A/N: Hello! My first khr fanfic on the web (God knows it's not the first one in my mind); do review to help me improve my writing! I know it sucks, but I hope you stick with me. ^^ I appreciate concrit, but please, no flames. I think it's rude and, well, just really not nice. Hope y'all enjoy anyway! :)

Warnings: OOC!Tsuna, possible angst (I don't know if it qualifies), my OC (Tsuna's brother) and... my writing, I guess.

Disclaimer: Don't own!

Chapter 1

Sawada Tsunayoshi pulled out a tattered notebook from his front pocket. He gazed at its once-yellow cover, an unreadable expression on his face as he fingered the brown spots that tainted the bright neon colour. His grip on the book tightened as he closed his eyes and relived the story behind each stain, recalling the number of times his fingers, stained an unsightly red, had opened and closed the small notebook, trying vainly to shut the painful memories away between the hard covers, to banish them into the once blank pages. He had failed repetitively, over and over again.

And he was failing once more.

Breathing a deep sigh, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pencil. (Thankfully, it wasn't broken; he'd had to replace four already in that month.) He flipped to the third last page of the ringed notebook, added a stroke, erased the number on the bottom and wrote the next one. 996. Huh, the 1000th anniversary is coming soon. Gotta celebrate it somehow. He traced his index finger over the lines on the paper, and felt the indentations on the page. Even if the pencil strokes were erased, the flimsy sheet would be marked forever. Like scars. Like me. He looked up into the sunset. That's too bad, I suppose.

Once again, the brunet's expression was back to its default apathetic state, and he drew in a lungful of fresh air. The smell of newly-bloomed flowers was carried by the wind to his sensitive nose, while the evening was tinted beautifully by burning reds and oranges. He found that none of the fondness he had once felt stirred within him for what was (had once been) his favourite colour - orange.

He idly wondered if he should feel miserable. Or perhaps angry, for all the unfair treatment he had received, and was still subject to. But he knew he didn't have a semblance of emotion in him. He was a long way beyond caring; a long way beyond feeling. It wasn't like anyone would bother themselves with what he felt, anyway, so what did it matter?

Thinking back, he had a vague memory of once being upset over the bullying, crying to himself in a dark corner of his bedroom as silver moonlight reflected off his tears through the open windows. His mother chatted amiably with his younger brother downstairs, the cheerful chatter drifting to his ears, piercing his already damaged heart. It whispered viciously see? they don't care at all.

His nine-year-old self had wept all the more harder, sobs echoing back and forth in his small room, ringing in his shattered mind. Yet they had went unheard by everyone in the household, who were perfectly happy without him. Looking back, he had been so dumb at that time, over three years ago. He couldn't imagine ever being bothered by anything like that anymore.

As the sun sunk in the horizon, he figured he might as well get home; it was getting late. Testing out his legs, Tsuna slowly pushed himself off the ground. He winced when he put weight on his left leg. He had scraped his knee and shin when he fell to the rough pavement, the small rocks breaking through his skin. He examined his other injuries, and concluded that there would be a bruise on his stomach later (from a punch) and another one on his shoulder (a kick). Meanwhile, he had to clean up the mess on his bloody leg, as well as his left arm, which had similarly been hurt when he fell. Thankfully, it was nothing that couldn't be explained away as a simple fall (that wasn't entirely a lie) when he was walking in the park. He was known for his clumsiness, after all.

He gathered his scattered materials into his school bag as quickly as his injured limbs would allow him, and, giving a final glance to the area where a few droplets of crimson were slowly being absorbed into the ground, he tried to walk normally towards the nearest toilet. Keyword being tried. In reality, he was half-stumbling, half-limping, putting most of his weight on his uninjured right leg while barely managing not to slam straight into the ground.

Finally making it to the washing point, he quickly rinsed off the crimson liquid, feeling the sharp pain as water touched his wounds with something almost akin to gratitude. As the days passed, he was slowly but surely losing touch with the human within him. His ability to hurt (albeit only physically) provided some relief. He was fairly certain, though, that it wasn't quite right to be watching himself wince through a strange translucent screen.

After finishing cleaning up, he walked home carefully, his head hung low while trying to hide his injuries. (No, Dame-Tsuna has not just been bullied again.) By then, the sky had darkened, and the pale glow from the street lights was the only thing that illuminated his way home.

Stepping through the doorway of his two-leveled house, he took off his shoes and arranged them neatly beside his brother's messy pair. ('Tadaima.' 'Okaeri.' he told himself.) The sound of careless chatter floated out from the kitchen's open door. Risking a glance into the kitchen, Tsuna saw that the table had already been cleared, not even any leftovers or scraps remain on its polished oak surface. He hadn't expected anything else, anyway. Nana must have assumed he ate out again. (It was, after all, almost 8.) The boy watched his twin and mother interact for a while and headed back to his own room, his personal safe haven, before the other brunet could spot him.

Plopping his bag onto the floor beside the doorway, Tsuna pushed the door close behind him and made his way through the mess of clothes and mangas strewn across the ground of his room, and finally flopped onto his bouncy bed. He accidentally jostled his limbs, and squeezed his eyes shut for a few moments to wait for the pain to fade. After the spots of white disappeared from his vision, he turned over onto his stomach (slowly, this time) and pulled out his iPod from its hiding place inside his pillow cover. The moment he touched his most prized possession, something sped through his veins lightning fast, and his eyes narrowed. He didn't know how he knew, but he did.

Someone had fiddled with the gadget.

His mind automatically began searching for the culprit.

Was it Ienashi? No, Ienashi would not be so careful when handling the iPod. There were absolutely no traces of anyone having touched it at all. If not for Tsuna's Hyper Intuition, there was no way he would have suspected anything.

So, was it Nana? No, it didn't sit right with his intuition. Besides, he couldn't even recall the last time his mother had entered his room to do anything but vacuum the floor; she would never find something so well hidden on his bed.

But there was no one else in the house...

The brunet pondered for a few more moments, before giving up. No matter, Tsuna told himself, it's not like I care anyway.

The unpleasant feeling in his stomach said otherwise. Shrugging it away as nonchalantly as he could manage, he plugged in his earphones, selected his favourite playlist and drifted off to dreamland.

In the end, he hadn't even needed to explain away his injuries at all.

Reborn was not at all pleased, to say the least. In fact, he was pissed. What the hell had Iemitsu been doing the past few years that he didn't even notice how drastically his family had changed? Even as the head of CEDEF, there had to be some miniscule of time for him to visit Namimori once in a while. If there wasn't, he should have bloody well squeezed out some time. A week, a day, or even an afternoon would have been good enough.

But no, for the past three years at least, Reborn was certain that Vongola's "Young Lion" had not deemed it important enough to check up on his family. Changes like these, after all, did not occur overnight.

Sure, Iemitsu was fiercely loyal to his Famiglia, and it was something that the hitman could appreciate (even though he was affiliated to Vongola only in about the loosest sense of the word). And yet, in the process, he had neglected his family. Reborn believed that family and Famiglia were of the same importance, and should both be at the top of Iemitsu's priority list.

After all, the man had decided to be a husband, was now a husband, and had even become a father. He was the one who chose to take up the responsibility of protecting the Sawada family, and then he had shirked it. (Taking care of his wife and sons did not just constitute of having bodyguards watching over them, dammit; mental health was just as important and it was not at all hard to see that the Sawada family was falling apart.)

And, as it so happens, Reborn was adamant about responsibility. Though he was by no means a family man, he had clear-cut principles about family. The very first one of them being: loyalty.

Iemitsu had only a half-assed form of it. Reborn wouldn't go as far as to say that the man had no loyalty at all, since it was unmistakable that he loved his family very much. (Just the thought of the hundreds of slides Iemitsu had shown to the number one assassin and the boss of the world's strongest mafia Famiglia about his 'BEAUTIFUL wife and cuuuuuute sons' could make said assassin groan. Except Reborn did not groan.) The Young Lion certainly had good intentions, but his priorities were terribly mixed up.

It was a mistake on his part, and for this particular one, Reborn would never forgive him for it.

After all, in the underground, slip-ups were often equivalent to death.

A/N: Umm I'm pretty new at posting stories, so if you think the rating or genres are unsuitable, please tell me!