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Timoteo Vongola, ninth head of the Vongola Famigila, sighed for what seemed like the thousandth time that night. And based on the twitch in Visconti’s eye that probably wasn’t an exaggeration. Far too much had happened over the last few hours and he was starting to feel all 62 years of his age.
When Xanxus came back from what should have been a normal day at school with young Tsunayoshi Sawada in tow, Timoteo had to reevaluate far too many of his life’s choices.
Iemitsu Sawada had literately dumped his kid at the Iron Fort for an unknown amount of time and didn’t tell anyone. Sure, Timoteo did invite the family of his External Advisor over to dinner. He had wanted to meet the family that Iemitsu gushed about so often but never seemed to have time to visit. That’s not a punishable crime. He would know, he’s involved in lots of those.
And sure he offered to let little Tsunayoshi stay over for the night so the Sawada couple could have some time alone. He remembered being young and in love, and Nana and Iemitsu were practically enamoured with each other the entire meal. So enamoured in fact they had clearly tuned out the rest of the table half way through in favour of prolonged eye contact, playful teasing, mentally undressing each other, and a lot of flirting. No regard to his boss or his five year old child being in the room.
It was so awkward that as much as he scolded Xanxus for missing a family dinner, he really wished that he could have skipped out on it too.
He stopped himself from sighing again at the memory of that horrible dinner. No need to tempt his cloud guardian’s ire any further. Visconti was a gruff, paranoid, bastard on the best of days, best not to upset him even further when the clear lapse in security indicated by Tsunayoshi’s presence in the Iron Fort already has him ruffled.
The entire afternoon had been spent fielding calls from various alliance members about the lack of announcement of a new sky flame user in the Vongola, ignoring calls from Don Basilishi, arranging meeting and play dates for Tsunayoshi with other heirs his age, listening to Don Basilishi’s complaints because someone— read Ganauche the Third, his lightning guardian— answered the phone when he called back, trying to track down Iemitsu and his wife, and yelling at Don Basilishi when information came to light that he had been poisoning his own kid. All in between trying to get information out of the kids about their home lives, trying to find Tsunayoshi’s friend Ta-kun, and questioning Xanxus and the staff about what they knew of Tsunayoshi’s impromptu stay at the Iron Fort.
Running the Vongola was already stressful enough— he had already been developing a headache from completing his usual paperwork— and the chaos of the afternoon had not helped at all.
Timoteo was currently sat in his office with most of his guardians scattered around the room, each one working through a different stack of papers. Mission and information reports from Iemitsu to be scoured for inconsistencies and errors, information about Hayato’s previous life as Falco Basilishi to be compiled in case Don Basilishi fought their claim on the boy, information about Tsunayoshi’s life in Japan with his mother to be reviewed to determine her fitness as the boy’s legal guardian, documents and forms to sign to recognising a new sky in the Vongola lineage and to arrange their training, mission briefs to prepare to have people scrub Tsunayoshi’s records so they couldn’t be used to find him and to set up proper security because Iemitsu deemed it ‘unnecessary for a civilian’. So much that had to be done to keep the Vongola, and the wider alliance of Famigilas, from collapsing under the growing pile of issues and oversights.
All because Iemistu Sawada couldn’t take care of his own kid for a fucking week. (Most people thought that Xanxus had learned his coarse language from his time on the streets with his mother. They were wrong. It was, after all, a tightly held secret that Timoteo Vongola knew quite the repertoire of curse words and had passed his knowledge onto all his children.)
Brow Nie Jr., his sun guardian, slipped into the office, even more paper in hand.
“I have the results of the health checks you ordered on the children.” The youngest member of Timoteo’s inner circle quietly addressed him, holding the papers out.
“Please, just give me a summary. I’ve looked at far too much paperwork for today.” He tried to infuse some levity into his voice, but it fell flat.
“Well, both kids are indeed flame active. Hayato is in the condition you’d expect for someone who’s been living on the streets for the last few months. He has some lingering damage from repeated poisonings while he was living with the Basilishi, but nothing that can’t be healed with a good diet plan and regular application of sun flames. The trauma from being poisoned so many times will likely take longer to work through though.” Brow Nie answered.
“What about Tsunayoshi?” His rain guardian, Schnitten Brabanters, asked.
“Physically, he’s healthy…” Brow Nie trailed off like he wanted to say more but was hesitant to do so.
“And mentally?” Coyote Nougat, his ever pragmatic storm guardian, prompted.
“Some signs of emotional neglect. His mother is apparently very reluctant to acknowledge when something is wrong. The more worrying thing is the strained element bonds that his flames are trying to reach for.”
A new bond between compatible element and sky is usually tenuous and fragile. When two people’s wills meet and decide to join as one it takes some time for the connection to settle and strengthen, so their flames encourage them to stay close while they build trust and finalise their bond. This was all the more obvious in young children who don’t have the emotional regulation or flame manipulation skills needed to moderate their flames influence as the bond formed.
When two newly bonded flame users are separated, their flames reach out to try and maintain that bond until the individuals meet again and can start working on their relationship. Skies with strained bonds often feel that some part of themselves is missing, while elements become hyper focused on the absent sky to their detriment. And a strained bond won’t break, no matter what. On the positive side, a strained bond isn’t fatal, far from it.
But it can lead to irreparable mental trauma to the flame user and those around them if not dealt with in a timely manner.
And Tsunayoshi had already been separated from one of his elements for almost a week.
“You said strained bonds. Plural. We know about his bond with this Ta-kun being strained, but is his bond with Hayato that tenuous?” Coyote questioned.
“Actually, his bond with his storm feels quite robust for how new it is. They’ve already gotten to the point of gleefully enabling each other. No, he has partial bonds to a rain and a cloud.
‘Fuck, a strained bond with a cloud,’ Timoteo though to himself, ‘The hardest element to bond with and the most destructive when fledgling bonds are strained.’
Judging by the looks on his guardians faces they were thinking something along the same lines too.
“How have they already reached the enabling stage?! They just met this morning!” Bouche Croquant, his mist, exclaimed.
Or not.
The stages of flame bonds was a controversial theory amongst flame users, and one that Timoteo did not subscribe to. Nor did Visconti, who stormed out of the room, or Coyote, who politely excused himself to see if dinner was ready. Still, Timoteo let the others indulge in their conversation as he put down the paper he was reading and watched them gush over how fast the children were bonding.
(If anyone were to categorise his bonds with his elements, they would place them in the fond exasperation stage, which is right before the tragic miscommunication stage. That is followed by the expression of undying love and orgy stages, and where the theory really falls apart. Romance story tropes really don’t work well when applied to real life.)
Just as the impromptu gossip session ended, Visconti stormed back in followed by a dishevelled Ganauche. The young man had been sent to CEDEF headquarters to enlist their help in tracking down Iemitsu and his wife so their child could be returned to their custody as punishment for subjecting them all to Don Basilishi’s complaints. Before anyone could ask for his report, Coyote strode back into the office with a tray of antipasto and a bottle wine for them to share and announced that the kitchen would be bringing dinner up to them shortly.
The finished paperwork was shuffled back to Timoteo’s desk for him to review and sign off on, the unfinished sheet put aside for after dinner, and everyone converged onto the couches and chairs around the low table he kept in his office for days like this. It wasn’t the most comfortable for eating off of but, when there was far to much to be done and not enough time to do it in, it was functional.
Everyone served themselves and took a few bites before Visconti broke the silence and asked the question everyone was thinking of.
“So, where is Iemitsu?”
“I don’t know.” Ganauche said dully, looking down at his plate. “No one knows where he went. He didn’t file his travel plans with the CEDEF. He didn’t arrange a discrete guard to protect his family while they were here. Hell, he didn’t even take his phone with him. Not a single person knows anything about what he’s doing or when he’ll be back. He didn’t even tell them he was going on vacation! Lal just returned from a mission this afternoon, so they’ve been running around like chickens with their heads cut off for the past week and didn’t bother to tell anyone!” His voice grew more intense as went on until he was practically yelling.
The room was silent at the revelation that the External Advisor had just left his post without telling anyone or appointing someone else to be in charge. And the CEDEF didn’t think to tell anyone that their leader had dropped of the face of the earth.
“What the fuck Iemitsu?” Timoteo whispered to himself. “What the hell were you thinking? How did such a bright-eyed, eager boy turn into such an incompetent asshole?”
Everyone else collectively took a drink of the wine that had been poured by Bouche to avoid Timoteo’s rhetorical question.
“I told Lal everything we learned from Tsunayoshi and Xanxus. Needless to say she was pissed, so I sicced her on tracking Iemitsu down and dragging him back.” A shiver ran down everyone’s spine at the thought of a pissed off Lal. The toddler sized woman was already a force to be reckoned with when calm. There was no telling what the almost-Arcobaleno would do when she finally tracked down her superior. “She’s whipping the other agents back into line for now, but we will need to appoint another head so a situation like this doesn’t happen again. Or just appoint her as External Advisor and be done with it.”
“Or you could appoint Xanxus and deal with him that way.” Visconti casually pointed out as he took another sip of his wine.
Brow Nie pulled his hands down his face as he groaned, “Not this argument again,” but his words were drowned out by Timoteo’s defence of his son.
“I don’t know what you have against him, but Xanxus is my son and deserves better than to be forced out of the Famiglia and into the CEDEF.” Timoteo only ever raised his voice when arguing about what was best for his family, and tonight was no different.
“The street brat can’t even inherit anyways. Since you won’t tell him the truth putting him in the CEDEF now ends his impossible dream before your lies come back to bite you in the ass!” Visconti countered, raising his voice to match Timoteo’s volume.
The other guardians just looked on helpless as they picked at the food and drank their wine. Not even Schintten dared intervene and the rain was usually the first to try and diffuse an argument with his flames before it could begin.
“I’m not going to take Xanxus’s choice away from him! God knows everyone else has already tried to dictate his life to him. I’m not going to be a part of that!”
“You’re too soft on the boy! I don’t know why you keep acting like he’s your actual son when we all know the results of the paternity test.”
“Do we really?” Timoteo roared, leaving Visconti and the rest of his guardians stunned.
While they have had this argument many times before, never had it gone in this direction. Timoteo paused for a second to take a breath then lowered his voice to emphasise his point.
“Do we really know if Xanxus is related to the Vongola or not? Because Sawada Iemitsu is the one who did that paternity test and if he can’t be trusted to do what’s best for his own fucking kid, then how the hell can I trust him when it comes to my children?”
The room sat in silence as they took in his words. Timoteo was glad to see that his guardians were actually considering what he had said. And by the looks on their faces his message had hit home and they were all thinking the same thing now.
‘Did Sawada Iemitsu ever act with the best interests of the Vongola Famigila in mind, or did he have some other motive in mind. Was he just incompetent? Or was he actually malicious?’
The kitchen staff knocked on the door, breaking the silence. Timoteo called them in. Dinner tonight would apparently be Margherita pizza with a garden salad on the side, easy enough to eat while sitting at the low table in his office. The children would enjoy it as well. Tsuna hasn’t had many opportunities to try a variety of authentic Italian cuisines during his stay, being stuck in the Iron Fort and all. The boy was probably sick of sandwiches and whole fruit by now, what with those being the easiest for the frazzled maid watching over him to sneak out of the kitchen.
When the last staff member shut the office door behind them, the conversation finally started back up again.
“So, I suppose you want me to run another DNA test on you and Xanxus?” Brow Nie awkwardly chuckled to break the tension.
“No,” Schnitten deadpanned, “He want’s you to test Xanxus’s DNA against Iemitsu’s.”
Everyone chuckled but something in Timoteo’s gut told him he should look into that joke deeper.
“Actually, since you mentioned it…” He trailed off as Coyote choked on his wine.
“I’m sorry,” his storm coughed out, “do you actually think Xanxus could be Iemitsu’s?”
“Something tells me that I shouldn’t limit our search. Best to run his DNA against as many samples as we can to see if there’s a connection. He does take very strongly after Secondo after all.”
With that, the conversation moved on to something lighter as they finished their meal and returned to the mountain of paperwork awaiting them. The pleasant atmosphere was then promptly ruined by another call from Don Basilishi to complain some more, apparently not deterred by being ripped to shreds for his horrible parenting earlier.
When Timoteo finally managed to hang up on him— and convince him that calling back to complain some more would lead to decisive action being taken against him— the pounding in his head returned in full force. He hadn’t even noticed it disappearing over dinner, but that’s what good food and good company did for the mind and soul.
If only everyday of his life could be like that, he thought to himself. But it couldn’t be, so Timoteo just sighed aloud again. Then dodged the fist Visconti threw at him. Apparently his earlier irritation had returned as well.
It was going to be a very long night.