She's on tour when she meets him. It's an old tradition, to leave the family and walk among others, to leave the world they know behind and see how the normal people live.
Nana is serving tables at a charming little restaurant, when Sawada Iemitsu walks through the door.
He's handsome enough, certainly, and he's charming enough, at least for a man born outside their world. What makes her notice him, though, what makes her interested, is the look in his eyes. The look in his eyes, the way he carries himself, the sharp taste of flame underneath her tongue.
This is a dangerous man, a man who's flirted with death time and time again.
And Nana likes dangerous things.
Darling Iemitsu is certainly interesting. He's not like her family, but there's still something dark in him, something hungry and yearning.
And yet he keeps it close, and yet he keeps his darkness hidden, pretends he hasn't killed. It might have worked on another woman, a normal woman. But she isn't normal.
Still, despite his lies, he's pleasant and charming. He makes grand gestures, almost grand enough to impress her, and his skill in lovemaking is nearly unparalleled. He's sweet and handsome and Nana thinks that's enough for an affair before she goes back home.
She falls pregnant then, an accident where she forgets the usual tea one night, and her Iemitsu insists they get married. Nana doesn't understand why this means they have to marry, assumes it's one of those silly outsider rules, but she agrees anyways. She may not have grandmama's gift of prophecy, but something still pulls her on, still tells her it's for the best.
Tsuna is born screaming. The girl screams loud enough to burst the doctor's eardrums, to make the windows shake, and Nana smiles and laughs throughout it all.
She takes Tsuna home alone, Iemitsu away on business, and lays her daughter down on the table.
Nana takes out blood and bone and poison, the hallmarks of her family. A drop of blood on her daughter's lips, a dust of bone on her skin, a spoonful of poison in her mouth.
Tsuna swallows it down eagerly, licks the blood from her lips, laughs at the feel of powdered bone, and Nana smiles.
This only proves what she already knows.
Blood will out.
Normal Iemitsu may be her daughter's father, but little Tsuna is an Addams to the bone and marrow beneath.
She did her homework, to borrow a phrase from the outside. She knows her Iemitsu is Vongola, knows he works for an empire built on blood and sin. The darling man still hasn't told her, still thinks her a civilian, but Nana supposes that can't be helped.
Oh, she could introduce him to her family. She could take him to a reunion, could bring him to a proper Addams party. But Iemitsu, for all his sins, isn't worthy of that. He's clever and charming and oh so dangerous-but that's not enough.
It's not like she minds, though, not when he's given her Tsuna. Not when she has a daughter to spoil and teach, to talk through the old rituals, to show how to conjure up flames.
A vase smashes against the wall as Nana screams, hoarse and angry and guilty. She'd thought Iemitsu better, somehow. Thought the man wouldn't bend, thought he'd want to protect his flesh and blood.
And yet he hadn't. Yet he aided in sealing his only daughter, he willingly agreed to mutilate her soul.
Nana waits until he is gone, as much as she wants to tear the skin from his skull and make him scream, as much as she wants to burn the old man alive. Justice can come later, for now Tsuna needs her.
Cousin Henri greets her at the door, surprise on his face as his bloody mouth lifts in a smile.
"Nana! I didn't think-"
He stops, then, feeling her own rage hanging in the air, seeing the blood lust on her face.
Her daughter stands next to her, vibrant amber eyes already a dull brown, and it clicks for him soon enough.
"Her father did this," Nana hisses through clenched teeth, shame and fear and anger heavy in her gut. "I need our family's help."
The ritual is simple enough. A life for a life, a soul for a soul.
Nana watches and waits as grandmama cuts the man's throat, as Aunt Wednesday catches the blood in one silver goblet, raising it to Tsuna's mouth. Her daughter takes it like a man dying of thirst, blood pouring into her mouth as she drinks him down.
And then-and then she watches as Henri paints with blood on the floor, writes the symbols and the words needed. She watches as they push the knife through her daughter's throat, as the tension in the air builds higher and higher and higher-
And Tsuna coughs. And Tsuna breathes again, is whole again, and she cannot stop her weeping, cannot stop the tears.
Death is too good for him. Iemitsu mutilated her only child's soul, and for that he needs to suffer. For that he needs to weep in pain, needs to scream in agony-needs to be denied the sweet mercy of death.
The entire family is in agreement, at least until Tsuna speaks.
"The empire still needs a heir," her daughter says suddenly, "he needs to be sane when it comes."
"When what comes, sweetheart?" Nana asks, keenly aware of her the look in her daughter's eyes, of the way sweet Tsuna stares.
"Death and devastation. Destruction and upheaval, but with it a chance to start again. To grow again."
A chill settles in her bones, a steady beat in her blood, as Nana looks up at her cousins and aunts and uncles, as she looks at the faces of her family. Those are a seer's words, after all, and only a fool would ignore a seer.
Her daughter's eyes have turned a burning orange, her once brown mop of hair has turned an inky black, and Nana smiles at that, carding a hand through Tsuna's hair.
"Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc," she whispers, smiling when Tsuna looks up in confusion.
"We gladly feast upon those who would subdue us," Nana translates, smile widening as Tsuna's eyes flare an even brighter orange, as the shadows dance around her.
Let Vongola come.
They will realize soon enough what it means to cross an Addams.