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The first time a man from the future shows up at Nana’s house, her little Tsu-kun is two. She lays down her kitchen knife, takes up the gun her husband doesn’t think she knows about, and shoots him while he stands over the bed of her little baby.
The bed her son could’ve laid in, had he not fallen asleep on her own during story time.
The man falls down. The only regret she has is that he’s bleeding out on the carpet, but then again, carpets can be replaced. Her small son cannot. Just the thought of what this man could’ve done to him if she hadn’t been in time makes her skin crawl.
This is not the first time a man has come for he son’s life. It is the first time he came from the future. Nana ignores it. She has a routine to follow.
‘’Mafia?’’ Mei-Lin asks when she comes to pick up the body, prodding at it with her toe, ‘’You did all the fun parts of taking out the trash.’’
Like Hibari Mei-Lin would go around picking up normal garbage.
Nana hands her the drivers licence she found in his pocket.
‘’From the future?’’ Mei-Lin asks without looking.
Nana nods, sweetly tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘’Please bring me Frederico Vongola’s head.’’
Mei-Lin is nothing if not efficient. Frederico’s dead by the end of the week, and only his bones remain. The minute his heart stops beating, memories begin to fade, and by the time Frederico’s bones are discovered, Sawada Nana does not remember anything about him at all.
Mei-Lin does, but that’s mostly because it was so fun to bash his head in. She’d never liked that fucker. Trespassed on her territory one too many times.
The first time a man from the future shows up at Nana’s house, her little Tsu-kun is four. She catches him in front of Tsuna’s bedroom door, gun in his hand, determination in his eyes. His blond hair gleams in the low light, and so does the barrel of the gun in his hand. His overalls are green, and he decidedly does not look Asian. Another Italian, she thinks, before shaking her head. What a curious thought.
‘’Stop right there,’’ she speaks up, raising the knife she’s holding.
‘’You don’t get it,’’ the young man says, desperately. His hand shakes. She’s glad the safety’s still on, because his finger is precariously close to the trigger. ‘’You don’t get it, he needs to be killed! He’s too in love with flames, too in love with robotics, to ever be able to go back. You might not see it right now, ma’am, but he’ll sell his heart and soul for it. I can’t let that happen. Sawada-san, this is for the world!’’
‘’The world?’’ she asks, ‘’My son is my world. And you’re too desperate for this to be the world in general. You’ve got a stake in this. This is personal.’’
The boy shrugs. ‘’He is destroying the world in general, if that’s what you’re asking. For more resources for his projects, and nobody is allowed to stand in his way. But you gotta understand, I was there all along. I… I can’t let our friends suffer more. I can’t let them look at this future of their own doing anymore. It’s breaking Shoichi. And Tsuna… As I said, the real him died a long time ago.’’
‘’But he hasn’t,’’ she smiles, ‘’Because that child right there? That’s my son. He has a heart. I’ll make sure he’ll keep it.’’
‘’…I’m sorry, ma’am.’’ The safety goes off.
Nana wrestles him into a judo hold.
‘’Thank you for your sacrifice,’’ Nana says as she slits his throat.
She calls Mei-Lin for clean-up.
‘’Mafia?’’ Mei-Lin asks when she comes to pick up the body, prodding at it with her toe, ‘’You did all the fun parts of taking out the trash.’’
Like Hibari Mei-Lin would go around picking up normal garbage.
Nana shrugs ‘’He was from the future.”
“Whose head do you want?”
Nana sighs and shakes her head as she helps Mei-Lin with the body bag. “I'll deal with this myself.”
The next day, she breaks it gently to her son that he can't become a super robot when he grows up.
He never meets Spanner and Shoichi through a science fair, and the future changes. Nobody remembers the blood encrusted knife in Nana's bedside table, simply because no blood ever got on it in the first place.
The first time a man from the future shows up at Nana’s house, her little Tsu-kun is six.
They're good- she almost didn't notice them. But Nana grew up with Hibari Mei-Lin, and that is not something to be spoken of lightly. She hears voices in the children’s room.
“...Stop.”
“Squalo?”
“He's a child.”
“Shishishi, the prince knows. That was the entire point of coming here. We can't defeat him if he's older, so we gotta cull him now.”
They’re good, possibly too good for her, and she doesn't have time to stand around listening to their conversation. She texts Mei-Lin and makes sure her phone's on silent.
The conversation in the room continues, the volume rising. “Bel, we shouldn't have done this in the first place. Boss ain't gonna like it. He wants to defeat Sawada with his own power or not at all.”
“...Mister, what are you doing in my room? Kaa-san said to scream if there's anybody I don't know.”
No- Nana's heart enters her throat. Tsuna! She throws the door open.
“Fuck! See what you did?! The kid woke up!”
“What?! The prince didn't even say anything! It was you, peasant!”
The glass breaks, Mei-Lin bursts in through the window, showering the men in glass.
Tsuna screams and scrambles out of bed, towards the door where Nana snatches him. “Run!” She throws him into the hallway.
Mei-Lin makes short work of the men. “Varia.” She sighs. “If only those kids got a better education. Would make for a much better fight.”
When her husband’s boss comes over with his son, she gifts him a children’s management book. Sure, the boy looks at her strangely, but he accepts it.
It doesn’t help much, but it helps enough.
The future changes.
The first time a man from the future shows up at Nana’s house, her little Tsu-kun is eight. She comes back from grocery shopping and finds her son tied to a chair in the middle of the kitchen. A man is walking in circles around him, his long cape flaring dramatically with every turn. He’s wearing a suit and a top hat, twirling his moustache while walking.
‘’AHA!’’ he exclaims upon seeing her. ‘’The lovely Sawada-san returns! This is an excellent opportunity to explain my evil plans!’’
‘’…Uhuh.’’ Nana says, while inching towards the wall.
‘’I,’’ the villain crows, ‘’Am destined to defeat my archenemy through time travel! No longer shall you, Sawada Tsunayoshi, block my path towards world domination! I shall rise above you by killing you before you grow into your magical girl powers! The oracle told me time travel would help me stop my arch enemy herself! Fear and bow before me, peasa-‘’
Nana grabs the gun out of the hidden compartment in the wall and shoots him in the face, right between the eyes. He sways left, he sways right, and falls down. Permanently. He dies crosseyed, trying to look at the place where the bullet entered.
Tsuna screams. And screams. And screams.
Nana calls Mei-Lin, and then her relatives. She warns her cousins that her son is a boy, and as such not eligible for the family business unless he dyes his hair protagonist pink.
Tsuna stops screaming. The blood disappears, and so does the body. The future changes, and Tsuna never becomes a magical girl.
The first time a man from the future shows up at Nana’s house, her little Tsu-kun is ten. There is a scuffle upstairs. And not the ‘’Tsuna falling off the stairs’’ kind. Nana stiffens, gets her gun and climbs the stairs as quietly as she can. Her heart is beating so loud she’s afraid that it will give her away. She walks past her own bedroom door, and there’s Tsuna’s- wide open.
There’s a man, and his hands are around her child’s throat. Her son’s face is turning blue. And while that is most certainly the most pressing issue in this situation, it is not the most shocking. No, the most shocking thing is the identity of the man holding him up.
Her husband. Iemitsu. Her son’s father. He’s older, at least a few years, and red in the face in the way that means he’s drunk, but the intent on his face is nothing less than murderous.
Leaning in close, Tsuna attempting to flinch back from the stench of alcohol, Iemitsu breathes: ‘’I put you into this world, and by god, I can put you out of it.’’
‘’Good thing I’m not letting you.’’ Nana shoots him in the back of the head. He drops, releasing Tsuna, and the boy takes a huge gulp of air, stares at the body of his father before him, blinks, and begins to cry and cough at the same time. Nana rushes towards him and cradles him in her arms, holding him tight.
Nobody touches her child. Not even her husband.
She spends the entire day after taking care of Tsuna, and never leaves the house. A bomb goes off in the grocery store she could’ve been present in an alternate universe, but Nana is safe at home and doesn’t die. Her husband doesn’t come home to a dead wife, and a crying child who blames himself for his mother’s death because she went shopping to get him candy. Iemitsu never travels back in time in despair to kill his own son.
Her marriage survives, if only because that particular future ceases to exist.
The first time a man from the future shows up at Nana’s house, her little Tsu-kun is fourteen. Well, ‘man’ might be a big word for him, since it’s a gangly teenager, fifteen years of age, bawling his eyes out as he tries to leave the kitchen.
Nana isn’t letting him. ‘’Lambo-kun, sit down with mama.’’
‘’But mama! I have to kill Tsuna-nii!’’
Nana gives him a stern look and tugs him down into her lap. He’s tall, now, at least twenty centimeters taller than her, but he’s a growing boy and hasn’t filled out yet. He fits on her lap just fine.
Lambo pushes against her arms weakly, caging him in, lower lip trembling. ‘’Mama, you don’t understand! I tripped and I kissed Tsuna-nii and it was my first kiss, mama!’’ He was full on sobbing at this point. ‘’I gotta murder him to prevent that from happening in the future!’’
Burying his head into her shoulder, nose pressing against her neck, he soaks her sleeves with his tears. He’s hysterical, and Nana pets him, rubbing gentle circles onto his back. His sobbing slows.
‘’You’re not going to let me kill him, are you?’’ He says, voice rough, but also strangely light.
‘’No. You’re both my children and nobody is going to hurt anyone else. What you’re going to do is stand up, let me hand you some cookies and go home. I’m your mother, no matter what time, but I don’t doubt I’d love a hug of yours in ten years from now. So go home and give me a hug, won’t you, sweetheart?’’
He nods, drying his eyes with his sleeves. He also reaches for his nose, but Nana manages to stop him with a tissue. ‘’Blow.’’
He complies.
She gives him the cookies in a Tupperware container and sends him off just as the pink smoke takes him away. She smiles. She’ll have ten years to think about how to handle that particular issue, but she doesn’t think it’s going to be that difficult to deal with.
If the future has teenagers who listen to their mama, it can’t be all that bad.
This is the future that never fades.
Omake
“From the future?” Mei-Lin asks from the bed.
Nana nods as she waves Lambo off to go apologize to Tsuna and share his goodies. “I made those cookies ten years ago.”
Mei-Lin laughs. “God, that was before your divorce went through!”