. It’s no choice at all.
But there is one thing Iemitsu can do right for his son. Timoteo picked his own guardians, and in Iemitsu’s considered opinion, he deliberately picked a bunch of loyal goofs who would never pose any threat to his position. The puppy dog mafia.
Iemitsu will pick Tsuna’s guardians, and they will be the most intimidating bunch of thugs in their generation. No one’s going to fuck with Iemitsu’s son the way they do with Timoteo.
The guardians will be shield and sword. The guardians will be scary as hell.
* * *
“Hah! Now there’s a face that brings back memories. Sawada Iemitsu, my God. It’s been years.”
“Yeah, it’s been ten years. At least.”
“Unbelievable. A lot’s changed, huh? Looks like your kid’s going for the top now. And he’s taking mine with him.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Iemitsu explains, just to be on the safe side. The problem with Yamamoto Tsuyoshi is, it’s hard to tell that he’s angry until he cuts you in half.
“It wasn’t your idea for your kid or mine?”
“Both.”
“Ah.” Tsuyoshi sets down his sushi knife, which is a comfort to Iemitsu. “Ninth, then.”
“Ninth. And Reborn.”
“Both? That’s enough to give a person nightmares. Yeah. I’ve been watching your son for a while.” Tsuyoshi picks up the knife again, but he only uses it for its intended, fish-related purpose. “Which is more than you can say. He could have used a father, growing up.”
“I was busy.”
“So was I. And then I had a kid, and now look! I make sushi.”
“It was…dangerous.”
“Mhmm. Because people were watching you?”
Because I couldn’t be trusted with him. He doesn’t say it. He tries not to even think it too loudly. Tsuyoshi hears it anyway; this is why he was once the scariest intelligence operative CEDEF had.
“Hm,” is all he says. He can be merciful sometimes. “I assume you’re not here for the food, what with the breaking and entering outside of store hours and all. What’s going on?”
“I’m thinking of offering your son the rain ring.”
Tsuyoshi’s knife slips. This never happens. “What?”
“Well, he’s calm, he’s deadly, he’s—”
“Fifteen years old.”
“When was your first kill?”
“That was then. It was a rougher time—or a rougher place, anyway. And no one was proposing to make us guardians. What’s Ninth thinking?”
Iemitsu sighs and rubs his face. “I don’t think he is thinking. There’s something off about all of this. First he bends over backward to train Tsuna, and now he’s turned around and nominated Xanxus.”
The knife slips again, and this time Tsuyoshi sets it down. “After Cradle, he nominates Xanxus.”
“Right.”
“The hell he does.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Your people looking into it?”
“They have been. But it’ll all be decided before they find anything worth knowing.”
Tsuyoshi steps back from his counter and turns to give Iemitsu his full attention. “You’re not just offering my son the rain ring,” he says. “You’re planning to make him fight for it. Battle for the rings. For the succession.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tsuyoshi stares in that unnervingly direct, fearless way of his. “I heard a rumor,” he says, “that you didn’t want your son in the mafia at all.”
Iemitsu doesn’t answer.
“So. Xanxus.”
“Xanxus.”
“We can’t have Xanxus. Were you asking my permission before you gave Takeshi the ring?”
“Timoteo asked my permission. It seemed fair.”
Tsuyoshi snorts and turns back to his counter. “Ninth never asks anyone’s permission, he just makes it look that way. But you have my permission, for what it’s worth.”
“Because you’re worried about Xanxus?”
Tsuyoshi pauses in his chopping, eyes focused on the middle distance. “No. I guess…because I want to see what Takeshi can really do.” A beat. “You asking permission for Gokudera?”
“Sure. I’m asking Shamal.”
Tsuyoshi laughs. “I like it!”
* * *
“The mafia,” Nana says, frowning fiercely.
This is the first time Iemitsu’s been home since the battle for the rings, and it is apparently time to face the music. He managed to put Nana off over the phone, but it’s impossible to put her off in person.
“You didn’t want to know,” Iemitsu reminds her.
“When my son is bleeding,” she hisses, “I want to know why. When children living in my house are beaten and electrocuted, I want to know why. When my son’s friends are hacked up and covered in burn scars—”
“I wanted to wait,” Iemitsu insists. “I didn’t think this would start so soon, I thought—”
She sits at the kitchen table opposite him, plants her elbows, and stares with all the intensity she can muster. Which is a lot; it’s just that she uses it very rarely. “So what happened?”
“Someone challenged.”
“Challenged. Challenged for what?”
“The title…of boss.”
“So when Timoteo said he had a job in mind for Tsuna, he meant he had a job as a mafia boss in mind for Tsuna.”
“Right.” This is starting to feel like an interrogation.
“So that’s why you wanted the right to refuse.” Iemitsu nods. Nana steeples her fingers thoughtfully. “Well,” she says, “I see why you didn’t.”
“You do?”
She gives him a stern look. Of course. They always understand each other.
“But then someone challenged, and Tsuna had to fight him?”
“Right.”
“This other person must have been really…terrible. To make Tsuna angry enough to fight.”
Iemitsu smiles in memory. “I’d never actually seen him angry before.”
She smiles sadly back and doesn’t say, You haven’t seen all that much of Tsuna. “Then his friends, too…Lambo?”
Iemitsu sighs. “Lambo will grow into it. He’s from a mafia family anyway, the same as Gokudera. This was always going to be his life.”
Nana sits back and stares. Iemitsu stays very still, waiting for his judgment to come down.
In the end, all she says is, “Thank you for telling me.” And she goes to make dinner.
Iemitsu has never deserved to have Nana as his wife. But it’s nice when life is unfair in the good way.
* * *
After the heart-to-heart with Nana, Iemitsu took a helicopter out to the middle of the ocean off a random island (flashbacks to his own first job offer, there). He had to; he wanted to see the Ninth, and this is where the Ninth’s yacht will be parked for the foreseeable future.
It takes Iemitsu ten full minutes to realize that the entire situation is surreal. He’s clearly known Timoteo far too long.
“He refused,” the Ninth says, blankly astonished. “He refused.”
Iemitsu could count on one hand the number of people who’ve refused the Ninth anything, and he wouldn’t use all the fingers. He’s never managed to refuse Timoteo anything himself, though he’s tried.
But his son refused. Iemitsu is far more proud than he has any right to be.
“That’s because you pushed.” he explains. “You never push my son. He’s a master of passive resistance, and if you push him past that, you hit the active resistance. You have to pull.”
The Ninth twirls his moustache, which, Iemitsu reflects, may be the most annoying habit he has. Not that it isn’t difficult to choose. “You know your son surprisingly well,” he murmurs. “All things considered.”
“I know, right? Sometimes it seems like I know mine better than you know yours. Funny, considering yours grew up in the same house and all.” If Timoteo wants to play dirty, they can play dirty. Fine.
“Well,” Timoteo says, the usual humor completely stripped from his voice. A point to Iemitsu. “It looks like the Shimon family pulled for me.”
“Lucky you.”
“Indeed. They’ve just told me you have a bit of history with the Shimon yourself.” A look of grim unhappiness.
Shimon. Iemitsu knows the name, of course, and the status (nonentity). He can’t remember whether he has personal history with them or not, though. It’s possible. Iemitsu has history with a lot of families. “I do?”
* * *
Tsuna won, of course. This is a new thing Iemitsu is learning about his stranger of a son: Tsuna always wins when it counts. Whatever it takes.
In honor of their victory and continued survival, the tenth generation is rewarded with a trip to Sorrento. They’re staying at one of Timoteo’s houses, allegedly learning the ropes. Iemitsu suspects that Timoteo’s actually trying to brainwash them or something creepy like that. He also suspects it won’t work, so he hasn’t done anything to stop it. Let them have their vacation in Sorrento.
He does visit the house, just to check up on the state of things (the better to report back to Nana). He’s accosted by an angry Storm Guardian before he even makes it to the door.
Tsuna’s guardians are going to be something nightmarish when they’re grown. It makes Iemitsu smile.
“Where,” says Gokudera Hayato, “have you been?”
Iemitsu takes a moment to appreciate what Tsuna’s done for this boy, formerly known as The Kid Most Likely to Blow Himself Up with His Own Bombs. And look at him now! Confident, settled, mouthing off to the head of CEDEF. Tsuna’s going to grow up to have even more disturbing people skills than Timoteo, Iemitsu can tell.
“I’ve been busy,” he answers. Gokudera, despite what he seems to think, doesn’t actually have the right to question a member of CEDEF. Still, Iemitsu’s willing to humor his son’s guardians.
“Busy? Since the ring battle, you’ve been busy?”
Iemitsu shrugs. “It’s the life.”
Interesting that Gokudera Hayato is much more bothered by Iemitsu’s absence than Tsuna is. A certain amount of empathy there, of course. (Iemitsu’s deliberately avoided Gokudera’s father for years. No need for meetings of the Terrible Fathers’ Club, for Christ’s sake.) Gokudera’s asked more questions today than Tsuna ever has. The sum total of Tsuna’s non-Vongola-related conversations with his father over the past three years have consisted of variations on the phrase, “Why are you here?”
“Fine, so you’ve been busy lately. Why weren’t you ever around?” Gokudera demands. It’s almost funny.
“Well,” Iemitsu murmurs, “it was either cowardice or courage. To be honest, kid, I’ve never figured out which one.”
Gokudera frowns in perfectly understandable bafflement. “But you want to be around, right?”
“Of course I love my son.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Gokudera,” interrupts the voice of the son in question. “Here you—oh.” Tsuna’s face, so open and willing to be pleased when he spotted Gokudera, goes briefly panicked and unhappy at the sight of his father, then shuts down completely. A nothing expression, appropriate for strangers.
“Dad,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
* * *
Tsuna’s turning twenty today. A man, and no mistake. Hell, after five years as heir to the Vongola, he’d be a man even if he were turning twelve. But the law recognizes it now. No confusion.
It’s an awkward party, or at least, it is for Iemitsu. He’s never felt like a somewhat unwelcome stranger in his own house before. That said, if he could just forget for a minute that it is, in fact, his house, the party would be a blast. He never gets tired of seeing how right he was to choose the guardians he did for his son. In this one thing, he didn’t let Tsuna down.
Chrome Dokuro is lurking by the food, which is hilarious, because she always looks like she’s never eaten in her life. Iemitsu catches her watching him. She watches everything. She’s as bad as he is—maybe worse. She nods respectfully, then turns and murmurs something to Bianchi. Cadging recipes from the Poison Scorpion?
Iemitsu decides he isn’t eating anything at this party that didn’t come directly from Nana’s hand. Chrome might not poison him, but Mukuro would. And Chrome wouldn’t stop him, is the thing. Iemitsu doubts they’d kill him, but he doesn’t know what other creative ideas they might come up with. His head is unluckily full of information they want.
He looks away from the Mist Guardian; they’re starting to freak him out.
Next to Chrome is Lambo, older now, though still too young. He’s chattering to I-Pin without drawing breath. He’s going to grow into something amazing, Iemitsu knows, but truth be told, he would’ve picked I-Pin for lightning if he could have gotten away with it. Nothing doing, though. She belongs to an Arcobaleno, and it’s not smart to take away their toys.
The good news is, I-Pin’s forever hanging around with Lambo, which means Iemitsu gets two for one. Such a deal.
Ryouhei is standing in the middle of the room ranting about the extreme extremity of Christ knows what. Boxing. The mafia. Delicious tempura. Could be anything. He’s a sun type, all right. Crazy bastards are all the same.
Oh, the bad Lussuria memories.
Gokudera is standing in the kitchen, back to a wall, shoulder to Yamamoto’s. He looks like he’s sulking, but he’s making Yamamoto laugh—and judging from his little sidelong glances at Yamamoto’s face, he’s doing it deliberately. For once.
Tsuna wanders by, smiles at them both, and casually steals Gokudera’s cigarette right out of his mouth. Gokudera’s eyes sadly follow the cigarette as it gets farther and farther away, and is eventually put out in the sink and tossed into the trash. Tsuna exchanges a meaningful nod with Kyoko, who folds her arms and spins to face Gokudera. I have my eye on you. Haru laughs.
The campaign to make him quit smoking is still in full force, then. Yamamoto pats his shoulder sympathetically; Gokudera sighs.
Cigarette mission accomplished, Tsuna keeps on walking, heading out back—to talk to Hibari, who’s skulking around outside like an alley cat, pretending he just happened to wander into the neighborhood today.
Reborn says Hibari’s actually started giving Tsuna reports, in the form of, “You never noticed this, this, or this, did you? That’s because you’re an herbivore. Get out of my way before I bite you to death.” Kid’s turning into a regular softy.
Iemitsu waits ten minutes, because that’s about as long as Hibari can stand to be around anyone, even Tsuna. Then he heads to the door himself.
Iemitsu opens the back door just as Haru opens the front one to let in—
Ah. Enma of the Shimon. And company.
Enma’s eyes meet Iemitsu’s across the room, and the poor bastard obviously has no idea what he’s supposed to feel. He believed for a short but intense time that Iemitsu had killed his mother and sister. They’ve seen each other maybe twice in the years since he learned otherwise, and it hasn’t been enough to get him past that instinctive rage response.
Iemitsu nods to Enma, steps outside, and closes the door. Agitating the kid serves no purpose.
It’s lucky everyone worked out that Iemitsu hadn’t killed Enma’s loved ones before they got a chance to ask him. He definitely killed some Shimon at some point, he remembers that much. And while he doesn’t normally kill women and children, it does happen. Collateral damage. He sees no benefit in keeping track.
It’s damned lucky no one asked him.
“You’ve got some new guests,” he tells Tsuna, who is indeed alone, gazing bemusedly into the night, presumably in the direction Hibari went.
“Yes,” Tsuna answers absently. “Hibari-san told me.”
Iemitsu chose Tsuna’s guardians well.
“I should go say hello…” Tsuna looks up and his voice trails off. Iemitsu doesn’t know what Tsuna sees in his face, but it causes him to conclude with, “But it can wait.” He widens his eyes expectantly. Listening.
Son, you are officially more lethal than Timoteo. “Nah, don’t keep them waiting on my account. I just thought…” Just thought what? That they’d strike up some kind of normal father-son relationship at this late date? He’s lost that chance a hundred times over. “Nothing.”
Tsuna’s giving him a very complicated look. Iemitsu’s not even sure he wants to know what it means. He flails around for something to say, and falls back on the old mafia standby. They have that much in common now. Right?
“I wouldn’t trust Shimon so much, if I were you,” Iemitsu says, and, more importantly, the outside advisor to the Vongola says. He understands that he’s done nothing to make Tsuna personally fond of him, but he earned his position.
Tsuna looks confused and young for just a second before he hides behind the enigmatic, pleasant mask he usually wears these days. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“Just a hunch. But my hunches are generally pretty good.”
Tsuna gives a tentative smile. “Yeah. So are mine.” Little Vongola joke, there.
“I don’t think it’s a great idea to be inviting them to Family events. It’s going too far.”
Tsuna meets Iemitsu’s eyes and settles into a long study. Iemitsu reminds himself that it’s irrational to be intimidated by his own son.
“Thank you for your advice,” Tsuna says eventually, very formal and a little disappointed. “But I disagree.”
He turns on his heel and walks back into the house, shutting the door behind him with a gentle click. Iemitsu wishes he’d slammed it. But then he wouldn’t, would he? Isn’t that the point?
“You must be proud of him,” Reborn says—orders, maybe—from his unlikely perch under the eaves. (Iemitsu has long stopped wondering such things as when the hell did he get here? with Reborn.)
“And nothing for me to do but choke on it,” Iemitsu murmurs back. “The last thing he wants is to hear something like that from me.”
Reborn maintains silence.
“I didn’t know what else to do.” Tsuna had been a tiny child. So tiny, so delicate, a creature someone like Iemitsu could break by accident. Would inevitably break by accident. Courage or cowardice? “I still don’t know what else I could have done.”
“I always felt the drunken stupor was unnecessary.”
Iemitsu laughs. “Maybe. But I can’t do anything stupid if I’m semiconscious, yeah?”
It must be some kind of secret Arcobaleno technique, the way they can give a look so expressive of utter contempt without seeming to use any facial muscles. Lal is definitely the winner of this contest, but Reborn’s giving her a run for her money at the moment. “Hmph,” he says, hopping down to wander after Tsuna. But he pauses at the door. “Your son has grown into a decent man. Some might say…a credit to his parents.” He tips his hat ambiguously, walks inside, and slams the door.
Iemitsu smiles after him.
* * *
“I told you,” Iemitsu murmurs to Nana as they’re clearing up after the party, having shooed Tsuna and his friends away when they tried to help. Away to their base and their power struggles and their complete lack of young adulthood. “I told you I’d be a terrible father.”
Nana’s hands pause in washing a plate. “You’re not proud of him?”
“Of course I’m proud of him. But he shouldn’t have to be…” He shouldn’t have to be an old man at twenty, for Christ’s sake. Iemitsu sets a stack of dirty plates next to Nana, sinks down into the nearest chair, and puts his head in his hands. He was an old man at twenty, himself. He’d been hoping for better for his son. And I still went and fucked it up, didn’t I?
“Maybe he shouldn’t.” Nana sets down the plate she was washing, wipes her hands on a towel, and turns to look at him, eyes full of the perfect, silent understanding that caused him to break a vow and get married. “But it’s too late now, Iemitsu.”
Too late for what? To not have kids, to leave the mafia, to save his son?
Yes, no, all of that. “I know.”
She steps up next to his chair, and he leans against her. She cradles his head in her hands. “He’s not unhappy.”
Iemitsu’s laughter is muffled into her apron. “For as long as he lives, eh?”
Her fingers card through his hair in strange patterns; she’s trying to work something out. “Isn’t it the same for everyone? He was always unhappy before. He was…lost. Before.”
Iemitsu sighs. Nana gave him permission to do this to their son. Does that make it all right? Or does it just mean they’re both horrible parents?
“It’s the same for everyone, but it’s also a question of odds,” he breathes. “Still. It’s too late now.”
“Too late now,” she agrees softly.
They understand each other. They always have.
* * *
At first glance, he’s nothing more than a businessman in a ridiculously opulent room that doesn’t match the simple, elegant lines of his suit. But the longer one watches, the more interesting he becomes.
Despite his undeniably sweet expression, he stands with the unconscious assurance and equally unconscious weariness of police, bodyguards, and hitmen—people who believe they are not only allowed, but obligated to subdue by force anyone in need of it. His gentle requests are acted upon with a speed and accuracy that imply barked orders. He stands in a poorly-lit corner, and yet the entire room centers around him. His eyes never stop moving for long.
This is Tsuna’s first Family event as Vongola X. It’s going very well, and Iemitsu is enjoying watching his son. It’s an interesting thing, to observe a man observing. Tsuna is still and controlled, alert but calm. His eyes flit over those he suspects are enemies, quick and unhappy. They linger on windows and doorways. They hesitate and lose themselves in contemplation of his loved ones.
They don’t touch Iemitsu at all.
This is the man Iemitsu always saw behind the bumbling son filtered through photographs and secondhand reports. This. His mother’s bottomless, quiet resolve. His father’s veiled rage. A sense of naïve justice he must have inherited by some quirk of genetics from Primo himself. Timid, inept Tsunayoshi always had it in him to become the undisputed leader of the Vongola. And now he has.
Iemitsu looks down at his hands, turns them reflectively over and back again. They’ve been the hands of a murderer since he was fifteen years old. Nothing has changed.
If Paulo were here, he’d be standing at Tsuna’s side, giving him all kinds of crap. He’d drag Iemitsu and Dino along with him, and force them all to talk. He’d make Tsuna call him Zio Paulo.
Paulo’s been dead for twenty years.
Iemitsu’s kicked out of that fit of brooding by a hostile, sharp presence at his side, a whisper of cloth and a hint of delicate scent—the Poison Scorpion thinks toxic perfumes are funny. “Sawada,” she murmurs, staring him aggressively in the eye, which is weird. He doesn’t think he’s had time to piss her off. They’ve almost never crossed paths.
“Poison Scorpion.” He nods. Bianchi, mysteriously, curls her lip at him.
“I’m amazed you’re here. It’s surprisingly Father of the Year of you.”
Ah, so that’s what the problem is. Iemitsu turns briefly away to hide a smile. So the Poison Scorpion has a soft spot for his son, too, the same as her brother. Who’d have guessed? “I wanted to see him at his best.”
“Why do you care?” she sneers. “You’re less of a father to him than my father is to Hayato. Don’t pretend.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Then don’t be stupid. Know what you are.”
Such wary, wounded eyes, the Poison Scorpion has. Know what you are. Yes. She must know how painful it is to know yourself. “I appreciate your advice. Young lady.”
Her fingers are twitching with the need to smash his face into something deadly. She really is fond of his son, isn’t she? But then, she’s always been devoted to Reborn, and Reborn…well, it doesn’t exactly count as defection when the Ninth so clearly endorsed the Tenth, but it’s a near thing.
“But I already know what I am,” Iemitsu continues calmly before Bianchi can do something rash and inadvertently ruin Tsuna’s party.
Her fingers still and her eyes narrow. After a moment, she bares her teeth in a non-smile and turns away from him. “Good,” she says. And stalks back to her brother’s side.
Her brother, who’s earned far more of Tsuna’s love and trust than Iemitsu ever will. All the guardians have, and it’s only proper. Iemitsu knows what he is, after all. He knows exactly what he is.
He’s Sawada Iemitsu, who has never managed to protect a single person he loves. He’s the Vongola’s outside advisor, famous for doing the unspeakable in the name of necessity. He’s a great assassin, and a terrible father.
He’s the man who made Vongola X.
He should never be forgiven.