Veni, Vidi, Vici (Pt.1-10)
Feb. 5th, 2016 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cywscrossFandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn
Summary: Vongola thinks their biggest problem will be training one twin to become Decimo and making sure the other one won’t try to overthrow them. They soon realize it really isn’t.
(Dino meets them for all of two minutes before he wonders if the Nono has finally gone either senile or insane. Because you’d have to be one or the other to think that forcing these two Skies into a life they don’t want won’t blow up in all their faces one day.)
(Tsuna and Shion are going to tear Vongola apart for what it’s done to them.)
--
The Sawada twins in fifty snapshots.
01.
Tsuna is born first. He has Nana’s hair and eye colour. He cries the moment he takes his first breath.
Shion is born second, exactly three minutes later. She has Iemitsu’s hair but startling blue eyes that come from neither of them. She doesn’t cry, and Tsuna goes abruptly silent the second they are placed next to each other.
02.
Nana sent letter after letter to her husband throughout the last two months before she gave birth, and then she sends two letters in the week that follows.
She receives a postcard reply the day before she’s due to go home with the twins:
Congratulations, Nana! I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there for the birth but you know how this construction business can get! If it’s a boy, let’s follow my family tradition and name him Tsunayoshi.
I’ll try to get vacation time very soon so I can see you again, but now that you’re past the hardest part, I’m sure you can handle anything!
Love, Iemitsu
Nana can’t quite squash all the disappointment that wells up inside her, but she smiles dreamily at the postcard all the same. She flips it over, and her smile widens at the note scribbled on the bottom left corner in her husband’s handwriting, an arrow pointing at the beautiful beach and ocean that the card depicts.
Building a new chain of hotels! Maybe we can go when it’s finished!
Iemitsu is such a romantic. And Nana hasn’t been to the beach in a long time.
For now, she glances at her sleeping children in the crib beside her bed, curled up together just like they’ve been for the past nine months.
Nana has been waiting to name them, hoping for Iemitsu’s arrival. He hasn’t come, but he has picked a name for a son, so Tsunayoshi it will be.
As for their daughter…
Nana looks down at the postcard again. Thinks of wide blue eyes blinking up at her the first time she held her daughter.
Shion.
A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.
03.
Kaa-chan coos over how adorable they both are, always together, never doing anything apart. They share a bedroom, a bed, daily baths, books and toys and identical smiles.
From the moment they learn how to talk, they’re already finishing each other’s sentences, and sometimes Tsuna speaks for Shion, and other times Shion speaks for Tsuna.
They hold hands whenever their mother takes them out, to the playground or to the market. Tsuna is shyer than Shion whenever strangers approach Kaa-chan for a chat and the two of them for a gushing session, but at the same time, this also means Tsuna’s grip on Shion’s hand is a little tighter, and he tends to shuffle her behind him when people try to pinch their cheeks or ruffle their hair or even hug them.
He’s older after all. Even as a toddler, he knows instinctively that that means he has to protect his younger sister.
04.
They’re both four years old when a loud, dirty, blond-haired man blows into the house, tracking mud and dirt all over the floor as he calls for their mother, and swinging her into the air when she rushes out of the kitchen with eyes that shine with delight.
This is their father, their mother introduces several minutes later when they finally notice the twins hovering at the bottom of the stairs.
“Eh? Who’s the little lady?” The blond man exclaims, blinking at Tsuna and Shion in a way that makes Tsuna tussle a little with his sister in an attempt to push her behind him. Shion just scowls and elbows her way to stand beside him so she can stare stonily up at the stranger in their house.
Kaa-chan laughs for some reason. “Iemitsu, this is your daughter, Shion. Tsuna and Shion. We have twins!”
The man blinks again. “…Eh?! I have a daughter?!”
Tsuna kind of already wishes the man would hurry up and leave again.
05.
The man, their father, alternates between taking up all their mother’s time and snoring on the living room floor in his underwear with lots of bottles around him.
Shion, more curious than Tsuna, sneaks an unopened one from the man’s – their father’s – side, and the two of them share it upstairs in the privacy of their bedroom.
It’s disgusting. Tsuna and Shion both agree, but Kaa-chan taught them not to waste things so they take turns drinking the whole bottle, even though it makes Tsuna all dizzy, and Shion mumbles about how her head feels like it’s being stuffed with cotton, and then they fall asleep without realizing it because Tsuna only wakes up again when his head hurts too much to stay asleep.
Shion isn’t any better, already awake and curled up at Tsuna’s side, muffling sobs behind her hands.
Never again, Tsuna vows as he pulls Shion into a hug and presses his own tears into her shoulder even as he tries to comfort her.
They’re never going to drink that yucky liquid ever again, even once they’re adults like the man is.
06.
Tsuna is relieved when the man – their father – leaves a week later, even though it seems to make Kaa-chan sad.
The man doesn’t do anything except sleep and eat and drink and be all mushy with Kaa-chan. He also tried to hug Tsuna and Shion early on, but Shion’s never liked strangers touching her, and Tsuna isn’t much better. So he’s stiff when the man picks him up and carries him around, babbling about how his son will grow up to be as strong as Papa, but when the man turns to give Shion the same treatment, Shion is already gone, not a single golden-blonde curl in sight, and Tsuna doesn’t tell the man or even Kaa-chan that his sister is sitting on the roof again.
That’s their spot. Shion is agile, Tsuna is quick, and even at four, they’re both fully capable of swinging themselves up onto the roof from their bedroom window. If they move to the side and back, no one can see them from the front, and there are enough trees in the back to hide them from view.
Kaa-chan never worries even when they’re not in their room. She just assumes they’re playing hide-and-seek, and they always make sure to appear again within hours.
The blond man wails about how his daughter hates him, and Tsuna wonders how anyone is supposed to like him when he’s so…
Tsuna doesn’t even know.
He’s just very, very relieved when the man finally leaves.
07.
Their mother cries though, at night. The first time he and Shion hear her, they freeze in their bed, staring wide-eyed at each other, and then they scamper out of their room and into Kaa-chan’s, and Kaa-chan tries to smile for them even though it comes out looking more like a frown.
“It’ll be okay, Kaa-chan,” Shion declares, cuddling up beside their mother on one side while Tsuna sits on the other. As always, she cuts straight to the heart of the problem. “That ma- Otou-san will visit again soon.”
Shion makes a face at Tsuna when Kaa-chan is too busy wiping her eyes to notice, but Kaa-chan is smiling again, for real this time, so Tsuna hurriedly pitches in, “Yeah, Otou-san loves you lots so he’ll defin’ly come back as soon as he can!”
Kaa-chan hugs them both. They all sleep in her big bed that night.
08.
Tsuna and Shion start school. They hold hands all the way to the school gates but Tsuna still gets more and more nervous the closer they get.
“It’ll be okay,” Tsu-nii,” Shion assures him, swinging their hands.
“But what if nobody likes us?” Tsuna frowns anxiously.
“Well you’ll always have me, and I’ll always have you,” Shion says stoutly. “So even if the rest of the school don’t like us, we still won’t be all alone. But I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t like us. There’s nothing wrong with us, right?”
Tsuna musters up a smile at that. “Right.” He takes a breath and squares his shoulders. “Right. You and me-”
“-against the world,” Shion finishes, and her smile is sweet and familiar. Tsuna grins back.
They walk into Namimori Elementary together.
09.
School isn’t bad. Well, it isn’t bad after Shion, in a fit of outrage after the whole class bursts into laughter just because Tsuna trips over some boy’s outstretched leg on his way up to the front to introduce himself, nails all the other students and the teacher with an explosion of dark blue light that suddenly makes them all stop laughing before the teacher hones in on the boy who tripped Tsuna and starts scolding him. And then they simply clap politely after Tsuna finishes introducing himself, and no more attention than what’s normal is paid to either twin for the rest of the day.
“What did you do?” Tsuna whispers during recess as they munch on the snacks that Kaa-chan made for them.
Shion hunches her shoulders, and Tsuna quickly grabs her hand because he never wants his sister to look like that, like she’s afraid Tsuna will run away from her.
“I dunno,” Shion huffs, staring down at her knees. “I just wanted them to stop. I thought… I thought maybe if they just saw what really happened, they wouldn’t laugh at you.” She rubs at her chest for a moment. “Then this felt like I drank too-hot tea, and then the blue light came out, and… it just happened.”
She sneaks a glance up at Tsuna, who smiles and squeezes her hand.
“It’s okay,” Tsuna assures. “We’ll figure it out.” He brightens. “Maybe it’s like a superpower, like in manga! That would be so cool!”
Shion blinks before a tiny smile curves her mouth. “You think so?”
“Mm!” Tsuna nods enthusiastically. “We could try seeing what else you can do, if you want.”
Shion beams at him and finally gives his hand a squeeze in return. “Then we’ll figure it out together! And find out what you can do ’cause you have to have a superpower too.”
Tsuna pulls up short, not quite able to hide the hope rearing its head inside him. “You think so?”
Shion nods determinedly. “We’re twins, Tsu-nii,” She reminds him, like that’s proof enough that Tsuna will have a superpower too, and for them, because it’s them, because it’s always been TsunaandShion and ShionandTsuna, and neither can even imagine a world where one of them lacks a piece that would fit them with the other, it is.
10.
Tsuna has a superpower. It turns out to be a very good thing and a very bad thing. Good, because his superpower is fire, like Shion’s, except it comes in varying shades of a fierce orange that burns or doesn’t depending on what he wants, as opposed to Shion’s eerily beautiful indigo that creates, and it’s good because it saves their lives.
But it’s also bad because Tsuna doesn’t manage it until Shion has been kidnapped, and it ends with blood on both their five-year-old hands.
His sister gets snatched up one afternoon when they’re walking home from school, along a street that not many people walk on but is the fastest way their house and Namimori Middle. A black car with tinted windows screech to a stop beside them, and Shion reacts by turning to Tsuna and shoving him hard enough to knock him down just as a man in a suit jumps out. Tsuna feels the increasingly familiar whisper of Shion’s flames washing over him, and then the stranger grabs her, stuffs her in the car, and without even glancing at Tsuna, like Tsuna isn’t even there, he ducks back into the vehicle and peels away.
Tsuna screams, incoherent rage mixed with heart-stopping terror, and the illusion around him shatters. He’s gasping and sobbing, staggering after the long gone car because that’s his sister, his twin, and it feels like a part of him has been ripped away, so it takes him a long, long moment before he realizes-
His hands are on fire. A dark, deep orange that blazes like his anger, like his fear, like the tight ball of need in his gut that says he has to get Shion back no matter what.
Their flames aren’t really like fire, as Shion’s shown him over the past several months. Shion’s flames can trick people, make them not see her and Tsuna when they walk by, or make them see things that aren’t there. When other students try to pick on them – Tsuna because he’s awkward around strangers, Shion because she hangs out with him – Shion would magic a dead mouse into one bully’s lunchbox, or form tiny spiders around another bully’s shoes during class so that they crawl up his pants and send him shrieking for his mommy, neither of which are actually real. And just the other day, in the backyard, she wished very hard for a koi pond, and one opened up in the ground, complete with pretty living fish, just like that, produced in a blur of indigo fire, and that was very real.
Tsuna’s flames can’t do that, or if they can, he doesn’t know how. What he does know – right here, right now, with the clock ticking, and Shion in danger – is the way it settles in his chest, just the way Shion described it (and now he can feel it for himself), making him feel safe and strong, even as it… tugs. It tugs, like a nudge, a guiding hand, like this way, this way, and somehow, Tsuna knows he can trust it.
So he scrubs away his tears and clenches his hands into fists. The fire curls around his knuckles but doesn’t burn, and he doesn’t bother picking up either of their book bags before taking off after Shion and the man who kidnapped her, the fire in his chest leading the way.
Later, he’ll think it’s a minor miracle no one saw him, saw his hands on fire, but at the same time, he isn’t surprised, because his flames guide him, down the safest, shortest route, the quickest way to Shion but also the one that hides him best, under the shadows of back alleys and empty side streets.
He doesn’t stop until he reaches a warehouse. It looks abandoned but the black car’s right outside, and when Tsuna creeps close enough, wriggling in through a broken window and then squirming along the floor on his stomach to crouch down behind some crates, he hears a smack of flesh on flesh, and the pained cry in his sister’s voice.
Tsuna sees red. But his flames soothe him, tells him not yet, not yet, you can’t save her if you rush out now, not yet, and so he swallows hard and presses his hands together, willing the fire to go down a bit more so it won’t draw attention, and it obeys, dimming to candle-sized flames that dance in his palms. That done, he dares to crawl closer, darting towards the shadows of another set of crates, and at this angle, he can see his sister’s golden hair splayed across the floor, with the man in the suit towering over her.
“You’ll tell me where your brother is,” The man hisses, and a glint of metal flashes in his right hand. “I saw him leave the school with you, so where is he? I’ll find him whether you tell me or not so you might as well spit it out.” His next smile is cruel. “Maybe I’ll even give you two time to say goodbye before I send you to the afterlife. Don’t worry; I’ll make sure you’re together when I take your heads to your father.”
Father? What-
Tsuna shakes the thought away. Later. Especially since Shion just stares up at her captor, white-faced and cold-eyed, even with the splash of blood across her temple, and then her gaze darts straight to him, sensing him as easily as they’ve always been able to sense each other, and their eyes meet in instant, mutual understanding.
Shion lunges. Her hands are tied behind her back but she rolls onto her knees and her blue eyes flare indigo, and a second later, the man is clawing at his own throat, at something only he can see and feel, and choking on it, leaving Tsuna free to sprint out, orange fire expanding again in swirls of blistering orange as he leaps at the kidnapper’s back.
The man spots him at the last second. He’s still choking, red-faced and struggling, but one of his hands, the one that’s still holding a knife, lashes out, aiming for Tsuna, and then Shion is there, savage and wild-eyed as she throws her whole body onto that arm and sinks her teeth into the man’s bare wrist where the sleeves have rucked up.
Blood spurts everywhere, and the kidnapper howls and curses, but Tsuna doesn’t hesitate. The fire in his chest goads him on, Shion’s eyes – like sea and sky – are filled with an unwavering faith in him, and no one – no one – touches his sister and gets away with it.
He punches the man’s side, not quite the stomach area but above the hip, except instead of making solid contact, his flames burn, melting flesh and boring straight into bone, through bone, before Tsuna tears his hand back out, leaving a gaping ragged hole in behind.
The man’s mouth opens in a soundless scream. Shion lets go, lips and teeth smeared with blood, and they both watch in silence as the kidnapper crumples to the ground with a heavy, decisive thud.
They are five when they take their first life. Tsuna’s flames finally retreat, still inside him but no longer visible, and then he turns and vomits all over the concrete floor.
It’s Shion who comforts him. Shion, whose hands are still bound, tangled golden hair flecked with blood and mouth even bloodier, but she presses into Tsuna’s side and doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have to. They’ve always understood each other even without words.
Tsuna’s hands shake. They’re not stained red – his flames burned that away too, although his sweater and pants are splattered with crimson – but they shake and he hates it because Shion’s the one who was kidnapped, who saved Tsuna from being stabbed, and she’s still tied up, and-
“S’o- S’okay, Tsu-nii,” Shion mutters, except it isn’t because her voice cracks, and a few tears slip from her eyes despite the way she scrunches them shut.
Tsuna scrambles behind her and works at the knots until his flames jump to life once more to burn the rope away. Then he throws his arms around her, feels Shion do the same, and for a long while after, they simply curl up on the hard, grimy floor and cling to each other. Tsuna uses a sleeve to wipe away as much of the blood on Shion’s face as he can before cuddling her close again.
“He said-” Shion breaks off, swallows, grimaces, and then starts again. “He talked about- about Iemitsu. And before you came, he made a phone call, something- something about getting one over on- on ‘Vongola’s damn Lion’. Said he always had a big mouth, bragging ’bout his kids, and now he’d- he’d be sorry once he got our- our bodies. Why- Why would Iemitsu know someone like that? What did he do?”
Tsuna doesn’t know, wouldn’t know, and Shion is only thinking out loud anyway. He clears his throat. “We don’t have to think about that right now,” He decides, voice shakier than he feels. Mostly, he just feels tired and relieved now. Shion is alive, they’re both alive, and that’s all that matters. “We should- We should go home.”
He feels more than sees Shion nod against his chest. Tsuna helps her up before they both turn to look at the body.
“We have to get rid of it,” Shion is the first to say, and her back straightens, and her expression goes hard, harder than Tsuna’s ever seen it. “We can’t just leave it here. What if he had friends? What if his friends want to ki- kill us too?”
Tsuna shudders at the thought, an image of Shion lying limp on the ground because he got there too late and she was de-
He tightens his grip on Shion’s hand. “How- Where would we hide it?”
Between the two of them, Shion has always been tougher, more practical. Tsuna’s the one who tries to talk bullies out of… well, bullying. His sister’s the one who gets back at them when talking doesn’t work. So she touches his elbow now and catches his eye and tells him, “Burn it. You can do it now, right?” Her smile is weak but genuine. “The fire thing. Told ya you had it too.”
Tsuna smiles back, despite the situation. “It’s different from yours.”
“I do what you can’t do, and you do what I can’t,” Shion says, full of a wisdom that Tsuna’s admired since he could understand words. “That’s the way it works.”
It is. So Tsuna does it. For them, for Shion, he can do anything. He summons his fire again, a bright bonfire orange, lighter than the angry orange from before, and when he sets his hands on their dead kidnapper’s chest, the flames stretch outward until they’re wrapped around the body completely.
The fire ebbs within minutes, and the man is gone.
Tsuna takes a deep breath, then another. Then he turns to Shion, who’s huddled in on herself but holds out her hand when Tsuna joins her again. They stop outside so that Tsuna can burn the car down to nothing too, and then-
And then they go home.
Even at five, both of them know that their mother is… not exactly stupid, but very, very oblivious. And it’s market day so she’s still gone when they arrive home. And, well, neither Tsuna nor Shion are in the habit of telling her everything. They never have been. Why confide in anyone else when they can confide in each other?
So they say nothing. It isn’t even a really conscious decision. It just… makes sense not to say anything. For all that she’s their mom, she isn’t Shion to Tsuna or Tsuna to Shion, and that makes all the difference. And she loves the man who – accidentally or not – sent a murderer after them.
They clean up in the bathroom, washing away all the blood before Tsuna burns their clothes because they don’t know how to work the washing machine yet, or if the bloodstains will even come out. Shion’s wrists are chafed raw, her cheek is purpled with a bruise by the time she steps out of the bath, and the gash on her forehead chases away any lingering regret that Tsuna might have felt over having killed someone, but Shion just blinks at her reflection, and a wave of dark blue flames later, all her injuries are covered up like they were never there at all.
After that, Tsuna tucks Shion into bed before running out for their schoolbags. Shion argued about going with him, and Tsuna wanted her to, but where Shion is practical, Tsuna is sensible, and those two things aren’t always the same. Someone needs to stay home in case Kaa-chan comes back while Tsuna is out, and Shion’s the one who’s been roughed up. She needs as much rest as she can get.
Kaa-chan does come home while Tsuna is fetching their bags but Shion has already spun a story about Tsuna dropping his house key just down the block, and their mother is happily bustling around in the kitchen by the time Tsuna returns.
They go to bed early that night. Shion claims a headache, and Tsuna is visibly exhausted too, so they get an early dinner before they hole up in their bedroom.
“You okay?” Tsuna mumbles into her shoulder.
Shion doesn’t answer for a long moment. “I will be,” She says eventually. “And you will too.”
Tsuna hugs her harder. They get nightmares that night, and for quite a few nights after, but Tsuna wakes Shion up when she starts tossing and turning, and Shion wakes Tsuna up when he thrashes the blankets right off the bed, and they cope.
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Date: 2016-02-07 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 07:53 pm (UTC)