"I'm sick of all of this shit." Xanxus threw down his guns. "I'm done." He stayed still even as Iemitsu rushed forward to restrain him, and instead held his arms out wide. "You've finally pushed me to breaking point, father." He spat. "Are you happy now?"

He didn't say anything else, even as he was tackled to the ground (oh so reminiscent of another event, four years prior) and the shouting continued and the Iemitsu's lackeys hurried to confirm the health of their master's family. Tsuna was still crying in the background, and Timoteo was giving Xanxus this soulful, sorry look as if he had no choice and was desperately seeking some measure of understanding, of forgiveness. Xanxus bared his teeth and gave him the finger, and the hurt look on The Ninth's face was the last thing he saw before the chains came and darkness rushed in.

- x -

Xanxus is six years old when he first realises there's something off about his mama. In the streets, everyone was a little off, a little too young, or too old, too hardened and weathered by the constant battling down of their defences as they fight the slow creep of the cold and pains of poverty that never seem to go away. Everyone's in it for themselves, and Xanxus might have been blinded a little by 'at least I have mama, those other kids don't have a mama, at least at least at least' that he doesn't realise she's not all there for him. She's not all there, in general.

It's only when she's huddled in the corner, terrified of men that aren't there that Xanxus comes to this realisation. It's a harsh one, because he was so dependant upon that safety net, that comforting thought that there was someone there to catch him whenever and wherever that he didn't quite realise just how much he relied upon it until it was pulled out of from under his feet.

So mama was his to protect as well, which was fine. He loved her, and she loved him, and she was worth it, his determination and resolve, all his effort just to keep them both afloat in a cruel, heartless world. Which was why it took little but some ugly, pig of a man smacking his mama to the ground and demand she get out of his way 'you filthy little bitch' for the flames of wrath to come bursting into life to burn the pig into ash.

Which was why - why Xanxus was so confused when three days later after he helped mama, after he saved her, that she was handing him off to some old man who wore wealth better than most wear wore their own hair and stank of lies.

This? This was his Papa?

His mama thought so - but his mama thought lots of things that weren't true, so maybe she was wrong on this as well. Except the man took one look at Xanxus' flames - the hot, burning thing that came out whenever he thought about his mama getting hurt, and smiled.

Apparently, he was this man's son.

Apparently being his son wasn't enough. He couldn't bring his mama with him, or his clothes or scraggly hair or 'filthy eating habits'. He was this man's son (right, right?) but he had to earn it. Xanxus would earn it then. He'd work harder, thrice as hard as any of the other sons (his brothers?) who lounged around all day or went to school or played guns (why, why didn't they have to earn it?). Xanxus would become the best, and he would earn himself the whole of Vongola and find his mama and make sure they'd never have to suffer in the cold with no food ever again.

It's years before he's allowed to roam free, to come and go unsupervised, with enough people certain in his loyalty to Vongola that he wouldn't be a risk. Xanxus had scoffed at the thought. Of course he was loyal to Vongola, they had given him everything.

"Do you want to take the car?"

Xanxus ignores the servant's bow but considers it. He remembers how those sort of people had been viewed, the rich or extraordinarily wealthy. Those who were too good to walk on the filthy streets like the rest of them and whose eyes they could feel piercing from behind tinted windows - judging all the street rats they came across and found them wanting. If Xanxus was anything, even with this newfound life of luxury, he was not one of those people.

"No. I'll go there myself."

He wears the oldest, most battleworn coat he has, but even then he's out of place by the time he reaches his old haunting ground. All his clothing, his entire appearance, has a level of quality and personal grooming that you'd never find within a mile of the slums. He's probably saved from hours of pointless work by the look in his eye - the look of someone intimately familiar with the poor surroundings and comfortable in them. Someone who came from the slums.

It both frustrates and relieves Xanxus, because for all that it makes his job easier, he'd being trying so, so hard at cutting that part of himself off and fitting in with his new family. It had been difficult - trying to squash down that indescribable feeling of anger, frustration, and appal, when his brothers throw away food like they never had to worry about it, never experienced the feeling of eating months old bread because it might make you sick but the empty void radiating pain where your stomach should be would make you more sick if you had to feel it for one more second - but he'd been trying.

He makes little progress that day, but he makes some. He makes a little more then next time he goes, a week later when he finally has time, because word was already getting around that someone was looking for something and they were paying real big money. He knows he's getting close, he could feel it right down to his core, which is why it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise that his search was interrupted. Vongola had an urgent mission he needed to complete. The safety of the heirs were at risk, and Xanxus was already one of the best in the Varia, and he needed to go.

He went.

Xanxus rushed through the case, broke three rules of the Varia and bent one direct order to get the job done as quick as possible. He made sure he had everyone involved rounded up and terminated for good measure, and if anyone else noticed his hurry or unusual cruelty, they didn't mention it. Still, it took three weeks before he got the all clear, and usually he'd stay around for a few days more, but he had a mother to find, and not a lot of time to do it in.

Or so he had thought. Three days after he returned to the Vongola headquarters, he finally catches up with his mother - or well, his mother's corpse. It was stored alongside number of other bodies, waiting for a state-funded mass funeral.

Xanxus took a long hard look at the body of the person he'd been chasing after for years, and scoffed.

"Have this shit cleared up." He said, waving at the unconscious forms of all the government officials who'd gotten in his way. "And take the fucking body while you're at it. Deserves a proper funeral at least."

He turned and left.

The funeral was a day later - courtesy of the Vongola that had never helped the woman in life, but at least could offer her a speedy, final death.

It hit him half a month later, while walking the halls of the mansion, trying to find somewhere quiet and out of the way to escape. He'd lost her, well and truly. He'd lost her once at six and again at sixteen, and maybe it was the memory he had clung onto - tinted through the worldview of a child who didn't know and didn't have any better (and that body on the table he saw didn't feel like anything to him and that, more than anything, messed him up inside) - maybe he didn't care about what sort of person his mother had been and instead wanted some proper family. At least one family member that could, maybe, possibly understand what life was like without the sweet comfort of a home to always return to. Or a family member that didn't look at him and automatically think bastard. Maybe he hadn't wanted her at all, as family or otherwise, and instead wanted to cling to the idea that he, Xanxus, was in some way redeemable, that anyone he'd killed was for the sake of some far off person he needed to save and not for his own survival.

No. Whatever he'd done was because Vongola had told him to. He killed and tortured for Vongola, for some idea of a family that he'd accepted wholeheartedly but never really accepted him back.

"So, did you hear about the youngest, yet?"

Xanxus froze. He had wound up near the servant's area. Evidently it was occupied, so he should leave.

"The bastard child?" The reply came. Xanxus really didn't need to stay for this. "What about him?"

Some sort of noise - a scoff or a tut or maybe one of the maids making some sound of excitement at being able to enlighten her co-worker on just how big of a fuck up Xanxus' life was.

"You must be new, I bet. Everyone knows he's not really a bastard; not even the old man's kid, just some urchin off the street, but get this-"

Xanxus was frozen in place, words having reached his ears but not yet his heart.

Not even the old man's kid.

Not even the old man's kid.

Not the old man's kid?

No.

No no no no no no no no.

And suddenly he was gone, tearing through the corridors with no regards to sleath - uncaring if the maids behind him heard his speedy exit - knocking over things carelessly in his rush to his father's office. He'd never barged in before, people didn't barge in on the boss of the biggest and greatest mafia syndicate in the whole world. This time he smashed to the door, realising late that it was only possible because the sheer, undeniable rage had manifested themselves physically as flames upon his skin.

Good. The old man deserved to have some things burn.

Xanxus tore through the room, not really with any purpose besides mindless destruction when a journal fell out of the cracked desk. It confirms what he has heard, and more. Xanxus' flames get brighter each passing minute he reads the old man's account of picking some child off the street as if it were some everyday occurrence, the heat of his rage pushing them further and further out of control. He's already making plans, how he'll show the old man, how he's lead a group and take Vongola - the thing that bastard valued most - out of his old, senile hands, when the door slides open and the Ninth walks in.

Iemitsu is by his side, and evidently they were deep in conversation, since it took both, top members of the mafia a moment to process that they were not alone in the room, or that it hadn't been left in the same condition they'd last seen it in. Any other time, Xanxus would have reigned in his temper, put to use all those hard, laborious years of training so that he could go away and plan and actually win.

This was not one of those times.

Maybe it as the bad timing. Xanxus hadn't nearly enough time to process this betrayal, had no way to think past the hurts and whys of betrayal to instead harness his rage into something focused and potent. If he had, maybe it would have gone differently. Maybe Xanxus still would have lost, but at least then it would have deserved - something he at least brought upon himself considering the scale and range of revenge he had already started planning. As it was, Xanxus was restrained as one of the few people who had ever cared for him - his father figure - condemned him to icy confinement. He might have raged and destroyed an office and even attacked out of anger - he may have threatened to do a number of things really. Yet the reality was this:

At sixteen, ten years after losing his mother, he loses his father too.

At sixteen, after years of dedication, blood, sweat, tears and toil, Vongola betrayed him.

At sixteen, without having committed any major sins, Xanxus was sentenced to imprisonment by his father's own flames, and all he could really ask as they creeped up his body and hindered his movements, as they involved his head, his sight and hearing and ability to speak - was why?

- x -

It works like this. The Zero-Point Breakthrough is a technique that creates ice out of flames. It works in the negatives, and will take any and all energy to fuel it. It simultaneously can only be melted by dying will flames as well. This contradiction exists in its unrefined technique, and leads to instability. Has Xanxus been angry when frozen - had his flames of wrath been burning wild within him, he'd have lost. He was too young to overcome his father's flames with his own, and instead would have fuelled them - his wrath supplying energy to the ice to keep his trapped for years and years more without any intervention. His flames would have fuelled his prison rather than melting it. As it was, he was frozen defeated, having been betrayed and beaten by the people he should have been able to trust most. His flames were not strong or active enough to supply any significant amount of energy to be stolen - but they were there, still. They were active and burning, burning low but burning hot enough to slowly, painstakingly shift the balance so that they melted a fraction more ice than they fuelled.

It took four years before his flames melted enough to set him free.

When Xanxus falls on all fours his arms buckle out of weakness and he crashes to the floor. He's only able to move by virtue of two things: his initial strength before all this crap went down and his ability to use flames to power through physical limits. He's not particularly grateful for it at the moment though, instead he's wondering - panicking really - about why his arms aren't working right in the first place.

His last memories were of being frozen by the old man - except no, that was wrong because there was a vast stretch, a void full of nothing but the feeling of cold and the slow passing of time - and it was both, all at once, that terrifying nothingness and pain of being alone alone oh so alone combined perfectly with the mix of rage, confusion, panic and hurt from his confrontation with the old man. It was one, then the other, then both and back to one again and then neither and, and-

Xanxus shoved it to the back of his head with force and practice as only one who spent years working with the mafia could do. He had to figure out a plan of action. He was not... he would not go to his father. Not again, not so soon. He ignored the voice saying it had actually been a long, long time since that dreadful confrontation and went back to the matter at hand. He didn't want another confrontation - it'd end up the same way as before, only without any chance of escape at all. Xanxus wasn't quite sure how he'd broken free this first time anyway.

He didn't want to stay with the Vongola, either. Revenge may be in store - oh, it was definitely in store - being but surrounded by the family that was just so cruelly cut from him was not something he wanted to do. Not something he could do when avoiding the old man regardless. And... as much as he wanted revenge - and he did he really did - that want was only one of many, and it could not overcome the pain of having to see something he had once valued so dearly crash and burn right around him.

Plus, he needed to recover. More than anything, he needed to get away. And thinking about what happened, who had been there at the start of this entire mess - well that gave Xanxus a good as start as any as to what to do next. Iemitsu may have only been the external advisor, but to hurt him would still hurt Vongola.

It might have been ages in the ice - years, his intuition claimed, and Xaxus shoved that thought away too, horrified - but still his skill set was as refined as if he'd been using it right up until yesterday. Those skills, as well as intimate knowledge of the Vongola and the Mansion - he refused to call it 'home' any longer - let him slip out discreetly. Things had changed enough though, to make it a challenge Xanxus wasn't sure he'd win if he was trying to sneak in instead of out. As it was, he managed to get out and slip himself some supplies. Money, whatever clothing he could nab. Food, and best of all - an old passport from one of his little cubby holes stashed around the house that nobody else knew of. It wasn't up to date - Xanxus didn't even know what he looked like anymore, and systematically refused to check before he got somewhere safe and alone so he could break down in peace - but he could make adjustments himself without having to bother finding, paying and then bribing for a professional to craft him one from scratch and to stay quiet about it. Everyone knew those guys were snitches, and going up to on was a surefire way to get caught before he even left the country.

When all was said and done, getting out of a country undetected wasn't as hard as people assumed it was. Getting into a new country undetected was an entirely different story, but Xanxus was one of the best, and he hadn't been able to earn his place there without reason. Before the month was up, he was in Japan, a lot better rested and with enough money and resources to get by. In honesty, he was only moving around by virtue of the dying will flame, but he needed this, needed some sort of goal to work towards to keep that flame running. If that meant scoping out Iemitsu's family, maybe seeing what sort of things he could do to them to fuck the bastard up was what he had to do, then so be it.

Honestly Iemitsu was the biggest fucking idiot Xanxus had ever met in the mafia, and that list included the person who tried to shoot him with a water-gun replica of an actual gun in their assassination attempt. The external advisor, with a staggering amount of trust in both the Vongola and mafia as a whole, had advertised his biggest weakness like there was no tomorrow. Sure he probably didn't gush about his wife or kid to anyone outside the upper echelon of the family, and probably had shown pictures to even fewer people than that, but his gushing and proud picture toting had been enough for Xanxus to track them down, and it'd be enough for anyone else too.

So with the ease of an assassin who'd done it many, many times before, Xanxus pieced together every bit of information, every throwaway comment and overhead lines over the phone and found himself outside the house of Iemitsu's family. There was a sense of power, one he never grew tired of, of having the ability to ruin a man's life - to be able to choose whether he, Xanxus, felt like doing something that would be a pivotal moment in his target's life but was just another Tuesday for him. He basked in the feeling for a good five minutes before giving his undying focus upon the house in his view. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do right yet, but scoping out the perimeter was a habit that never killed anyone besides the enemy.

It was an average house - surprising, considering what Iemitsu must make and his tendency for the ostentatious, but at least it's one thing he did right. In a good neighbourhood, with a nice garden and nice occupants who were unaware of the assassin looming over them. Xanxus paid extra attention as the back door opened, and both mother and son walked out.

"Come on, let's go outside! I'm sure you'll feel a lot better." That was Sawada Nana. Xanxus recognised her from the pictures, though her hair had gotten dramatically shorter.

"There," she said, leaning down to face the child besides her. "That's better, right? Look how prettily the sun is shining!"

The kid - and wow was he short, was he actually nine years old? - nodded hesitantly. "Yeah."

"Go on then," his mother gently urged with a smile. "Have some time to play."

Xanxus spent another hour watching the oddly domestic scene, with the happy mother and a small, painfully shy child. He didn't even look like his father, all soft chubby cheeks and flyaway brown hair. Xanxus had to do a lot of things in his ten years of service to Vongola, and it was idiocy to think they had never targeted those vulnerable ones, the wife and kids, but it was one of the few things Xanxus had never been asked to do that often, and there weren't exactly a wealth of civilians with civilian families going against the Vongola to warrant it being that common a request. Also, as much as he was an all-powerful member of the Varia, he hadn't yet reached his twenties before being frozen, and there was only so much they were willing to put on, as much as he hated the word, a child.

(Bel, though was another story altogether, but he was a special case.)

Xanxus hadn't spent much that time contemplating the Vongola or his service towards it since getting out (he'd been in that ice for four years, four years said the date and he didn't, he couldn't-) and he didn't really want to. What he had wanted was some sort of direction - an easy outlet for the range of emotions he was nowhere near used to experiencing. Maybe he'd go to Japan, lick his own wounds, grab Iemitsu by the balls and come back with a bang, having fucked over one of the men who fucked him over in the first place. Nothing, really was going to plan.

When he had found out that Federico, kindhearted Federico had been killed not a month after Xanxus was frozen, he stayed holed up for two days straight. Apparently some of the people that he had been sent to deal with had gotten away - the very same mission he'd rushed through and no- no no no. It was easy to hate something in anger but harder to hate after it was gone, and Federico, his third and favourite brother had loved Vongola to bits.

Really, taking the Vongola apart wasn't an option any more.

'But', Xanxus thought, looking down at the Young Lion's son and calculating lines of inheritance, 'taking the Vongola from the Ninth? That could be arranged.' He turned to go, plans forming in his mind and orders read to be given. Guess it was finally time to involve the old gang again.

Sawada Tsunayoshi was probably one of the easiest marks in Xanxus' whole career. An only child with a soft, trusting mother, no friends, no other family (that were present, at least) and best of all, no confidence. Xanxus had to soften down his look quite a bit after scaring off Tsuna once (boy was the kid easy to scare, he'd have to fix that for the plan to work at all) and bring out the natural youth of his - biological, at least - age, reversing all the techniques he'd been using to make himself look older. Tsuna, wary as he was, still happened to be a small, bullied civilian child - and his want for a friend was far stronger than his wariness of strangers. That too, Xanxus would work out of him, but not before using it to his own advantage.

In all honesty, the kid's problems weren't that out of hand. He was clumsy and he had bad grades. He was also possibly a little dull, but both clumsiness and grades could be worked with, pretty much with minimal effort too. Alas, that would be counter productive.

"Why- why don't you want to do homework with me, Xan-nii?" Tsuna asked, butchering Xanus' name as usual and with the onset of tears in his eyes. The kid rubbed them away and looked to his feet instead. "None of the adults want to help me with it."

Xanus gave him a gruff pat on the head. "I can help you with your homework, kid, but that won't help you in the long run."

Better start teaching him early. Going with the group, buckling under expectation and making friends under false pretense all weren't good life lessons for a kid, never mind the future of the Vongola. Tsunayoshi was going to question everything even if it killed Xanxus to get him to that point.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," Xanxus said, shifting to a more comfortable position on the park bench, "why do you want good grades anyway?"

"So people will stop bullying me. And maybe... be my friend." Tsuna said, shyly. Such a simple answer.

"And will those people be friends with you, or friends with someone with good grades?"

Tsuna frowned. "I don't understand."

Xanxus sat up straight and looked properly at Tsuna. "I mean, if you change yourself for somebody to approve of you, do they actually like who you are or who you've fooled them into thinking you are?"

Tsuna's frown deepened, and Xanxus got up with a sigh. "Think about it a little more, okay?"

"Are you going?" Tsuna's face fell.

"Gotta get to work, kid." Xanxus waved him goodbye. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Okay, Xan-nii! I'll see you later!"

Xanxus refrained a from smirk. The kid wasn't half bad, really.

All in all, they had one and a half - almost two years, really - together before the Ninth caught up with them. Xanxus knew it would have happened sooner or later - sooner if they were in any way smart, and later when the other heirs of the family had a series of unfortunate 'accidents' and they realised their only hope was an unprotected child halfway across the world. What he hadn't anticipated, was this.

"You contacted the Vindice?" Xanxus spat, hunched protectively with Tsuna behind him.

"We had no choice." The Ninth said in that godawful, mournful tone of his. "You are responsible for the death of three of my heirs and here you are gunning for another."

Xanxus refrained from flinching but the wrath of his flames burned stronger. He would not forgive himself for Federico's death, but to dare insinuate that he wanted it to happen?

"Fuck you, old man."

Xanxus could hear Tsuna crying behind him, and as much as he tried to wean the weakness out of the kid, Xanxus couldn't blame him that time. The Ninth had come, flames at the ready, his guardian's behind him. Iemitsu was there to see him kid for the first time in years, face hard set and eyes cold. He too had a bunch of lackeys. And there, looming over them all, like a bunch of vultures waiting for some dying prey to let out its last, laborious breath before swooping in to rip out its intestines, were the Vindice. No wonder the kid was scared, Xanxus was too, just a little.

He hadn't planned a definite out, not really, but he had thought that he'd get away somehow. The varia was on hold to swoop in whenever he needed them, but with dawning realisation, Xanxus understood that it wouldn't be enough.

(He'd already lost enough time to the ice, already had spent weeks months years getting over the void in his memory where he had gone to rest in one time and awake to find a completely different world to greet him, a world that hadn't waited and instead left him behind. Being locked up, being suspended and chained and left aware as he could feel his body degrade all over again-

That would be worse.)

And then the Ninth, ever the puppeteer, set the final nail in the coffin.

"Now, Xanxus. I'm sure you care for young Tsunayoshi," he started, eyeing the protective stance Xanxus was still set within with a small amount of bemused curiosity. "But I'm sure you understand what that relationship would do to him. Everyone would judge him for his relation to you, he'd have twice as much to prove, three times, even, just for spending time with you. People will think he's been compromised, you understand."

Xanxus held back a sound of disgust. Of course, of course that's what he'd been threatened with. Xanxus had suffered under the same conditions, never good enough from the start, never trusted no matter how much, no matter the lengths he went to. He'd spent hours and hours a day bleeding out in training rooms by the time he was twelve just to prove that he was worth something, that he deserved a place to stay. And Tsuna, for all that he had a friend for the last two years, still doubted himself incredibly. Those conditions would undo everything Xanxus was teaching him, they would break him. Figures, the Ninth took one look at Xanxus and found out just how big a weakness Tsuna was and used it against him. Some father he was.

'Well,' Xanxus thought, dropping out of his stance. 'You just fucked up big time, old man.'

So he dropped his guns, and said his final speech and let the chains rush towards him. And Xanxus knew, just as he knew what being a lonely child was like, just what sort of effect this would have on Tsuna - seeing his only friend dragged away from him like that and for no good discernable reason. They'd try to feed him their lies, sure, but Xanxus had taught him enough, and they'd already set themselves up as the bad guys, the ones not to be trusted. Xanxus was taking a big risk there, but his hands were tied, and he had faith. The little one was part of his family now, and the one thing Xanxus taught before all else was that family didn't let each other down.

So he was dragged to the depths of Vendicare, and screamed in his own mind when the water rushed in and darkness became his every living moment. He gave up and regained hope and gave up again.

And he flinched at the first bit of light he'd gotten in years when the surrounding tank was rendered from its seams. He lay limp until some kid he didn't recognise caught him and let him down from suspension, and he grinned behind his mask because it was Tsuna standing there, already so much bigger and brighter, with a heavy set expression on his face and fire in his eyes and the look of a leader about him.

Xanxus could already see the Mafia burning at their feet.