Chapter Text
Natsuki bounced Chiara on her knee, watching her husband toss Stefano gently into the air. Xanxus was good with the children, far more attentive than either of her parents had ever been with her. They joked, sometimes, that between them they had a comprehensive model for how not to parent. It was heartbreaking more than it was funny. But Stefano was almost five now, and Chiara had just celebrated her second birthday. Both of them were happy and healthy and loved. That had to be enough for her.
Growing up she had wanted more than her mother’s life. More than home and children and a husband that was never there. It burned, sometimes, to think that she had been trapped there anyway. That wasn’t fair. Xanxus was there for her when he could be. Most of his spare time was spent with the children, as it should be. He organised their tutors and their playmates, understanding the Mafia and its politics so much better than she did, even now.
Now that she was Unidecima. In name, she was the leader of the most powerful Family in Italy. The Family that had got her brother killed. The Family that had stolen her father and dragged her into its greedy, unforgiving heart. There was no way to clean the blood from the Vongola, and Tsuna had died trying.
They had never been close, she and her brother. Much as she had loved him, once, she had never been able to relate to him and he had never tried to reach her. After the wedding, the weak foundation of their sibling bond wasn’t enough to hold a relationship steady. He had screeched, of course, about her being young to be married, about Xanxus being dangerous, but not for long. Once that nicety had been observed and he had finished pretending to care, he had been delighted that she was married to Xanxus. Pleased that she would keep him in check. Relieved that Xanxus was no longer his problem, that he wouldn’t have to interact with the man who had rubbed his face in what the Mafia really was. And that had set the tone.
She was Xanxus’ wife, not Tsuna’s sister any more. He had spoken to her as a go-between for her husband, never for her own sake. More often than not, he hadn’t spoken to her at all. Yamamoto had relayed messages at first, before he began to pass them directly to Squalo and she had been cut out altogether. She saw her brother at the family dinners their father insisted on, and at the Vongola parties. That was more than enough for her. She couldn’t stand to see him standing with Nono, smiling and laughing. She hated watching the Mafiosi fawn all over him and sneer behind his back. She felt like a little girl again, wanting to protect him and knowing that she couldn’t. That helplessness mixed with her anger and disgust into a toxic mess inside her that felt horribly close to contempt.
By the time he was killed, when little Chiara was barely six months old, he was little more than a stranger. She didn’t cry at the funeral, seven coffins sunk into the cold Italian ground. Grand caskets, festooned with flowers. A gaudy spectacle, a sick mirror of her wedding. Like her wedding, she could barely call the day back to her memory. She had been there, but it came to her in empty snapshots. Her dry eyes had burned. That, she remembered.
His friends had died with him that day. His guardians, who had been utterly incapable of the role they had taken. A group of children, playing Mafia, thinking that they could take on the world. She had thought that she had finished grieving for her brother years ago, given up on ever being close to him. But the loss of him, the last twisted remnant of her childhood, burned. They had been so young, and none of them had ever had a chance. It was all just a sick joke. Like so much of her life, it was hilarious apart from the heartbreak. and sometimes she wanted to laugh at the ridiculouness of it all. Sometimes she did, until she choked and sobbed and the staff brought her tea to help her sleep.
It was sweet of Xanxus to avenge Tsuna. Before she had even known that he was dead, Xanxus was killing the ones responsible. He had found the culprits, somehow, and destroyed them before they even got a chance to brag about what they’d done. She knew that Xanxus didn’t care for Tsuna, knew the only reason for this vicious response was for her sake. It was romantic, in its way. Violence was Xanxus’ language, and one he couldn’t often speak with her, his soft civilian wife. It made communication difficult.
So she was the last of the bloodline. But no one would follow a foreign woman. That had been demonstrated even before her wedding, as far back as Tsuna’s birth. She was only useful as a vessel to carry forward the bloodline. Nothing more. Never anything more. So she took the title, and Xanxus took the power. He insisted that she stay with the Varia, behind thick walls and armed guards. He wouldn’t risk orphaning their children, and Tsuna had proved with his mangled body how dangerous the role Xanxus played was. She couldn’t argue. She never could argue about Vongola business. What did she know about the Mafia?
She raised her children. Xanxus set the schedule for them, and they had servants as befitted their status, but she played with them. She couldn’t really cook for them, nothing that would compare with the world-class food the chefs prepared for them, but she made cookies. She didn’t understand all of Stefano’s lessons, and his Italian was already more advanced than hers but she let him explain it to her and she made sure he completed it at least. It didn’t feel like enough, but it was all she could do. She tried to ignore how Stefano grew more distant from her, how he so obviously preferred Uncle Squalo and Auntie Luss to her. He was a child, of course it wasn’t cool to spend time with his mother. And it wasn’t fair of her to resent her husband’s people.
The Varia were very good to her. Every time she saw her father he was dropping warnings about them being dangerous and unpredictable, but they were nothing but respectful towards her. They all spoke Japanese, so her efforts at learning Italian were largely unnecessary. THat was good, because she was awful at it. No matter how patient her teachers, she never seemed to get any better. They went over the same lessons over and over, but she just couldn’t make herself understood, even when the Varia were obviously trying their best to grasp her meaning through her awful pronunciation and mangled grammar. Conversations always reverted to Japanese, and it was so easy to just stop trying.
So here she was, at a Mafia garden party, holding her daughter and smiling along to conversations she barely understood. A twenty-one year old mother of two, the most powerful powerless woman in the world. She wished, sometimes, that she was more like her mother. Beautiful, charming Nana, who had wept at her son’s funeral. Who had never forgiven her daughter for her lack of tears. If she was more like that, maybe she could be happy with this picture-perfect life. She was holding her laughing daughter, sat in a beautiful garden, wearing a beautiful dress, watching her handsome, powerful husband play with their son. It was everything she had ever been told she should want. It was everything she had never wanted to have.
She blinked, focusing again. It was so easy to space out, to lose time. She watched as Dino Cavallone approached, smiling charmingly.
She hated him. Almost more than she hated her father. More than she hated Nono. She hated Dino because he had been her last chance to escape. If she had screamed all those years ago, if she had kicked him and made a fuss, maybe she wouldn’t be here. Maybe she would be an engineer by now, instead of a housewife who occasionally dabbled in mechanics. Maybe she would have a husband she had fallen in love with, instead of a co-parent who was trying his best but obviously had no idea how to relate to a civilian wife. Maybe she would be pregnant with her first child, one that she had planned and wished for, instead of a useless, resentful mother to a five year old who condescended to her and a daughter who preferred her nurse. All of that she laid at Dino’s feet, and maybe it wasn’t fair, but this was the Mafia. Nothing was fair here.
“Natsuki! You look beautiful, as usual!” he beamed as he approached.
She smiled slightly. At least Dino spoke Japanese to her.
“Cavallone. How is your Family doing?”
As expected, he was off on a one-sided conversation. His right-hand man had a broken arm, but his new bodyguards were very good, have you met Matteo? He’d opened a new hospital, one with a research wing. Such a lack of research, was that a Vongola priority too? Maybe he should speak to Xanxus about it. And two baby boys had been named after him, wasn’t that an honour! She smiled and nodded and didn’t care. At all. On her knee, Chiara started to cry.
Three months later, kneeling in a pool of her husband’s blood, she would regret taking the moment of peace for granted. She looked up at the white-haired Don Gesso, the man who had destroyed the Vongola. She should probably hate him for this, she realised. Probably be cursing or screaming. Or fighting. Xanxus would be disappointed that she was on her knees.
There was an emotion, almost. She regretted not being a woman who could match Xanxus. He had deserved better than her. Gesso laughed as he tossed her daughter’s corpse onto the floor. She crumpled like a broken toy, her blood adding to the mess on the floor. Natsuki should be angry, right? A mother’s love, a mother’s vengeance, was held in the Mafia as the strongest force. But there was nothing. She hadn’t asked for her children. She hadn’t wanted them. Had barely been involved with them. And now she was free of them. She would die free of the Mafia’s chains. It was enough to make her smile as she looked up at the man responsible.
She's still smiling as he reached down and broke her neck.