veni, vidi, vici: gemstones

[cywscross]

Summary: The first and only time Mukuro ever made the mistake of dismissing Sawada Shion as a threat, he almost paid for it with his life.

A/N: I can’t seem to stop writing these two. But at least this time it’s mostly Mukuro’s first impressions of Shion.

 

 

The first and only time Mukuro ever made the mistake of dismissing Sawada Shion as a threat, he almost paid for it with his life.

He’d heard the whispers of course, and he’d followed them to the quaint little suburban town in Japan.  A rising famiglia, but not mafia, and headed by a boy slated as the next Vongola Decimo, except when the Vongola came calling, instead of finding a civilian heir waiting for them, they found a leader with a group of skilled individuals waiting in the wings and set to topple them from their throne.

Mukuro could use that, he thought.  Tsubasa, the rumours called them, and they were new, very new, but he could work with that.  Founding leader or not, Sawada Tsunayoshi was still just a boy, younger even than Mukuro, and he only needed one moment of weakness to possess him.  After that, he could take over Tsubasa, an army already formed, or even pretend to capitulate to Vongola’s wishes and take their throne too.  He could do both and destroy the mafia from there.

Tsunayoshi was the one he fought, after luring him out alone into a remote area while Ken and Chikusa and the others distracted his target’s people.

They nearly destroyed the forest they were fighting in.  For someone rumoured to be entirely self-taught, he was a lot stronger than Mukuro expected, and it didn’t help that he wielded his Sky flames as easily as an average person breathed.

But Mukuro hadn’t lived through six hells just to lose to someone who watched him like he wanted to know what made Mukuro tick, and he gave as good as he got.  They fought to a standstill, and Mukuro even managed to push Tsunayoshi onto the defensive for a few moments, to injure him enough to make him falter, just enough time to reach out with his own flames and grab onto that consciousness-

He didn’t get any further than that.  Honestly, when he thinks back later on, he still isn’t entirely sure what happened next, or even how it happened.  He’s never been able to replicate that particular attack.  All he remembers is choking on a lack of air as the clearing around him warped and twisted before melting into a black, endless void.  There was nothing as far as the eye could see, just cold and darkness and a creeping ice that robbed him of his breath and closed around his heart.  He alone existed in an otherwise empty universe, and the sheer terror of being something so small and insignificant felt like it should’ve killed him.

And then he blinked, and between one eternity and the next, he’s back in the clearing, gasping for breath, pinned against the rough bark of a half-splintered tree, and there in front of him is the golden-haired sister of his main target.

Sawada Shion.  Mukuro had seen her, of course, when he was scouting out who might be the biggest threat aside from Tsunayoshi.  Golden-haired with big blue eyes, usually at her brother’s side or getting dragged out by some girls, dressed up for a day out, a white summer dress fluttering around her knees.  She probably knew at least basic martial arts but… she didn’t look at all like a threat, certainly not to him, and he couldn’t sense any flames from her, not like he could sense in her brother, a Sky core pulsing in the boy with every breath.  When two assassins ambushed her and two others she was with at the time – two older boys, both members of the Cloud Division in charge of security – it was the latter two who took care of the attack while the girl stood back, and once they were done, they fussed over her, asked if she was alright, and they called her Princess.

Princess had seemed a suitable label, in Mukuro’s opinion.  Pretty to look at, and wielding a certain amount of power in that she could order others around, perhaps because she was the boss’ sister, but ultimately useless.

There was nothing useless about her in their confrontation.  She was shorter than him, and she still looked like something that belonged in a glass tower in a fairy tale, but her eyes drilled straight into his, as cold and clinical as the barren plains of a distant moon.  He knew she was incandescent with rage, he could almost taste it, and yet not a speck of it showed.

Her silhouette, his mind registered, was blurred at the edges, and it was like staring at something out of focus.  It took another second to understand why.  The girl’s entire being was infused with Mist flames, and the sheer weight of it…

Mukuro struggled to flare his own, but it was far too late for that.  His moment of inattention, distracted with his battle against Tsunayoshi, was his undoing.  The void that this girl threw his mind into, probably for no longer than a few seconds but felt like forever, an illusion even Mukuro couldn’t break, didn’t even think to break – all that meant was that his reality had already been completely overwritten.

Sawada Shion was a Mist, and Mukuro had missed it.  He’d looked for the bright Sky flames in her that he’d heard would always mark a bloodline Vongola, but her very nature meant that he should’ve been looking for what was missing, not what should’ve been there.

Dimly, he realized his breaths were still coming in stops and starts, and when he looked down, he saw exactly how the girl was keeping him immobile and helpless.

She had an entire hand and half an arm in his chest, and if he focused, he could literally feel her fingers wrapped around the frantic flutter of his own heart.  It didn’t hurt, her hand phased right through flesh and bone and blood like they weren’t even there, but the palm that cradled his heart was very real, and poised to rip it out at her leisure.

No wonder he overlooked her as a threat.  Her skill with illusions rivalled his own at his very best, and Mukuro expected a number of things in this town, but a Mist who was his equal was not one of them.

When he looked back up, she was still watching him, a detached sort of curiosity in the way she peered up at him, and he wondered how many she had killed, and how many ways she had come up with to do it.

Tsubasa, they were called.  Mukuro hadn’t really considered what that meant or why they’d chosen to call themselves that, but it was in the name, wasn’t it?  In the symbol even, the one Hibari Kyouya and his entire division had sewn into some part of their uniforms, the one Yamamoto Takeshi had engraved onto all his swords and baseball bats, the one Gokudera Hayato had tattooed across his shoulder blades, the one every member carried around in some form, coloured black and white.

Mukuro should’ve taken note of it.  After all, wings always come in pairs.

In the end, it was probably Tsunayoshi who prevented his imminent death that day, calling out to his sister and suggesting they spare him.  It still took a few minutes before the dangerous gleam in the girl’s eyes faded, and she eased her hand from his chest cavity.  It was only obstinate willpower that saw Mukuro stay standing after that.

She’d tossed her hair over her shoulder, a slightly displeased slant to her mouth even as she stepped back with barely a word, only calling out, “Nagi, good job, wrap it up,” and the clearing warped again to reveal most of the people that Mukuro had brought dead or dying on the ground instead of still fighting the way he had thought they were.  In Jiji and Djidji’s case, with an irritated-looking Hibari standing over them, there was hardly enough of their bodies left to identify them.

Standing on the far left by a tree stump was a girl with dark blue hair tied neatly back, and Mukuro had known she was a Mist, but he’d gauged her level and had judged himself the stronger.  Which was still true – he’d sensed the tingle of active illusions throughout the entire ordeal, but they hadn’t touched his battle with Tsunayoshi, hadn’t even come close, and so he hadn’t paid it much mind.

Apparently, she wasn’t strong offensively, but that hadn’t been her job anyway.  If Mukuro had had the breathing room to concentrate on her, he probably would’ve seen through her misdirection and concealment, but obviously he hadn’t, occupied as he was with Tsunayoshi.  Otherwise… Otherwise he would’ve seen which way the wind was blowing and taken the first opportunity he could to retreat, and that wasn’t what these people wanted, was it?

He’d walked straight into a trap from the very beginning, and he had no one to blame but his own arrogance.

“Tsu-nii,” The girl – Shion, a Mist of all things – had said, and she and her brother had stared at each for several seconds, an entire conversation passing between them before Tsunayoshi nodded and Shion sighed and took off back towards the town without another backwards’ glance.  The other Mist followed her, as did the skylark who ignored everyone in favour of taking out his phone and calling someone to “clean up the mess”, leaving Gokudera and Yamamoto to flank Tsunayoshi.

Tsunayoshi had told him their goals were the same: destroy Vongola.  No doubt, Vongola’s allies would get involved soon enough, which meant most of the mafia would be pulled in, and wouldn’t it just be easier if Mukuro joined them?  At least for now?  Better than being handed back to the Vindice, right?

Of course Mukuro agreed.  It was threat and promise rolled into one, and how he could’ve underestimated either of the Sawada twins, he didn’t know.  Tsunayoshi was definitely one to watch.

But his sister Shion was the one to be wary of.  If her brother was judge and executioner, both of whom you always saw coming, then Shion was the poison in your drink, the dagger in your back, the one who took care of the problem before it became a problem, and Mukuro was under no delusions of what it meant when Tsunayoshi told him Shion was – incidentally – the head of the Mist Division and therefore Mukuro and his friends would be placed under her care.

Shion smiled at them, looking pretty and sweet and innocent, but Mukuro still remembered the frozen grip of a timeless abyss, and he knew better.

Months down the road, he still hasn’t stopped watching her, although these days, it’s as much fascination as it is caution, and a little of the ice she turns on him every time they so much as look at each other has melted.  They’re by no means friends, and Mukuro still plots the best ways he could go about possessing Tsunayoshi without anyone the wiser, but he also thinks of the work they’re doing, of the most recent Vongola-allied famiglia they just finished dismantling last week for daring to attempt a kidnapping of the children under Tsubasa’s protection, and he wonders…

He wonders what a pair of wings would look like on his own skin.