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Iemitsu had the better part of a month to reflect on the very cold reception he'd gotten from his son. The son that denied him, called him a lying stranger—and at first he'd been confused, shocked, and more than a little thrown by it...

Surely he'd written? Surely he'd talked to his Tuna-fishie on the phone within at least the last few months? Surely, surely he hadn't abandoned him so completely?

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't think of a time where he'd actually done so. He'd talked to his wife, surely—and picking through his phone records where his memory failed, he had talked to his wife. The year before, once, and once two more years before that. He couldn't bring himself to look further back, because that—that was a failure. He hadn't been able to bring himself to face her, when she was in Italy (and how had she gotten there? There were no plane tickets, no passports, and no record of her leaving Japan) with children that a glance at security tapes showed clearly were his son's, not his wife's.

(And that son hadn't even batted and eye when one of the guests tried to shoot him, the bullet melting against a pinpoint barrier of Sky that flared into being just as the trigger was pulled. That son—he wasn't a clumsy child anymore. Wasn't the walking disaster school reports and varying spies had claimed.)

Tsuna had asked for a meeting, and Lal had firmly instructed him not to treat her Sky—his son—familiarly, because it wouldn't be appreciated. Tsuna had not denied blood-relation, but had denied kinship, and Lal was probably right.

... the real question, then, was 'why the meeting?' If Tsuna had no need of him—and he didn't, he didn't, Iemitsu could see that even if only on security tapes; Tsuna was the one caring for so many, a father to three children who called him 'brother' and obviously looked to by the others who called him their Sky (and Reborn had been shock enough, but Xanxus? Fon, Skull? Lal returning days after she had gone to meet him, her Pacifier cracked down the middle and a steady blue, her Flames resonating as mostly Rain and so clearly with the calm of one bonded to a Sky?) ... no, Tsuna had no need of a father, and even if he had, Iemitsu wouldn't be the one he looked to. He'd failed too badly for that.

(And how hadn't he even realized he was failing? How had he let that much time pass him by? Eight years without a visit? No letters? Two calls in the last three, and both less than ten minutes and during times Tsuna would have been in school? No wonder his son hadn't known his face or his voice.)

He went to the meeting, heavy-hearted and cautious, and the sheer expansive weight of his son's Flames made him feel small, and his son had his younger Storm at his side.

Iemitsu swallowed back his pride, his nearly overwhelming desire to brush off the missed years as though they hadn't happened—and, to him, it didn't feel as if they had, for all the evidence said otherwise—and treated his son like he would Timoteo in a bad mood; a higher-ranked allied Boss who was not to be trifled with.

(He was all but ordered to talk to his wife, who was back in Japan with those three children bare minutes after the last time they'd been seen in the Vongola mansion, and still Iemitsu had no idea how, and when he didn't protest, didn't try anything—Tsuna's chill towards him warmed, just a little.

Maybe he could still fix this, somehow.)

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Iemitsu is a bad father and a bad husband, and it's canon at least to the anime that Tsuna didn't recognize him the first time he showed up in Japan. There's a little flashback-scene where he'd leaving while Tsuna is not in sight (it's not specifically stated that it's the same visit as the one where Tsuna's Flames are sealed when he's five, but nor are there any scenes of Iemitsu with Tsuna between the ages of five and fourteen) and he tells Nana to tell Tsuna he's gone 'to become a star'. Which. Sounds a lot like a nice way of telling a child that someone's died, really.

He's also clearly a ditz about some things, but... he does seem to love his wife. He also ranges between loving and having some kind of weird dominance issues with Tsuna, and he seems to be in overall complete denial over or simply oblivious to what a failure he's been to his family. Nevertheless, I imagine if someone smacked him hard enough with reality, and Tsuna's Flames weren't sealed enough to have him on par, power-wise, with Iemitsu instead of as much stronger as he is portrayed as being in the end (thus killing whatever instinct issues might be involved around the dominance displays), he might actually think about what he's done.

And if he loves his family as much as his ditz-moments imply, he'd want to make it better. Whether or not he succeeded or fell straight back into old habits is a different question entirely.

Also, I have a friend with literally no sense of relative time. Things marked out on a schedule aren't too hard for her to keep track of in a future-sense, often without even being written, but she's mildly autistic and with an eidetic memory, which adds up to her not being able to tell whether something happened two days or two years ago without actively counting back calendar-style. Since there are apparently few situations that call to mind a need to know when something happened instead of that it happened, she tends to drop out of contact indefinitely unless one sets up an actual contact-schedule or is the one to do the calling. I'm using that as a reason to give Iemitsu something akin to the benefit of the doubt.

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