OH MY GOODNESS LAST CHAPTER.

Finally. I've only been at this for like an hour and I have already resolved that no matter how many injuries my pride may or may not receive in the future, I am never ever ever ever EVER making anything into a chapter fic ever again ever. I fricking hate this. The process was so tedious and I put a lot more effort than I wanted to into it and I'd already published the damn thing once and that took forever in its own right, and so all in all this sucked.

I really hope I get at least one or two reviews for this, because I might just break something if my labor bears no fruit at all.

Enjoy.

.~o~.~o~.~o~.~o~.~o~.~o~.

vi. why lambo and i-pin are far from the end

She knew something was wrong from the moment she walked into the kitchen.

Though he promised her he would come home before morning, Iemitsu hadn't been in bed when she'd woken up. She'd assumed he was in the kitchen making himself breakfast even though it was far too early for anyone else in the house to be up, but when she turned the corner there was Bianchi, draped listlessly around her cup of coffee and looking as though she'd been awake for a very long time. Beside her on the table was a note in what looked like Iemitsu's handwriting.

An alarm bell suddenly went off inside Nana's head, and then Bianchi looked up from her coffee.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting when she skidded through the hospital doors - Bianchi hadn't told her much, only that Lambo had been admitted to Nami general and that Tsuna was waiting for her there - but she certainly hadn't been expecting to find him in the same clothes he'd been in yesterday, with Gokudera-kun and Yamamoto-kun and even Sasagawa-kun sort of arranged around him like a little barrier from the outside world, sitting unnaturally stiffly in one of the chairs facing the doors. He looked like that baby rabbit he used to be, frightened out of his wits, like he'd just seen a ghost, and that scared her more than anything.

And then he'd looked up to meet her eyes, and his face lifted and fell all at the same time, and it was only when Yamamoto-kun put an encouraging hand on his shoulder that Tsuna rose gingerly from his seat and approached her.

Her body was buzzing with fear and adrenaline and maternal instinct, her mind was whirling at a million kilometers an hour, but everything around her seemed to be moving in slow-motion. She watched him move closer, watched the other boys rise to flank him on all sides like a protective sort of entourage, watched his eyes shining with pain and uncertainty and reluctance and that all-too-familiar heaviness, and she heard herself ask what happened.

He opened his mouth to speak, and nothing came out.

She heard herself ask again, slightly more frantic, trying to keep the majority of the panic she felt out of her voice, keep it from shaking -

She had never before heard him sound so incredibly serious as he did then, when he steeled himself and asked her to take care of Lambo-kun. When he told her that he was unable to explain what happened.

Nana felt another shock of adrenaline, felt her stomach plummet as her heart leaped into her mouth. It wasn't that he couldn't tell her. It was that he wouldn't tell her.

She repeated his words breathlessly, hoping he hadn't meant them, knew that she couldn't keep the incredulity and hurt she felt from seeping into her tone -

And he told her he was sorry.

And she felt her heart crack, deep and jagged, right down the middle. She felt her face betray her own betrayal. She felt her mouth shape his name, disbelieving and deeply distressed.

She watched his eyes sink to the floor, and she knew she'd get no more out of him.

She moved forward numbly, only vaguely aware of the sea of teenage boys who parted down the middle to let her through, and heard herself ask for Lambo-kun's room number. One of the boys spoke up, although she couldn't be bothered to tell which one, and she stepped into the elevator and pressed for the fourth floor.

As the doors slid closed, she saw Tsuna sink back down onto a chair with his head in his hands, curling in on himself.

The elevator rose agonizingly slowly, and when she finally stepped out and hurried down the hallway, she was more afraid than she could ever remember being in her entire life.

The little boy that awaited her in that hospital bed was very nearly unrecognizable.

A shock of fear, sick and ice cold, washed over her at the sight of him, her worst nightmares realized in vivid detail before her very eyes. This weak and broken Lambo-kun, scratched and burned and limp and still, was so incredibly different from the vivacious and energetic little boy who scampered happily around her legs in the kitchen and tried to eat the food she was making before it had even reached the table. He was breathing shallowly, an oxygen mask strapped to his nose and mouth, and she could see several places where his skin had been cut or charred, as if he'd been struck by lightning. In fact, a lot of his injuries pointed towards some kind of burn - his pretty curly hair was singed, still smoking in some places, and his horns and little cow suit were scorched and browned.

She smoothed his hair back from his face and felt her eyes well up with tears, too fast for her to stop them.

Lambo-kun was in the hospital, seriously injured, and she would not be told how it happened.

In some ways it was even worse than if she'd been lied to. If only Tsuna had made up a lie, showed her that he didn't trust her, showed her that he was dishonest, gave her something to latch on to or to blame -

But he had looked at her, his face wide open and full of regret and self-reproach, and told her that he would not be able to tell her the reason. The guilt in his voice and in his eyes was so clear, and the striking solemnity of the boys that flanked him was so weighty with remorse and helplessness, and every single one of them had their jaws set and their fists clenched and their heavy eyes downcast, and she felt...

She felt ambushed. She felt excluded, distrusted, out of the loop and in the dark and kept that way on purpose, and the note from Iemitsu only proved her point.

She almost burst into tears when she had to think up a lie about what happened to Lambo to feed to Kyoko-chan and Haru-chan.

Nana had promised herself that she would be what Tsuna needed her to be, what Iemitsu asked her to be, what her intuition told her to be. She very rarely questioned the things that went on in Tsuna's life. She never asked where Iemitsu was going to be sent next. She was strong and sweet and silent, and she could give them both something to be anchored to, a steady foundation and a warm and loving home.

She had also made a promise to herself to protect her entire family, and the battered and broken little boy breathing shallowly in front of her told her that she had broken one promise to uphold another.

This had gone too far.

The razed little figure in the hospital bed stirred for a moment, moving his head from side to side in a pained and uncomfortable sort of way, and Nana swiftly placed the gently dozing child she'd been holding in her lap onto the chair before anxiously pressing the call button on the side of the bed rails. She watched as one of the nurses hurried in and pressed a few buttons on some of the machines Lambo-kun was hooked up to, what she could only assume was connected to the pain medications he was on, because after a moment the lines in his furrowed brow relaxed and he stopped his tossing and turning.

She sat back down, resting her chin on the head of the still-sleeping little girl she once again held in her lap and watching the rise and fall of Lambo-kun's chest as his breathing evened out once more.

No one else could get hurt like Lambo-kun.

No one.

The baby in her lap tilted her face up to smile at her, to ask in sweet and broken Japanese if Mama was all right. She couldn't help but smile back, smoothing an errant strand of hair back from her forehead and into place in her otherwise-impeccable braid, telling the little girl that she was all right and that in a few days, Lambo-kun would be, too. I-pin seemed satisfied with that, turning back to fit more comfortably in the safe little cocoon of warmth she'd been sleeping in, and Nana knew that nothing like this would ever happen to any of her children again, because she would make sure of it.

The nurse that had been fiddling with Lambo-kun's pain medications straightened up and made to leave the room, but stopped to tell Nana, almost as an afterthought, that at this time only family was allowed to be in the room with Lambo-kun because visiting hours were over.

She turned back to the sleeping boy in the hospital bed and told the nurse that she was family.

The nurse, who at second glance Nana thought looked remarkably young, squinted as if surprised and asked if she was his mother.

Nana smiled, reaching out and taking that little hand that rested on top of the bedclothes, squeezing it affectionately. She felt a surge of love and protectiveness, of life and happiness and loyalty, and there was not a single trace of doubt in her mind or in her voice.

"Yes," she told the nurse. "I am his mother."

.~o~.~o~.~o~.~o~.~o~.~o~.

Jesus Christ, that was ridiculous.

Well, for all the effort I put into this damn thing, it ended up showing off my proclivity for commas far too well. And I do understand that you probably felt like you had to really wade through a couple parts.

I'd love some feedback, though. Really, I would.

Also, I tried something different with the line breaks. I think I like this better.

(Oh my goodness, I love Nana~ :D)