Diclaimer: I don't own the characters or the series. Amano Akira does. I'm just playing with them for a bit.

A/N: Written for a friend by request.


Loyalties

The Varia acts under the Vongola's orders.

This is a well known fact. After all, Varia is a big part of what makes the Vongola Famiglia so very powerful, so very terrifying. The power of the family backs them up, and they back up the family. They may take other assignments, but in the end, it all comes down to what the Don commands.

They were almost joined more closely, once; for a brief, fleeting moment he actually thought they might become Vongola, become the very core of the family, the boss and his guardians. However, that moment of triumph was torn from their hands, cruelly twisted away, and though it stung he couldn't help but admit he had expected it. There are so many things that depend on things that should be trivial but aren't.

They are still a part of the Vongola, they could never not be, even if their leader has been denied the status of the tenth don they are still connected too deeply to be torn entirely away. Some say it's good this way, to keep them in the family but not in it, to give their leader some of the power he desires but not let him gain it all. It wouldn't work, they say. He would just destroy the Famiglia.

He hears them, and snorts, and would kill them if they weren't some of those old men who have set themselves above anyone else.

They may be a part of the Vongola, but he isn't; they may follow the orders of the boss, but he doesn't. He only ever follows one man, the words of one man; the Second Sword Emperor does not bow before anyone, not anyone but his leader. He doesn't care who bears the rings, doesn't care who is the official heir, doesn't even care as everyone else hails Sawada Tsunayoshi as the future of Vongola.

It doesn't matter to him. He doesn't bow to the Vongola crest. He only bows to the man he has sworn to follow.

He takes the jobs, and he does them, and he is perhaps the most feared swordsman in the world since the Vongola Rain Guardian still has a long way to go in his opinion, and his hair is long and silky and he will never let it be cut, there is no way his leader will be the tenth now so he will never be freed from his oath. It doesn't matter, though. To him, this one man is the strength, the threat, the very heart of Vongola.

The Varia acts under the Vongola's orders, but Squalo only acts under Xanxus'.