AN: Sorry it took so long! This chapter fought with me all the way, and by that I mean I actually wrote this chapter several times in the year since releasing the first one, but I never liked how it turned out so I ended up scraping each copy. Originally I had wanted it to be longer(since the first chapter spans over ten pages), but everytime I tried to stretch it out it seemed to almost turn into a seperate story completely! I might come back to it in the future. I really wanted to delve into how that night effected Giotto and his Guardians, and therefore their rebuilt lives and just the plain culture shock of being in another country. For now though, it's time to move on to the good part.
Time marched on slowly for Giotto and the remainder of his precious family. They slowly settled into their new lives in Japan. Somehow along the way, they each gained new wives, and soon after, new children.
They never forgot the ones they lost in Italy, the ones they failed to protect. The pain would dull, and disappear over time, but it would come back. Like a cut that refused to heal, it just kept scabbing over, never closing. All it would take was a look, a picture; anything could reopen the wound of losing them. The innocent lives that should have been there in Japan with their fathers, bonding with their step-mothers, teaching, playing or fighting with their younger siblings. They shouldn't be in unmarked graves on Vongola grounds!
Giotto opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling above his head and listening to the birds outside chirp their songs. He groaned, rolling over onto his other side. It was late, well past the time he would typically get up, but the blonde didn't care. He had no energy, save for what it took to get comfortable and close his eyes to sleep again.
He awoke an hour later to his wife, Sachi, asking him if he'd planned on sleeping all day. Turning on his side so he was facing her, he cracked an eye open at her. She stood in her kimono, sleeves tied up and wooden spoon in her hand. She must have been cooking lunch; it was far too late for breakfast.
With a sigh, the former leader of Vongola forced himself into a sitting position. He ran a hand through his unruly hair, sighing once again. Shifting his gaze from the floor, he shot his wife a half-hearted smile. She offered one back in response before heading out of the room and down the hall to finish lunch.
She knew her husband was having one of his 'days' again. She and the males' other wives had borne witness to these episodes on more than one occasion. They could only deduce that whatever it was, it must have been something that happened to them in their home country, as even Elena, Daemon's wife, would have similar episodes. None of the women had been brave enough thus far to ask what could have happened.
When lunch was finally done and served, she headed outside, finding her husband sitting on the porch watching their three year old son. As she approached, the far off look in his orange eyes told her he was somewhere far away, lost in memories of before he knew her.
Giotto had decided to head outside after he dressed, wanting to watch his three year old son, Keita. Sitting down the porch, he found his mind wandering soon after he began watching his son play with a ball. Soon, it wasn't the toddler with black hair and whiskey colored eyes he was looking at.
There were two of them now. One his exact double with his mother's brown hair and eyes, and the other, a girl, gained her mother's looks with his blonde hair and orange eyes. The fenced in yard of his Japanese home shifted, expanding into a giant field bordered by trees off in the distance.
The blonde stopped chasing her brother, looking up, just now noticing Giotto. "Papa! Come play with us!" She stated, her brother grinning at him also. Giotto found himself smiling, opening his arms for the twins to run into.
He was shocked from his daydream when it was Keita that crashed into his arms instead. "Tou-san!" The little boy cried happily. Giotto's smile waned just a bit. He picked the toddler up and crushed him to his chest. "Tou-san?" The little boy questioned, wondering why his father was shaking.
"Kei-kun, why don't you go have lunch?" "Okay!" He stated, wiggling out of his father's tight grip to rush off into the house. Ieyasu sighed for what felt like the thousandth time that day. "Ieyasu..." Sachi started, unsure of what exactly to say. "You want to know what's wrong." He stated. He always seemed to be able to do that, Sachi noted. He knew exactly what she was trying to say, often times without her having to say anything.
His second wife only nodded her head. "I doubt you'll like it." He warned, finally turning his amber gaze to her. "I don't care. I want to know what could possibly have hurt you so bad." She stated. Admittedly she was nervous about whatever it was; Ieyasu and his friends were the strongest men she knew, so it had to have been something truly terrible for them to look so broken. However, this was the first time the Italian man had uttered a word about it, and Sachi wasn't going to let the chance slip by her!
"After lunch then." He stated standing and offering an arm to his wife before the duo walked into the dining room where their son was impatiently waiting for them.
Lunch went by rather awkwardly, with Giotto lost in thought about what exactly to tell Sachi, while said woman listened to their boy talk about his day. Once the food was eaten, the trio set about cleaning dishes and putting them away. "Okaa-san, could I play by the river?" Keita asked. Sachi was about to tell him no, after all it was too dangerous since it was on the edge of town. What if he fell in or something?
"Go on Keita. Make sure not to bother Alaude-ojisama." "Hai!" The little boy chirped, rushing out the door.
Alaude lived near the river for the very fact it was on the edge of town. Even now the man didn't care for crowds, or other people in general. Still, Giotto trusted the man to keep an eye, or an ear, in the blonde's case, on his son.
"I had forgotten Alaude-san lived so far away." Sachi stated as the two adults made their way to the porch that encompassed their home. "He was never one for liking the company of too many people. Still, he'll keep them all safe." Giotto knew without a doubt that his son would likely round up his friends' children to go play with him.
It was something that still brought out a chuckle in the man. The group had decided to move into the same town, but had opted for their own places, instead of living together under one roof as they had in Italy. After all, this was a new land, so they would all start fresh, with little to no ties of their old lives. Fate had other ideas. Despite the group all spreading out and getting their own places, they all lived fairly close together. It was all purely coincidental.
Giotto would be lying if he'd said he was upset with how things had turned out. He understood their need for change and their desire to wipe the slate clean. Still, that didn't meant Giotto wanted to lose the remainder of his family. They were all no more than fifteen minutes away from each other, with Alaude being the outlier, living nearly a thirty minutes' walk from the village, and they seemed to accept it as fate.
"Ieyasu?" Sachi's voice cut the former don from his musing, and he turned to look at her. He could see the battle beginning to take place. She wanted so badly to continue their discussion from earlier, but on the other hand she didn't want to force him to share anything he wasn't ready to talk about.
God, Ambra and Amato would have loved this woman. Keita too.
"This is by no means a happy tale," He stated, staring out into the yard, watching as the wind glided through the trees that dotted their land. "It started when I was a young man. The village I grew up in, in Italy was overrun with thugs and thieves and crooked cops everywhere you looked. After years of watching crime and corruption eat away at my town, decided I'd had enough. I would take back my hometown, I would make it right again." Sachi watched as her husband's eyes glazed over, lost once again in his memories of his life before he moved to Japan.
"I couldn't do it alone, so I asked G to help. He was more than willing to, having also had enough to watching the place go to the dogs. We didn't really have a plan, so we just kind of floundered around at first. Eventually we got things going, and we started from the bottom, making out way up the ladder of each and every organization that thought they could do whatever they wanted in our town. Within a few years things were on the mend. G and I decided to travel, figuring we'd earned it. That's how we met Asari."
"He joined us on our journey around Japan, acting as our translator and our teacher as we learned the language. After a couple years travelling around together, the two of us grew homesick, and parted ways with the musician. Upon arriving home, we realized with growing horror that things had reverted back to the way it was. Like a weeds left to grow in a garden when the caretaker stopped pulling them. It was harder this time, and the underground's influence was rooted deeper and spread farther than what my best friend and I could handle. Still, we weren't about to sit back and watch. Once again, we began fighting."
"We weren't alone this time though." Here, Giotto smiled, and Sachi had a feeling that these ensuing fights were where he met his friends. "In time we once again subdued the underground. However, we caught the attention of a powerful mob boss. Apparently our town was going to be the new center for drug trafficking, and he didn't appreciate our meddling. G and I were in trouble this time. Word spread surprisingly fast, and before we knew it, our friends were standing on our run down doorstep, ready to lend us their power."
"Asari joined them a few weeks later. Lampo managed to drag us from the house one day, complaining that a rundown shack was no place for a war counsel. He took us out of town and into the woods, where, after what seemed like eternity, we came upon a mansion that seemed like it could fit the entire town's population and then some inside. It belonged to Lampo, and we were informed that the teen's family had given it to us as thanks for saving their son."
"I was glad, with the mansion's location being so far out of town, we wouldn't be endangering the townsfolk. We set out a few days later to attack the enemy before they attacked us. I'm honestly still surprised we won that battle. We were outnumbered and out gunned. That seemed to send a message to the other mob leaders, and for the next handful of years, things were peaceful as my friends and I settled into a routine. It was decided that our protection shouldn't only be offered to this one town, when so many others were suffering much the same. We set out, little by little, to take back other towns and villages and cities that were in similar states to ours."
"It was during these excursions that we met our respective wives. The peace that we'd found wasn't going to last however. As our power grew, and we took property from the underworld one acre at a time, we gained their attention. They sent us a warning, which came in the form of a slaughter. Our wives, whose only crimes were being married to us, were all murdered in cold blood. Emilio was only four at the time, and Nevio wasn't even born yet. Out of the women, Elena was the only one with combat experience. Without her, Nevio's mother, as well as the child himself, would have died. Still, Elena barely pulled through, and Nevio's mother went into labor shortly thereafter, dying within minutes of giving birth to the boy."
"I hadn't realized until then. What G and I had set out to do was to protect our small hometown, now we stood at the top as the most powerful vigilante group, servants and cooks, nannies and groundskeepers and thousands of men all working under us. Dozens of towns and cities were under our protection, their populace looking to us, counting on us to keep them safe. Unfortunately, all that power came at the cost of our wives, countless men that fell in our name, and targets on our children's backs."
"That was something we were exceptionally careful about. Whenever our children were out and about, one of us went with. Or if we were busy with missions or the like, we sent about a dozen armed men to scatter throughout the town and keep an eye on the children and their caretakers." Here the blonde's eyes took on a harder look to them.
"Unfortunately we couldn't keep them safe from everything. A known Mafioso was making quite a fuss and causing lots of trouble for several towns under our protection. Typically we'd send our men, and possibly one of us would go along. I decided we had to make an example of him, to show that we wouldn't tolerate this sort of behavior to those towns and villages under our jurisdiction."
"They were expecting it. While we were out cleaning up, they'd sent a good number of men to our home." Giotto's hands were clenched in anger as he recalled the events, and he heard Sachi gasp, already beginning to put the pieces together. "While we were gone, they lay siege to our home. The children's caretakers sacrificed their lives to ensure they made it to the secret passage, only accessible by my twins. They couldn't find it. The enemy found them instead."
"The engaged our children in combat, and although the kids took out an impressive number of foes, it was futile. One by one they were slaughtered in cold blood. We came home to the carnage, and I found the kids were doomed from the start. They were tricked, and the room they believed to be the one with the secret passage was actually further down the hall. They never had a chance to survive that battle. Alaude's son Emilio was the oldest at eight. Livio and Sandro were seven. Masato, Ambra, Amato and Dante were six, Sophia, Livio's younger sister was five, and little Nevio was the youngest at three. They were all cut down in cold blood, simply because their father's wanted to protect people from the underground, and raise them in a world that was safer than the one we grew up in."
Sachi was sobbing by now. She knew something had to have happened in the past to him and his friends, but she hadn't thought it was something like that. "Ieyasu…." She trailed off, not knowing what to say. "It's alright Sachi." He turned and smiled at her, though pain was still visible in her eyes. "I'll meet them again years from now. In the meantime, I should spend time with the family I've got left." Sachi was surprised at how he could do that. He always managed to look on the brighter side of everything. He was trying not to let his horrible past get in the way of his future. Sachi herself wasn't sure she would be able to do the same if the situation were reversed. Robbed of not only her husband, but her children (and also children she considered nephews and nieces –because surly that's what the other children were to the men), Sachi would likely be drowning in self-hatred and bitterness. Yet here was Ieyasu, his spirit dampened by many losses, still trying to move on with his life and move forward, still able to love another woman and have another shot at raising kids.
The blonde spoke, breaking Sachi from her thoughts. "When that time comes, I can't wait tell them all about you and Keita." Sachi couldn't help but smile. "I think they would love to know about their younger brother."
