Target 25: She Knows Everything
Nana set a kettle to boil as Iemitsu twiddled his thumbs at the kitchen table.
"So. How's Tsuna doing in his classes?" Iemitsu said.
"He's doing very well!" she said cheerfully. "He's applying himself so much more, he's been studying hard for a big test in science coming up soon, and he's showing interest in what he's learning!"
"Really? Huh."
"I, I am a little concerned for him, though," she said quietly. Iemitsu leaned forward in his seat. "Lately, he's just seemed so stressed, beyond what a teenage boy should be feeling. But he spends time with his friends, budgets his time, gets plenty of sleep, is doing well in class, but..."
"Well," he said as he stretched. He recalled what Reborn said about Tsuna being anxious ever since the incident with the Vindice and Fuuta. "Maybe it's girl trouble? Seems like a lot are after my Tsuna!"
Nana wrinkled her nose. "Hm. I don't think so. He's been spending more time around the girls in the neighborhood, but the more I see him around Kyouko-chan the more I think it was just a schoolboy crush. The rest, he just doesn't seem very interested."
"Huh." He tried to think of another excuse. "Is he eating right? I know I get pretty bad when I-"
"Iemitsu," she said, in an abnormally firm tone of voice. "I've been noticing other things with my son, recently. He seemed so close to Enma-kun but as far as I can tell they haven't spoken a word to each other in months. He's got these frown lines between his eyebrows. There will be times when he is with his friends, and I pass by the room and all of the talking just stops, completely. He's always getting hurt, and it's different from clumsiness and what he got from P.E., it's broken bones and concussions and nasty bruising. And it's not just him, all of his friends are getting hurt like that, too."
She came nearer to him and gently pressed her hand against the back of his shoulder. He winced for the bruising down his back, obtained after being thrown into a brick wall. She must have seen them while he was asleep on the couch earlier.
"A lot of the same kinds of injuries you get, actually. It was an oil pipeline, right?"
There was a sinking feeling in his stomach. "Uh. Think I said construction?" It was the same as an ordinary husband calling himself a paper-pusher, all Nana really knew was that he travelled a lot and worked on-site.
"He lies to me about what he's doing," she continued, "Trying to hide it or soothe a guilty conscience by being vague and evasive. But he never smiles while he does it, you know? Not like you."
"Nana, please, let's just go back to-"
"Don't!" she cried, and then softly, "Don't. I know you think I'm stupid, Iemitsu. I know that you tell me absurd things because you think I would't understand or wouldn't approve, and I've been fine with that, but not when my son is getting hurt because his father is getting him involved with whatever it is!"
Maybe bringing Tsuna to Italy would have more advantages than he realized. He stood up slowly, as though with much effort, supporting himself with one hand on the back of the chair. "Alright, Nana, alright. I won't involve him anymore."
"No, I want to know what's going on," she said sternly. "Because until I do, I can't-" Her voice broke, and she sounded on the verge of tears. "I can't trust you, Iemitsu. If you can't explain to me, and I'll know if you're lying we've been married for too long to not be able to tell, if you can't explain, then..."
"What, you'll kick me out of my house?" he said quietly. Nana heard him and took a step back from him, and he felt a twist in his gut at her fear.
"Please," she said weakly.
He closed his eyes, and took a seat on the counter. "Alright. You win. I'll tell you." He was running through plans in his head. He would need to pull some strings to get a student with test scores as abysmal as Tsuna's into St. Gestus High School in Milan, but Tsuna could start there as soon as January.
She did not sit, but she did look at him.
"You know the business I have told you I work for, Vocentro? That is a real company, and it is the business which gives me a paycheck. But I'm not a construction worker or any such; I'm the chief executive for a law firm on retainer to Vocentro."
"A lawyer?"
"I am not, but I have advocates working for me. This is not a dangerous job. However, Vocentro is the public face for another organization. It is called the Vongola, and it is one of the most powerful crime families in all of Europe."
Nana listened to everything he had to say, feeling sick and wishing she had been wrong, that she had been reading too much into it or she was paranoid and her son was fine and her husband wasn't putting her son in danger.
When Tsuna returned to the house, his father was sitting on the stoop, smoking with a stone-faced expression. Tsuna looked uncomfortable and guilty as he entered and approached his mother. She sat at the dining room table, her expression haunted. Her eyes looked strained, and she looked tired. He took the nearly-full cup of lukewarm tea from her and dumped it out in the sink.
"Would you like some fresh tea, mom?"
"Oh, my baby boy!" she cried as she leapt up and threw her arms around him, sobbing, when did he get so tall when did he get so serious? She had been so pleased that he was trying that she had turned a blind eye to everything wrong, to the bruises and the lies and she felt sick with herself. "I'm sorry, I'm s-so, s-" She hiccuped.
"Mom, I'm okay," Tsuna said hesitantly. "Really, you don't have to apologize. I'm the one who's been lying to you. They told me it'd be safer if you weren't involved, but...I shoulda been able to think for myself."
She shook her head and released her death grip on her son only with great reluctance. "Tsu-kun, you are fifteen years old. You should not have to worry about criminals, you should be having fun with your friends, living, not, not all of this." She wiped at her eyes. "You are my young man, my son, none of this should have happened."
"I'm sorry, mom."
"You and your friends...your friends," she said, as something seemed to dawn on her. "They've been pulled into this, too?"
Tsuna felt ill. "Gokudera-kun was already working as a hitman, and Lambo, the group that had custody of him was a family called the Bovino, but, yeah. I'm dragging everyone else down with me."
"Oh, Tsu-kun."
"It's almost funny. I wouldn't have made any friends if Reborn never showed up, but they keep on getting hurt cause they know me. Gokudera-kun keeps putting himself in danger cause he thinks he owes me his life, and Fuuta ran away and almost got kidnapped by yakuza cause he was afraid I would hurt him, and Lambo, when he got hurt last year? Lambo..." The memory of Lambo struggling to breathe floated to the top of his mind. The Death Heater. One after another, he saw in his mind's eye Gokudera and Bianchi and Hibari being possessed and their bodies being pushed to the breaking point, Chrome's abdomen collapsing and her crying out for help, Sasagawa falling to his knees and dragged away in chains, Yamamoto laying in a hospital bed comatose and paralyzed for pride and sin.
They just keep getting hurt cause of me, he thought, as his mother hugged him again.
There were details left out and questions left unanswered for the sake of a better story. That's what Tsuna figured, anyways.
"You said, it started with Reborn-kun?"
"Uh, uh-huh. I don't know how much I should tell you, cause, it's not really my story to tell? But, Reborn isn't really a kid, mom. There's, um, the world is really, really weird, and he's been a part of the underworld for a long time, and he's worked for the Ninth for a long time, so the Ninth sent him to teach me how to become a mafia boss."
Nana had to sit down again to process this. "Everyone in my house is a mobster except for me."
"Well no," Tsuna said, and he jumped when his mother looked up at him. "I mean, not everyone. Fuuta is an esper, he can make perfect rankings of anything, and it's criminals who want his rankings so he asked me to protect him. I-pin, she's technically in training to become an assassin, but I think she just wants to grow up a civilian, yaknow? Go to school here in Japan. And kinda the same for Lambo, he just wants to play games with everyone and eat sweets, y'know? He loves you so much, mom."
Nana smiled softly "I know. Lambo-kun, and Fuuta-kun and I-pin-chan, oh, everyone, and your friends, too, you all bring so much light into my life." She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out an envelope, which she showed to Tsuna. "The application for the adoption went through. It's why your father is in town, we're going up to Tokyo next week to finalize the paperwork."
"That's great, mom!" The Ninth certainly hadn't lied about the speed of it. "He's gonna be really happy when he hears."
She replaced the envelope in her pocket. "Alright." She took a deep breath stood up, and clapped her hands together. "Alright, back to what I'm good at! I need to speak to everyone, I'll go get dinner going, is your father still outside?"
Getting back to something familiar and finding comfort in it. Tsuna went to the front door and looked outside. "Nah, he's gone."
"Okay! Then that's seven as usual, could you make up seven place settings, Tsu-kun? And tell everyone dinner will be ready in half an hour."
Bianchi had heard the entirety of the argument, and wanted to hit Iemitsu with her worst poison cooking for daring to threaten his wife. Calling it his house when he was never there; of course, he would never force Nana out of the house, for all his faults he did love her, and he thought that he loved his son, but a threat he would never carry out was a threat all the same. And Nana did love him, even now.
Bianchi also knew better than to so much as look at Iemitsu funny, after all the stories about the Young Lion that she had heard. She wouldn't stand a chance. He probably wouldn't kill her, it would risk alienating her brother. And he didn't kill when he had other options. Iemitsu and Tsuna were strangely alike in that way, they both turned former enemies into allies, but the difference was that Tsuna showed empathy to his foes and attracted allies with his charisma, while Iemitsu generally relied on blackmail. Take Rokudou Mukuro; she could imagine how it went, being asked to represent Tsuna during the Ring Battles in exchange for the freedom of his subordinates. Sawada Iemitsu killed only if he was ordered to, or if that person was completely uncontrollable.
Nana had a few new rules, once everyone was around for dinner. No more lies from anyone. A long, rambling, painful few sentences that summed up to a prohibition on taking contracts on somebody's life while one lived in her house. You had to be at least 18 to drink alcohol, and you had to be at least four feet tall to consume caffeine.
Tsuna was practically cackling, Reborn looked like he wanted to say something crude, and Nana informed them that she would be very disappointed if anyone helped the kids get around the prohibition. "I do not care when anyone was actually born," Nana said, in a statement that was absolutely directed at Reborn, "but caffeine will stunt your growth. Am I understood? Good.
"The last thing I have to say is this: all of you will always be able to find a home here. All of you are family to me." She clapped her hands together. "Okay, then! Let's eat!"
Cultural Notes: Gestus is the name of one of the thieves who was crucified next to Christ. Dismas was the name given to the repentant thief, who confessed and was raised up to heaven, and Gestus is the name of the unrepentant thief. As you may guess, Gestus is never actually referred to as a Saint.
A/N: This is about the fifth version of this chapter that I have written. Originally, there was going to be a scene with Nana asking how her son was able to fight against such powerful people, but it didn't fit anywhere in the final version. So, I'll tell you now that in my own little world, Nana has a Sky Flame. Sun, Lightning, Storm, Mist, Cloud, Rain, she understands and accepts all of them.
Thanks for sticking with me, guys. Waning interest, engineering school, procrastination. It's, uh, been a messy time, but I do still want to finish Flame of Day. So, until next time.