Prejudice.

Typical, really. I just couldn't catch a break from it, could I?

Sadly, Prejudice was a concept I was intimately familiar with. One could argue that it was in fact discrimination that tormented me, that had made my life, though the eyes of a child, a ludicrous reflection of hell on earth, but … blame should be laid where blame belonged, and discrimination was naught if not born from prejudice, from the wretched idea that a single uncommon characteristic of a person or of an object could be judged as abnormal or unacceptable, and become condemned, because once you start, it is easy. You look for a factor that this person has in common with other people; maybe you find one or two people of this group who share the uncommon characteristic, and suddenly this whole group, no matter if they share skin colour, race, origin, sexuality, a lifestyle, religion, a disability or any other kind of factor that could connect them, they are all painted with the same brush. Individuality? Responsibility for one's own self and actions? Making a choice? It didn't matter to those who let prejudice guide their way of thinking; I truly believe that none of us were blameless of falling victim to prejudice, I know I'm not, but to use it as a measure of normalcy, as an excuse for believing yourself above others and treating those different as less than yourself for something they are blameless of – that catastrophically moronic way of thinking, of living, it had a terrible tendency to destroy lives.

It tended to start wars.

Prejudice was one of the vices upon which war was built, upon which it was fought and justified; it would always sit there, at the centre of conflict, consciously or subconsciously colouring our actions, festering and poisoning.

No one human could actually claim themselves blameless. From the youngest child on the playground to the leader of a nation, we all had our preconceptions. It was the actual way we handled our prejudices that differed.

Are you the kind of person who judged another for who they as an individual human being acted?

Or do you judge another based on prejudices; do you brand them before they can prove your preconceptions wrong?

… I truly loathed the kind of morons who followed hearsay blindly.

Prejudiced fools.

For the longest time, I was a right mess.

Fuck, I was a failure of epic proportions. No nice way to describe it as anything else but what it was.

What I was.

Defeat after defeat in my studies, the mocking of my peers, the derision of teachers, the contempt of our neighbours and … and the indifference of my mother, her casual dismissal of my problems, of the difficulties I had encountered so early on … it hurt. I was not particularly gifted academically, I was rather plain to look at and my breathy stutter – it wouldn't have made any difference if I had worn a big sign with the limitless offer to ridicule me. Honestly, the end result would have been the same.

At an early age, I started to hate school. Math, Science, Physical Education. None of them proved in any way logical to my mind, they just slipped my grip. Math, I couldn't make heads or tails of, and the farther up we went, the more the complexity of the problems evolved, the more my lack of understanding became obvious.

No one cared.

Science was difficult, and though I wasn't actually all that bad at it, the teachers had already decided that I was a lost cause, and, well, the fact that even the idea of opening my mouth and speaking up terrified me, didn't help at all. Let's not even start at Physical Education: I'm a firm believer of the old adage 'Sport is murder'. Social interactions … I didn't fare all that well at it either. I was too timid, too insecure; after a while, I simply stopped trying and let myself become accustomed to the contemptuous, sometimes violent, reactions of others. I tried to keep my head down and trudge on.

Not the best way to handle the situation, but the only one I could think of.

At least I tried to keep going on. I tried so desperately that even swallowing the pain became easier.

Or at least I became better at lying to myself.

I mean, being ridiculed had been kind of the norm for a long long time. I would step into the class room, often too late, and my darling class mates would get started right away, jeering, throwing slurs into my face, snickering maliciously. And the teacher? Deaf, blind and absolutely not interested in interfering.

There was absolutely no one there I could have asked for help.

Friends? I had to look up the definition in a dictionary.

My unassuming appearance, my shy demeanour, my later-on ambivalent grades – everything I was, everything I accomplished or didn't, as the case often was, it fuelled the fire of their dislike; and in that dislike at least, my classmates were indiscriminately united; boys and girls, jocks and nerds, sweet and sour, when it came to tormenting me, there seemed to be no barriers in teaming up. Truly, it was an inspiring picture of harmony and team work. The fact that I was one little lonely girl against dozens of cruel students didn't seem to be a point of contention.

Nothing I did right seemed to matter.

All that mattered were my mistakes.

I was a right mess.

And I drowned.

Do you know the saying 'Stick and stones my break my bones, but words will never harm me'?

It is such an easy thing to claim.

Also – only a fool could claim that.

Growing up …

… I hated myself.

Their words, I accepted them as the truth.

Slow. Idiotic. Dumb. Failure. No-good. Useless. Waste. Retard. Stupid. Loser. Freak.

Hurtful. Familiar.

At least I knew where I was at with them.

Scorn and I, we were old and dreaded companions. Horrifyingly enough, there was a time when to be met with anything but scorn became something to be feared to me. Scorn was familiar. Scorn, I was used to. I knew what to expect. I expected pain. It was a dance I had become very adept at.

To be met with anything but … ?

I always searched for the hidden agenda, for the second shoe to drop, the sleight of hand driving a knife into my back.

I have never been able to trust anyone. Not even my own family.

Not a mother who looked the other way, who lived in her oblivious little bubble.

Not a father who shined with absence, who still saw me as an adorable toddler.

Scorn was safe, it was familiar terrain.

It was all I could look forward to …

… sometimes …

… sometimes I wished …

… no.

No.

Wishes … were dangerous.

Too dangerous

All this changed after …

… after the incident.

After I was forced to grow up.

It changed.

After that day …

… I gave up on my childhood.

I had to.

… sometimes I wished …

… no.

… never.

I could never truly wish that things had stayed the same.

I could never wish …

Every second.

Every second, every pain, every tear.

Everything.

It was worth it.

Some things you can forgive.

Others, you can't.

Rotten breath, ghosting over my skin. Hands, so big, so rough, ragged nails scraping over my skin. Lips, those dirty dirty lips , they were touching me …

Fingers digging into me, my clothes torn as he shoves me into the dirt. A slap hits my face, turning it, blood filling my mouth … blackness creeps into my vision, tethering around the edges …

… never taking me … never providing blessed escape ...

I remember tears. I remember screams. I remember restraining hands.

I remember pain.

I wished I could forget.

I wished I could sink into sweet oblivion, but he haunts me, every touch, every breath, every word ...

I wished I could rewrite history, rewrite the way he left me in ruins, the way he took something I can never regain ...

Everything about him, it haunts me.

I can't get his touch from my skin.

My screams were lost, silenced.

My tears were ignored, forbidden.

My fears were ridiculed, rationalised.

Some things you can forgive.

Others, you can't.

I learned my lesson.

Oblivion.

It was the one mercy I hadn't been gifted, and oh, how I craved it.

Every second of that evening had been burned into my memory with cursed clarity. I had been late getting home from the library after Kusabe-san asked me for help with re-shelving the books, and I had decided to take a short-cut because I wanted to avoid those of my lovely peers who had with time taken to lingering on the streets at night. But that short cut would turn out to be my personal way into hell. From one moment to the other, I had been grabbed, big strong hands restricting my movement, sealing my lips before a sound could escape, and then the harsh slap which had damningly disoriented me for long enough so that the fucking monster had been able to restrain and silence me.

After that …

He took his pleasure …

… and left me in agony.

Everything got hazy, and the next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital, my memory intact and my mother … not there. I woke up alone. It … I never had high expectations of her, at some point I buried all my expectations, because I knew that deep down she was disappointed with the child she had been burdened with, and I rightfully took the blame for that. But …

I woke up alone.

She truly didn't care.

Something in me … just broke.

Until that day, there hadn't been anything I couldn't have excused. There was nothing I hadn't actually excused, for both of my neglectful airheaded parents, but this … I was sixteen. I was a sixteen year old waking up after being violated, and my own parents hadn't cared enough to come for me.

Something in me … did more than break. It shattered.

And I wasn't sure if it was worth the effort to fix.

But one thing was clear.

It was the one revelation I had, lying there in that tiny white hospital bed, surrounded by whirring sounds and antiseptic smell, a revelation which would be the foundation of everything I was about to become.

My life … was not a life worth living.

Not as it was.

And I wanted to live.

Live, not barely survive.

It was time to change the game.

And there was only one starting point I could take.

One fact in the equation I could actually change.

Myself.

Nothing went smooth afterwards.

Mother didn't even acknowledge the incident. She acted as if nothing had changed. There was only one moment in which she admitted to a difference from the norm.

She berated me for missing school.

I can't count all the endless nights during which I cried myself to sleep, alone.

My father never called.

Quite the disappearance act he had going on. I wasn't even surprised.

My class mates, for the most part, stayed clear of me, shy of the few cruel creatures that took the incident as just another reason to mock me. But where before maybe I would have considered their words as not being completely baseless, now … now I just looked at them and saw nothing but foolish cruel children. If they took pleasure in ridiculing me for being violated, for experiencing a pain none of them could even comprehend … a pain I wished on no one in the entire world … then they weren't even worth the effort to acknowledge them anymore.

I couldn't care less.

Actually … I cared for nothing during that time.

And then, everything changed again.

It went from horrible, to devastating. The news I received a few weeks later could have done two things: They could have broken the last remains of who I was, the shards I clung to in the dim hope of ever becoming whole and hale again, or they could have given me the resolution to keep going on, and finally start taking control of my life.

All that kept ringing in my head, as I sat at the edge of the hospital bed, one hand gently placed over my belly, were the words the remorseful doctor had just departed to me.

It kept ringing and ringing and ringing in the silent room.

'I'm sorry, Sawada-san, it seems that you are … with child.'

'… with child.'

'… with child.'

'… with child.'

I couldn't even really call it a decision.

It was a blessing brought on by a curse, and while I hated how my own child had been conceived …

I could never hate my baby.

It was a strange feeling.

I think … no, I know.

It was love.

It is love.

How can you love something that still feels unreal?

Mother didn't understand.

She made an appointment for me, to … to terminate …

Abort.

She selfishly made an appointment and demanded me to meet her at the clinic. To take care of the … mistake. The abomination, as she called it. There was no questions asked, she couldn't even look at me, her gaze always averted as if I had somehow become … even less than I was before, in her eyes, tainted, now that I had a constant reminder of the incident growing within my own body. She saw my little baby as a burden.

I saw naught but my very own tiny loveable miracle.

Mother waited for hours at the clinic. When she came home, I wasn't there.

I never would be, again.

In the end, my strength wasn't infinite.And I had a decision to make.

Did I want to save my relationship with my mother? Did I want to please her? Did I want to continue my life how it was?

Or did I want to be strong for my child? Did I want to go my own way, no matter how that would turn out?

The question was: Did I have what it takes to be the mother my child deserved?

At least I tried to be.

Sawada Tsunayuki was sixteen when a man she had never seen before, and never would see again, raped her.

He took her virginity, and the last vestiges of fondness her family may have harboured for her.

And he gave her the greatest gift of her young life. Her baby.

Because despite everything that happened to create them, she couldn't hate the little life growing inside her. She just couldn't.

Things could have happened differently if she had bowed to her mother, if she had put society's expectations above her own convictions. Everything would have turned out differently if she hadn't disappeared during that one march afternoon while her mother expected Tsuna to meet her at the clinic where she would have watched as her grandchild would have been denied a chance at living, robbing the little dear of its very first breathe.

But they didn't, because for once in her life, Tsuna had someone to fight for, and her resolution burned brightly.

Instead of submitting, she struck, instead of meekly staying silent, she screamed, and instead of letting things happen, she took action.

And with nothing but two bags containing her most important belongings, she disappeared.

Her mother wouldn't find her for four more years, and when she did … there would be no place for her in Tsuna's life.

Sawada Nana hadn't been the most reliable of mothers …

… but she would never be granted the chance to mess it up as a grandmother.

It was a terrifying time.

For nearly a month, Tsuna slept beneath bridges and begged for money, for anything to make due with. Food was scarce, and her nights sleepless. Fear kept her awake.

Her clothes were torn, her body skinnier than ever except for her slowly growing bump, and even that, she was sure, should have been a lot bigger by now; and she was dirtier, too. She tried to hide, kept to the lesser known areas, out of the way.

Maybe she could have survived like this, if the worry for her little one hadn't been so strong. No prenatal vitamins, no doctor visits or a healthy diet – the hunger and exhaustion made her sick. It wasn't until she actually collapsed, though, that she was forced to acknowledge just how sick she had gotten.

It was in this moment, as she woke up on the cold ground with rain pelting her face, in which she realised: she couldn't keep going like that.

She needed help.

Despite her fear of being forced back home, she decided to give it a try. She went to a shelter, and … and it was the best decision she could have made. The nice lady that run the shelter took one look at how scrawny and obviously pregnant Tsuna looked and told her to sit down because she needed to make a call.

Tsuna hadn't known what to expect, a part of her dreaded looking up to see the police standing in front of her, escorting her back to her mother; but the bigger part of her knew that she did this for one reason only: the little innocent life within her.

The nice lady returned and sat with her, telling her gently that Tsuna wasn't the first young girl in this situation, and that she would be taken care of. That she had made a call to a shelter specialised for teenage mothers, who would listen to her, who would work with her and help her care for herself and her baby. That she would be safe there.

It sounded too fantastically to be real.

At least, Tsuna believed so until the door opened and revealed a young pretty brown-haired brown-eyed woman who slowly stepped in. Her eyes crinkled and a soft smile rested on her lips as she took Tsuna in. She gently kneed before the young mother-to-be, who still cradled her belly, and laid a hand on top of Tsuna's own.

Startled, she looked up into the eyes of the unfamiliar woman.

" Hello dear, my name is Kari. I heard that you need a little bit of help. How does a warm bed sound at the moment?"

Why was she so nice?

It was too much.

Tsuna broke down.

And all because that woman, who had never met her before, did what no one else had done, as she gathered Tsuna's shaking sobbing frame within her arms and cradled her as if she was something precious. Something worthwhile.

A single gesture.

But it conveyed more care then her own mother had shown her in years.

It was disconcertingly easy to settle down at the shelter.

There, she was just one of many young teenage girls, some even younger than her. Some with children of their own, new-borns and toddlers alike, some pregnant. But they all had one thing in common: they were mothers, they had no other place to go, and they were underage.

She wasn't alone.

Tsuna slowly started to breathe again, the weight of her fear lessening so much.

Kari had brought her to the shelter, shown her to her new room and made her aware of the rules.

She had even made an appointment with a doctor that worked for the shelter, and Tsuna was given a meal plan and prenatal vitamins after the first examination. She started to look healthier again. She even started doing her school work once more, working at it with the other girls of her age group.

For the first time since that night, she actually dared to hope.

Maybe she would be able to keep the promises she had made her baby.

She had always been a disappointment for everyone in her life.

Just this once …

… this once she couldn't fail.

She couldn't fail her little one.

Tsuna smiled gently down at the curve of her stomach.

There, growing within her, was her child.

Such a tiny being, with a fluttering heartbeat and barely-felt movement.

She cupped the obvious swell and closed her eyes.

In a few short months, she would hold them …

Her baby.

Thankfully, her pregnancy wasn't one of the crazier ones.

She didn't have strange food cravings, like pickles dipped in chocolate or ice with BBQ sauce; oh, she had seen them devoured by a few other girls, but the most Tsuna could complain over her pregnancy in that regard were the sudden attacks of ravenous appetite, for chips and – of all things – grapes. No, what was a lot more serious was the fact that she still had a hard time gaining weight. Her belly grew, and the doctor was satisfied, even if he cautioned her that her baby was on the small side; what concerned not only the doctor but the caregivers at the shelter was the fact that not only had Tsuna's hips remained quite narrow, she herself didn't really regain the weight she had lost on the streets. She looked healthier, yes, but she was still nearly six pounds underweight, and though it may have not sounded like all that much, for a petite pregnant teenage girl, that was a lot.

She had been forbidden any strenuous activity at five months pregnant – not that she had ever really been into sport to begin with; ewe. Instead, she did light yoga with the other girls.

But while her pregnancy wasn't crazy, it was still not exactly easy.

She spent the time catching up on her school work, preparing for her baby and often having story time with the toddlers. Seeing all the little happy faces whenever she entered a room with a book flooded her heart with warmth.

It was an expression she wanted to preserve.

She was nearly at the end of her eighth month when her water broke.

Panic.

The only thought that echoed in her head while she was rushed to the clinic was …

'It's too early!'

But her baby didn't want to wait any longer, and twelve hours later, she held her beautiful little baby boy in her arms.

He was perfect.

Sawada Ieyasu.

Born 5th May 2012.

4 ½ pounds and 17 inches.

Ten little fingers.

Ten little toes.

A shock of brown curls.

And the golden-hued brown eyes of his mother.

Mother and son were kept in the hospital for nearly three weeks.

Tsuna had a bad scare with heavy bleeding after her son's birth, while her little one was premature; and even though he was actually perfectly healthy, if at a slightly smaller end of the scale, they had kept them until both were given a clean bill of health. Tsuna had never been more scared then when her water had broken so early, but she had also never been happier.

Thankfully, she didn't need a Caesarean.

Holding little Yasu in her arms for the first time had been beyond words. Even now, she couldn't describe it. It was more than any words could encompass.

It was … love.

This small helpless innocent being was a part of her.

The best part.

He was her son, her family, her everything.

And she knew, in that moment when she had first laid eyes on him, that she never would love someone as much as she loved him.

Unconditionally. Wholly. Uncompromisingly.

He was her world.

Sleepless nights.

Countless diapers.

Colic's and Flues.

Crying until they both were in tears.

She wouldn't change a single thing, because for all that the helplessness, insecurity and fear for his well-being drove her to the brink of sanity…

His first smile.

His first little giggle.

His first laugh.

Seeing him playing with his little toes.

Watching him coo with the other children.

Feeling him fall asleep on her chest.

His first crawl.

His first steps.

Everything he did …

It made every. Single. Tear. Worth. It.

So worth it.

(There had been moments, during the pregnancy, where fear had choked her.

There had been moments, when she had feared that her baby would look, or sound, or smell like their sperm giver.

That she would look at her child, and only see the man who had violated her. That she would be unable to continue loving that innocent little being, that she would resent them.

But the second she had held him, the second she had looked at his scrunched up red face …

How idiotic could she have been?

This was her baby boy.

And only her baby.

She had gone by Yuki for two years.

Just Yuki.

No one found out her real name until the day she turned eighteen – an adult - and could no longer be forced back into the claws of her mother. But for all that she couldn't be forced back to that woman, that she was able to stand up for herself now, she actually didn't want contact the woman who had brought her into this world, didn't want to tell her that her daughter and her grandchild were okay.

Sawada Nana hadn't cared then. Why should she care now?

Instead, Tsuna went on with her life.

Being Yuki or Tsuna, it didn't matter.

She had a life, a future to look forward to, and another human being completely depending on her.

It was inevitable that she would make mistakes, no matter how much she tried not to, but there was one mistake she wouldn't commit.

She wouldn't force her baby boy to endure her own mother.

It was the best course of action for everyone.

Still, she was curious.

So, she looked into her own disappearance.

It didn't surprise her that she had never been declared missing.

It should.

It should hurt.

She should be furious.

… but she knew her mother.

Sadly.

Did her father even know of her disappearance?

Did he know of his grandchild?

Somehow, she didn't think so.

Somehow, she didn't feel hurt.

It was … sad.

But she didn't expect more.

She wouldn't repeat the mistake of her own parents.

She would not discard her own child, nor force her own demons upon her little baby boy.

Instead, she would do the one thing her own parents never tried to do.

She would put Ieyasu first.

And if the fact that Kari often told her that she was a good mother, that Yasu-Chan's bright and happy disposition and contagious giggling were a testament to the happy home she provided her baby boy, then it to let those words warm her from within.

Though, honestly?

She never desired any other acceptance but Yasu-Chan's.

And every little kiss he gave her was all the proof that she needed.

Tsuna was eighteen when she graduated High School.

Thanks to all the help she had received during her time at the shelter, she had managed to graduate with her age group, and she had even managed to score a job at the local bakery. There she helped out in the kitchen and worked as a waitress during the hours that Yasu-Chan was at the day nursery.

And late at night?

She did her school work, because thanks to Kari, Sakura and Mei, she had actually gotten into Tokyo University and been accepted into a correspondence course to complete her major in Information Management and a minor in English. Japanese and English were the only subject that had always come naturally to her, and after she had managed to really settle down and think about the future, she knew what she wanted to do: She wanted to be a librarian, and for that she needed a bachelor degree in Information Management. It had come to her in a moment of calm: even if her peers had teased her for going to the library so often – especially because clearly, it was no use, what with her bad grades – Tsuna had still enjoyed helping Kusabe-san with the re-shelving and listening to the old woman as she explained what her job entailed. It was the one thing she actually could imagine herself doing. And so she learned whatever she could, got her grades in the relevant subjects up – with a lot of help – and now she was actually studying to get a degree. Maybe next year, she could even get an internship in the library, when Yasu-Chan was old enough for the full-day-groups.

… how crazy …

She would have never believed anyone if they had told her at sixteen where she would be three years later.

A mother of one very curious adorable little baby boy.

Studying for a degree she truly desired, working hard to get a job she wanted.

Actually having a job and being somewhat good at it.

Earning enough money to have a one room apartment for her and her baby boy.

This … it was crazy, how everything had turned out.

And Tsuna?

Couldn't be happier.

(Five years later, there would be a knock on her door.

She would be hectic, her son once more too lazy in the morning on a school day.

She would open the door, and look at a man who coined 'tall, dark and handsome'. For one moment, she would blink in askance, question if her coffee that morning was somehow bad.

Than that man would smirk and drawl out deeply. „ Chaos, my name is Reborn. I'm an acquaintance of your father …"

And Tsuna?

Would slam the door in his face.)

~ The End for now. Would you like a sequel?