Iemitsu's daughter comes to Italy when she is eleven. The ninth has had a bad spell with his heart and Xanxus's inheritance seems closer than ever. The Outside Adviser wants his daughter close to him in this time of danger- and though no one mentions it, she's also there as a comfort to the old man in his dying years.

If Xanxus permitted himself to be impressed by anything, he would have been by Sawada Iemitsu- but his daughter is a weak, wispy thing, more eight than eleven, a mouse in a house of lions.

This, this girl, also carries the blood of the Vongola in her veins, like he does. But they couldn't be more different, Xanxus fifteen and lordly, killings and a kingdom to his name. Xanxus is learning how to run the family and plotting to usurp his cousins, because although he is the heir-apparent, that's not the same as a heir. He has no time for another distant cousin, some civilian girl who has no idea of the life she's leading and her face always hidden behind her hair and behind her father.

Things being as they are, this changes.

Some of his cousins' supporters ambush Xanxus in a quiet corner at someone else's house during some dinner, where weapons are not permitted but there are, apparently, imbeciles allowed. Even without his guns Xanxus can handle them all easily, though he's careful with the flame- no one can be allowed to see him struggling. His reputation must remain impeachable.

Caution bites him in the ass. The little girl wanders into the room, clearly intent on hiding from everybody and the world. She freezes upon seeing them, her mouth a wide round O of surprise. One of the assailants is still enough on top of things that he immediately lunges for her, holding a knife to her throat.

"Ha," he pants. "Give up, or Iemitsu's daughter has her pretty little throat cut."

Before Xanxus can point out that he could care less about a girl he barely knows, one of her wildly flailing little fists smashes into the man's face with the strength of desperation, and her shiny shoes dig into his stomach. The man curses and drops her, which is just enough time for Xanxus to cross the room and break his stupid trash neck.

With that done, he finishes the rest of them easily. Iemitsu's daughter- her name is Natsuki or Natsumi or some other weird Japanese name, stares at him, eyes large and liquid and- cold. It's the first indication that this girl is anything other than a whimpering, useless crybaby- or maybe it's just Xanxus's blood speaking, the thrill of absolute victory and absolute perception.

Then they scrunch up and fill up and the girl throws herself at Xanxus's leg, sobbing and screaming with fear. Awkwardly, he pokes at her, so much smaller and more breakable than

him, crying and clinging to him.

(If pressed, later, Natsu recalls it like this: he saved me.

Xanxus saw and thought: she saved herself.)

Because he refuses to walk around with semi-hysterical girl attached to his leg, Xanxus coaxes her up into his arms, and halts her noisy shrieks with "Stop that. It's weak."

Weak, and she had lifted impossibly long lashes wet with tears to stare at him. "He was-" she chokes out to him, in her own language, sure, so sure, that this is another one who will not understand her, like everyone else in this confusing, terrifying country, where her daddy has to do shadowy work everyday and her mummy is in Japan, so far away. It barely registers that he has addressed her in Japanese. "He was going to hurt me."

"Kill you," corrects Xanxus. "He didn't," and here Xanxus smiles, or what passes for a smile with him, all savage pleasure and grim humor mixed with self-assurance. "because you hurt him first."

"Did you," whispers Natsu, looking at him like a god. Xanxus glorifies in that look. This is how people should look at him.

"Trash like that doesn't deserve to live."

And then they are back in the main hall, with plenty of people to exclaim over their state of disarray and more to cast disapproving looks at his cousins' innocent disclaimers over Xanxus's almost completely fabricated story, but all the while, Natsu keeps staring at Xanxus, and he cannot help but feel the weight of her regard.

.0.

Natsumi (he refuses to call her Natsu, or even worse, Natsu-chan, she is childish and childlike enough already) develops an enormous hero-worshipping crush on Xanxus. She calls him onii-sama, waits on him, spends her time dangling around him and seems entirely willing to shape herself to his preference.

Even more mystifying than why she's doing this is why Xanxus allows it.

Oen would think the standoffish, arrogant heir-apparent to the Vongola would have no time or patience for his distant cousin, but the way that he tolerates- and, indeed, almost indulges- her is most uncharacteristic. He keeps Spartan track of her studies, and barks at her to sit up straight and watch herself and all those other things, taking unwarranted interest in her.

Maybe he is trying to ingratiate himself with the outside adviser, suggests one school of thought. Actually, suggest all the schools of thought. (As one unwise but imaginative punter put it: we would bet on him dying by heart attack- all that rage, dontcherknow- but that would assume that he had a heart)

(Maybe it is because of the way she looks at him, and expects absolutely nothing, to her he is utterly perfect and supreme.

Maybe he is tired and disgusted with the conniving 'bombshells' who wouldn't spare a sneer for the ninth's bastard son but fall all over themselves to flatter the next Vongola boss.

Maybe, maybe, because she's utterly different from anything and everything Xanxus knows, like a shaft of light and sunshine in their world of secrets and shadows.)

Mostly it's because she's the one thing he can and will call entirely his. It's intoxicating, to know that you are master of something, given unreservedly and without regrets. So many other things- loyalty, power- he has to work to get.

Xanxus takes care of what is his, because he demands so much of them.

But that doesn't explain this: one day, forcing Natsumi to talk in pitch-perfect Italian, she asks, blushingly, in halting musical tones, taken verbatim from a phrasebook, what is your marital status?

Xanxus has not seen this coming, and he wonders that he didn't- just because she looks like she's eight doesn't mean she is, of course. And it's natural that she would like him- he is, he knows, with a touch of vanity, very attractive.

He leaves Natsu to stammer and blush while he examines her, and the traces of woman in the growing girl. She is, he supposes, very cute, when she's not being shy or stupid, and has the potential to become quite good-looking.

More important than that, of course, is that he can do whatever he wants to her. She's his.

It's with this (admittedly little) in mind that he first kisses her, nearly-twelve and nearly-sixteen on the floor of an old study, feeling- feeling poised to take the world.

(There are excuses, at first: she needs to learn, and he has appointed himself the one to teach her, etc. He's doing it for her, he rationalizes. It doesn't excuse why he does it again, and again, kissing a little slip of girl like a lover.

It takes a near-lifetime, after a spectacularly messy affair, for him to admit this: he'd done it for himself.)

.0.

Suddenly, abruptly, Natsu is thrown out of Xanxus's life. He has gone looking deep into private files, digging deep for anything he can use in his struggle for the leadership, but he never expected this.

Suddenly he is scrambling for options, aware that his position is weak, laughably weak, and has always been so. He no longer has time for largesse or anything other than his need for power, and the bitterness festering in him like poison.

Natsu, however, is stubborn and stupid, and keeps after him with her stupid hopeful expression and her usual assurances that his cousins don't stand a chance against him. Unsurprisingly, this only makes him angrier, through no fault of hers.

He plans, and plans, dreaming up a scenario where he can still come out top, all the while hating everyone and everything. Even her. The only thing she does is remind him that he, worthy though he is, has no Vongola blood. An accident.

(The other thing she does that he will not admit is remind him that he still wants her to look at him like he's everything. But he is not. He is not.)

Xanxus works himself up to nearly fever pitch with rage, over the ninth and his lies and- and everything. He's never needed the rage more.

And Natsu, sweet innocent Natsu, comes to try and calm him, stealing through the halls at night to his room.

"Tell me what's wrong," she begs him, eyes bright. "Let me help you!"

Xanxus's control, always tenuous, snaps. He grabs her arm hard, and throws her, drunk on hate and anger.

"I can think," he snarls at her, holding her down, watching her go fearful of him. "of only one thing a stupid bitch like you can do to help me."

In his defense- and there is very little- he never meant to go that far, only to scare her and drive her away from him at last, only to make her understand that he's not the type of person she thinks he is.

But after he has kissed her harder than he ever has and divested her of clothing, he doesn't stop. He doesn't shout at her and send her back to where she came from, doesn't lift his hand from the bruises he's making on her thin wrists.

Doesn't stop.

.0.

After he's done, rolls away from her, and looks- just looks- at the tear tracks dried on her cheeks, the purpling marks all over her body. The blood. She's asleep, or passed out. She's so small.

He's never hated anything more, and it's himself.

He doesn't want to think about it. Can't stand-

Phone. "Boss?" the stupid shark. Time to make good on his promises.

"Tonight," he grinds out. "We attack tonight."

.0.

In the confusion after this, no one really notices Natsu being more quiet than usual, the dark marks on her wrists, her swollen mouth and unsteady gait.

Her father sends her back to Japan posthaste, and advises her to forget about anything bad (he means: the numerous assasins overrunning Uncle's house, she take it to mean: everything.)

And Sawada Natsumi, no-good, shrinking violet, with no one to be strong for and no one to be strong for her, lives weakly.