"You're being reckless," Nana says, blunt and unflinching, her fingers delicately linked under her chin and her eyes smoldering. Kensuke is seated beside her, the stark white of the bandages wrapped around his neck and arms standing out under the warm light.
Tsuna taps his finger on the table once and doesn't say anything.
A month ago, he would've been able to feel the texture under his fingertip and hear the echo resonate under his skin. Now, there's nothing but a dull, nearly silent tap that leaves him feeling incensed.
There is absolutely nothing, Tsuna thinks, and he wouldn't have thought he'd be this unsettled over losing something he didn't know he had in the first place, but he is, and it's infuriating, it's disgusting, he can't get the feeling out of the pores of his skin-
"I didn't think I'd have to repeat myself when I told you to be careful," she continues frostily, pointedly staring at the blood under his fingernails and the crimson that tinted his chapped lips, and Tsuna doesn't even notice, doesn't show any signs of recognition which is in and of itself alarming, "I thought you, of all people, would understand that best."
He taps again and again. A gradual crescendo, foreboding.
Shut up, shut up, shut up, he repeats, the voice indistinguishable from his and his mother's, the tug in his stomach telling of another bout of uncontrolled urge to eat and it's so familiar to him now after suffering through it the first few weeks with forced restraint, there's nothing, you don't understand, I can't see, I can't feel anything, I can't breathe without feeling like I'm swallowing dirt, shut up-
Kensuke shifts uneasily in his chair.
"The authorities have started noticing; you haven't been careful with hiding the evidence. They know where you took them and they have their suspicions about what could have happened and that's- that's dangerous, Tsu-kun. They could trace you back here and you wouldn't know, you hardly even noticed that you came home with blood on your-"
Tsuna clenches and unclenches his fingers. They're trembling, he notices, and he feels hot, feels like he's burning inside and out, every breath in and out an inferno in his lungs. Something- felt wrong, but he couldn't tell what-
"-clothes and your… Tsu-kun, are you listening?"
It feels different, numb and nothing else aside from the acidic gnawing of something in his stomach-
"Tsu-kun."
-for something cold, something warm, something sweet, something, something and he's forgotten what it tastes like but he has to remember, he could remember, if he only had another, another prey, another try, another bite, but that man is there, that man is in his head, that man-
"Tsunayoshi-"
-brown eyes, smiling and warm but unkind, the presence of eight others, eight flames, eight eyes, eight voices, and sin, the dissonance of sin and Family, Vongola, it sings, and he is the tenth, he is the torchbearer, he is the descendant of the Sky, and he-
"Shut up," he murmurs.
Nana stops smiling. The light over their heads flickers ominously.
"...What did you say?"
He looks up, meets her eyes, and sees that man smiling back at him.
"I said, shut up."
"Mind your tone, Tsunayoshi," she returns mildly as the table creaks dangerously under her elbows, the whites of her eyes slipping into coal black.
Tsuna lifts his chin, a predator to another, and murmurs, "Or what?"
Something moves and rips behind Nana, knocking over glasses and porcelain plates with one sweep. Tsuna leans forward and tries to do the same but everything in him seems to stutter and freeze, the cold mist of opaque ice clinging heavily to his skin.
The table breaks, the light shatters, and Kensuke feels something warm splatter against the side and front of his face.
A few seconds, seven heartbeats.
When Kensuke's eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees Tsuna dangling from the ceiling with a gargantuan black tail ripping through his stomach.
Nana looks up at him, her expression devoid of any emotion. The front of her face is dripping with red and at that very moment, Kensuke sees the Tsunayoshi he knew in their mother.
"Don't make me repeat myself," she says, her tone cold. She doesn't raise her voice, doesn't move as much as a millimeter from where she stands, but something about the way she speaks provokes fear in Kensuke in a way that Tsunayoshi never could. "I am still your mother and it isn't beneath me to eat you."
