#but I wrote Oregano as having too much self-respect to suffer a useless boss

[cedefaci]

In which a miracle happens...

Sawada Iemitsu apologizes. I present to you the rarest of occurrences in KHR-fandom--Sawada Iemitsu getting a passing grade in parenting (still only barely scraping by, mind you, but still, a miracle). (Full fic on AO3)

note: Basil’s internal monologue is both surprisingly snarky and only occasionally old-fashioned.

“Anata has told me so much about you, but this is the first time we have met.” Nana poured us all tea, “I can imagine that it took some effort to make time off work—you must be so busy all the time!”

“Yes. About that.” Oregano said stiffly. “We are technically here on the job.”

Turmeric picked up her train of thought, smiling as he put his hand on hers, “By which we mean that we are here as emotional support for Iemitsu-shishou. He wants to tell you something.”

“Ara?” Nana turned to sir.

Unseen by her, we also looked expectantly at him.

“Ah, Nana!” He took a deep breath. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “I need to say—I’m sorry.”

Nana looked up from her unpacking of the endless supply of macarons with a cheerful smile. “What do you mean?”

“When Tsu-kun was five.” Sir began.

He stopped. He swallowed. He couldn’t continue.

Cues? I mouthed.

Oregano indicated her backpack, but Turmeric signed wait with the tapping of his fingers on his mug and pushed the plates Nana had forgotten towards us.

“Do you remember my boss?” He tried again.

“Yes.” Nana said. The air felt charged, like the moment before the first strike of lightning in a gathering storm. “I remember him with Tsu-kun.”

“I should have done more.” A decent start.

“En?”

“The Sealing hurt Tsuna. I shouldn’t have let him do it. And it’s still hurting Tsuna. I should have done something sooner.”

The quiet clunk of a mug being set on the table.

“Tsu-kun is shy.” The Lady said, “He doesn’t like to speak, and is scared of people. I took him out of kindergarten because he had no friends and only felt more lonely there, and elementary school has not been any better for him. He doesn’t want to eat. He still comes home crying, sometimes.”

“Ah…” Sir was torn between hiding behind his silly face and flinching at my lady’s narration, shying away from pain. Press forward, lord, as a needle pushes through the flesh of a wound.

I held his gaze in steadiness and pushed the open box of macarons toward him, tranquil Rain weighing down flighty fairground smoke with the clarity of what must be done. Oregano’s Clouds bolstered his courage, and Turmeric’s Sun-Storm was a blaze of strength to break through reticence and hesitation.

Iemitsu chewed and swallowed slowly—a brief respite.

“It is my fault.” He said, borrowing from my stillness and Oregano’s focus and Turmeric’s determination, “I was scared, I needed to choose between Nono and you, and I didn’t want to. I was wrong, and I ran away, and left my son to suffer and my wife to pay the price. I’m going to do my best to fix it.”

“How can you?” Nana asked, “Our son has learned that the world is unkind. The world has learned that he is easy to hurt. How can we reverse that? How can we teach our son that he can do more than hide? And what is the alternative? You told me about the other life he could have led, and I do not want it for my son.”

“There’s more to it now.” Sir said, crumbling the remains of his macaron between his fingers. “Guys?”

“Circumstances have changed.” Oregano leaned forward, putting her hands on the table. “Shishou has chosen his obligations to you, so we have turned from the Ninth. Given that we are responsible for monitoring Giotto’s line, we can simply fail to inform him that his containment measures have failed. Your son will not be forced into our world the moment we Unseal him.”

“To whit.” I continued, “Sessha’s investigations have revealed a method of circumventing the necessity of Vongola Nono-dono’s blessing. There are two parts to it: the first involves helping the Young Master cultivate close relationships with his peers; the second—” I bowed my head, “—demands that he feel himself to be in such danger that he breaks his own limits.”

“Put our son in danger?” My lady had barely acknowledged me before turning the full force of her attention onto her husband, her Will splitting the table open with swiftly-spreading fractures growing from where her fingers rested delicately on the wood.

Between Turmeric and Oregano, we had managed to hammer out a more conservative plan than what I would have devised—empathy in childcare was rather lacking in me, given my unique upbringing.

Sir squirmed, taking apart another cookie. “That’s why everything’s gotten so complicated right now! I don’t know what I should do. I’ve got a few things figured out, but I need to ask you about the rest. Tsu-kun should be kept safe, he’s a baby!”

Turmeric finally took pity on our boss, or maybe had reached the end of his patience. He set his mug down. “What shishou means is that while the second part of our strategy bears refining,” Which was an infuriatingly mild way to put it, if Nana’s sharp-sweet smile was any indication, “It would do young Tsunayoshi good to make some friends he can trust, no matter how we intend the situation to progress from there.”

Friends, Guardians, Coterie. People who would accept the Young Master for who he was, who would stand with him against the world. Hayato, Bianchi’s little brother, whose distrust—contempt—of adults would serve to support Tsunayoshi in the face of this community’s implicit acceptance of his suffering. Yamamoto Takeshi, who was in a similar situation to him, relative to legacies and family secrets, would be someone who had shared similar experiences. Hibari Kyoya, whose reputation would suffice before the Young Master established his own, and Sasagawa Ryohei, as an older peer.

I knew them as well as anyone could without observing them myself, and I could see how they would connect further to each other—Hayato would be suspicious of anyone grown, but he had been saved by his sister. He would trust another elder sibling. Hibari Kyoya would be drawn to the master swordsman with his sword hidden in his sushi shop. Sports would bring the dormant Sun and Rain together. Fighting, history and myth, shared betrayals. So much common ground, and a peaceful environment in which to grow. It was such a fortunate coincidence that the estranged lines of the First Generation had come—(3, counted my Ring, a stutter in my thoughts)—no, been brought together to Namimori (There would be a price for such a boon).

“And?” Nana pressed, as furious as she had been since the start, her smile still as perfect as a porcelain doll’s, “Will they stay his friends? And even if they do, even if they will protect Tsu-kun against bullies, what about his teachers? What about the neighbours? What about the future, when he needs to go out and find a job? What will they do then?”

What about his teachers? What about their neighbours? Oregano and I tilted our heads in unison, then righted them as we looked to the couple at the head of the table—Nana also shared in the shame of her son, though naturally, she would only refer to it obliquely with us present.

“Basil-kun has looked to history, and found us one way forward.” Turmeric said, to my surprise. I had thought that we were going the social engineering route to slowly shape Namimori to our liking, with some under-the-table dealing with the Hibari if necessary. “But I have been investigating a few current advances in technology, and I believe it may be possible to undo Nono’s work without resorting to such traumatizing measures.”

What advances in technology? The Vongola had a vested interest in controlling access to Flame, there was little incentive for research in that area, apart from—the Estraneo! Of course Turmeric would have taken an interest in what they had discovered.

“Very well.” Nana took a sip of tea and a bite from her cookie, apparently mollified, and clasped her hands together, “I see that you have a nice plan for fixing Tsu-kun! But what about his future? Will he be able to have a good life?”

“For some time, at least.” Sir winced, “Nami isn’t completely isolated from the outside world, so word’s going to get out in the end. What we can do is delay that point until Tsu-kun can make his own choices.” —he had perfectly parroted one of the sentences we had drilled him in, I noted in amusement— “Then, he can either fake his death with his friends, or join his dear old dad!”

…we had had no hand in that statement.

“How exciting!” My Lady exclaimed.

But Oregano, having worked through her third box of sweets, played the Devil’s Advocate. “There were three heirs to the Ninth, and with one dead, there are two remaining. There is a possibility that they find themselves out of the running, in which case the inheritance passes back to Giotto’s line, namely, your son.”

Nana narrowed her eyes. “Will that happen?”

The Tri-ni-sette. The ancient Giglio Nero, who traced their history to birth of the Roman Kingdom and the establishment of the Vestal Office, Giotto who had been gifted the Vongola Rings to sanctify his rule as if he was Arthur honoured by Caliburn, the Arcobaleno who were accepted as fixtures despite having had predecessors. Someone or something had brought the Tenth Generation together for a reason, and they would not let it live in peace.

Sir chuckled nervously, “I’ll try not to let it!”

He made a dramatic show of heartbreak, “Even if I want to avenge our little family!”

We laughed, the tension dispelled.