There is a yellow bird.
It's small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, small enough to be mistaken for a ball of yarn or a pile of yellow feathers, but he smells before he sees the blood and his stomach lurches.
Hunger.
He stares, wide-eyed, at the bird that was weakly breathing through its tiny beak, the imperceptible rise of its chest tearing at Tsuna's heart.
This isn't prey. This isn't food.
This bird has done nothing wrong. But it's dying, it's dying-
His blood visibly boils under his skin, aching to pierce, aching to dig through meat and flesh, to cut into skin like one would cut through steak, and he doesn't want to, he doesn't want to eat, and in his desperation, he bites through his left arm.
It isn't enough. It isn't enough, still hungry, just eat it, it's dead anyway-
Tsuna shakes his head, desperately fighting against his body's urge to squeeze the tiny animal inside his hand, to watch its insides explode and drip down his fingers so he can slurp and chew and-
"No," he vehemently spits. "No, it did nothing wrong. It did nothing wrong. Mama taught me better than this."
And she did. She will be disappointed in him if she feeds on one that did no wrong, one that isn't prey.
Tsuna fights against his instincts, fights against the hunger in his core. His skin tears at the blatant resistance, the rush of thick, dark blood deafening in his ears. His body is destroying itself to break him, his will, he knows that, his mother told him so, but he will not harm. He will not lay his hand on anything that did nothing wrong.
"Tsu-kun…? What-"
He looks at her, defiance burning hot in his red and amber eyes. The veins around his eyes have violently ripped through the skin, running down the side of his face and his neck, throbbing with a scorching pain she knew well from when she was young and stubborn like her son, his entire body shuddering with the suppression of need-
"Please," he croaks, blood dripping down his nose and ears. He has bitten through his arm, his hand missing more fingers than it held, the muscles of his limb thrashing wildly. Someone as young as him shouldn't survive from cannibalizing himself but through sheer will, he holds, stands his ground, and says, "Please help him."
There, in his one unharmed hand, was a tiny, yellow bird.
Barely alive, she senses, but alive and tears well up at the corners of her eyes as she helps the little one heal.
("Tsu-kun?" she whispers later as they watch the little bird recover its strength, her voice wavering.
Tsuna, faint and weak and feverish from self-cannibalism, looks at her through one brown eye.
"I'm proud of you," she tells him sincerely. "I'm very, very proud of you."
He smiles warmly, and that's when Nana knows her son will not be like her mother who forcefully fed off of her when she doesn't do something right or like his clueless father who foolishly believed that Nana would never know of what she's keeping from her.
Iemitsu Sawada reeked of blood and he is her husband.
But above that, he is prey with the blood of a predator under his paper-thin skin.)
