(warnings: daddy issues)


Late one night while Tsunayoshi snuffles into his pillow, two-year-old Tsunami stares at the ceiling and thinks of parents.

(It's not like she has anything better to do— her favorite part of sleep is dreaming and she hasn't done that since she died.)

She'd had parents, once. A mom and a dad and an asshole of a cat.

Tsunami has parents now, too, but acknowledging that feels like betraying what she's left behind. Who had found her body, she wonders? Was there blood? Trying to imagine what her mother's reaction must have been like makes her stomach roll and her breath catch in her throat.

The woman who takes care of her now ('Nana', if those friendly old women across the street can be believed) is the polar opposite of the mother that she remembers.

Nana is gentle. Her hair is long and dark and she speaks softly, filling the whole house with a quiet kind of cheer. Her mother from Before had been a blonde force of nature who believed very strongly in the idea of 'tough love'. If she closes her eyes and concentrates, Tsunami thinks she can still feel the sting of knuckles grinding affectionately into her hair. Loud, deep laughter echoes in her ears— her father's. He was never any help when her mother was like this, just sat back and laughed like they were prime entertainment. She misses him.

In this life, Tsunami's father is…

…is...

...Hold up.

Tsunami sits ramrod straight in the tiny bed she shares with her brother so fast her head spins. There is red-hot righteous indignation brewing in her stomach, bright and furious. She racks her brain for memories of any kind of man that could maybe be her father, but she comes up blank. She cannot recall a single instance of heavy laughter or warm hands. She can't think of any caretakers who aren't Nana, actually, which rules out the possibility of her father really just being another mother. Hell, she's never even met Nana's family members. The woman has been well and truly alone for as long as Tsunami has known her.

Tsunami's mommy issues aside, Nana is a ridiculously sweet woman. Even if Tsunami's limited language skills can only help her decipher about half of what Nana says, she can tell that the older woman genuinely loves her twins with all her heart. She tries her best to look after them both and provides a warm and loving environment that even skittish Tsunami has grown to feel safe in. Even if Tsunami can't quite clear the "mom" hurdle, she's grown very fond of her caretaker.

And some gaping shithole had up and ditched her.

Thoroughly pissed off and feeling more than a little childish, Tsunami throws her body back into the soft mattress with a huff. Tsunayoshi's breathing stutters for a moment as the force jostles him awake, but in true child fashion he just rolls over and falls right back asleep. Tsunami is too busy focusing every ounce of her irritation into the open air— if she concentrates hard enough, maybe she can telepathically explode her sperm donor's brain? —to notice or be apologetic.

What a douchebag. If she ever meets him, she's going to kick him in the balls.


(Ten thousand miles away, Sawada Iemitsu sneezes. There's some kind of pressure behind his eyes that feels different than the usual work-related headache. He hopes he is not getting sick.)


To absolutely no one's shock or surprise, Tsunami does not understand the first thing about toddlers. This is fine, because toddlers do not seem to give a shit.

It is stressing her out.

For one thing, she's supposed to be playing the part of a guileless two year old who is absolutely not bored to fucking tears with her brightly-colored plastic toys or her pathetically short arms or her fuzzy pink onesie.

Well, alright, she's getting kind of attached to that last one. Tsunami looks cute as heck with her tiny feet covered up by soft pastel fuzz and she refuses to be ashamed of it. The matching headband with the big, floppy bow is just the icing on the frilly pink cake and she loves it. Unfortunately for everyone around her, Tsunami cannot be pacified by her own adorable feetsies forever.

She's been trying hard to cut down on her Slips, capital 'S' for maximum importance. Blocking out the whole world and retreating to the dark empty space in her head is all well and good, but it isn't doing her any favors when it comes to learning the language. Consequently, falling back on the instinctual part of her brain that knows how to act like an actual kid is off the table.

She learns to fake it.

Bullshitting childlike behavior comes easier when she is working off a template, so she watches her brother closely and mimics what he does. When Tsunayoshi grows tired of playing with his action figures or his Legos, Tsunami stops playing with them as well. Nana tries to coax her into playing dress-up and make-believe with her dolls, but for the most part Tsunami doesn't pay them much mind. They are fun to manipulate from time-to-time in a nostalgic sort of way (which trips her up because she is having flashbacks to her early childhood while she is in her early childhood), but it is much easier to keep an eye on Tsunayoshi when she does not have to split her attention between him and the questionable fashion choices of a foot-tall plastic doll.

Also, she had never actually played with Gundams before and they are, like, super fucking cool. Gundams are the highlight of her day.

Tsunayoshi seems glad to have the company, usually. Half the time she isn't really sure what he's babbling to her, but since Nana doesn't seem to know either she figures it's probably par for the course. Her grasp on the Japanese language is certainly better than it was even four weeks ago, but it is still far from perfect. Or, uh, passable.

Tsunami may be getting a lot better with her articulation and verb tenses, but flubbing every third word is embarrassing and frustrating so most of the time she just stays quiet. There will be time to chatter when the language isn't quite so foreign to her.

Because he seems to be literally incapable of shutting up, Tsunayoshi is unintentionally her greatest helper in this endeavor. Although his grammar is worse than even hers, he's such a bouncy little ray of sunshine that it's cute instead of annoying. He's finally grown out of his creepy little infant raisin face and now his cheeks are just a squishy and soft as hers are.

His puppy eyes are lethal and she is weak.

"'n then the hero flewed in like whoosh and he, he hit the bad guy in the FACE!" Here, Tsunayoshi pauses and looks at her expectantly, wooden rectangle frozen in what she assumes is a battle position. Her own wooden block is triangle shaped and is consequently playing the villain that the hero is engaged in life-or-shadow-realm combat with. Tsunami isn't sure why they couldn't have played this with the conveniently humanoid action figures lying, like, right there, but she isn't about to argue pretend-fight logic with a two-year-old. Instead, she clears her throat and adopts her best menacing villain voice.

"AUGH," she bellows. This is enough for Tsunayoshi. She appreciates that.

"The bad guy falls over! The crowd goes wild! It's another home run for Captain Justice!" Tsunayoshi throws his arms in the air and teeters onto his back, giggling madly. Tsunami, who lost the plot to the epic block smackdown ten minutes ago when Captain Justice— who was named just now, on the spot —had to fly through an active volcano to save the dragon-warrior princess so she could return to her kingdom and eat dinner, feels vaguely charmed but mostly relieved that she is allowed to stop holding her villain triangle over her head. Apparently, that is the only way to correctly hold a villain in flight. Who knew.

Tsunayoshi's giggle train is nigh impossible to stop once it starts going. He rolls over in a fit before scrambling to his feet, crowing his excitement to the world with rosy cheeks and horrendously messy hair. Tsunami giggles a little bit along with him because he's super fucking cute and his little onesie is so rumpled that he has to pause to straighten it back out so that he can move right. She gets up too, abandoning her blocks in favor of figuring out where he is running off to and whether or not she should go run off there after him.

It should chafe at her pride, probably, that she spends most of her time playing following-the-leader with a kid just barely out of diapers. It's a good thing she doesn't have a whole lot of pride left in her body. Nana believed in breastfeeding.

She likes boobs as much as the next person, but not like that. Never, ever like that, not now and maybe never again.

"Mama, mama, I-won-I-won-I-won-I-won!" He shrieks, bursting into the kitchen where Nana is stirring a pot of something that smells delicious. He wraps his arms around her leg and shimmies up her thigh like some kind of overexcited koala, chattering gleefully if unintelligibly about Captain Justice's 'totally awesome' superpowers and his incredible take-down of the dastardly villain. It sounds about twenty times more exciting in his retelling than it actually was.

Tsunami follows after him at a more sedate pace and mimics his clinging, tugging a fistful of Nana's loose pants close to her chest. Tsunayoshi is an energetic force of nature and that is all well and good, but she doesn't quite have the same boundless enthusiasm or zest for life. Also, forcing poor Nana to deal with more than just the one hyperactive toddler on her own is kind of a dick move.

Nana listens to Tsunayoshi's story with rapt attention and shows appropriate shock and horror when he tells her about the vicious block-eating monsters Captain Justice had to fight off, only to join him in his victorious cheering when he reveals that the hero beat them all up without breaking a sweat. Never once does her stirring rhythm so much as stutter, which is astonishing considering how much Tsunayoshi is moving around on her hip.

"'Nami was the bad guy this time! She made a really cool noise when I fighted her, like BWUGH, and then I beat her and won 'nd, and, um…" Tsunayoshi trails off, realizing that he has finally run out of story to tell. He looks at her imploringly. She, having absolutely no idea what he's wanting her to say, redirects the conversation to the most pressing topic on her mind.

"...When's food, Mama?" She asks, getting as high up on her toes as she can to try to take a peek into the pot that Nana is so artfully mixing. She's about three feet too short to actually see anything but her own slightly warped reflection in the stainless steel.

She, too, is super fucking cute, she notes with satisfaction. Her eyes aren't quite as wide and round as her brothers and they are a little on the unsettling side, but her cheeks are squishy and plump. Her hair is the same warm shade as her brothers but, unlike his, it actually observes the laws of gravity and lies flat. Too flat, actually— she'd gotten nice and used to having wavy hair Before and the ease with which Nana could get a brush through her hair now makes her feel a little weird in her skin. It has a nice shine to it, at least.

She really would not mind being this adorable forever, if she's honest. It is a refreshing change from what she originally lived with, which were lanky teenage limbs that just wouldn't stop growing and a rather unfortunate tendency to break out in acne when the weather changed.

"'When will dinner be ready', Tsu-chan," Nana corrects gently. Tsunami takes a moment to roll the words over in her mouth and parrots them back obediently. Nana nitpicks her grammar a lot more than Tsunayoshi's, presumably because Tsunami is the only twin who actually listens. Her baby brother has certain unshakable ideas about how words are supposed to work.

"When will dinner be ready, Mama?"

"Dinner!" Tsunayoshi chimes in hopefully, trying to scramble even further up Nana's side to do what Tsunami cannot and catch a glimpse of whatever feast his mother is brewing within. In one fluid motion, Nana scoops Tsunayoshi up to place him in a steadier position higher on her hip and then bounces him all the way back down until his feet are firmly back on the ground. He whines and tries in earnest to scramble back up, but all Nana has to do is put a finger on his nose and he freezes, crossing his eyes to try and figure out what she is doing.

Tsunami basks in the sudden silence and takes a mental note.

"Just a few more minutes, you two. But, you know…" Nana hums thoughtfully, tapping her chin and glancing down at them with a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Dirty kids don't get dinner. You better hurry and wash your hands or else you won't be able to have any!"

Mortally offended at the idea of no dinner, oh shit, Tsunayoshi gasps and takes off like a shot towards the bathroom. Whatever is in that pot smells amazing and Tsunami will be damned if she lets her grubby little brother get his paws on it first. She is faster than he is when motivated and within seconds they are racing neck and neck down the hallway towards the stairs.

Their proximity turns out to be a good thing when gravity strikes. Tsunayoshi makes it all of four feet on the carpet before he trips over his own legs and spins out sideways into a wild tumble. Luckily, Tsunami is in the perfect position to cushion his fall and he faceplants into her hip and sends the both of them crashing to the floor. Her face squishes into Tsunayoshi's shoulder as her entire body skids out into a wide arc along the carpet.

Frick, heck, major fucking ouch. If she doesn't have rug burn all up her side its going to be a goddamn miracle.

Tsunami lies dazed and spread eagle on the ground. There is half a two-year-old sprawled over her torso and a sharp knee digging into her ribcage like its trying to shank her to second death.

She contemplates movement.

'Nah,' she decides. Her head may be aching and about half an inch from the wall, but she's really rocking this whole "lie on the floor perfectly motionless" thing she's got going on and isn't really all that motivated to get up.

Tsunayoshi, with his face smashed into the carpet, is not quite so content. Eerily silent, he digs her knee even deeper into her ribcage (she releases a noise somewhere between a wheeze and a sob) and pulls himself upright. He slips off of her without a single noise, which is unusual enough that she raises her head to get a look at his face.

There's a big red spot on his forehead from where it bumped into the floor and, as Tsunami watches, he tentatively raises his hands to poke at it.

Still not a peep.

It feels like the calm before the storm. She's starting to freak out a little bit.

"...Um. Are you oka—?" Tsunami's question is strangled by a squeak of panic as the dam finally breaks and Tsunayoshi begins to sniffle, pawing at his head at looking her with a trembling lip and eyes like the world has just ended.

'Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuckfuckfuck,' Tsunami screeches internally and her terror must be showing on her face because Tsunayoshi's expression crumples. His big brown eyes get wet and shiny and he opens his mouth to take in a huge gulp of air and oh gosh, oh no, Tsunami knows exactly what that means, shit shit shit shit shit-

Children are an unknown entity and completely beyond her skills as a functioning human being. Tsunami has no fucking idea what to do other than stand up and run screaming for the hills, but for whatever reason that strikes her as kind of a dick move. It's a fight or flight situation but she can't run and punching a two year old in the face seems counterproductive somehow, so she does the first thing that comes to mind and—

she boops him on the nose.

Tsunayoshi stills, caught in the middle of his massive inhale. His watery eyes cross to stare at her finger like he cannot believe that it's really there, his hands still hovering over his own forehead. Tsunami absolutely did not plan this far ahead and she is feeling the opposite of reassured by his silence. What now? Would he just start screaming if she stopped touching his nose? Is this his off button?

They sit frozen for several seconds, neither one knowing quite how to proceed. With no small amount of hesitation, Tsunayoshi uncrosses his eyes and stares at her with big blank owl eyes.

"...You're okay," she states slowly and then inches her finger off his nose like he will break if she moves too fast. To her surprise and relief, the tears and screams do not resume.

She feels like she has just unearthed a great and powerful secret.

Tsunayoshi brings his hands back down to his sides and keeps staring at her like he's completely checked out of planet earth. She's about to go get Nana because oh no, maybe he really is concussed, when he bursts into maniacal giggles out of fuckshit nowhere and scrambles back up to his feet like nothing had happened.

"You're so weird, nee-chan," he laughs, patting her on the head magnanimously before turning on a dime and scampering down the rest of the hallway and up the stairs on all fours. She stares after him, poleaxed.

Just… what.

Literally, just, what in the actual fuck.

...

The upstairs bathroom door opens.

She… she is not weird. He's weird! He was about to start raising hell two seconds ago and now he's laughing and also gone, how did that make her the weird one? Tsunami is not equipped for this. Toddlers are fucking strange as hell and she is so far beyond out of her element.

The sink turns on.

...That little shit is winning the race, goddammit all.

"I'm not weird!" Tsunami yelps and scurries up the staircase after him, fully intent on washing her hands and then shoving her wet fingers down his neck in retribution.

She has never had a little brother before, Tsunami thinks. It is different from accepting a new mother or a new body or a new life simply because she has no basis for comparison. Siblings are new, uncharted territory. Even if she has fuck-all idea of what she's doing, she can't deny that she kind of likes figuring it out.


When she and Tsuna ('Tsunayoshi' was such a pain in the ass to say all the time, honestly) are three, they meet their father. And their grandfather. And their grandfather's bodyguards.

It does not go well.

When the large blonde man bursts in through the front door with a bouquet of roses in his hands and a love song on his lips, Tsunami startles so badly that she trips and falls directly on her face in the middle of tag with Tsuna. He's close enough behind her that he stumbles hard on over her body and spends an almost impressive amount of time tripping and catching himself and tripping again. When he finally comes to a stop he is laid out flat on the floor, looking vaguely concussed. This isn't really anything new to Tsunami because lord knows that boy was a disaster with feet but the strange man in her house? Unknown element.

Tsunami scrambles back up to her feet and hauls Tsuna behind the sitting room table by his armpits because what the fuck. She's fairly certain Nana keeps the front door locked tight and this… this screaming blonde goliath just broke in like there hadn't even been anything in his way. Was this a home invasion? Were they being robbed? What the fuck was she supposed to do during a robbery?

Between the sudden shock that had probably just taken years off her life and the vaguely lyrical harpy screams that still have not stopped, Tsunami is more than a little rattled. Her heart beating too fast in her chest and she is frozen in place. There are procedures for this, she knows that she's supposed to do something if someone breaks into her house but she can't think and everything is so loud and so fast and oh, oh shit, is she having a heart attack? Can toddlers have heart attacks? Her name is Tsunami and she is about to die for the second time in three years, fucking fantastic.

The system overload starts to become a little much for her to handle and, just for a moment, she feels herself Slip.


It is quiet inside her head, like always. Good. Tsunami could use quiet.

The space around her is dark and endless and comfortingly familiar. It reminds her of outer space, or of being dead, or of curling under the blankets where the monsters can't get her. There's a dim glow like a cooling ember somewhere off in the distance that doesn't offer much light, but comforts her all the same.

Tsunami's wandered all over what she thinks of as her mindscape, using the glow as her north star to stay oriented in a place where the difference between up and down is open to interpretation. Once or twice she's tried to get closer to the glow to investigate its source, but after a while she always ends up crashing face-first into what feels like a glass wall.

Questionable architecture of her mindscape aside… she should really wake up.

Something important is happening on the Outside and she needs to be around to experience it and react to it and also maybe save her life from home intruders.

...She isn't sure she cares. Slipping feels a lot like being on heavy sedatives and it's hard to remember why she was so afraid just seconds before. Tsunami has the distance and emotional clarity now to realize that she has probably just experienced the start of a panic attack.

It had felt like she was dying all over again.

She does not want to wake up and go back to that.

Sawada Tsunami has to be a responsible big sister now, though, so she sucks it up and does it anyways.


Tsunami blinks twice and the world returns. It hits her like a slap in the face and she has to take a second to just breathe and re-calibrate. Her heart is still working overtime and she is suddenly so, so annoyed with herself for blacking out at what could be a critical moment. Her gut is clenching with nausea, but she forces herself to focus through it.

The death warbles have stopped. Instead, Nana's laughter rings out through the house, bright and clear. Someone else is laughing with her, someone with a deep and deafening voice that reminds her of her father's except, no, not at all. Her father's laugh was warm like sunshine or soup on a cold day, but this? This is just fucking obnoxious.

Tsunayoshi is upright and tugging on their joined hands, impatient to get out of her grip ('when did I grab his hand, I don't remember doing that,') and see what is happening in the next room over. She allows herself to be dragged out of their hiding spot and what she sees through the door frame immediately sets her back on edge.

The blonde man has Nana in a massive bear hug and they are twirling circles in the middle of the entrance hall. They both seem so absolutely ecstatic to see each other that it is jarring to her. The man is exactly as huge as he had seemed before and his pale hair is cut professionally short. In contrast to his spiffy haircut, the rest of him is…

Well. He's kind of gross. His white wifebeater is slightly stained in some unidentified substance— grease or blood, mechanic or home-invading murderer —and his beard is more like scruff than anything else. When he opens his eyes to look at the two kids peering out from the doorway, his eyes are honey brown and elated.

They are the same shade as Tsuna's, she realizes. Is this… could this be their father? It would explain the hugging and the roses and the general lack of concern from anyone but her. Well, her and Tsuna.

"Mama?" Her brother tries cautiously, squeezing Tsunami's hand tightly. For being such a noisy kid, Tsuna gets awfully shy around strangers. Tsunami really hopes she isn't rubbing off on him. The blonde in the doorway slowly lowers Nana to her feet and she turns to them, smile wider than Tsunami has ever seen it.

"Tsu-kun, Tsu-chan, come say hi to your Papa!"

The man kneels and opens his arms wide, grinning from ear to ear. Tsunami's grip spasms for a moment. Tsuna jumps a little at the squeeze and stares between her and the beaming blonde man with open trepidation. When he ducks behind her instead of running to hug their 'father', she is filled with a vicious sense of smug satisfaction and affectionate pride. Clearly, Tsuna is aware of stranger danger.

And that's all he is. A stranger. She glares at him with as much vitriol as she can muster, her need to assuage Tsuna's fear handily overriding her own anxiety. Resisting the urge to do something drastic like bare her teeth or punch this dude in the nose is hard. It doesn't matter how warmly Nana is greeting him, he might as well be some random guy off the street.

He has not so much as visited them since their birth three years ago. He has left Nana on her own to raise twins. Nana clearly does not give a shit about any of this, but Tsunami isn't about to let some no-show fuckwad anywhere near her or Tsuna's person before she sees some fucking grovelling.

She decides to call him Jackass.

The only thing stopping her from marching up to Jackass right now and smashing her tiny child foot directly into his junk multiple times is her baby brother's small hand gripping hers solidly and the weight of his body pressing against her back. The moment Tsuna lets up, she is going to rush this stupid old man with all the power in her toddler body and kick his ass.

He must be able to read her thoughts on her face because his smile falters for a moment. To her alarm, it comes back twice as strong barely a second later before he moves forward to close the gap between them. She tries to reel back but there is a child behind her, shit, it's too late to dodge, maybe she can kick him in the face—?

Before she can make her thoughts a bloody reality, Jackass has scooped both her and Tsuna up in one fell swoop. Toddlers are small, but they aren't that small, and if she weren't so busy cursing his name to hell and back she might've been impressed. Her legs are pinned at too awkward of an angle to do anything more than shuffle feebly and she hates it, she hates it so fucking much. She's forced to release Tsuna's hand and grab two fistfuls of Jackass's shirt else she tip sideways and fall what feels like twenty feet to the ground.

Her breath stutters. Heights do not bother her quite so much as the idea of falling from them does.

"Mama," Tsuna squeaks, clearly as alarmed at the sudden shift in vantage as she is. Nana laughs good-naturedly and reaches up to extract him from Jackass's grip, leaving each parent to carry one twin each. It would be the perfect moment for a picture if Tsunami wasn't so sure she looked like she was about to puke. She certainly felt the part. Safe in the familiar arms of his mother, Tsuna relaxes and looks up at the tall blonde man with open curiosity.

"There's someone else I want you two to meet," Jackass whispers conspiratorially. Tsuna's mouth opens into a perfect 'O' and he begins to look reluctantly excited for the surprise. He's a traitor to the cause, but Tsunami will forgive him because he is too young to know any better. She, on the other hand, has had her fill of meeting new people for the next four years, give or take.

Tsunami struggles a little in Jackass's grip to let him know she wants to get down now, but all that does is make her feel like she's about to tumble out of his arms and she quickly gives it up.

She is going to have to use her words, isn't she. Eurgh.

"I want down," she hisses. "...please," she tacks on as an afterthought. Adults liked polite shit, right? She's super cute, there's no reason why he shouldn't give her what she wants.

Jackass laughs straight from his belly and it's like being part of a small earthquake. Everything about this man is overpowered and no, she takes it back, Nana is clearly flourishing on her own, none of them needed this guy in the picture anymore. She hopes he will leave quickly.

"Aw, so soon? But you haven't even been in the best spot yet!" Tsuna lets out a short noise of alarm, then Jackass's shirt is being wrenched from her hands. She swallows a shriek as she is lifted up and up and up. Her only supports are the hands under her arms and the ground is getting farther and farther away and this is it, this is how she dies again, she is going to fall and be a little child-sized smear on the floor oh god oh god she is going to murder this son of a bitch—

—she Slips—


There is a supernova burning like the sun and it is blinding. She squeezes her eyes shut too and rears back but the white is still searing through her eyelids and it hurts


—and wrenches herself right back out again. She is barely gone for a second but that was apparently long enough for Jackass to finish settling her so that she is perched on his neck. Her legs are dangling limply over his shoulders so she folds them immediately— partly to make sure she cannot fall and partly to try and choke the ever loving fuck out of this abrasive shitwad.

'I want down' does not mean 'put me even higher, you fucking mountain'. She fists her hands more tightly than necessary in his hair and hangs on for dear life, seething.

Jackass is oddly still for a moment and she hopes it's because there is a distressed toddler on his neck trying to kill him and he's feeling some kind of regret or remorse. Her hopes are dashed when he just laughs once more— her whole body shakes with it —and gently loosens her deadlocked legs like they are toothpicks. Tsunami does not appreciate the demonstration of strength and tightens her grip in his hair.

"Let's go meet your grandfather," Nana suggests, bouncing Tsuna on her hip slightly in her excitement. Excitement happens to be the exact opposite of the emotion Tsunami is feeling at the moment. Tsuna, at least, looks intrigued and put up no fuss as the two adults carry them into the backyard.

There is an old man with a moustache with a some frankly hideous tourist clothes sitting primly in one of their lawn chairs. From her ridiculously high vantage point, Tsunami can spy three other men in suits around the perimeter of her house, standing tall and alert.

The fuck.

Nana gently settles Tsuna back to his feet and Tsunami braces herself for similar treatment. Jackass reaches up and grip her firmly under the arms again and she squeezes her eyes shut, stiff as a board as he pulls her up and swings her through the air. She refuses to unfreeze or even open her eyes until she is completely sure that her feet are firmly on the ground.

As soon as her feet are back on the porch, Tsuna's tiny hand wraps around her clenched fist and pries it apart so he can wiggle his fingers between her own. It helps ground her in a different sense and she pulls in a deep, calming breath. If Jackass ever tries that again she is going to shove her fingers in his eyesockets, propriety be damned.

Tsunami turns to look at her… grandfather? Is that what Nana had said? She wonders if he is Nana's father or if they are related through the... less palatable party.

She really, really hopes he is Nana's father.

He leans over in his chair so that he is closer to eye-level with she and her twin. His mustache is extremely bushy close-up, she notes. Tsuna takes a half-step behind her to hide again and she lets him, shifting slightly so that she blocks more of him from view.

It's not very effective. Tsuna's spiky cloud of brown hair is too large and distinctive to fit entirely behind her back, but they try their best anyways.

The old man pulls back by inches, eyebrows flinching upwards. Tsunami is confused for a moment before she remembers her bright fucking orange eyes with the pupils that glowed at certain angles. She tilts her head down and looks away because really, there's no need for her to give an old man a heart attack so soon after meeting him.

"Introduce yourselves," Nana prompts, patting Tsuna's floof of hair affectionately. He peers over Tsunami's shoulder, squeezing her hand so tight she can feel her bones grinding together.

"...M-my name's… um, Tsunayoshi. Y-you can… um, you can…" Tsuna stutters, growing more and more flustered by the second as his words get stuck in his throat. His palms are kind of gross and sweaty as he squeezes her hand once, twice, three more times in panic.

"You can call him Tsuna," Tsunami interjects. Her shoulders square. A wave of protectiveness is surging through her and she squeezes his hand right back, solid and firm. She feels for him. The crushing press of anxiety against her lungs is a feeling she's become intimately familiar with over the past few minutes (years) and it fucking blows.

"And what's your name, little princess?" The old man's voice is rough, but it's also filled with warmth. His eyes are dark, she notes, darker than Tsuna's or even Nana's. There is something twinkling in them that Jackass's didn't quite have and she finds herself liking him more and more.

He is Nana's father, she is sure of it.

"Tsunami," she replies, a little hesitant. He is leaning closer, looking at her eyes with focus that surprises her in its intensity. He looks like… he looks like he is searching for something. She shifts, uncomfortable down to her bones but also unwilling to break character in front of her brother.

"Tsunami-chan," he hums. His scrutinizing gaze breaks into a wide, genial smile and she feels herself relax bit by bit. "You have very pretty eyes, Tsunami-chan."

...Oh.

Oh, no.

No one has ever complimented her eyes before.

Unwelcome comments about how 'unique' she was are common to her now. The people at the supermarket who stop Nana to coo at she and Tsuna mostly just cough awkwardly at her pupils and change the subject. Even Nana chooses to just avoid mentioning them.

Punching her directly in the eye socket might actually have had less of an effect. Blood is rushing to her face so fast that she gets dizzy and her cheeks feel so hot that she is half-convinced that someone has just straight turned up the sun. Tsuna is giggling at her, the traitor, and oh lord is Nana squealing, she's squealing. This is simultaneously the absolutely worst and the best, best, best thing that's happened to Tsunami in a long time.

"Thankyouverymuch!" Tsunami tries for grateful and humbled but only manages some kind of quiet nasal scream that does not sound composed at all. She bites the inside of her cheek immediately after and curses her tiny, adorable voice to hell and back. She is so red in the face that she is glowing as bright as her eyes, she can fucking feel it.

It shouldn't be a big deal. This is such bullshit, she is so weak to flattery. Forgetting about her intentions to be Tsuna's unshakeable shield, Tsunami ducks her head and tries valiantly to control her furious blushing.

'I love this old guy,' she thinks furiously. He is her new favorite person on the planet, right after her brother and Nana.

Sudden rush of affection aside, she is quite literally redder than a fucking stoplight and she is possessed by the need to run away and scream quietly in a corner until she calms the hell down. She does so abruptly, yanking Tsuna along behind her into the backyard. He stumbles a little bit, too caught up in his guffaws to concentrate on coordination. Its pretty rude to just up and leave her grandpa like that, if Tsunami's honest, but she can't find the will to give a shit.

She is three, she chants internally. She is allowed to be both easily flustered and rude as hell.

She powerwalks a little faster.


When she calms down enough to look people in the eye again, her first order of business is to unleash unholy retribution on Tsuna for laughing at her in her time of peril. He shrieks with glee as he successfully evades her first lunge, but she is quick to catch up and lock him into an affectionate noogie. His unruly hair cushions him from most of the sting, but he wails dramatically anyways just to be a brat. It is equal parts irritating and endearing.

"Nee-chan," Tsuna whines, stretching her title out about four syllables longer than it really needs to be. His tiny fists papping against her arm do nothing to dissuade her from her thirst for vengeance.

"You laughed at me!"

He is, in fact, laughing at her right now.

"Y-your face," he wheezes out between his giggles. "You look like a big t'mato!"

"I DO NOT," she whisper-yells so hard that her voice cracks right in the middle and she flushes again in mortification. Tsuna goes boneless with the force of his giggles and slips out of her grip to puddle on the grass, more slime than boy. The temptation to sit on top of him until her dominance is re-established is almost too strong to ignore, but the muffled tittering of the adults by the backdoor reminds her that she has an audience.

She is a mature adult with mature adult reactions to things, goddammit. Just because her justified adult rage happens to look fucking adorable on a three year old girl does not mean she will stand for being made spectacle of.

Tsunami does the mature adult thing and walks away with her nose in the air. Her face is not bright red, she is just… it's just a healthy glow. It's fine and totally un-funny.

Desperate for a distraction, she looks around the yard. The neighbor's Chihuahua is sniffing around the back gate, so she makes a hasty beeline towards it. Three steps in, she remembers herself, and slows to a sedate walk like petting the dog had been her plan the whole time.

It has a little white collar on and it is even tinier than she is. It would be a criminal act not to go scratch behind its ears, clearly.

The dog's internal affection radar is apparently in perfect working order because the minute it catches sight of her, it is wiggling through the gate bars to trot towards her with a cute little puppy grin.

She runs her hands over it's fur with more than a little syrupy cooing. The dog's little tongue pokes out as it pants happily and that's it, she is sold. It is so soft and cute and it is hers now, she is adopting it into her home.

(Lord alive, does she fucking love dogs. She used to be a cat person, sure, but it is amazing how being indirectly murdered by a cat will open your eyes to the wonders of puppies. Plus, dogs didn't do that tsundere shit. They looked after you and loved you freely. Cats just puked on your chemistry homework and sat in inconvenient places.)

"Tsuna, look!" Tsunami calls, because the only thing better than petting a dog is alerting other people that there is a dog nearby to pet. Tsuna, still laying in the grass where she left him, does not look nearly as excited at the prospect of doggies as she does. This is completely unacceptable.

She scoops the Chihuahua up in her arms and totters towards her brother. The arrangement is a little precarious because as small as the dog is, Tsunami is still just a little kid and not all that much bigger than it. Tsuna begins to look a little pale as she approaches on unsteady feet. She stops about three feet away from him and lets the wiggling Chihuahua down so it can snuffle its nose at Tsuna and open his eyes to the joys of teeny dog muzzles.

So yeah, okay, Tsunami is maybe a little over-excited about introducing her baby brother to foreign animals, but cute things have always been a chink in her armor. Case in point, her precious baby brother who she loves very much. His puffy cheeks are her kryptonite.

"Say hi to the puppy," she urges. Tsuna shuffles backwards inch by inch with wide eyes. The dog is clearly unhappy with the total lack of petting happening right now and bounds up to her little brother to lick him in the face with gleeful abandon. Tsunami really hopes Nana has a camera out right now because it is fucking adorable.

Then Tsuna bursts into tears and she is forced to concede that maybe, just maybe, dog petting may not be for everyone. It burns her deep to admit that. She's a little offended, honestly. Sighing hard, she picks the dog back up and trudges all the way back to the fence. Setting it down, she almost goes in for a tummy rub anyways. The steady backtrack of her brother wailing stays her hand.

The things she does for him, honestly.

"Go home, puppy," she commands, stance firm and finger pointing resolutely out to the other side of the gate. The Chihuahua's little ears flatten against its skull and she feels her resolve wavering, but Tsuna is clearly afraid of dogs and she has to prioritize her sibling over her potential new best friend. Even if the look on its little face is utterly heartbreaking and she feels like scum.

"Go on," she repeats, chest heavy. It finally obeys and she sighs again, mourning the death of her bright, dog-filled future.

When she turns back around to comfort her brother, he is on fire.

...

She blinks.

Nothing changes.

At first she thinks it's some kind of trick of the light, but then he cries even harder and it flares and-

Her head goes completely blank.

Her baby brother, in the ten seconds she has had her back turned, has spontaneously combusted into bright orange fire without moving a fucking inch. Her baby brother, who is named Tsunayoshi. Tsunayoshi is on fire. There is orange fire coming from Tsunayoshi.

Hysterical giggles are already welling up in her throat. Jackass is rushing out to scoop him up but Tsunami is too weak in the knees to do much of anything, much less help. She isn't even sure how she would help. Other than being incredibly distressed, Tsunayoshi doesn't seem to be in pain and that is weird to her because he is on fire.

Her breath catches. Jackass seems to be touching him just fine. There is no scorched grass where Tsuna sat. All signs point to Tsunayoshi not actually burning.

The signs can go fuck themselves because he is very clearly still on fire.

Tsunami is hit with the most intense sense of deja vu she has ever felt in either of her lives. Something about this sight is tripping all kinds of alarm bells in her head and it isn't just how her twin has suddenly lit up like he's the fucking sun.

What is it about this sight that's so familiar to her?

Her sweet, fashion-challenged grandpa who minutes ago successfully bought her affection with flattery approaches her adorable and lovable twin brother and pokes him in the forehead with two fingers. His fingers are also on fire, absolutely amazing. She feels like she has seen this before, but that's fucking insane. She would remember something like that.

...She remembers something like that.

It is on the tip of her tongue.

As soon as her grandfather's flaming hands make contact, all orange fire ceases to burn and Tsuna just wilts like the life has been sucked out of him.

'Oh,' Tsunami recalls distantly. She wonders if this is what out-of-body-experiences are like. 'I know where I've seen this.'

Fuck.

When she Slips, she doesn't even fight it.


AN: Dogs are my friends. If you have not pet a dog today, please reconsider your lifestyle.

i do have tumblr (witty-name-goes-here . tumblr . com) if any of you want to peek in and ask questions or anything.

Thanks to HeirOfChairs for proofreading/kicking my booty into writing gear every day. Meet me in the pit so I can kick your ass, its how I show affection

Review at your own leisure and thank you for reading!

(5/12/18 edit)