Chapter 4

Natsu knows things about Xanxus she's not sure even he knows she knows about him. She knows that even though he doesn't like to appear to superstitious, he considers the tens in his name and birth date part of his destiny too. She knows he'd rather go without than settle for cut-price liquor. She knows what he's like when he's angry, when he's bored or brooding or pleased, and how to deal with him in each of those moods, what to say and what to do. When he's in a good mood he's as generous as convenience allows, but when he's angry it used to be that only she wouldn't duck and cover.

Natsu hadn't known that Uncle was the mafia. She'd thought that he was some company boss, and that Xanxus and their cousins were fighting for eventual control. Foreigners did things differently. She hadn't thought much of their cousins, hard distant men (mob bosses) who'd attack their teenage cousin. She realized now that Xanxus had turned her against them, but even then she still can't think of them well. Natsu won't think badly of the dead.

Natsu is training, training, because even when Hiabri wins tonight (and he will, because he must), it will only have been a very temporary reprieve from slaughter. Reborn doesn't trust Xanxus to let them go, and neither does she.

("He's right," Natsu tells them, after Lambo has been dropped off at the hospital. "Four- four years ago, when I lived in Italy, I stumbled on an assassination attempt. They were attacking him- one of them held a knife to my throat. He- he killed that man. He saved me."

Reborn is silent, and for once, unsmiling.

But Yamamoto and Gokudera are looking at Natsu, her small face twisted with bitterness. "I worshipped him," she says. "From that time til- til- the time I left, he was everything to me.

"He says I haven't changed," she says, laughs. "He hasn't changed, either. We're both still the same."

"So," says Yamamoto cautiously. Gokudera doesn't trust himself to speak. "He's- he's a good guy?"

"No," says Natsu. Reborn snorts. "No, he's not a good guy.")

Xanxus will pull something. Xanxus always has a trick or two up his sleeve.

.0.

The ninth falls out of Gola Mosca like a premature white worm, and Xanxus feels nothing. No triumph, no vindication, no relief or sorrow or joy.

The flame fades from Natsumi's head, and with it the blood from her face. "Uncle!" she screams. "Uncle!" her head whips around, and she shrieks at Xanxus. "You! How could you have done this? He's your father, you-"

"What have I done?" inquires Xanxus archly, coldly. Even she takes his side. "The one who dealt the finishing blow, Natsumi…was you."

The implications of this sink in around the battlefield, and mouths drop open with horror and disbelief. He's destroyed the credibility of the Outside Advisor and the new heir in one fell swoop. Now, when he wins the ring battle (as assuredly he must), there will be less than no hope for them. He never meant to allow even a single one of them to live.

The old man stirs. Xanxus has to admire his tenacity, like some fucking cockroach. Almost like Natsumi herself. He says his last words to her and Reborn, bestows a meaningless birthright- it should be his anyway, but dying old men hold no fears for Xanxus.

("You don't like to fight. I know that."

The picture forms in Natsu's mind of the dining room in the Vongola mansion, Xanxus and her and Uncle and Daddy, eating together, in-between listening to Natsu carry on a conversation in Italian. She hadn't been looking at Xanxus, but he had, and Natsu realizes with a jolt that she's forgotten what Xanxus looks like when he smiles without malice or mockery or cruelty beyond repair.)

And Natsumi lifts her eyes like ice to him, hard and cold. Gola Mosca's wreckage casts long orange tongues of flame over the remains of the cloud battlefield. She looks less like the girl he remembers than ever, sad and resolute and- can it be?- beautiful, the crushing weight of vengeance wiping childhood from her face for now. Everyone's staring and Natsumi doesn't care.

"Fight me," she nearly snarls at him, and the force of those words hits him like a slap in the face. "I won't let you be boss, Xanxus. I'll take that ring from you with my own hands."

Ice, ice, rage spilling over and hardening into resolve in Xanxus's heart. She's finally said it. Finally, she's challenging him for the boss position- even her. Everyone, everyone, fucking standing in his way- "I'll kill you," he promises her.

"You were always going to do that," says Natsu, and there's something in her tone that might be despair.

And that's it. That's all. He'll kill her, and her trash friends, and he'll be finished with that stupid little girl he'd picked up on a whim with eyes that might have been ice, finished with the love struck idiot he'd used and thrown away, and most of all finished with the fool who only cared about her friends and not enough about herself.

Finished with Sawada Natsumi, ending this once and for all.

.0.

Natsu plays with fire, and Natsu reaches for ice. What is the zero-point, this technique? Sometimes she feels like there's something about it, some trick she knows and doesn't know. Something she's missing. But Natsu strives towards it almost thinking, for she feels it in her bones.

Uncle has been sent for treatment, and though he'll live, it'll be in pain and sorrow. What happened four years ago, to raise Xanxus's rage against his father? The ninth had loved his son well- too well, perhaps. Why would Xanxus hurt him like that?

And- for the first time in four years, Natsu wonders why he'd hurt her.

She'd gone to his room that night because she'd never met a bad mood she couldn't coax out of him, and- because she'd loved him, with all the devotion and blindness of a lonely little girl.

Now she's not so little and she's not so lonely, but she still doesn't know what to feel about him. He's doen such terrible things. He'll do more if she doesn't stop him. She has to face him tonight.

Natsu still wants it to be okay. She still-

It has to turn out alright. All she can do is believe.

,0.

(Natsumi had liked kissing. She'd liked it when he pulled her onto his lap and she'd press herself to him, kiss back softly or sloppily around the edge of a smile, laughing and happy. He'd taught her how to use her tongue and kiss less like someone with exactly no experience, had found his fingers in her hair and left little marks where she would feel them on the arch of her neck.

He hadn't touched her much beyond that, because she'd been so young and so innocent, something he could leave untouched and savor at his leisure.

Taking her that night had been- had been a stupid mistake. That was all. He'd stolen the joy of having her from himself, because he'd lost control.

Xanxus does not make stupid mistakes, and Xanxus does not. Lose. Control.

-tbc-