what we fought for - part 2
“Campania has the highest murder rate in Italy, among the highest in the world.”
* * *
Reborn was right. Gokudera wouldn’t go.
“Tenth, if you can’t trust me, then you need to find somebody else to be your right hand.”
As if Tsuna didn’t know full well that Gokudera would blow any would-be replacement sky-high. Also, Gokudera was misunderstanding. He was completely misunderstanding.
“No, Gokudera, it’s not that I don’t trust you! It’s just-”
“You’re trying to protect me. I know.” Gokudera smiled at him, but it wasn’t a happy smile. Not the smile Tsuna was used to. It bothered him more than he would have expected. “You don’t trust me to be able to take care of myself. That makes me a burden on you, Tenth.”
“It doesn’t,” Tsuna insisted.
“It does,” Gokudera cut in.
“No!” Tsuna was at least as surprised as Gokudera by the outburst, but he ploughed on into the silence. “No, you’re not a burden, this is just one thing, you don’t-I don’t mind. I mean, if I can’t protect you from something like this-if you guys don’t need me, then-then why am I here at all? I know you like it best when you’re doing things for me, but…can’t I do things for you?”
Gokudera burst out laughing. Tsuna stood blinking at him. What?
“Tenth, you really-no, I know you don’t know, but-look, I’m never going to be able to pay you back for what you’ve already done for me. For us! Trust me, none of us would last a month without you around, not even Hibari. So you don’t owe me anything. But if you’re really determined to do something for me anyway…you could let me stay with you.”
You’ll learn, Reborn had said.
“I don’t want anything to happen to any of you because of me,” Tsuna argued, not sure what he was trying to say at this point.
“Yeah, I know.” Gokudera grinned, it was surreal. “If it makes you feel better, most of us would be dead by now if we hadn’t met you. You’re good for us. Don’t worry so much.”
Gokudera was telling Tsuna to worry less. It was a world gone wrong.
* * *
“Around here, opportunities don’t happen; you have to rip them out with your teeth, buy them, or dig for them. They have to be here, somewhere, somehow. Nothing is left to chance.”
* * *
Six years later, and Tsuna knows better than anyone but Haru where it is the money comes from. He knows that Gokudera will never leave. He knows Italy’s rules. He even knows why Reborn trained him to kill before introducing him to business.
He’s spent most of these six years frantically trying to run a criminal empire without crossing the line between illegal and evil-mainly with the help of Haru, Shouichi, and Hana, everybody else being either ignorant of money or unclear on the point.
After the crashing disaster of Ercolano, he’s also tried to stay away from the other families. He doesn’t want any vendettas. The Varia are getting bored and annoyed, but other than that impending problem, he’d thought he was doing well. He thought he’d kept the family out of trouble.
Pride goeth, etc.
“The Grazianos are up to something,” Gokudera says. He’s become the designated person to keep Tsuna up to speed. He’s had to. Apparently that car-burning story got around, and they now live surreal lives in which people are too afraid of Tsuna to talk to him at all, but they’re perfectly comfortable pouring out sob stories to Gokudera.
It breaks Tsuna’s brain a little more every time he lets himself think about it.
“Up to something?” he asks.
“Yeah. Ever since the Cava family got wiped out, they’ve been a pain in the ass. The Grazianos and the Cavas used to keep busy killing each other off, but now the Grazianos don’t have enough to do. Their girls are starting to show up in the weirdest places, not their territory. In Naples. In Ercolano. At our construction sites, and we’re in trouble if they get a look at the Mosca. I definitely do not want any Grazianos making their own giant robots. And Spanner’s such a spaz, all a girl’d have to do would be to bat her eyelashes at him and give him a shiny engineering problem, and we’d all be fucked.”
In Tsuna’s experience, it doesn’t take eyelash batting. It doesn’t even take a girl. “Luckily, Spanner doesn’t like to leave Japan. Ercolano?”
“Yeah. The Birra family.”
The Birra family, yes. Tsuna remembers them. He’s pretty sure some of them tried to kill him one time a few years ago, and he’d retaliated with fire and death. “How likely is it…?”
“Mafiosi tend to have long memories, Tenth.”
Tsuna runs his hands through his hair and forces himself not to whimper. “All we can do right now is watch.”
“And prepare,” Gokudera says, and Tsuna nods agreement. They sit in mutual weary silence for a while.
“How did you learn all of this anyway, Gokudera?” It’s a question Tsuna always asks. The answer is usually horrifying.
“I made Lambo follow Giannini to Naples. See what was what. You know you can’t ask Giannini to pay attention to anything but machines.”
Other times, though, the answer is kind of hilarious. Like now. Tsuna puts a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. “Have you submitted your expense report for that yet?”
“Why do we even have expense reports?” Gokudera explodes, which means the answer to the question is no. “Who ever heard of hitmen writing expense reports? This is bullshit. No offense to you, Tenth, of course, but that woman-”
“She knows you’re back,” Tsuna points out. “She’ll find you sooner or later. And when she does…”
“Tenth.”
“She makes me write reports, too, Gokudera. She wants to know why we can’t all be more like Hibari-san.” Who is wonderful about expense reports, and terrible about reports containing any actual information.
“There you are,” comes the voice of the woman in question from the doorway.
“Good morning, Haru,” Tsuna says.
“Good morning, Tsuna-san! And you. You and I need to have a talk.”
People often tell Tsuna that the whole family shouldn’t feel free to wander in and out of his office. He always smiles and nods and ignores them. Reborn has actually managed to fool all these people into believing Tsuna’s something other than a giant spaz with an expensive desk. Amazing.
“I hear,” Haru goes on, arms folded disapprovingly, “that Lambo flew first class to Naples. How generous of you, Gokudera-san. Do you think money grows on trees?”
“He had to go Alitalia,” Gokudera says defensively. “He might’ve crashed and died-you know what they’re like. I thought he might as well go down with style.”
“Alitalia is perfectly safe. It has better accident rates than Japan Airlines.”
“Why do you know that?”
“It’s my job.”
“Then why does everybody always clap when the plane lands?”
“Because Italians are insane, Gokudera-san. Know thyself. More to the point, that first class ticket? It’s coming out of your pocket.”
“Bullshit!”
“Don’t you swear at me! What kind of irresponsible right hand are you, anyway, blowing that kind of money?”
“I’m the military right hand,” Gokudera says. “You’re the economic right hand.”
Haru’s mouth, already preparing for the next volley of abuse, drops open, and she blushes. She’s apparently never going to outgrow the blushing.
Tsuna recognizes Gokudera’s technique from the Yamamoto Takeshi School of Staying out of Trouble. Life became decidedly more hilarious once Yamamoto and Gokudera really started working together.
Unfortunately for Gokudera, Haru is familiar with this technique, too.
“Don’t think you can flatter your way out of this!” she shouts, thinking better of the blush. “You’re paying the difference between first class and economy. No weaseling.”
“You wanted to cram him with his stork legs in coach?” Gokudera demands. “I’m not paying more than half the difference.”
“You’re paying all of it.”
“Sixty percent.”
“All.”
“Seventy percent.”
“I can keep this up all day, Mr. Irresponsible Right Hand.”
“You’ll get wrinkles young from being such a goddamn pinch-penny.”
“Am I interrupting something?” Dino asks with a smile, lounging against the doorframe.
The room falls silent. Dino is supposed to be in Italy. If he’s in Japan instead, something has gone wrong.
“Not at all, Dino-san,” Haru says, recovering first. “I’ll just write you a bill, Gokudera-san.”
Gokudera snorts, and waves her imperiously away. She scowls at him, but turns to leave without comment. Tsuna notes the bump in the middle of her back under her jacket, caused by the annoyingly short-barreled 357 Night Guard she insists on carrying even though it’s inaccurate at anything over five feet and kicks like a mule.
Tsuna’s going to have to ask Bianchi if she’ll share her tailor. There’s not a lot of point to Haru carrying concealed if it isn’t actually concealed. And maybe it’s time to try to talk her into that .32 Beretta Tomcat again. He rubs at his temple and writes himself a note.
“She’s making us rich, Tenth,” Gokudera mutters with reluctant admiration once he’s sure she’s out of earshot. “She’s a real Dante Passarelli.”
“Dante Passarelli’s family says he was completely legit,” Dino points out.
Gokudera rolls his eyes. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent, as far as Gokudera’s concerned.
“What brings you to Japan, Dino?” Tsuna asks.
Dino sighs and rubs his hands together. Tsuna isn’t used to seeing Dino look nervous. Reborn’s students, Tsuna knows, tend to have the nervousness burned right out of them.
He doesn’t really want to hear what Dino has to say.
“Bad news, little brother.”
* * *
“In the Camorra system murder is necessary; it’s like depositing money in the bank, purchasing a franchise, or breaking off a friendship. It’s no different from the rest of your life, part of the daily routine of every Camorra family, boss, and affiliate.”
* * *
The bad news is, probably unsurprisingly, about the Birra family. The Birras, the Grazianos, the end of Southern Italy as they know it.
Haha. If only.
It looks like another power struggle, another Camorra war. Windows shot out. Cars burned. Bodies stacking up in impromptu mass graves all over the south. At least they haven’t joined up to attack the Vongola yet, which is what Tsuna was most afraid of. Thus far, in fact, the Vongola and their allies haven’t been dragged in at all. As long as it stays that way, Tsuna plans to keep his people well out of it.
Unfortunately, evidence suggests that it’s not going to stay that way, which is why Gokudera’s following the whole thing with a level of obsession he once reserved for possible alien sightings.
Tsuna makes sure to keep Yamamoto in the room for any meetings with Gokudera in which unpleasant information is likely to come up. Unless he’s upset beyond reason, Gokudera tries to spare Tsuna the gory details. Yamamoto, however, is sure to ask all the questions Tsuna would like to, and Gokudera is sure to answer him in the most blunt, clear, insulting way possible.
A good system all around. Especially since Tsuna’s fairly sure that Yamamoto knows what he’s up to and finds it hilarious.
“So what do they say?” Yamamoto asks of Gokudera’s stack of wiretap transcripts, stolen by Mukuro from the carabinieri.
“Blah blah loyalty, blah blah traitors, blah blah dissolving people in acid,” Gokudera mutters. He flips over a couple of pages, then throws the whole stack down on Tsuna’s desk in apparent disgust. “It’s Vietnam all over again.” Vietnam. It is, for whatever reason, the name given to the 2004 Secondigliano war. The one Gokudera grew up in the middle of. “We’re gonna have to comb through this crap for hours. Is Chrome in town?”
Tsuna nods. “I’ll call her tomorrow.” Chrome is the best for surveillance, stakeouts, close reading of boring documents, and any other job involving hours of attention to mind-numbing detail. As far as anyone can tell, Chrome never gets distracted, bored, or even impatient.
Sometimes Tsuna wonders if Mukuro’s broken something in her brain. Of course, even if he has, it’s too late to do anything about it now. And Chrome doesn’t seem unhappy with her life.
It’s really none of Tsuna’s business.
* * *
They’re involved in the war before Chrome has a chance to make it through the wiretap transcripts.
Fuuta is killed while walking down the street in Scampia. Tsuna’s first reaction is disbelief. Fuuta. He’s Vongola, yes, but he’s no soldier. On top of that, he's priceless alive. Tsuna had worried about people abducting him, yes, but killing him? Never.
One might ask what the hell he was doing in Scampia, of course. Gokudera does ask, in something approaching a scream. But they’ll never know.
Fuuta’s death isn’t the first, not by a long shot. It is one of the closest, though, and it’s certainly the closest one that Tsuna feels this responsible for.
He can’t remember the last time Fuuta reported in. He’s always been independent, closer to Reborn and Bianchi than to anyone nearer his own age. He wanders in, drops invaluable information on Tsuna’s desk, then wanders out again with a proud smile. He’s hard to keep track of.
Was. He was hard to keep track of. Keeping track of him now will be the easiest thing in the world.
“A message,” Gokudera rasps in a raw, exhausted voice. “That’s all it was, Tenth. A message.”
Seventy-four bullets. Seventy-four months, Gokudera explains: a little over six years. That’s how long it’s been since the last time Tsuna ran into the Birra family. And they remember.
They remember how it ended, that is. They seem a little less precise on the subject of how it began.
“You. You should’ve let us kill ‘em all the last time!” Squalo shouts. “This is what you get, dicking around, acting like the mafia’s all fuckin’ daisies-”
“Don’t talk to the boss like that!” Gokudera yells back.
“Tsuna, what are we going to do?” Yamamoto, worried and pale. Thinking of that other war in that other timeline. Thinking of his father.
Bel sniggers. “Look at him. He doesn’t have a clue. If my boss-”
“Kill them all,” Tsuna interrupts quietly. And the silence is devastating.
He doesn’t know why they’re so shocked. There’s nothing else to do.
Last time, the Birra had gone for him, not his family. Not Fuuta, who was barely involved. Tsuna had thought he’d fixed the problem, he’d thought it was a misunderstanding. A mistake, the way it had been with the Shimon family. It clearly isn’t. He doesn’t know what the Ninth and Giotto would want him to do, but he can see what he has to do.
This started as a war between the Birras and the Grazianos, but the Grazianos are apparently beaten, or beaten enough. And the Birras, with one victory under their belts, have had time to think about other families they hate. Or maybe it’s simpler than that: maybe some of the Grazianos talked. Maybe the Grazianos saw more of the Vongola construction sites than Gokudera hoped, and maybe they told the Birras what they’d seen. The odds were good that this was, at its heart, just an attempted hostile business takeover. To which there is only one way to respond.
Tsuna knows the rules now.
“I’m glad the Ninth isn’t alive anymore,” Basil says, words dropped into the still pond of Tsuna’s office, and Tsuna watches the ripples touch everyone in turn. Yes. They’re all glad Ninth isn’t alive and won’t have to see this. The Ninth had hoped they would be better than this. He’d hoped they wouldn’t repeat his mistakes.
* * *
Tsuna lets the Varia handle the funeral. A Birra funeral; a Birra family gathering. If Tsuna learned nothing else from Shimon, he learned that there’s no better time to strike than at a family event.
Which is why he never has any.
Reborn says it’s too late for mercy, that assassination can’t be done by halves. He and Bianchi go off on their own, and Tsuna doesn’t ask any questions.
There are a lot of questions that Tsuna hasn’t asked about this mission. He saw the name Luca on the list of Birra family members, and he didn’t ask Gokudera anything at all. Luca is a very common name.
Tsuna and his guardians hunt down the stragglers, the ones not attending the funeral. There are a surprising number of them. Maybe word got out that the Vongola boss and his guardians were wandering around in the open, and it was a target too tempting to pass up. Maybe Reborn made sure word got out.
Gokudera pushes a man into an open well and throws a bomb in after him. Murder and burial, all in one.
Yamamoto cuts down two men at once with grim efficiency.
Mukuro and Chrome stand perfectly still, and the people around them imagine their own deaths with such conviction that it kills them.
Ryouhei sticks to fists.
Lambo can electrocute people from as far as ten feet away by now.
Tsuna burns everyone who comes close. He has at least learned to be quick.
Hibari isn’t here, but Tsuna doesn’t believe he’s stayed out of this. He’s just doing things his own way. Tsuna’s almost glad he doesn’t have to watch.
White light and flames. Blood everywhere. And the sounds.
It’s over so quickly that Tsuna feels sick. He tries to convince himself that they’re not attacking the helpless, but it’s hard to believe. Hard to believe when killing so many people is so horribly easy.
Once it’s over, Tsuna stands next to Yamamoto and watches Gokudera and Ryouhei clean up. He knows he should help. He knows, but he can’t make himself move.
“I used to think we’d never be murderers,” Yamamoto says without any particular emphasis, staring across the scorched and blood-spattered ground. Tsuna can’t see his expression, but he doesn’t really need to.
“So did I.”
* * *
“The fact is that the only thing you learn here is how to die.”
* * *
“It’s over, Tenth,” Gokudera says, brimming with professional pride. “Yamamoto and Lambo just landed, so all our people are accounted for, no casualties, no arrests. Reborn says we got them all-or at least all the real members. Maybe not the lookouts or whatever, because who even knows who those guys work for? It’s over, though. Nobody’s left who can come after us.”
They’re lucky the carabinieri, confronted with dozens of dead bodies, don’t expect the murderers to be foreign. No, more than that-they assume the murderers were native.
Tsuna smiles. “Well done.” It feels like the whole world is underwater. Sound is echoing, strange; he can’t quite breathe. He hopes Gokudera hasn’t noticed.
“Thank you, Tenth.” Gokudera says, pleased. He hasn’t noticed. Good. “I’ll see you in the morning. We have a meeting with Chiavarone, you remember.”
“Of course.” Tsuna hadn’t even remembered Dino was in the country. “Eight, wasn’t it?” Meetings are always at eight.
“That’s right.”
Tsuna watches Gokudera go. Ten minutes later, it occurs to him that he’s still standing in a darkened, empty hallway, staring at the place Gokudera disappeared.
This is doing no one any good. What if Yamamoto came home and found him here? He would understand, he would try to be distracting, and then Tsuna would cry in front of his Rain Guardian. That would be so embarrassing.
Bearing this in mind, Tsuna carefully walks to his suite, touching each door as he passes. Hibari’s door, rarely used. Chrome’s door, which is also Mukuro’s, Ken’s, Chikusa’s. Lambo’s door. Kyoko and Haru’s. Ryouhei’s, though the room has been mostly empty since he and Hana got married and Hana demanded an above-ground home. Gokudera’s door, then Yamamoto’s, which is the one Gokudera went into. Tsuna reaches his own door-the very last-and eases his way inside. He goes to his bathroom and locks himself in, because people have been known to barge into his rooms in the middle of the night before.
He falls to his knees in front of the toilet and throws up everything in his stomach. When that’s done, he rinses his mouth out, then curls into a ball on the tile floor and tries to think.
Think.
He’s the boss of a mafia family for God’s sake. If he can’t live with his choices (choose your favorite hell), then he shouldn’t make them. He should step down for Xanxus and wash his hands of the entire mess. This was never what he wanted his life to be.
Is he really going to step down and abandon everyone who was pulled into this world because of him?
No. No, he won’t, not if he spends every night for the rest of his life locked in this bathroom so no one can see how weak their boss really is.
His throat’s burning, but it’s probably just the bile.
He knows there’s no one he can panic to about this; a boss can’t be seen to panic. He’s not Sawada Tsunayoshi anymore, not really. (Poor Loser Tsuna, left behind, forgotten.) When people look at him now, all they see is Vongola X, and Vongola X isn’t a person, he’s a symbol of strength. A symbol of strength is not allowed to run to the people he’s meant to be protecting to cry on their floors.
He’s not allowed.
He could still run crying to Reborn. Reborn is the one who made him a symbol, and he owes Tsuna for that. For everything. But Reborn’s not here, and neither are Basil or Tsuna’s dad. They’re still in Italy, monitoring the effects of what Tsuna’s done.
What Tsuna’s done.
He clenches his teeth until his jaw aches. What kind of sympathy does a murderer think he deserves, anyway?
The thing is, he’s killed people before and it didn’t tear him apart then. He hadn’t been horribly upset even the first time he killed someone undeniably human, but…Byakuran had deserved it. He’d hurt Uni, he’d hurt Tsuna’s family, and Tsuna had had all the evidence he could possibly want that the world would be better off without Byakuran in it.
He sincerely doubts the entire Birra family deserved it. And he definitely doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know all their names.
He grinds his forehead into the cool tile and orders himself to pull it together. By eight o’clock in the morning, he has to be Vongola X again, or everything he accomplished today will be ruined. And he doesn’t want to have to do it again.
God, he doesn’t want to. Especially not when it may turn out to have been futile. There are hundreds of clans. The destruction of one family (or two, or twelve) will hardly even change the tempo of business. It won’t keep his family safe for long.
He hadn’t wanted to bear responsibility for the sins of the previous generations of Vongola, and now he’s committing his own. He’d said he would destroy the Vongola himself before it came to this. God, he’d been so young. Destroy the Vongola and leave his people to be picked off one by one? He can’t wipe out the only thing that keeps his family safe.
Strange that Giotto accepted that condition. Maybe he just doesn’t understand what things are like in the modern world. The kind of family Giotto wants wouldn’t survive, not the way the mafia is now.
Tsuna sits up abruptly and stares down at his ring, eyes wide.
* * *
“Campania clans, unlike the old Cosa Nostra clans, are not obsessed with a truce.”
* * *
He’d like to go to Hibari first, because Hibari won’t tell anyone, and he’ll make it really clear whether or not he finds this idea worthy. Unfortunately, Hibari is somewhere in Italy doing whatever it is he does with his time. Tsuna’s sure that whatever he’s doing will someday, somehow benefit the family, but that doesn’t help much at the moment.
He goes to Kyoko instead. She won’t be quite as blunt as Hibari, but she also won’t yell at him, won’t tell anyone, and will let him know if his crazy idea just won’t work.
“That just won’t work, Tsu-kun.”
He sighs. He thought she might say that.
“Mafia families have been killing each other off since the beginning,” she reminds him. “I understand why you did what you did with the Birra, but joining in won’t change anything.”
“I wasn’t suggesting a bloodbath,” Tsuna says defensively.
“Tsu-kun, I don’t think you know what you’re suggesting yet. ‘Let’s destroy the mafia’ isn’t very specific.”
Well. No, maybe it isn't specific. But the basic idea is one of Reborn’s most important lessons: if you can’t run, then turn and fight.
“You don’t think we can do it?”
She studies his face, hesitates. “For a start,” she says, “you’re going to have to talk to Haru and Hana and Irie-san about our legitimate businesses. We can’t run out of money halfway through this.”
“I’ll do that,” he says, aiming for a serious tone. He knows he’s smiling like an idiot, but it can’t be helped.
“You can’t destroy the entire phenomenon of organized crime in Italy, Tsu-kun. The very idea is insane. You’ll only be able to make it less…prevalent. And only if we’re very lucky.”
“Okay.”
“Although heaven knows you’re not happy unless you’re throwing yourself at a brick wall.”
“Mm.”
“And when you just agree with everything I say, I know you’re not listening to me.”
“I’m listening!”
She laughs and loops her arm through his, leans her head against his shoulder. He smiles down at her.
“Well, since you’re agreeing to everything,” she murmurs, “Haru and I were thinking about children. We want you to be the father. And I guess we should hurry, before you get yourself killed and we have to settle for Hibari-san.”
“Oka-wait, what?” She definitely shouldn’t be allowed to spring this kind of thing on him in the middle of a life-altering mafia conversation. And besides that, besides…
Well, of all the ways he’s pictured women offering to have his children-and he has pictured it, in the embarrassed privacy of his own mind, because Haru went through a phase that made it impossible not to-it’d never gone quite this way. Somehow. And he hasn’t thought about it at all since Kyoko and Haru got married in all but law.
“You’re not serious, are you? Kyoko, are you serious?”
She smiles at him.
“Hibari-san!?”
She turns to prop her forehead against his shoulder, and she laughs at him. She laughs at length. Which probably means she is serious. About everything, up to and including Hibari.
Oh God.
Tsuna stares across the room and tries to think reasonable thoughts about his situation. His life. All the crazy shit that’s happened every single day since he was fourteen, when he was introduced to the profession he’s now planning to destroy.
All that, and now his first crush has offered to have his children. Sort of.
He starts laughing, too.
* * *
He goes to Gokudera next, because Gokudera will tell everyone. He’ll argue and persuade and cajole so that Tsuna doesn’t have to.
He will. But he’s going to have to shout at Tsuna for a while first.
“But, Tenth, that’s impossible!” he cries. “Do you know how many people are going to try to kill you? And what’s going to happen to-what’s going to happen…?”
To me. To us. “Gokudera, I only agreed to be boss so that I could protect my family. Protect you. It isn’t working. I need to find a better way to keep you safe, that’s all.”
Gokudera takes a deep breath and musters further arguments. “This life is all most of us know,” he says. “It’s the only way we’ve ever lived.”
Tsuna nods. “We won’t be changing our methods that much. Not at first. We’re halfway legitimate as it is, thanks to Hana. I need to talk to Reborn and…” and Giotto, but maybe this wasn’t the time to bring that up, “and everyone about the details. It’s the way the other families work that I don’t like.”
“But-”
“Dino sees the mafia as a way to protect the people in his territory from government corruption. Enma and I see it as a way to protect our families at the expense of everybody else. Enma takes it further than I do, and some people take it further than he does. Then there are a lot of people who just see it as a way to look scary and make money. It’s gone too far.”
“Boss,” ouch, the burden of responsibility, “you can’t keep the family safe if you’re dead.”
“I can’t keep the family safe this way, either.” He wills Gokudera to understand. “I don’t think I can survive hating myself this much. I can’t-”
“Hating yourself? But-no, you never would have started-”
“But I finished it. I finished it, and I knew that not everyone I killed was guilty. I was playing by mafia rules. And now another family could come after us on behalf of the Birra, and they’d have every right to do it. I don’t like these rules. I want new ones.”
Gokudera collapses into a chair and throws his head back, as if Tsuna’s dragged all the energy out of him. “Well,” he says bravely, “I’ll have to learn some new life skills, I guess.”
“You should have gone to college when I told you to.”
“Tenth!”
* * *
Reborn calls it Vongola intuition. Sometimes things that Tsuna predicts actually happen. More often than is quite normal.
Tsuna hates it.
“Most of the families do not care,” Basil says. “Or else they are glad. But the Secondigliano clans think this is a good opportunity to take over our territory and the factories there, so they are claiming they were the Birra’s allies all along.”
“Were they?” Tsuna asks.
Basil gives him a disappointed look. “It does not matter, Sawada-dono.”
It doesn’t matter. Haha. Of course. Tsuna sighs and scrubs his face. “Dad? Ideas?”
“They’re cockroaches,” Iemitsu says. “Even with a full-scale bloodbath, we’d miss a few. It’s a moot point, anyway: you don’t have the stomach for it.”
Tsuna smiles vaguely and thinks of cool, white tile. “Is that supposed to be an insult?”
Iemitsu snorts and smacks him gently upside the head. “Reborn?”
“We have no right,” Reborn says grimly. “Acting before we’re threatened would be against tradition. The other families wouldn’t stand for it.”
Tradition. Tsuna’s getting even more tired of the word than he was back when he worked at Takezushi and had to listen to the old men going on about it for hours.
“I’m not worried about tradition,” Tsuna says. He takes a steadying breath. “I don’t care about the other families.”
Basil’s eyes widen dramatically. Iemitsu’s jaw drops and he gets half a word out, but Reborn waves a hand and cuts him off. He studies Tsuna for a long moment, inscrutable. “Interesting, Tsuna. How do you think you’ll survive that attitude?”
“If I make the mafia powerless…then I won’t need to worry.”
“And if I were a sparkly unicorn-” Iemitsu begins incredulously, but Reborn interrupts again.
“You think you’ve found a way to do that?”
“I’m looking for one.”
Reborn sighs and sits back. “Reckless,” he says. “You might have paid closer attention when I was teaching you about strategy.”
Reborn isn’t arguing, he’s just complaining. That means he doesn’t mind. It also means he’s taking this better than anyone else did, which is. Strange. But Tsuna’s definitely not going to question it.
“I was paying attention,” Tsuna insists, a little giddy. If Reborn and Giotto are both on his side, then he can do this. With them and his family, he can do anything. He can. “The element of surprise.”
Reborn hums at him. “You’re going to need the element of surprise, yes. And blind, stubborn, idiotic persistence after that.” Speculative once-over. “At least you have the idiocy in spades.”
People wonder why Tsuna’s title hasn’t gone to his head. These people have apparently never met Reborn.
“Reborn,” Iemitsu cuts in, appalled. “You’re not taking him seriously, are you?” Basil’s still staring at Tsuna with his mouth open.
Reborn just gives one of the famous impenetrable looks, and Iemitsu sighs. “All right. Fine. Let’s talk about this catastrophically insane idea of yours. We still have our original problem, which is: they’re cockroaches. Do your guardians know about this…plan, for lack of a better word?”
“They do.”
“And they’re with you on this?”
“Of course they are.”
Lambo had initially burst into tears, but Tsuna won him over by promising that no Bovinos would be shot. Ryouhei is game for anything extreme. Gokudera required a knock-down, drag-out argument and Yamamoto required two hours of careful explanation, but they’re both behind him now. Hibari finds the discipline in Southern Italy to be utterly lacking, and has threatened to fix it before. The prospect of a mafia family breaking the back of mafia power in Italy, meanwhile, delights Mukuro down to the bottom of his twisted soul. And finally, there’s Chrome, who has a higher opinion of Tsuna’s intelligence than she ought to, and is largely indifferent to the fate of anyone who isn’t Vongola. She sees nothing wrong with Tsuna’s plan.
Tsuna doesn’t feel like sharing all these fascinating details.
* * *
“The strength of Italian criminal business lies precisely in maintaining a double track, in never renouncing its criminal origins.”
* * *
The Vongola family is sitting around a table having what Tsuna facetiously refers to as a meeting. A meeting about Tsuna’s insane idea.
Well, they’re mostly sitting around the table. Squalo is lying on top of it, hair hanging down to the floor, while Yamamoto absently pokes him in the side with the eraser of one of Tsuna’s pencils. Gokudera is scowling about the lack of respect, but since Uri is also sprawled on the table, he doesn’t have sufficient moral high ground to comment.
Bianchi sits on Gokudera’s other side, looking bored, and Reborn is beside her, even more bored. Chrome is here, but Mukuro hasn’t deigned to be physically present. Lambo sits very close to Tsuna and fidgets. Ryouhei is sitting next to Hana, who’s ignoring him, and explaining his latest extreme idea to Kyoko and Haru. They’re looking very patient about it all. Kyoko is passing documents to Hana, who’s frantically typing something. I-Pin is doing homework. The scientists are ominously absent.
It never fails to amuse Tsuna how scary and professional they manage to look when non-family is present. It’s like they only have so much professionalism in them, and don’t dare waste it on other family members.
“Out and out attack is just going to bring us full circle,” Gokudera announces. “We need to hit them somewhere it actually hurts.”
“Squalo, I need to talk to Xanxus,” Tsuna says.
Squalo squirms around so that he can stare incredulously at Tsuna. “The boss hates your fucking guts,” he explains slowly and carefully.
“Yes,” Tsuna agrees. “I know that. I need to talk to him anyway. Convince him. I don’t care if you lie, I don’t care if it takes a year, I need to talk to him.”
“Out of his fuckin’ gourd,” Squalo informs Yamamoto. Yamamoto smiles and shrugs.
Tsuna and Xanxus have worked out a set of rules based on grade school playground logic that, sadly enough, seem to do the trick. To wit: Xanxus will follow Tsuna’s orders as long as he (1) never has to see Tsuna’s face, and (2) can convincingly tell himself that the orders weren’t actually Tsuna’s-that they came from Reborn instead, or even Gokudera.
Meanwhile, Tsuna will allow the Varia a high degree of autonomy and will clean up Xanxus’s more dramatic tantrums so long as Xanxus (1) gives detailed reports on any attempts to talk him into overthrowing Tsuna, and (2) never works with any family without first clearing it with Gokudera.
Tsuna will support and accept Xanxus as long as Xanxus turns his loathing of Tsuna to the family’s advantage. Tsuna isn’t too worried. It’s hard to conspire with Xanxus when he tries to kill anyone who so much as mentions Tsuna’s name.
If there are orders Tsuna doesn’t want to give over the phone, Squalo and Yamamoto usually have to act as go-betweens. Gokudera tends to be physically close to Tsuna, which means that Xanxus won’t talk to him because he runs too much of a risk of seeing Tsuna’s face, so he sends Squalo. Squalo and Gokudera hate each other, so Gokudera sends Yamamoto.
Sometimes the conveyance of orders is like a really bloodthirsty game of Telephone. By some miracle, though, it occasionally works. All involved parties agree that that’s the best that can be expected.
Tsuna can’t trust this conversation to the Telephone method. God only knows what would happen if Xanxus misunderstood. Death, fire, vendettas.
“Okay. While we’re waiting for Xanxus, which’ll take forever because he’s a dick,” Gokudera says, “we have to figure out a way to undercut everything that supports the mafia.”
“You make it sound easy, Gokudera-san, but it’s almost impossible,” Haru says. “You know some family or other owns just about everything. That’s an awful lot of support.”
“If we want to kill their businesses, we’ll have to undersell them,” Kyoko says. “In everything from groceries to real estate. Haru’s right, it’s going to be almost impossible, even with Spanner helping. The Mosca cut labor costs, but we’ve been using them all along, and we’re barely holding our own. It’s that pesky habit we have of obeying safety restrictions. Nobody else has that habit.”
“There’s hardly any legitimate work in Puglia,” Haru says brusquely. “We’ll hire some kids. They come cheap.”
“Haru!”
“Tsuna-san, they can work for us, or they can work for the Sacra Corona Unita, kidnapping people and selling them for parts.” She folds her arms and sticks her chin out. “Your choice.”
“Nice how they branched out,” Squalo throws in. “I thought they were gonna go under at one point, the SCU. Organs, though, real money-maker. Maybe we should get into that.”
“No,” Tsuna snaps, more irritated than he should be, given that Squalo probably isn’t serious. “Why aren’t there jobs in Puglia?”
“Please don’t try to fix Italy, Boss,” Gokudera says, despairing. “Please.”
“Well.” Tsuna glances at his ring. “I think that might be the easiest way.”
A moment of stunned silence, broken by Reborn’s laugh. Reborn, Tsuna thinks irritably, has been really, really unhelpful this entire meeting.
“Are you for fuckin’ real?” Squalo howls. “The Romans couldn’t fix the south!”
“If by that you mean the Romans fucked the south over, then yeah, I agree,” Gokudera snarls. “Them and everybody who came after them. Actually, there’s an idea, Tenth,” he goes on, thoughtful now. “The easiest thing would be to take down the north. Then they’d have a harder time screwing the south, and we wouldn’t have to scrabble along on rock bottom being criminals. Problem solved.”
“You’d have been a criminal if you were born in Shangri-La, brat. And the southerners screw themselves,” Squalo announces, arms belligerently crossed. “Wiping out the north would just cut you off from the only thing that’s holding your economy up, deadweights.”
“I don’t know how it looks from fucking Milan, but-”
“Anyway, that wouldn’t stop the rest of Europe,” Haru cuts in before another meeting dissolves into a fistfight. “Isn’t the south some kind of international toxic waste dump?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re the ones dumping their shit all over Europe, actually,” Squalo says. “Which is goddamn typ-”
“We’ll start with that,” Tsuna says firmly. “I just got a bunch of reports on toxic waste in Campania.” He empties the envelope of photographs onto the table for everyone to paw through in a morbid free-for-all. He watches them, considering who he should send to look into this. He briefly, fiercely misses Fuuta. “Bianchi, if you and Basil don’t mind, I’d like you to investigate the worst areas. And we’ll need to send someone for cleanup.”
“Cleanup?” Lambo asks in the sad little voice of the person who always gets the worst jobs.
“I’ll go,” Ryouhei offers, and Tsuna nods. He’s the best choice-for the radioactive stuff, anyway. Sun types are hell on a half-life, but heavy metals are more of a problem. And then there’s the simple problem of not enough landfills and incinerators. But one step at a time.
“Borrow Lussuria,” Tsuna says. Ryouhei agrees: the more sun types, the better. “And Kyoko, I’d like you to go, too.” Tsuna braces himself for the inevitable shouting. Kyoko’s good at languages, she’s familiar with the business and the politics, and on top of that, she has a beautiful ability to smile people into submission. She’s their best negotiator. It’s just that Ryouhei is going to refuse to accept this until his dying day.
Ryouhei shouts. Kyoko ignores him. Tsuna slumps low in his chair and hopes he isn’t going to get punched this time.
“Holy shit,” Gokudera interrupts about three minutes into the Ryouhei rant. He’s still studying the photographs. “Can we agree to never let Hibari find out about this?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Chrome says in Mukuro’s voice, which is a creepy new trick the two of them have learned. “We haven’t tried biting the Camorra to death yet.”
“It’s too late, anyway,” Tsuna admits. “The first reports I got were from Hibari-san.”
Chrome smiles Mukuro’s smile and makes happy little snapping gestures with one hand. At least someone is pleased.
“What’s he doing in Campania?” Gokudera asks suspiciously. As if Tsuna ever has any idea what Hibari’s doing.
“He’ll be back on Friday,” Tsuna says, hoping that makes it sound like Hibari, you know, reports in. What he actually does is forward Tsuna a string of bills interspersed with brief, angry notes about things that annoy him (there are many such things), always concluding with, “Fix this or I’ll bite you to death.”
After years of patient explanation, Kusakabe has finally managed to convey the concept of division of labor to Hibari. Tsuna wishes he hadn’t bothered.
It does make Hibari easy to track, at least. And sometimes there are supporting notes from Kusakabe that provide context, though not as often as Tsuna might like. There are also occasional snapshots of Hibird. Just in case Tsuna was worried about Hibird.
The enraged notes on the situation in Campania were as close to hysterical as Hibari’s notes have ever been. Kusakabe’s addendum is no comfort, either; it’s the most ominously cryptic thing he’s ever written. I’m sorry. I tried to stop him.
Tsuna’s already dreading Friday.
“What’s going on?” Hana asks, finally distracted from her computer screen.
“Tsu-kun’s going to fix the waste crisis in Italy,” Kyoko reports, a smile tugging at her lips. “Then he’s going to fix the economy. And after that, the world.”
Hana stares at Tsuna in horrified disbelief. “Sawada,” she says, “if this makes as much paperwork as I think it will, I’m going to kill you with a letter opener.”
“Ah,” Tsuna says.
“We’ll help, Hana-chan,” Haru tells her, would-be encouraging.
“I’ll shred paper to the extreme!” Ryouhei announces. Hana turns to him and bangs her forehead against his shoulder a few times. He throws a companionable arm around her.
Hana’s first mistake was getting that law degree, and her second was marrying Ryouhei. There’s probably no way for her to recover from those mistakes.
“Well done, Tsuna,” Reborn tells him once everyone else has cleared out. “You’re almost useless in yourself, but you do have a gift for choosing more capable people to do what needs to be done. It’s impressive.”
This is one of those Reborn compliments that sounds exactly like an insult. “Thank you?”
Reborn smiles almost fondly. “Go sleep. If you collapse from exhaustion, Gokudera will be a nuisance.”
Tsuna falls asleep and dreams that Haru is yelling at him about reports all night long. He wakes up smiling.
* * *
“You don’t divide up an empire with a handshake. You have to cut it with a knife.”
* * *
Hibari walks into the middle of a meeting on Friday, which is unfortunate-Tsuna’d been hoping for some time alone with him before letting him loose with the rest of the family.
Dino enjoys the entrance, at least. Dino always has gotten a kick out of the Hibari Kyouya show.
Hibari marches up to Tsuna as if they are alone, his wild eyes suggesting that he plans to rip someone’s throat out over this, and that he’s becoming less picky about whose throat by the second.
“Sawada Tsunayoshi,” he snarls.
“If we could have a minute,” Tsuna says to the rest of the room.
When the door finally shuts behind a reluctant Gokudera, Hibari and Tsuna both close their eyes and listen. Most of the footsteps echo farther and farther down the hall, but one set lingers, pacing. Gokudera, of course. The longer he hesitates, the funnier it is. His mother hen tendencies get worse every year.
Eventually, more determined footsteps approach, and then two sets move away. That would be Yamamoto. That would be Yamamoto dragging Gokudera off by force.
Tsuna opens his eyes, walks to the door, and locks it. “Let’s go,” he says.
Tsuna’s office connects to his private training room (private, that is, apart from Reborn’s ringside seat). It’s the one he uses when he’s testing out new tricks with the gloves and is afraid he might blow out a wall in one of the normal rooms. It’s the one he uses when he’s sparring with Hibari, same reason.
Today, though, the walls are in no danger. Hibari is sticking to fists, tonfa, and teeth, which could mean a number of things. That this is personal, that he’s holding everything against Tsuna in particular. That he’s too tired to use a box weapon, but too angry not to fight. That he wants this to hurt.
It definitely means that he is very, very upset.
Two hours later, they’re slumped side by side against the wall, gasping for air, covered in sweat, blood, and bruises. Hibari looks calm, almost happy, and not at all like he’s thinking of ripping throats out.
I did that, Tsuna thinks smugly.
He stays quiet, though, because he’s learned (thanks to Kusakabe, again) that Hibari will speak if he’s given enough time. Rushing him only annoys him, with predictable consequences.
“You used to talk more,” Hibari points out after ten minutes or so. He sounds almost indignant.
Kusakabe is always right.
“Nobody used to listen to me,” Tsuna explains after a moment of thought. “So it didn’t matter what I said. Now everybody listens to me, and that’s…scary. If I said, just talking, ‘Gosh, it’s a shame Tokyo Tower’s so far away,’ well. Someone would try to bring it to me.” Gokudera, probably. He would force Giannini and Spanner to build a flying monstrosity to transport it. Shouichi-kun would organize it all. Yamamoto would cling to the bottom of the Tower and radio up when they were getting too close to the tops of buildings. Tsuna can see it all now.
“Do you wish Tokyo Tower were closer?” Hibari asks, deadpan.
“It’ll make me really happy if Tokyo Tower stays exactly where it is, Hibari-san.”
Hibari smirks.
In school, Tsuna would never have guessed that Hibari had a sense of humor. Having learned that he does, it at least comes as no surprise that it’s a completely evil sense of humor.
“But could I maybe get actual reports from you, every once in a while?” Tsuna asks, figuring he may as well take advantage of this good mood while it lasts. “If you’re accepting crazy requests.”
“No, that’s ridiculous.”
Tsuna laughs, feeling benevolent toward everything. Disasters in Italy notwithstanding. He knows where all of his family is, and he knows they’re safe. He’s pleasantly thrashed. He, Sawada Tsunayoshi, actually managed to cheer up Hibari.
There are times when his life doesn’t seem so bad.
He tips his head to the side and studies Hibari, fighting the irrational temptation to tell him about Kyoko and Haru’s plans for children: his place therein. The staring will prompt either more talking or an attack; Tsuna doesn’t really care which one.
Hibari’s hair is a mess again, he notices. It always used to be so neat. Of course, Tsuna realizes with a grin, a bird does nest in it now.
“There is no discipline in that country,” Hibari says, and Tsuna’s grin falls. “You saw.”
“I saw,” Tsuna confirms quietly.
“This is your problem,” Hibari insists. “Your problem. Not mine.”
“I haven’t asked you to take care of it,” Tsuna points out, just for the record. Hibari sneers at him and raises a threatening tonfa, which would be more impressive if he weren’t slumped against the wall in exhaustion. “But I see your point,” Tsuna goes on quickly. “Kusakabe-san says you did something…?”
Hibari tucks the tonfa away and waves a dismissive hand. “We didn’t accomplish anything.”
Not quite the royal we; it’s the we that means ‘Suzuki Adelheid and I.’ Which at least tells Tsuna where in the world Suzuki is. She’s often in the same place as Hibari, but by no means always. He’s not sure whether it’s more or less worrying when they’re together, but it is nice to know.
Kusakabe doesn’t rate a we. Kusakabe is understood.
“Suzuki is still in Italy?”
Hibari shrugs, indifferent.
It doesn’t matter in any immediate way, but Tsuna does like to keep track of Shimon family members when he can. Ah, well.
“Is Kusakabe-san still in Italy?”
“He’s finding out who was responsible. I told him it’s a waste of time; they’re all dead now.”
I tried to stop him, Tsuna thinks, and sighs. All dead, meaning everyone who might have been responsible, plus a dozen others Hibari hadn’t liked the look of. “If they’re all dead, then…”
“No,” Hibari interrupts. “This has been going on for years. We fixed one problem, but it doesn’t mean anything. Someone else will pick up where they left off.”
Fixed. Haha, yes. “Tell me where,” Tsuna says, “and we’ll take care of it.”
Hibari sneers again. “Every other town south of Rome. You’re dreaming.”
* * *
“The life of a boss is short; the power of a clan, between vendettas, arrests, killings, and life sentences, cannot last for long. To flood an area with toxic waste and circle one’s city with poisonous mountain ranges is a problem only for someone with a sense of social responsibility and a long-term concept of power. In the here and now of business, there are no negatives, only a high profit margin.”
* * *
Tsuna is alone.
There’s something about being alone in the dark that breaks everyone back to their childhood fears, and Tsuna’s childhood fears were something special. He feels swallowed by the space; tiny, insignificant, fragile. The idea of sleep is terrifying, and even breathing feels dangerous; pulling the darkness into his lungs, letting it change him. Twist him.
He brushes shoulders with death every day, but that’s with his family standing behind him, reminding him of his reasons. It’s different at night, when he’s closer to the dead than he is to his family. The family is down the hall, but the dead are in the dark of his room, whispering why, why, why.
He doesn’t know. Right now, he really doesn’t know. Why?
But then, why not? Why not, when it’s just a matter of time? He’ll be joining them soon enough, and then no one will know who died first. No one will remember or care, not once they’ve all been swallowed by the dark.
Tsuna’s options are three: to stare into the shadows at his ghosts, to hide in the bathroom with all the lights on, or to just give up on everything and scream until Gokudera and Yamamoto come running.
None of his options appeal to him.
He could call up Giotto, but he’s called up Giotto every night this week, and he doesn’t have anything more to say that isn’t pointless panicking. Which means he’d be calling up a dead man in order to cry on his shoulder. About other dead people.
That’s really not fair to Giotto. Tsuna doesn’t want his distant successors calling him back from the dead so they can cry on his shoulder, does he?
Actually, thinking about it, he wouldn’t mind at all. Giotto doesn’t seem to mind, either. That’s not the point, though. It’s still, it’s, it’s inconsiderate.
On the other hand, it’s dark and he’s choking and he’s alone-
There’s a knock at the door, and Tsuna jumps to answer it.
After a day like today, after a year like this year, it’s going to be Hibari. It doesn’t really matter who it is, God knows Tsuna never turns anyone away no matter what they want from him (please don’t leave me on my own), but tonight, it’ll be Hibari. Which is good, because Tsuna’s in a Hibari kind of mood. He opens the door.
“Tsuna,” Hibari says quietly.
Tsuna grins at him, almost hysterical with relief, and steps backward, making room. “Let’s go,” he whispers.
Part 3