She watches warily as Sawada gets poked and prodded.
She wasn't sure what to expect when she'd accepted Sawada's protection, but she certainly hadn't thought she'd be settled in a nice room in a residential area, told she was free to wander around and that they'd be enrolling her in school tomorrow.
She'd stared blankly at the closed door of "her" room for a full thirty minutes before she decided to try pushing boundaries.
Most of the kids who'd been with Sawada earlier seemed to be downstairs, but when she'd wandered into Sawada's room to see some man measuring Sawada frantically and snapping out questions in a foreign language, neither Sawada nor the little kid answering the man's questions had objected.
Sawada had even told her, when she settled cautiously a bit away from him on his bed, that the man - Giannichi - was trying to figure out what weapon to make for him.
And now she's being allowed to just sit there and stare at Sawada as the measuring continues.
Sawada's still calling.
She'd forgotten to get that solved for herself, distracted by the hole in his head.
She's honestly still distracted by the hole in his head, but apparently even horror gets old with over-exposure, and while the hole in Sawada's head is still very distracting, his calling is rapidly becoming the more pressing issue in her opinion because she is still very tired and she really want to sleep without the nagging sensation of doom if she doesn't respond to the call for help.
It's worse, because she can see that the hole in Sawada's head is probably the whole reason he's calling out, because everything else about his head seems as telepathically active as a particularly dumb bowl of highly purified salt.
She hadn't been lying when she told the Hibaris that she couldn't solve the problem of Sawada having a hole in his head. She doesn't have any idea where she would even start fixing something like this, let alone whether that's something she can do.
A couple hours in close proximity to that crushing sadness and loss have her scrambling to come up with something, anything to make him stop.
If I have to wrap myself around him and be the fucking shield that stops him from calling out I will, she thinks in despair. If he's good enough to keep from getting possessed like that, he's good enough to to keep his mind his own if something like that happens, and at least if she were a part of his mental shields she could build ones between them that won't - she winces with the rolling wave of bittersweet - immediately fall. He should be able to match his own strength.
She pauses, thoughts ticking over in the back of her mind.
They were concerned this would happen. I don't have the talent, so they taught me the hard way. And in the end I survived them.
Nooooooo.
No.
She considers how difficult it is for people without the talent to defend from mental invasions without preparation at a split second's notice. (Her fingers twitch. They're still a little numb from her earlier attempt.)
She stares at the hole in Sawada's skull and considers her desire to wrap herself around him. She considers how desperate she is that she'd consider it, when it's so much almost a permanent solution. The kind of defenses she's considering are hard to take down. No matter how far she went, she'd always be between layers of shields.
She considers how desperate she would have to be to teach someone without talent how to defend themself.
She considers that she would want to know they were safe. If she could teach them to shield, she could probably teach them to broadcast-
They taught me the hard way, he'd said, and she thinks to wonder - the hard way for who? Him? Or his teachers?
Sawada is broadcasting. Sawada's always broadcasting, it's what she'd used to triangulate him here. She doesn't understand how he can manage it - doesn't understand how that works. He's obviously good at keeping his mind in his head, otherwise it would have leaked out the hole. But that should have meant he wasn't broadcasting.
"Why are you calling?" she demands, pulling Sawada's attention away from Giannichi and the kid as they talk. "What are you always calling?"
Sawada looks tired. "Habit, I guess," he says. "I'm used to having someone on the other side-"
Amd she pounces on the loneliness, catching it and reflecting it helplessly back, and she watches in fascination at the defenses that light up in response to protect him and at the absences where it is only his talentless training that protects him, and she remembers something else -
The way everyone had reacted when she mentioned possession. The quiet We checked, from the elder Hibari.
"You aren't possessed now, but you were once," she says. "And they stayed, and they cared for you, and they're gone."
She can see the shape of it in Sawada's mind - the palace of defenses, too big for one person, almost waiting for someone to settle in.
The kid has gone silent, black eyes staring soulless at her.
"Yes," Sawada says. "They are gone."
Giannichi says something, and Sawada glances up, then replies in the same language.
He stands up, dusting off his pants automatically, then holds out a hand to her. "Come on, let's go downstairs. Giannichi's done with me for now and needs some time to think."
She follows Sawada out of his room and down the stairs. She tugs him to a stop in the hallway at the bottom. She's remembering his defenses - glittering, beautiful protections - and thinking desperation and she says, "I think I can fix it now. Will you let me fix it?"
"Chrome," Sawada says, calling her by the name she'd given him and sounding so fond. "There's only one way to fix it, and I don't think you're ready yet. I'll try to be quieter tonight."
Then he turns and continues down the hallway, tugging her lightly behind him.
And she notices - he didn't say that he wasn't ready. Only that she wasn't.
()
"Now that Tsuna's gone," Reborn says, "How is the Family doing? I know Shamal missed something while he was busy helping with the results of . . . Timoteo's rampage."
"The Varia are pissed, and they're making no secret of it," Giannichi says, staring contemplatively down at his notes. "Everyone could tell that there was some reason beyond Xanxus - they became abruptly even less cooperative, and no one's seen any of the mooks for even the easier jobs the Varia take specifically for the mooks. No one knew the cause, but," Giannichi pauses to look up at Reborn. "I saw that you've got one of their mooks. I doubt you sent for one, and the Varia shouldn't have known you're here. Then Timoteo or Iemitsu . . ."
"Timoteo."
"For his heir?"
"The summary said testing. The details said assassination."
"For his heir."
"It was. Luckily, no one else wanted that. Beelzebub took it as an opportunity to get Macbeth's brother safe. Well. Relatively. And the safehouse she gave was that one I'd set up Bovino in, so there wasn't any chance of a mistake."
"Beelzebub's alright? No one's seen her since her father died."
"Cristiana, Mint, and Macbeth have all talked with her."
"Good. Then, Sveva."
"Has she talked with you? Macbeth said something was happening."
"I believe that she found Xanxus frozen in zero point ice and has been working to thaw him."
". . . Xan- . . . and she didn't tell the Varia?"
"The only reason I know is because she asked me some very pointed questions, and then had a Mist bind me not to repeat them."
Reborn sighs. "Maybe we should have just let women rule the family. Ottava certainly showed that it works, and all of the men have been absolute messes."
"Do you want to try talking the Vaspa family into giving up their entire way of life?" Giannichi asks archly. "Sveva was never going to be a member of the Vongola family. And what about Timoteo's generation?"
"There was Eliana Vongola. She only died last year."
"Didn't that family branch split off . . . back with Quarto and Quinto? Given what happened with Quinto, do you really think the family would have let that happen?"
"Given that that's basically what happened with Quarto and Quinto, I see no reason why not. It's all Vongola blood."
Giannichi just looks at Reborn.
"No, I know." Reborn sighs. "It never would have happened. Not after Ottava had children."