She drops the fillet knife, tipped red and dripping, and tells herself that she did the right thing. Her baby was in danger, that makes it right, that makes it not wrong.
But her heart is going a hundred miles per second in her chest, rampaging and beating against her ribs as if it wants to escape its cage of muscle and bone. It yells in her ears as blood, blood, so much blood, and how much does a man bleed, and then, I need to clean.
She doesn't move an inch from her spot. Down below, in a small closet off of the kitchen, there is a mop and a bucket and scrubbers and rubber gloves and she has the power to wield them like magicians have the power to wield magick but the magick isn't with her at the moment and neither are the cleaning supplies.
So she tries to look away instead, because it's impolite to stare and she is nothing but polite.
And a murderer. But it's okay. She had a reason to do it. She wouldn't have done it without a reason.
She focuses on that; on reason. Her reason. She can hear screaming finally and brings a hand up to her mouth, thinking it might be her, but it's not and something wet smears across her lips as she touches them.
Slowly, she jerks around and stumbles to the crib, leans over and sees that her baby is just fine within the bars of his bed. He looks up at her, now that he knows his cries has brought him attention, and he quiets to sniffles before he squirms and tries to derive some comfort from the small plushie bunny.
She takes the bunny from him and ignores how he starts crying again. She'll get him a new bunny.
One that isn't red.
She'll get him a bunny that is purely white, yes, and he will drool on it and drag it with him wherever he goes and he will try to feed it the food he doesn't want, soiling its white coat in a rainbow of colors that will never come out in the wash as he gets older to do these things. Because he will become old enough to do these things. She has just made sure of it.
But at least it won't be red.
She throws it on the ground and doesn't care that the red will only get worse because that is a mess she will have to deal with either way. She picks him up and holds him tight, tight enough that he stops crying and whimpers instead, pushing against her breast, but she doesn't, can't, relent.
She kisses his forehead, pets back his wild head of copper brown locks, and pretends that he isn't slowly turning red under her ministrations. She whispers quiet, reassuring things like, "It's going to be okay", and "Mommy's here," and "Mommy made the bad guy go away," but she doesn't know if he cares for what she's saying more than she does.
She takes him out of the room and into her own, piles the pillows into a small fort, and rests him in the middle of it, raining kisses down on his face as she does so.
He squints at her, still whimpering, but he doesn't cry out again as she moves away from him. He gurgles tiredly instead and she descends the stairs, only to come back up a moment later with her munitions: the mop, the bucket, the washcloths, the scrubbers, the steaming hot water, the gloves, and two jugs of bleach.
And she cleans his room, his room with its cartoon animals leaping across the wallpaper, a mobile of happily smiling lions lying on the ground, white swing thrown sideways, his colorful bouncer has been broken for reasons she can not understand. The bunny stares at her with beady yellow eyes.
The changing table still stands but red is seeping under its small, delicate legs and she has the desire to break it herself, turn it into firewood, and never see it again. The desire to do the same with the room entirely is so strong, she nearly screams.
Except she overcomes it, thinking of her reason, her son, her baby, I will protect him, he will never know about this, he's mine, mine, MINE, no one will take him from me, helpless, defenseless in the next room.
So she cleans and tries to convince herself that what she's doing is actually making the room cleaner, though the red just comes crawling back and her rags are turning scarlet and the water is a murky, lukewarm brown. The air is clogged with bleach and she can't breathe, but she keeps trying and failing and trying again until she has worked through her gloves and the red is under her fingernails, in the crevices of her palms, and she realizes that her vision is blurry for reasons other than exhaustion and the chemical fumes.
No, she finally admits to herself, something must be done about the source of all this mess.
But she has no clue what to do about it.
So she sits back on her knees, sitting on the red ground, her clothes soaked and filthy, and does the impolite thing: she stares.
She stares as if she can make the body go away if she doesn't look away ever again. Except the body stays. Eventually, it stops leaching red, but it doesn't go anywhere.
Her baby cries eventually, hungry, and she blinks as she realizes that the sun has risen and is casting the room in a soft golden glow, and it's the first time she has ever contemplated the possibility of murdering the sun as it highlights her every mistake. All the nooks and crannies she missed, but, most of all, her largest mistake that she can't will away, the body.
It isn't a mistake, though, because it wasn't wrong to do.
She swallows dryly, realizes that she's parched, and wonders if maybe she can get something to drink, feed her baby, dust the rest of the house a little, and then come back to this. The thought isn't even fully formed before she tells herself that she can't do that. She is no procrastinator and she will not become one now.
So she wipes her brow with her stained, red sleeve and thinks that now might be the time to bring out some gasoline and matches.
"I never took you for an omnivore."
She blinks tiredly, vapidly realizes that she isn't alone and that that isn't a voice in her head, and looks up. Crouching on the window sill, and she has to question herself for not closing the window and why the room is so stuffy with it open, is an average-sized man with slanted blue-grey eyes and brown hair, wearing a black suit.
She swallows again, finds her voice somewhere deep within her mind where it seems remarkably busy with screaming its way into a migraine, and speaks softly, as if she has been gargling razor blades. "Who are you?"
"Does it matter?"
She looks down at the cumbersome mistake on her floor. She meets the man's eyes again. "Yes."
He smiles. It's all sharp edges and occluded viciousness. "Sawada-san, I never thought you were a woman worth respecting." He slips inside, as if welcomed, and steps over the source of her upcoming madness.
Then again, how does one welcome someone in from the window? The question holds her attention for a small moment till she realizes she is staring at the man's expensive-looking shoes.
"Then again, I never much liked your husband either."
"… Iemitsu?" she asks dumbly, dredging up an image of her absent lover.
"Do you have more than one husband?"
The question confounds her. "No."
"Then, yes, that man."
"Who are you?" she asks again because she has already had one stranger in her home this day – yesterday – one stranger too many to last a thousand lifetimes. She doesn't want another one. "And why didn't you use the front door…?"
"I'm here to dispose of the body, Sawada-san," says the man, answering her without answering her. "That should make you happy. And then you can go back to your herbivorous tendencies."
"My… My what?" She sees the glint of metal underneath the crib and her fingers twitch. Thoughts of killing the sun resurface. Its light shines off the stained blade almost romantically.
He follows her gaze and lifts an eyebrow. "You brought down a demagogue with a fillet knife?"
"A what?"
"A mobster, omnivore. You killed a mob leader using common, everyday kitchenware."
He makes it sound like a compliment, so she bows her head slightly, thoughts whirring crazily, and says, "Doumo arigatou gozaimasu," and then vomits on his shoes.
He takes it more calmly than she does, which is to say that he doesn't react at all as she numbly tries to mop it up with a scrubber, only half aware that her attempts are, again, failing. As of late, nothing cleans like it used to.
"Your baby is crying for you, Sawada-san," he says after a moment with yellow fluid wet on his loafers. "You should go check up on him."
"I have to clean up this mess…"
"Leave that to me."
"I'm good at cleaning," she feels she needs to verify, because she doubts herself. "I really am."
"I'm better at cleaning when it comes to these sorts of messes," he counters and lends her a hand up. Her knees ache something dreadful and her back is hunched over. Her hands are swollen and cold. "My specialty is making these sorts of messes go away altogether."
She likes the sound of that, as if he's some new brand of super-bleach, and smiles faintly at him before nodding. "Okay. I'll, I'll go do that. And, food? Breakfast."
"Lunch," he clarifies.
She nods again, feeling the cogs of her mind starting to work again. "I can cook," she tells him.
"So your husband tells me."
"He loves my cooking."
"He would."
"Any requests?"
"Something light." He shoos her away with an offhanded gesture. The conversation is over.
So she leaves the room, feeling somewhat hopeful and mostly drained, and the first thing she does is make certain that her reason is safe, her baby, her son, her one and only, hers, hers, hers.
He's hungry and cranky, but otherwise alright.
But there's red on him from where she held him last night and it only becomes worse as she picks him up. His face twists in displeasure at the smell of her and his nightie becomes soaked when it comes into contact with her shirt.
First things first, she decides, and then she undresses them both and takes a bath.
And she feeds him from her breast as she watches away the red that taints him.
And then she cleans herself, him carefully, so gently, as comfortably as she could manage, set in his floatie.
She feels slightly more human by the time she gets out of the bath with him and knows what she will cook.
She knows that she can clean.
And she knows that she is right.
She makes Udon noodles and leaves her baby in the living room in his playpen as she goes upstairs and stands in front of his nursery door.
Taking a deep breath, she smiles, opens it, and walks through.
Not a drop of red is to be seen anywhere. Her baby's mobile is dancing above his empty crib, his swing is right side up, and his bouncer is in one piece. Nothing glints metallically in the sunlight. There is no red bunny.
She releases a breath she didn't realize she was holding.
In the small rocking chair to one corner of the room, the man tilts back and forth, hands folded dapperly in his lap. Not a hair is out of place and there isn't a speck of red on his suit; even his shoes gleam glossily.
As if nothing bad ever happened in this room. Her smile grows.
"I made Udon noodles! I hope you enjoy it."
He smiles at her, beastly, and gingerly takes the bowl from her. "Itadakimasu," he says politely and eats slowly, with great manners.
"You can come down stairs," she tells him, but isn't answered. "You're a very strange man." And he still doesn't answer. "Doumo arigatou gozaimasu," she thanks him, "for cleaning up the mess."
He puts his empty bowl aside. "I have ulterior motives."
She tilts her head curiously. "What would those be?"
"I want your son." His eyes find hers faster than she can find something to bludgeon him with. "I want you to give your son to my family."
"I want you out of my house," she snaps icily.
"I have a son, three years older than yours. I want them to form a legal, binding agreement."
Confusion slowly overcomes rage. "You want… my baby to marry your son?"
"Yes. Not now, though. Later in life." He puts his elbows on the arms of the rocking chair and steeples his fingers together. He looks at her over them. "You are an omnivore and your husband is a carnivore; by deduction, your son should be somewhere in between, which is more than I can say for anyone else in this town. My son will need a strong mate when he grows up, and I would like that mate to be your son."
"You say strange things." Like herbivore and carnivore and mate. And his smile is predatory, eyes alight with neutral instincts.
"You've yet to say no."
She realizes, belatedly, that he is right. She clasps her hands to her chest and eyeballs her nails, sees the flecks of red, and feels a spike of self-hatred.
"That is something my son will have to decide," she answers finally and meets his gaze squarely, leaving no room for debate. She will not be coerced to say otherwise, she will not have her verdict be impugned. "When he is old enough, that is."
He studies her from the top of her head to the tips of her slippers, slowly, as if he's seeing every minute change that occurs within her. "Then that is something he will decide later in life," he at last yields and she somehow knows that she has won a war. "But my son will have your blessing when they do decide to copulate, won't he?"
His self-assurance somehow doesn't anger her. "If your son has a good heart and loves my baby, then, yes, he has my blessing."
"Love?"
"Oh, yes." She stares distantly through him. "Love."
"That's foolish."
"It's not."
"How can you say that?"
"I gave birth to my baby out of love for my husband," she explains, "and I took the life of someone else out of love for my baby." She sucks in a deep breath, holds it, and then releases it when she knows she isn't going to throw up again. "Don't you know about love?"
He stares at her as if she is a new species of women he has never seen before and is fascinated. Then his hands untangle and one flitters uncertainly over his chest for a moment, as if something is amiss and he is trying to find out what.
"I don't think your husband deserves you," he growls tersely after a short pause.
She hums pleasantly. "Perhaps ~ but I love him anyway. That is the thing about love, Stranger-kun, it doesn't matter if it's deserving or not; it simply is and it's very powerful."
She takes the bowl as he sits frozen. "How did you have a child if you don't even know what love is?" she asks sweetly.
Because the room is spotless, the body is gone, and she loves to talk to new people, even when they happen to jump in through her window.
And then she stops and blinks because she remembers, earlier, thinking the opposite about strangers.
"That, Sawada-san, is of no concern to you," he bites off and flashes white teeth at her.
She giggles despite herself. And she thinks of small puppies that are trying to look scary by barking. When he glares at her, she doesn't explain and only shakes her head. "I understand, Stranger-kun. Will you be staying for awhile longer?"
"No."
"I see. Will you be using the window or the door?"
"Door."
"Then, please, let me walk you out!"
At the threshold, he looks at her, into her, and she stands her ground because she in someway knows that the fight going on in those eyes has everything to do with her and what she has done and said.
"Nothing happened," are his parting words and she lets herself believe them because his blue-grey glare demand that she does. "If there is no proof of it, then it obviously never happened."
She clenched her hands behind her back, still red. But that will wash off in time. "What happened?" she says instead, humoring him.
His smile is dangerously proud. "Exactly." And then he leaves.
And she doesn't even think about why he was there to begin with, or the strange things he said, because nothing happened.
Three days later, her husband comes home, embraces her tightly, swings their son around in the air a few times till their baby is crying for mercy, and then puts the few-month old boy in his crib before attacking her like the bear of a man he is.
Hours later, he asks her, in a not-so quiet voice, "Anything happen while I was gone?"
She answers, honestly, and tells him about everything their son had done because everything he does is all that she cares about when her husband is gone – about how he nibbled toothlessly on a cookie and how he tried to crawl and ultimately failed. About how he slept with her for the most part and how he was smiling more.
Iemitsu is extremely proud of their son and exclaims, "That's my Tsuna! Getting to be a man already." Then, "Anything else?"
She tells him about her trips to the supermarket and how the other shoppers reacted to their baby.
"Well, he's the damned cutest thing this side of the universe," Iemitsu admits. "Come on, you must have done something while I was gone without him, Nana. Spoiled yourself a bit? What do you think we have a nanny for?"
She thinks back. But that never happened, so it isn't technically something she did. So she smiles. "I just can't hand him over to someone else yet! He's so precious and small right now and he's still breastfeeding."
She doesn't need to bother him with something that didn't happen.
Because there is no proof that something did happen, and even her hands are clean.
Fourteen years later, a teenage boy appears in the kitchen as she's coming down the stairs to prepare breakfast.
He's wearing a black version of the Namimori school uniform and his hair is a mop of onyx. His hands are folded over his lower face and he looks at her over them, sitting patiently at the kitchen table.
His eyes are blue-grey and she feels that she already knows why he is there, unwelcomed and yet not unwanted.
"Sawada Nana," he states when she steps into the room, "I must have a moment of your time."
"You have it!" she chirps.
He slips off the stool and then to his knees in front of her. He bows lowly and she can see how tense and cagey he is and she knows that this obeisance makes him terribly uncomfortable.
"May I," and his tone of voice is vicious and curt, as if to make up for how imploring he is, "have your blessing to marry your son…?"
She crouches, smoothes her skirt around her calves, and smiles when he looks vehemently up at her. "You don't have to bow, Stranger-kun's son." His eyebrows draw together irately and she knows he doesn't understand the reference, but goes on nonetheless. "All you had to say was that you love him and I would have given you my blessing."
He jerks away from her, as if burned. He glares at her, obviously at a loss of what to say, and bares his white teeth.
She giggles, thinking of small dogs that are trying to be tough.
"I'm happy that my no-good son has you in his life," she trills. "Bring him up to be a good omnivore!"
~::~
I have an account on Quizlet. It was originally for an assignment in my English class, but then I got really excited about it, so, after I made a set of flashcards for that assignment, I went out into Google and looked up more vocabulary. So then I created another set of flashcards with ninety-nine words.
And then the words got me excited and I was like, I'm going to put these words to use! So I wrote this. If you know what Quizlet is and you want to see the Vocab words, it's labeled, "Words Every High School Student Should Know", and it was made by me, my username being 121hlc.
And, yes, that was Hibari's dad. I just don't think it's possible to separate mafia and family life and I hate Iemitsu for trying. And, no, Iemitsu has no clue what his wifey did. Because it never happened. Remember that.