Chapter Two : Welcome Back


Iemitsu leaves one, two days later, and then it's just Nana and Tsunayoshi and this thing the two of them went through together that has made strangers of them both. Nana keeps dropping things and Tsunayoshi has to go back to school, and she keeps looking at him with her eyes wide like she's become the protagonist of some kind of horror movie.

He knows that something is wrong but he doesn't know how to broach the subject, how to ask, how to - if it was too terrible, what he - if he'd -

(How should he ask if what is wrong is him?)

It's just - all this time, he's been messing things up to clucking tongues and Nana doing things for him, saying dame just like everyone else has done. Because he's clumsy, and awkward, and forgets things and easily tires and gets sick. It's easier to just sit down and let things happen around him. He can't do it in the first place, so why bother trying?

Of course if they're kidnapped, he's going to stay put and let Nana sing him lullabies. Those men were adults, and Tsunayoshi can't even handle his own peers. Of course he's going to let an adult handle it.

Only, it hadn't worked out that way, and then the Tsunayoshi who isn't good for anything suddenly did something awful and scary. He's just a kid, isn't he? But he did that, so obviously something is wrong with him. How should he ask if Nana noticed it, too?

And because he doesn't know how to ask, the house stays silent and still, but for the occasional crash of a dish breaking. Nana wakes him up in the morning and then later she calls him down when breakfast is ready, but they don't talk to one another. The words jam up in his throat. He says 'I'm off' when it leaves for school and comes back home and says 'I'm back' but he doesn't often get a reply.

Meals are quiet and awkward, Nana's shaking hands and his own restless thoughts, twisting and turning uneasily over the soft silence in his head that lingers in the wake of Iemitsu coming back from the dead. The nights are worse that that: the silent darkness of his room. He keeps touching his hands together, keeps touching his clothing. He keeps expecting wet and sticky. He keeps thinking he smells it.

It's a week after Iemitsu left that Tsunayoshi's dark and restless thoughts begin to crowd up and make his head noisy - like fish or birds returning to feeding grounds after a stranger has passed. They shove up and chase each other and chase his other thoughts with snapping teeth and make his heart hammer and his breath short. He needs- he needs- he needs-

("Get caught?" Mochida asks with a long, sharp smile. "Tsk. Making trouble for your family, aren't you? At least take care of yourself without weighing them down, Dame-Tsuna."

The way his hands had been numb, the startling spatter, a wetness he hadn't really felt until it began to cool on his skin. His racing thoughts, his racing heart, his breathing- his breathing- )

"I'm home," Tsunayoshi calls out like he always does, and listens for the reply, and doesn't get one. Still doesn't get one. Still- still-

(I tried, he thinks. For three days, he'd been unable to do anything, playing the part of some stupid, scared kid while Nana did her best all on her own-

Did he try? Did he really? Could that really be called trying when- if it was possible all along, then-

Dame-Tsuna.)

He comes home but the house is quiet. Shucks his shoes off, and hears the sink going in the kitchen, a distance rush of water. Tsunayoshi goes because he has to see. He has to be able to see her again, to see that Nana isn't crying, to see that her lip has healed.

It's been thirteen days since Tsunayoshi's hands went numb from the kickback of a gun (five men, six bullets. How had he been able to do that? How? How? He'd never held one but there had been one bullet left in the chamber and two dead and three dying men) and there's something licking at his insides, at his heart, and he has to see her.

Nana is fine. Of course she's fine - or as fine as she can be, standing at the sink and washing a cup. She seems distracted, but she's home and her bruises and lip have healed and she- and she-

(is he not welcome home anymore?)

The weight of Tsunayoshi's eyes must be heavy, standing there in the doorway and watching her to reassure himself that everything is fine (it's not fine), because she glances over. Nana glances over and she startles back a step and the cup in her hands falls to the floor and shatters like so many dishes before it.

"Ah!" he says, like he always does when this happens. "Don't move. I'll get the broom."

After all, Tsunayoshi is a clumsy child, so he's always dropping things and having to clean up after himself if he doesn't want Nana to fuss at him over it and call him dame again. He brings both broom and dustpan, and Nana herself has already picked up the largest pieces, and Tsunayoshi goes to sweep the rest up.

As he bends, and ducks his head, he sees the way she jerks back, and the awful cracked things in his chest jar and squeeze the breath from his lungs. It seems like the worst kind of confirmation, that even when he's trying to do something helpful, he's something to flinch back from. Nana has been flinching ever since then, and despite what she told those men- despite her holding her tongue about it-

(Ahh. It's bad.)

His own mother, who hadn't turned away even once no matter how dame he was, has stepped back from him a lot further than is really called for.

"I see. I really am the worst."

It takes a second for the words to fall on Tsunayoshi's ears, and he realizes immediately that he hasn't just thought that: he's said it out loud, and the dustpan falls from his fingers, and he looks up in shock at Nana.

His mother stares back at him with wide eyes and her hands cupped to her mouth, like she's horrified.

(His heart beats: there it is. There it is. You're frightening. No-good Tsuna. Look at the expression you've put on your mother. No good. You're no good. Ahh, ahh, someone like you is fated to be alone. Not even the mother you protected with your own hands can stand to be near you.)

He says: "Ah!" He almost brains himself with the broom he still has clutched in his hands, saying in a panic, "Sorry, that was- I mean- could-" Tsunayoshi fumbles for the dustpan and manages to send the ceramic shards on the floor flying in various directions. This is really dragging everything out unnecessarily. He's already- "F-forget I said anything-!"

Nana says, "Tsu-kun," and then her arms are closing around him, and they both stumble as he's brought to a sudden halt. She holds onto him, so, so tightly. "I'm sorry - I'm so sorry, Tsu-kun - I'm so, so sorry-"

(his cracking heart begins to -)

"I wasn't able to protect you!"

Tsunayoshi says, "What?"

His mother, holding onto him so hard and bent over his small frame, begins to cry. She's holding him too tightly, her fingernails digging into his skin again, and she cries in heaving, messy gasps; hot tears that sear the skin of his neck and make him feel branded. "I'm so sorry, Tsu-kun," she sobs, "your mama- your mama- she wasn't strong enough-!"

"Mom," he says, more a protest than anything else because he doesn't understand, Nana isn't making any sense at all.

"This is all my fault," she says, still sobbing like her heart is breaking, and "oh, honey, oh, baby, my Tsu-kun-" and "I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you!"

Tsunayoshi gives up on any of this making sense, and twists so that he can hug her back, at least. It's terrible and hateful listening to his mother sounding like that, and he thinks he'll do anything to make her stop. She sounds so awful. She holds him too tight, and smooths the hair at the back of his head down with a hard hand and presses her lips to the top of his head like he's just a kid when he-

"I'm going to protect you," Sawada Nana says, the oath hoarse with salt and fire.

-0-

Nana's vision of 'protecting' him seems to be to sign him up for various kinds of fighting classes? Or rather, the both of them. Over the next few weeks, they both test in and out of a few different classes of fighting - from basic self-defense to something more structured: kendo, and martial arts.

None of them really seem to stick, even though Nana finds a class of self-defense that is mostly 'escape' that works well for her. Tsunayoshi finds it acceptable, as well. He doesn't like how he feels in the wake of what happened. When all the blood spills. He hates it. He hates it.

He doesn't want to hurt people.

So he and Nana stick with the class that teaches them to be aware of their surroundings, to identify weak points and go for dirty hits, to twist and escape through any means necessary. And because Nana has that kind of way around her, as she's talking to the classes' teacher, she brings up that she wants something a little more defensive for her son. For him to have not just a way of escaping, but protecting himself.

"Is that so?" the teacher says, looking at Tsunayoshi thoughtfully. He flinches a bit under her searching gaze, touching his fingertips to his palms, and his palms to his pants leg - just to reassure himself that it's not tacky with blood, despite what he thinks sometimes- despite what he sees at night. "Huh," she says, then looks at Nana, and says, "For his temperament, have you considered kickboxing?"

They have not. It's not a naturally occurring thought, maybe, when people think of 'fighting' and 'defense'. Nana decides to give it a try anyway. Tsunayoshi isn't sure he likes it any better than any of the other forms of fighting that she's had him try, but it's better- easier, somehow, once they've covered the basics. Fighting hand-to-hand always involves so much eye contact.

Tsunayoshi finds that he's more comfortable letting his awareness open to the room, to his opponent's entire body. Somehow, when he's striking with his hands alone, it makes his focus too narrow -

(if his focus in that room with five men, a gun, and his mother had been narrow, then he would have-)

At first, it's overwhelming to try to track four limbs, any of which could strike at him, but by this time, he has some small background in fighting, so it's- not impossible? Still, he's not sure he likes it, he's not sure it's right for him. Hurting people is-

Yet, somehow, he doesn't quit the class, either.

-0-

One thing is certain: Tsunayoshi doesn't like fighting. If there was any question about that, the class confirms it. His teacher, a man this time by the name of Hayashi, seems tickled by Tsunayoshi's reluctance to go for a strike. Against someone with the pads meant for practice and warm-ups, Tsunayoshi feels no hesitation. That's what the pads are for, after all, right? It's safe.

In any of the careful, cautious spars that their teacher pits them against each other, Tsunayoshi tends to dodge about the ring, blocking attacks he can't dodge, and mostly trips and trips up his opponent until his opponent or his teacher give up. Sometimes they'll even listen to his 'I yield!' without trying to force the issue.

He doesn't like fighting, and he doesn't like hurting people, and he especially doesn't want to hurt someone bad enough that they bleed or anything. If he gets anymore blood on his hands-

It just seems like his instincts for fighting are uncommonly good. Just like when he'd gotten his hand on that gun. Probably the only reason the men in the police uniforms had decided to accept Nana's story about a disagreement was because- well. Who would believe a thirteen year old could shoot five men dead? Tsunayoshi can hardly believe it himself, and he- well. He hadn't felt like himself at the time, but he'd been the one to do it.

His instincts for fighting are good, but they make his head hurt. No, his head hurts all the times these days, in a particular way. Well - no. Saying 'it hurts' isn't exactly correct. It feels like it should hurt; it feels bright and hot, licking around his ribs, up his throat and at the back of his tongue, curling up behind his ears to sit hot and sharp at the center of his forehead. It itches, and crackles. It should hurt, it should.

Sometimes, when he relaxes too much in a spar - especially when he spars against Hayashi-sensei - those instincts rear up their head and a dreadful calm comes over him, and Tsunayoshi always, always, always lets the next strike against him knock him to the ground and he always cries out 'I yield!'

Hayashi-sensei pats him on the head and says, "You've got to trust yourself, Sawada-kun. You have the basics down, but every time you get serious and go to strike, you freeze up. You have to let the muscle memory we've built up take over."

Tsunayoshi says, as always, "No way!"

There's no way to explain it or explain himself, not in a way that Hayashi-sensei or anyone else could understand. Tsunayoshi hates to fight, hates people getting hurt, but he watches: he watches the clubs and he watches people in the ring and he watches the TV-

("A natural-born hitman you're not," Iemitsu said then, right after 'you did well.' There had been a strange light in those unfamiliar eyes and that unfamiliar face: strange and wild, like some kind of mad animal, like the ghastly glow of light reflected off a cat's eyes; orange rather than yellow or green. He'd smiled, but to Tsunayoshi, there had been too many teeth that looked too sharp. "But going to any length is just as good.")

Whatever it is, Tsunayoshi doesn't want anything to do with it. He can't trust that calm. 'Going to any length' isn't fine at all.

-0-

The instincts, on the other hand-

His instincts have gotten uncommonly good, though where he notices them first is when it comes to his defense classes. But it's not just those parts of his life that he realizes that they're interfering with. First of all, he's gotten a sort of sixth sense where Kyoya Hibari is concerned- or, well, everyone has a bit of a sixth sense where Hibari is concerned; anyone who doesn't either quickly develops one or gets bitten to death until they transfer out of Nami Middle.

Hibari Kyoya is terrifying for all sorts of reasons, even if Tsunayoshi's newly honed instincts say that Hibari is no threat to him. Not that Hibari won't hurt him, as Tsunayoshi discovers when after venturing too close and ending up out of breath on the ground. Later, a magnificent bruise comes in across his belly.

However, if he mostly stays out of the way and gives Hibari his space, Hibari doesn't seem to care overly much about his presence. It's probably far beneath his notice, given the way Hibari seems to think. His crew - the Namimori Middle's Disciplinary Committee - on the other hand, seem to object to his presence on moral grounds, or something, because at the barest hint of his presence, they seem to start snarling. It's like his stupid fluffy brown hair is a red flag or something.

Tsunayoshi isn't entirely sure himself what he's doing, tailing along behind Hibari and attracting the hostile attention of his crew. It makes Hayashi-sensei ask him if he's being bullied, and - well, yeah, Tsunayoshi gets bullied. Mochida is far from the only person to draw a connection between Tsunayoshi missing school for three days and a branch of the local troublemakers getting shut down, even if the newspaper didn't say anything about hostages. Whether or not Hibari still beats him for missing so much school without a doctor's excuse, people still make the connection and-

Maybe there had been something about the way Tsunayoshi had looked, coming back? There had been various assumptions about the cause of it, even though no one had any concrete information. His classmates hadn't been able to leave him alone, and so yes, Tsunayoshi had gotten bullied. He's never gotten more bullied, honestly, like somehow he's gotten some kind of target tattooed all over his skin. Even Yamamoto, a popular guy who slept through most of his classes to the point that Tsunayoshi hadn't thought Yamamoto knew he existed, had patted him over the head and said 'welcome back,' as if that weren't strange enough.

But the bullying is never the kind that involves putting bruises on his skin. No, this is just his… instincts driving him to get himself in trouble with Hibari's thugs. Even when he tries his hardest to ignore it, there's something about Hibari and the people around Hibari that Tsunayoshi just can't leave alone, himself.

It's probably the way Hibari beats people to the ground but never breaks skulls - attacks with brutal efficiency and terrible intent, but never actually… well. Kills anyone.

'Trust your instincts,' Tsunayoshi's teacher said, so Tsunayoshi looks to the person he thinks trusts their instincts the most, and he tries to learn. After all, everything about Hibari is order and control. Tsunayoshi thinks that if he can figure that out - if he can bend that ignition and burn to his own order and purpose, then maybe he can do some good with it.

Because, instinctively, Tsunayoshi can tell that this is just the beginning of it.

-0-


NOTES: obviously there are other guardian candidates around, but naturally a Sky in a vulnerable position like Tsunayoshi is, just having had his family attacked, would immediately go for the stupidly strong Cloud.

* Kidnapping children and holding them hostage is a privileged Namimori Cultural Practice. Generally, the kids of mafiosi and assassins are exempt from this for obvious reasons. Funny that a guy with strong ties to Vongola had his kid taken lmao.