on the outside - part 1

[metisket]

YOU GUYS, D.GRAY-MAN JUST GOT AWESOME AGAIN.

I admit, I had kind of lost the faith! That last arc, what the hell was that? Apart from awesome Kanda backstory (which, yes, was awesome), I am really unclear on what the point of that arc was. Unless it was just to serve as a vehicle for Kanda backstory, in which case, Hoshino, I am disappoint.

Or I WAS, but with this new arc, I think I can totally forgive and forget. I’m sure she had a rough time! She switched from weekly to monthly and possibly had some kind of meltdown! Whatever, whatever, the point is, now there is Cross drama and Tyki & Road drama and Lavi & Bookman drama and did I mention Cross drama and ALL IS FORGIVEN.

The whole world is better with a little Cross.

And of course, Allen. OH MY GOD, Allen, for a minute there I really thought you’d killed a man. o_O

I HONESTLY HAVE NO IDEA WHO THE BAD GUYS ARE ANYMORE, IT IS AMAZING. :D :D :D

Um…yes. So, uh. THAT SAID, now for something completely different. Here I will put stars in order to indicate complete differentness:

* * *

Right. Katekyo Hitman Reborn! Iemitsu fic!

So I find it really interesting that Tsuna, a person famed for his insightfulness, could have the following two conversations:

(1)
Enma: I am absolutely sure that Vongola Primo was a murderous bastard.
Tsuna: Um, no, this is all a big misunderstanding.

(2)
Enma: I am absolutely sure that Sawada Iemitsu is a murderous bastard.
Tsuna: OH NO, MY DAD’S A MURDEROUS BASTARD. ;_;

Even Reborn made a o_O face. Tsuna. That is amazingly little faith you’ve got going there. WHY, MY FRIEND? ???

Aaaaand this fic is about how that came to be. I’m on a total misadventures in parenting kick right now. Possibly because some of my friends are threatening to have children. Hahahaha DISASTER.

Spoilers through 319. I don’t own KHR. Too bad.



On the Outside



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.


Part 2