Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tsuna dies on a Thursday.

Tsuna dies and wakes up in a small bed with well-loved blankets and well-worn bed posts, well removed from the luxuries of money. Tsuna wakes up, sits up, and looks out past a window that he knows is not bulletproof (which, if Hayato knew about, he'd throw an absolute fit) onto a sight that he hadn't seen in, hell, maybe ten years: Namimori.

It's Namimori as it used to be, small and sleepy, with its roads unburdened by traffic and with a population being just enough for people to greet each other on the streets. The busy to-be-metropolis of the future (of Tsuna's present), returned to its roots as a no-name place, quiet and nostalgic and absolutely perfect.

It's a nice landscape to see. Probably the best one to see, the only one that could possibly hope to relax the tension in his shoulders. He'd missed it.

Nothing about it should be surprising, because it's something that people say, isn't it? Of there being a flash of light, and then the dying sees parts of their history, their memory? Or something. He probably should have paid more attention when Hayato had told him this, but it hadn't seemed important at the time. After all, he hadn't been dead then. At the time, death had simply been a part of living.

Tsuna looks down at his lap to his bandaged hands. They itch with the characteristic irritation of crusted blood on skin. Tsuna flexes them and smiles around the ache of it all. The proof that he could yet bleed, could hurt.

Once upon a time, he had only been Decimo in name.

"Reborn?" Tsuna says into the dark, because Reborn will be here. There would be no one else more appropriate for him to see, to kick his butt into gear for one last hurdle.

"Why aren't you asleep, Loser Tsuna?" comes the eventual response, just like Tsuna had known it would.

Reborn isn't someone that will ever be entirely predictable, but it's been years -- Tsuna knows, as well as he knows the limits of his own skin, of the handful of areas in which Reborn will allow himself the comforts of routine. Like needing his coffee in the morning, in how he likes to clean Leon (the gun) in a certain way. Like how will allow Tsuna to borrow Leon (the chameleon) even when he would allow no one else. Like how he'd always, always, answer Tsuna's call without fail, especially when Tsuna sounds as he does now.

Throwing his legs over the side of the bed is easy with that kind of confidence, as is the way in which he pats at the space to his right. He waits with the kind of certainty that lends itself to serenity, never raising his head to check. Faith is easy when one is tasked with believing something as sure as this.

He waits with his hands folded in his lap until Reborn hops down onto his bed with palpable irritation, small again. Toddler-sized for how the curse was beginning to subside, a fitting symbol for the middle chapter that spanned between Tsuna's end and Decimo's beginning. It's not a bad thing to see, especially considering how Reborn had been towering over Tsuna for years since his growth spurt, but here and now, at the end of it all, they should be as they had started. It's only fitting.

Tsuna looks at Reborn, dressed in his usual, ridiculous sleeping outfit. At a young, pudgy face and a pair of eyes that are too dark and too haunted to be nothing but old. How he could have ever doubted Reborn's true age, Tsuna has no idea, but that's fine. Reborn had taught him, and Tsuna had learned.

Just like how Reborn had shown him, day after day, with hint after hint, of the limits of his tolerance. It makes it easy for Tsuna to reach for him now, keeping his hand within Reborn's line of sight and keeping it slow enough as not to spook him. Slow enough to give Reborn a chance to turn away if he so wished by -- hitting him, probably. To push him away.

Reborn does neither, and Tsuna twirls his finger into one of Reborn's sideburns in victory. Takes his spoils by laughing softly at Reborn's narrow-eyed expression, a sound that echoes as something fond and vulnerable, even to his own ears. It's sloppy, but that's fine too. It's just Reborn, and Tsuna is already dead.

"What are you doing," Reborn says, his voice flat, his violence leashed only by his curiosity and the oddity of this moment.

"There's a question," Tsuna says. The hair is soft and malleable under his touch; all natural, just as Reborn had always claimed. Just another thing that Reborn will be right about. Tsuna pulls away. "Dying, probably."

Reborn stares at him in the same way that someone might blink, hard and assessing and so, so confused. Tsuna grins.

"Let's talk, Reborn," Tsuna says, because this will be the last time that they can. The last time, for everything. "Let's talk."

He talks about Kyoko first, because she had been the first person for whom his flame had burned, for whom it had burst free. She was the epicenter of the quake that had swept him off his feet and shook his life apart. For that (and a myriad of other reasons), she deserved the honour of being the first person that he complains about at the end of his days.

"She's still just so pretty," Tsuna sighs.

Pretty, but more than that, she was horribly, absurdly competent. She had integrated herself neatly into the dirty underbelly of the mafia with a kind of ease that Tsuna had (never) envied. To this day, he has no idea why she hadn't usurped Tsuna's tenuous title as boss, gently staging a coup to crown herself as the Vongola Eleventh. She would have been so much better at it, diplomatic and terrifying as she could be, armed with a smile that could level mountains, surrounded by people who loved her.

Instead, she had chosen to become a mom, creating life from within her body, committed to raising them to adulthood and excelling in it. She really should have gone with mafia wrangling; it seemed like a much easier profession in hindsight.

She had laughed when he told her this, once upon a night, had laughed into the shoulder that she had been leaning against. They had shared one too many glasses of wine that night, and he wasn't sure who died (which is a lie, Tsuna knows exactly who died), but it had been a night when he had needed someone to stay by his side. Someone to remind him why he was doing this, still doing this, someone that could ground him. And Kyoko had done just that, slipping her hand into his before leaning her cheek into his shoulder and piling him with good wine.

Because ice cream, Tsuna-kun, is overrated.

Well, he said, grimacing through the wine. At least it's not whiskey.

"You're the boss because you still need me to do this for you," Kyoko had said after spilling him into bed. She seemed so ethereal that night, tucking aside a stray strand of hair behind her ear before bending down to brush her lips over Tsuna's eyelid. "And I will always do this for you, for as long as you never stop being you."

"I love you," Tsuna remembers slurring out in response, and Tsuna's face burns even now, from how gone he must have been to blurt out something so embarrassing, true or not.

Reborn smirks.

"Shut up," Tsuna says.

Hayato is next. Loyal to the point of personal detriment, Hayato had been his Right Hand in every sense of the word. Sometimes shielding Tsuna from the uglier side of their shared reality, sometimes pushing him along. And, eventually, after decades together, finally learning how to say no. To pull him back when Tsuna could find no reason to waver, his Dying Will burning bright on his forehead and in the circle of his fists.

Tsuna talks about how Hayato had learned and earned the other Families' respect, having grown into such a force of nature that it wasn't uncommon for the unaware to mistake Hayato as Decimo. (Which was hilarious, because Hayato would always get so mad, offended by the very idea. Irony at its finest.) How he had become someone great when the world had told him that he would amount to nothing at all.

"Used to bother me, you know?" Hayato had confessed. In such an odd and awkward place too: they had been discussing business up until ten minutes ago on the Vongola's main grounds, before being distracted by an ice cream truck of all things. Then they had gotten sidetracked (how, Tsuna still had no idea), and then suddenly, Hayato was saying stuff like:

"But it's made me stronger for it. Strong enough for me to stay by your side, so I guess I can't mind it that much."

And -- god, he was embarrassing. He had always been embarrassing, but he was especially embarrassing now, making Tsuna's face do something odd and acrobatic in the face of his earnesty. Even the truck owner had looked uncomfortable, and Tsuna had done nothing as wise as guiding them back around to making their way to the... park, or something. Tsuna could spend the rest of his years with Hayato (by his side, as it had been said) and he would still find this embarrassing, even at the end. There was no getting used to something like that.

"You really need to stop living for me," Tsuna had said, just barely reigning in the desire to sigh. Or, you know, look sad over how one of his best friends was literally pledging the rest of his life to Tsuna and the madness that followed the Decimo's name. "You shouldn't. Not just for me."

Hayato had snorted, which is something else that he'd had to learn to do in Tsuna's presence. To learn that it was okay to be onto Tsuna as he was onto others: prickly as heck. Soft-hearted, too, but that was a trait that was only expressed in addition to his usual acidity, one that tasted vaguely of a burning cigarette, scaled down by, like, a million. So not very prickly at all, in hindsight.

"Twenty years too late for that, Tenth," Hayato says.

"It's not too late," Tsuna remembers saying, which is when he should have known for everything to start going horribly wrong and terribly right. "Find something other than me to live for. Marry and have kids or something."

"Who'd I even marry, Haru?" Hayato had scowled. The scowl had faded as soon as it came, smoothing out into something thoughtful. Something more kicked and rueful, almost sad. Damn it. "Fuck, you know she's too good for me. No one should marry me." He blew out a breath. "Kids, though. I mean, maybe. But what about you, Tenth? Everyone's starting to get antsy about your heir. Even if you're going to live for another fifty years."

Tsuna was definitely not going to live another fifty years, holy hell.

"I'm not having kids," Tsuna had said instead, because the Vongola blood and curse was going to die with him.

"But you want kids?" Hayato had asked, shrewd and scarily in-tuned as always. It was almost as though he was constantly tapping into the frequencies of Tsuna's moods and well-being. It was creepy and endearing and flattering all at once.

"Stop doing that," Tsuna said in answer.

"Huh," Hayato said. "Okay."

Okay eventually found its translation in the flurry of research and activity that Hayato threw himself into, headlong and obsessive. He hadn't told Tsuna, hadn't told anyone, until he had found and deciphered everything that had had to do with adoption. In how to make it work for a single man with seven Guardians and a Family that was growing in both power and wealth. He did this in the span of five years, somehow managing to juggle that responsibility alongside everything else, which included (but wasn't limited to): paperwork, budget debates with Haru, the assassination attempts, the attempted coup, the police inquiries, and the supremely difficult task of keeping Tsuna alive and sane.

Somehow, Hayato had brought a single piece of paper for Tsuna to sign at the end of it all while asking him, "Hey Tenth. How do you feel about marriage?"

Takeshi. Now, Takeshi--

"Wait," Reborn interrupts, "Go back to the marriage thing."

"I don't want to talk about the marriage thing," Tsuna says.

"Too bad. Talk."

"I'm not going to talk. About that." Tsuna says, grimacing his way through every word. "Hayato was just asking me how I felt about it."

"There's more to it than that," Reborn says, surer than Tsuna's ever been about his place as Decimo. That's the sort of confidence that had always been a little annoying. "Why was he asking?"

"He wanted me to marry someone, okay," Tsuna says, looking down at his lap. At his hands and the fists that his hands create, the tiny bursts of flame that he can feel under his fingers. "Apparently it's easier for a married man to adopt kids."

"And? Did you pick someone?"

"Well," Tsuna says, and says nothing else. He doesn't retell a story that Reborn must already know, seeing how he'd been there for the whole thing. He doesn't talk about how intensely Tsuna had deliberated over the choice, weighing the pros and cons of marrying someone. (How it had kept him up at night over how his chosen person would become a target for all those that stood in the Vongola's way, because such was the way of the mafia.) He doesn't talk about how he had allowed the farce by offering up nothing more than his signature, stoutly declining any offers of ceremony. Gatherings were where people died. He doesn't talk about how Hayato's face had looked at Tsuna's wariness, the pain and regret etched into it.

He only talks about how Hayato had ultimately bitten the bullet to sign the document with Takeshi as their witness. It had been fitting that Hayato and Takeshi would be his accomplices in this little farce of theirs, because marriage was supposed to be about love, right? About the pledge and promise of forever? Hayato had never lied about his devotion to Tsuna, had never even tried to hide it. He had never faltered in his affections, which is all that Tsuna had ever come to want, that sure and steady something that he could hang onto. Something that wouldn't break. And Hayato had been that something for so long that signing those papers had felt nothing more than routine. It wasn't as though they hadn't already been sharing everything anyway.

Besides, the kids aside, it hadn't been much of a marriage in the end. No more than a humorous piece of trivia to be shared. An inside-joke, of a sort.

It had also been something that had bothered Takeshi (of all people) more than he'd let on. And Tsuna, to this day, cannot figure out whether the envy that had gripped Takeshi in a near-chokehold had run against him or Hayato, from whom Takeshi had desired affection.

"Idiot," Reborn says, as if the answer was as simple as calling Tsuna out on his chronic bouts of idiocy.

And maybe it was. It wasn't as though Tsuna had been entirely unaware of the different levels of (co)dependence that he had cultivated between his Guardians and himself. Of them all, Takeshi had been the one to stand by him almost as long as Hayato, unfailingly loyal. A rock when he should have been rain, he had been the immovable force upon which Tsuna could rest his head, cradling the weight of his responsibilities against Takeshi's shoulder for as long as Tsuna needed the rest.

Takeshi had always taken that all in stride, wrapping an arm around him when Tsuna needed the reprieve, chattering in Tsuna's ears with babble that had ranged from the weather to baseball to asking him things like,

"You want them gone, Tsuna?"

What a question. An oddly dressed one, seeing how Takeshi was offering up a hit as easily as a guy might offer chocolates or sushi, casual and friendly. The Vongola's dog, the underworld had used to call him, a demon that smiled while gutting a man at Tsuna's word. A wild thing that had chosen to be tamed by Decimo's hand, lying obediently at his feet until he was ready to take flight and hunt. Fearing Takeshi's very name while cursing Tsuna's, calling Tsuna the monster's keeper when there was no one more chilled by how readily Takeshi had taken to this game of politics and murder.

The only difference between Tsuna and everyone else is how Tsuna was messed up enough to think: it's okay. This was just how Takeshi was, a part of who he was. After all, the tasks that Takeshi used to take on, often without Tsuna's conscious input, was simply doing what had to be done so that Tsuna didn't have to. It had felt a bit too much like hypocrisy to judge Takeshi for it.

Tsuna remembers laughing in one such insistence, choking where he had rested his forehead against Takeshi's shoulder, fingers curling desperately into the fabric of Takeshi's dress shirt. As if he could stop Takeshi from becoming the assassin that Reborn had warned him to be, as if Tsuna alone held the privilege of keeping Takeshi human when it was in his name that Takeshi split blood. Christ.

"No," Tsuna had said. "Let them live." Let them live to regret it.

"Sometimes it's nice to be told not to do something," Reborn says at the end of the tale, ever dismissive despite the burn of understanding in his gaze, how he turns his eyes away for a moment as if to fix his imaginary fedora. "It keeps things interesting."

In-laws that he'd never asked for: that's how he'd describe Ryouhei and Hana under the threat of death. (Or more paperwork, since, you know, dying kind of happened all the time.) Of how they'd been Ryouhei and Hana instead of being Ryouhei and Hana, Ryouhei or Hana, in the end, a symbiotic creature made of all the things that Tsuna found overwhelming: overbearing, ruthlessly efficient, and incredibly devoted to all that Tsuna could ever want accomplished.

There had always been an absolution to the type of loyalty that Ryouhei had worn like a badge, an unwavering pillar of support that would choose to stand by his shoulder with more certainty than even Hayato, at times. Ryouhei had been his biggest supporter as well as having taken on the arduous task of becoming his moral compass, someone who could wipe out an entire armada and refuse to kill one man in the same breath. There had been no politics to Ryouhei's behaviour, only instinct, responding entirely to the minute details that he seemed to pick up from Tsuna's general demeanor.

Because when Tsuna faltered, Ryouhei refused. If Tsuna looked at him in the eye and told him to kill, Ryouhei said, okay, Sawada.

God, and he'd been so loud, before. Loud and embarrassing and endearing all at once. By the end of it, he had been -- endearing. Reliable. Still loud at times, but only in the company of Hana, his sister, their Family. He never got around to calling Tsuna by anything other than Sawada, but twenty years in, that was probably purposeful. It was a comfort that Ryouhei had never found it necessary to call him boss, really.

Hana, on the other hand, had used boss as a form of punishment, ruthless in how she would step in to smack the nervous jitters back into Tsuna whenever his flame burned too brightly, fierce and unrelenting like the storm she was not. She had been the Family's sword as well as its shield, a lawyer worth every penny that she squeezed out of Tsuna, keeping their goals in her ledger even when the rest of them swayed.

Ryouhei and Hana. An inseparable pair of unwavering morals and lofty goals. The two that bore the brunt of Tsuna's well-meaning idealism, a duo that even Hayato would accuse of being codependent, as though he had any room to talk.

What Hayato didn't know was how they were the two that Tsuna approached when he knew that he needed to doubt. To be given a chance to be just Sawada rather than the infallible Decimo. He turned to them when he couldn't be too certain whether he was doing the right thing, the rare moments when his will would waver with the kind of sentimentality that he hadn't yet let Reborn beat out of him.

"You're not making any sense," Reborn says.

"It's not meant to make sense," Tsuna says wryly, because that was kind of the point. People who'd been born into this role like Reborn shouldn't get it.

Because just as Takeshi might sometimes need Tsuna to tell him no, let them live, Tsuna sometimes needed to hear that his choices were correct. That he was doing it for his Family, that there was no other way. He needed to know that Ryouhei would stand behind him and Hana would shield him when he brought down the old mafia, a massacre that would have the world calling him Decimo with more fear than respect.

"It had to be done," Tsuna says, and Reborn doesn't say anything at all.

Lambo stopped being a child at fifteen and I-Pin at ten, but given how they had been the youngest of their group since its inception, they were all guilty of babying them a little. Tsuna was especially weak against the combined strength of their begging, the pouty puppy eyes that they would level against him when he wasn't moving to their desired tune and rhythm.

And so it was only natural that they would grow up to becoming particularly good at dragging Tsuna away from the rigors of paperwork and murder when the days grew longer and harder, gifted in how they would grab him by the hands and make him feel like big brother again. Turning him back into someone that could belong to a family instead of a Family, making him feel like a person rather than the centerpiece of an empire built on bloodshed and deceit. They had (re)introduced him to the little wonders in life like video games and cookies and park visits. They gave him reason to cry over the velocity of roller coasters even when they all knew Tsuna could fly faster than anything man-made, could bring forth more death and destruction with a single push of his palm.

It had been a dirty job, keeping Tsuna sane. They were often the two that their Family had grown to depend on to bring Tsuna back when even Hayato (and Takeshi, Ryouhei, Hana) would fail, to lull his flame into silence. They had seen Tsuna at his best and at his worst, when he was at his scariest and most ruthless. They embraced him as both their big brother and as their leader, never flinching away from the calm-eyed killer that Tsuna could become under the influence of his flames.

There are any number of scenarios that Tsuna could remember them by, all of them valid and important, but he narrows it down to the morning when Tsuna had (tried to) lock himself in their training bunker, standing still as the eye of a storm. He remembers how potently he had felt his anger, his fingers clenched into fists as he burned, burned, burned, doing his best to burn himself down to the bone before his flames could burn anything else.

A difficult thing to do, when he could be set off by the memory of being forcibly ejected from the medical wing by Shamal, leaving Hayato and Takeshi in his care, both unconscious. (Still unconscious after a disastrous meeting with the Lumaca Famiglia, one of the last Families that had managed to escape Tsuna's purge. Had been one of the last, seeing how they no longer existed beyond the crater of ash and bone that Tsuna had left them in.) He doesn't know why he had felt so numb when he should have only felt worried, coldly furious when he should have felt guilty over Hayato and Takeshi's conditions.

"Hey. Tsuna-nii." Lambo's voice had taken on the rasp that they had always known it would, but no one could've made Tsuna believe that he could also sound so calming, coaxing Tsuna to look at him with nothing more than his voice. "C'mon, Tsuna-nii. Let's take five, 'kay?"

Lambo said, "You owe me another churro, remember?" while also saying don't do this without so many words, staring back into the chilling abyss that even Tsuna avoided, (seemingly, supposedly, absolutely) unafraid of the way in which he was standing only an arm's length away from where Tsuna's flame burned along the lines of his body.

"I-Pin's already waiting for us," Lambo had added, and then smiled, crooked and young, "She'll be sad if I don't bring you with me."

Tsuna had been dragged outside on those words, had been held steady when he had flinched at sunlight. They had been there, grounding him and keeping him solid when Tsuna thought to slip back into the familiar numbness of his Will. Holding him to the very human concept of pain and grief, chatting about their day until Tsuna had been able to smile again.

"The cow actually grows up to be useful. Shocking," Reborn says. He doesn't look nearly as shocked as he claims to be, and Tsuna allows the bravado without comment.

Sometime into his first decade as Decimo, Mukuro had caught onto the fact that no crafted nightmare could overtake the terrors that Tsuna's twisted psyche could weave. There was too much fanaticism in Mukuro's creations while Tsuna's dreams had stuck stubbornly to reality, borrowing a day's events and spinning them out of control, exploring the million different ways that Tsuna could've failed.

Somewhere along the line, Mukuro caught onto the fact that Tsuna was beginning to look forward to his little nighttime visits, that he found reprieve in them, whereupon he promptly decides to leave the act of crafting little terrors to Tsuna's subconscious to take on another form of torment: the mundane.

They had found themselves sitting at the Vongola dinner table more nights than not, the place where the chaotic and the heartbreaking often took place. It was quiet in Mukuro's illusions, made eerie by the lack of people, made peaceful by it. Because here, in this crafted little reality for two, there was no death, no politics, no responsibilities. Just them, the two that had started it all.

"It's almost as though you dislike being part of the mafia, Tsunayoshi," Mukuro had said.

"I've literally said that from the start," Tsuna had said into his arms. His shoulders were slumped, his spine curved into an angle as he laid his head down into the crook of an elbow. He didn't have to pretend to be anything around Mukuro, because Mukuro knew all of Tsuna's shadows. He knew what lurked beneath the oath that Tsuna had taken prior to taking the mantle of the Vongola Decimo, the brilliant struggle between violence and serenity that existed in his inherited blood. There was no hiding what could not be hidden, no point in trying to be more or less than what he already was.

Mukuro had seen, and Mukuro was still here. It was different from how Ryouhei obeyed his will, how Hayato accepted Tsuna's whims. It differed immensely from how Takashi matched violence with violence, how Lambo pulled Tsuna out of the worst of it. Mukuro had seen, had all the right in the world to disapprove, but had still remained, entrusting Chrome in Tsuna's care.

Or, well. Entrusting Tsuna in Chrome's hands, which was. Just as bad? Or was that good? Tsuna couldn't keep track. Not that he would consider Chrome as anything but good, even if her morals had always been the most twisted of his Guardians, the most aligned with Tsuna's. She never questioned him, though maybe that faith had been more so with how she trusted Mukuro to shut Tsuna down if he did something that erred on the side of too much.

Like how Mukuro was doing now, actually. Huh.

Tsuna raised his head. That was a scream, wasn't it? Echoing out from beyond the windows of Mukuro's crafted reality? That wasn't a noise that he would ever hear in Mukuro's illusions; it was too real, too blood-chilling. He could almost feel the reverberations through his body, scratching at a memory that Tsuna didn't actually want to recall, and yet.

What had he been doing again? Hadn't there been--?

A hand fell on his arm, startling him out of the memory that fought to become a dream, a memoir of how easily bodies tended to drop at Tsuna's feet.

"This is a dream, Tsunayoshi," Mukuro had murmured. His eyes had been bright and dangerous, his lips thinned with a smile that he didn't mean. His fingers lingered on Tsuna's arm, his thumb rubbing comforting circles into the bare skin of Tsuna's forearm. Right, he had gotten into the habit of rolling up his sleeves when he would invite his flame to take shape on his forehead, a habit and routine that had developed over the course of a few months. Something about laundry costs --

"This is my dream," Mukuro was saying again, voice mild as the mist upon a foretold tragedy. "My reality. Do try to be polite and stop trying to escape it?"

And Tsuna remembers cracking a smile, laughter bubbling forth from deep within his chest at the irony of it. He remembers giving into that laughter, his body shaking with little hiccups rather than the tears that he had chosen not to shed in front of an audience of one, accepting the strange comfort that came with having Mukuro in his head. In receiving the allowance to continue as he is and will continue to be.

"You've done enough," Mukuro had said, lulling Tsuna into closing his eyes. There had been fingers in his hair, gentle and tangled into what couldn't be tamed. "Allow me. Sleep, and entrust reality to me for the moment."

Maybe it had been Mukuro's form of apology, these meetings. Maybe it had been his way of taking responsibility. After all, if Mukuro hadn't been tempted by the Vongola blood, the best and worst of the mafia may have never come into its current shape. If he hadn't made the game real, Tsuna might've never found the calm of his hyper intuition.

Or maybe it had been none of the above and this had been as much of a whim as everything else, no more than a way to kill time. Tsuna hadn't ever been particularly invested in figuring out which it had been.

"For the moment?" Reborn echoes in the present.

Tsuna looks at him for a long minute. Shrugs when Reborn seemed serious and intent, the skin around his eyes tight with worry. Strange how Tsuna had never thought to notice it before, willingly looking away from the emotion that Reborn had been giving away in obvious and telling ways. So many missed opportunities.

"Well," Tsuna says eventually, "It's not like he'd have made anything worse."

Hibari Kyouya is -- complicated.

"Oh?" Reborn says, his smile showing teeth, "Did he finally confess?"

"Kyouya-san is never going to confess," Tsuna says. He shrugs and looks out to the sight of sleepy Namimori, wondering how a man could love a city as much as he did another person. How that other person could feel as that to be natural, no different from how Tsuna burned and people died. But if anyone could find someone to accept that as the natural order of things, it would be Hibari Kyouya.

And it would be Hibari Kyouya that would be the one to approach him when Tsuna was at his most ruthless. It would be Kyouya that would reward him with his company at the end of every execution and carnage, grounding him in a way that was so fundamentally different from the rest of his Guardians.

And it would be Kyouya that would find him when Tsuna was standing amongst corpses, fascinated by how brightly he could burn. He had been the only one to willingly reach out and touch what could hurt him, delighting in courting the danger that lurked beneath Tsuna's skin. He was the only one that had dared to reach out and brush his fingers up against the livewire of Tsuna's flames, batting away the wisps to reach into the core, never yielding to anything but Tsuna's best.

"Do you plan on burning out, Tsunayoshi?" Kyouya had asked on one occasion. He had one of Tsuna's wrists in his hand, his fingers tight enough to bruise. It would've been painful if Tsuna had felt anything at all, if he could hear anything but the screams of the dead, their ashes buried into the dirt beneath his shoes.

"That's happening already, Kyouya-san," Tsuna had told him.

That's what he remembers telling him, his eyes downcast, distracted by how he had seen the faces of his once-enemies with every blink. How he remembered, over and over, of their sins, of how they had killed countless Vongola allies, how they had put Hayato and Takeshi in Shamal's care. Remembering how this had been the result of his own choices, the actions that he had taken to bring them to this result and consequence. How he hadn't been filled with regret over that realization, too full of regret over having stayed his hand one too many times instead.

Too busy regretting how slow he had been to carry out his will, this execution of dozens.

Never again.

"No," Kyouya had said, low and dangerous, "Not yet. You don't get to be extinguished after what you've done."

What you've done. A damning phrase, a curse and accusation that would've followed Tsuna to his grave if it had come from anyone but Hibari Kyouya. From Kyouya though, it had sounded like benediction. Telling him, without so many words, that Tsuna had only done as Tsuna willed, protecting what deserved to be protected while laying to waste what did not. Reminding Tsuna of his duty while honouring his own oath to Tsuna as fervently as Hayato did, but only in the ways that he found palatable.

He had accepted Tsuna as he was and would continue to be, because this was just the natural order of things. Predators hunted, prey died. Tsuna burned, and the world burned with him.

The hand had moved from his wrist to the back of his neck, and what Tsuna remembers next is blinking, slow and measured against the curve of Kyouya's shoulder. It had gotten broader over the years despite Kyouya's lithe build. He had felt sturdy beneath Tsuna's head, strong and stable, unflinching despite the fire that still burned atop Tsuna's forehead. Unflinching each and every time that he would have to pull Tsuna in.

Because despite years' worth of reasons to steer clear, the arrow of Kyouya's compass had only ever shifted in Tsuna's direction. Until Tsuna had become Namimori's equal in Kyouya's hierarchy of things, which was almost as shocking as becoming gradually aware of the weight of that devotion. Of how intensely addicting it was to command Hibari Kyouya's attention, as well as the costs associated with it.

It had been -- flattering. In a terrifying sort of way.

And it's not like the fighting had ever stopped between them, not when the only one that could challenge Kyouya was Tsuna. Not when Tsuna was the only one that Kyouya could fight to spend his pent up frustrations, defusing what could otherwise undo the very fabric of world peace (or something). But sometimes, instead of aiming a tonfa at Tsuna's face, Kyouya would do this instead. He would stand with Tsuna in a graveyard full of ashes and hold him together until he stopped burning long enough for others to approach.

"That's as good as a confession," Reborn points out.

Tsuna thinks about how they had stood together in the middle of dirt and ashes as the only living things for miles on end. How Kyouya had accepted his weakness, allowing him the exception for no palpable reason. About how fiercely Kyouya would have guarded his space and his rules against anyone else even as he allowed Tsuna the time to come down from his hyper mode, accepting all the sins that he shouldered.

"I guess," Tsuna allows.

"And?" Reborn asks. "Any complaints about me?"

"You already know everything I want to say about you," Tsuna says, rolling his eyes.

Reborn blinks, slow and lazy. Predatory. Assessing. "Humour me."

"Well," Tsuna says, and his smile is a small thing, genuine and gradual. His finger finds that sideburn curl again, letting it tangle against his skin to allow him just enough of a grip to tug. Giving back for all those times that Reborn had tugged on his hair, and his chest feels warm with the understanding that this is Reborn letting him. "You never confessed either."

Reborn snorts, but there's no delivered retribution for Tsuna's quip, so. Hah.

"Would you do it again?" Reborn asks instead. "Being Decimo?"

Tsuna considers the question. Considers the people that the governance of blood money had brought into his life, the laughter and the love alongside the corpses that now paved his path to the afterlife. Draws his hands back to his lap and shrugs.

"Who knows?" Tsuna says.

Chapter Text

His body wakes to a click. A very distinct click.

It is the click of a safety coming off of a gun, one that fills him with adrenaline and exhaustion, both.

His body wakes, but Tsuna's mind doesn't, not really. He's only peripherally aware of how his body responds, tucking in his legs to roll off the bed. His hands are reaching for his gloves -- no gloves, hands in bandages, but there's a gun -- mid-tumble one minute, then he's on one knee and one foot, gun pointed at the source of that click, in the next.

Gun's empty. There's a distinct flavour to the voice of his intuition. It sounds like him, if a little deeper. Candid, too, especially in the early hours of the morning, when it can work unhindered. It's the only time it can, outside of hyper mode.

Gun's empty, but that's inconsequential. That doesn't matter. He's the Decimo; he doesn't need bullets to kill.

One would think that people would stop trying to kill him in the morning, given that awful situation from two years ago. An old dog, the mafia; learning new things just isn't their thing.

Not that he's complaining. It's by that very weakness that they had crumbled, stubbornly falling on the sword that Tsuna had placed in their path. It had been so easy.

As it stands, Tsuna will count his blessings if this whole situation doesn't give Hayato an aneurysm. Or if Takeshi can find it within himself to dial down his haha I'll kill you look down to like -- an eleven or something. An eleven down from the five hundred that it takes on when someone makes an attempt on Tsuna's pinky, much less his life. Or, like, if Kyouya didn't glower at Tsuna for weeks for tempting death without telling him. Hana is probably going to make Ryouhei camp outside of his door for a few days, and Chrome and Mukuro's preference for revenge is best left unspoken.

There is overprotectiveness, then there is his Guardians. Maybe they would have gotten used to the idea that people wanted Tsuna dead one day. It's too bad that Tsuna had died before that day had even been conceived.

"--that's almost a pass, Loser Tsuna," his assailant says, which. What.

"What," Tsuna says, distantly enraged. That was better than just a pass. If he's rusty, he's only rusty by Reborn's standards, which are impossible to meet anyway. That's just unfair.

It's been a while since Reborn had been the one to try and put a bullet in Tsuna's head. Pulling at Tsuna's hair is Reborn's choice of torment these days, so this is -- what, exactly? A regression?

Tsuna raises both hands and lets the gun twirl by its trigger ring around his index finger, going upside down and harmless.

Then, he looks. He looks at Reborn.

Reborn, who's suddenly too young. Too short. Looking like the child that he hadn't been when they had first met.

Nevermind, it's too early for this. Tsuna hadn't had breakfast. Hadn't even had coffee.

Tsuna rubs his free hand over his face. "Put the gun down and tell me what you remember last."

Reborn raises a brow but does as he's asked. Not immediately, of course not, but at a moment of his choosing. Why did he have to be so stubborn?

"Don't go stealing my lines."

"I'm not the one who's small again," Tsuna says, tossing his gun back onto his bed. He stretches out his legs and notes that they look -- weird. They feel weird. For one thing, his knee doesn't hurt. He doesn't ache. He doesn't even feel stiff or rigid.

"What happened could work."

"I can see what happened, I'm saving us a step." Tsuna narrows his eyes, trying to stave off a headache. "Why are you giving me a hard time over this, Reborn? Just tell me."

"Tsuna," Reborn says, and Tsuna's immediately on alert. That tone of voice, the lack of a nickname? All red flags. "Turn around."

"Give me your gun," Tsuna says first, because -- no. There's something wrong here, and he's not turning his back on a gun. Even if it's Reborn.

Reborn gives him a long look, then lets Leon fall from his fingers to the ground, dropped at a distance that Tsuna tracks with his eyes. That's… relatively out of reach. Good enough. "Turn around and look."

Tsuna turns.

The reflection of himself, all of sixteen years old, stares back at him, and right. Right, there's something even stranger than the amazing un-growth of Reborn. Even stranger than that gloriously embarrassing outfit that Tsuna is wearing. Tiny cat faces dot the flat blue colour of his pajamas, adorable in a cartoonish sort of way. The sleeves are too long and the pants engulf his feet, leaving only his toes to poke out. His hair is an absolute mess, sticking up more than usual, and his eyes are brown again. He's missing several scars.

Most devastatingly, "I'm not dead?"

Reborn makes him coffee.

Actually, Reborn bullies Tsuna into making coffee, barking out directions that Tsuna follows with relative ease.

They're seated now, sitting at the table as sixteen and ten-year-olds, both nursing a cup of coffee. The skin beneath the bandages begin to itch, and Tsuna stares down at his fingers and his coffee cup and tries not to throw up. Or blow up. One or the other.

So, yeah. Apparently, he had just -- just woken up, as if it's normal to just wake up from something like death. Even in the realm of Flames, of Dying Wills and the goddamn mafia, this is too ridiculous. This is too much.

He's supposed to be dead. Dead-dead.

He doesn't cry, but his next breath out is telling. Too frustrated. And Reborn is going to click his tongue at him for it, for being too honest for the mantle that he wears. Has worn. Is Tsuna even the boss anymore, now that he's died? Sort of died?

Hayato will have to figure out the logistics of that. Because if Tsuna knows his Guardians -- and he does, sometimes way too well -- then they're going to answer to no other authority than Tsuna's own, as unsteady as that could sometimes be.

Only, wait.

Wait.

The Hayato of this time wouldn't be his Hayato, would he? He isn't, not yet. He isn't the Hayato that had walked the layers of hell with him. Not the one that had found Tsuna in the gardens to just sit with him for hours. He's not yet the one who had pulled Tsuna from the precipice of certain insanity, holding him together even when he had become something unforgivable.

Stay with me, Tenth.

Tsuna takes a sip of his coffee, and grimaces.

The nuances of brewing coffee had always escaped Tsuna, always a bit too bitter or a bit too watery, Tsuna had never managed a sweet spot with his brews like Mukuro had, lacking the delicacy and talent for it.

Not worried I'd poison you, Sawada Tsunayoshi? So murmurs the voice of the one who had brewed Tsuna's coffee almost every day.

"Rude," Reborn says, clicking his tongue. "What have I been doing with you?"

"You're making absolutely no sense right now," Tsuna tells him. Understanding Reborn didn't usually take much effort at all, but, well. He feels a little broken. He should be broken. Actually, he should have been cremated. He had asked for it, and Kyouya had even agreed, as angry as he'd been at the request. "Are you talking to me or at me?"

Reborn snorts. "Are those the only options?"

Spoken like how an Italian would say taxes. Tsuna smiles, briefly.

"Reborn," Tsuna says.

"You were in your head," Reborn says eventually, narrow-eyed and suddenly assessing. Tsuna has been under that gaze too often to even remotely care, so. It's fine. Let Reborn watch. "Where did you go?"

Tsuna leans back. Considers him, then says, "Somewhere with better coffee."

Reborn's lips twitch. It's the smile-twitch, one that denotes pride rather than disappointment.

"So that talk last night was all real, was it?" Reborn says, and.

Oh. Damn it all.

"I'm impressed, Loser Tsuna," Reborn continues, smug and teasing. His smile wears an edge that could cut him if Tsuna let it, but if last night is the night whose hours had been filled with reminiscence and confessions, then there are more important things to think about right now. "You went from being universally pitied to being a real boss."

Ah. Well, there's no point in freaking out over what can't be changed, no point in denying what was true. Which leaves Tsuna to just ask, "You believe me, then?"

Reborn doesn't quite lose that look of pride as he dips his head. His fedora hides the upper half of his eyes, but Tsuna doesn't need to see them to know what Reborn means to say with that look.

"You couldn't make up a story like that if your life depended on it," Reborn says.

True, but it's not just that. Tsuna knows it's not just that. He doesn't remember much about being sixteen, but he does remember -- awkwardness. He had been all gangly limbs and noisy thoughts, challenged by all that he knew and didn't know. He remembers being both scared of the future and resigned to it, the many times that he had argued with Reborn over it. He remembers how the arguments would escalate, and how moments of peace would become sacred in their rarity.

And how that status quo had continued until Tsuna had become Decimo proper, when Tsuna finally accepted that what Tsuna had wanted and what Tsuna had gotten wasn't that much different.

It's really no wonder that Reborn had been as responsive as he had been last night. Why he had responded almost immediately to Tsuna's call, almost eager for calmer waters after being out at sea, perhaps as lost as Tsuna had felt, once upon a time.

Reborn isn't sentimental by nature, but he did have his moments.

"Anyone else wouldn't have believed me," Tsuna says, "no matter how serious I sounded."

"I'm not anyone else," Reborn says.

Tsuna laughs, short and barking. "That's true."

Reborn puts his coffee cup down, heavy as an anvil. Or a guillotine. He doesn't speak, and he doesn't need to.

It's fine. It's not like Tsuna had been meaning to hide anything anyway, given how much has already been said. This wouldn't be the first time that the timeline was fucked up. If he was meant to stay here, alive and sixteen again, then it likely wouldn't be the last.

They move to the couch, and Reborn doesn't try to cripple him when Tsuna pulls him onto his lap. Not in any weird way, okay, just. Just close enough to be close, close enough to feel it. There was no point in faking his sixteen-year-old persona now, no point to pretending that he didn't want the closeness. It has been years since Tsuna has been able to hold anyone like this, not with how his Family had sprung up like evergreens around him while Tsuna had remained a shrub, with even Chrome growing into these incredible legs that --

"How old are you?" Reborn asks.

Tsuna considers lying, and decides that it's not worth the effort. So he says, "Thirty-six."

Reborn shifts in his arms, and Tsuna huffs out a laugh.

"It's fine. I can't even believe I made it that far," Tsuna says. "We did pretty good."

"Not good enough," Reborn says, and Tsuna would have to be deaf to miss the low curl of anger in his tone, the absolute offense that he seems to have taken at how Tsuna had died at thirty-six instead of, what, a hundred? Wow, what a nightmare that would've been. "How did you die?"

"In no way that you could've prevented," Tsuna says, slumping a bit to rest his chin on Reborn's head. He had only been about fifty percent sure that Reborn would let him, but talks of Tsuna's demise earned him that right or something, because Reborn doesn't even stiffen. "It would've happened, no matter what anyone did."

"That's hard to believe," Reborn bites out.

"There's nothing anyone could've done," Tsuna says. He picks at his bandages and Reborn lets him, allowing the fidgeting until Tsuna gets his fingers free, flexing away the itchiness. "You guys hung onto me longer than anyone could've."

Reborn is silent for a while, and Tsuna basks in the quiet, his eyes closing and his mind drifting under the ticking of the clock hand. Like a conductor's hand, guiding Tsuna's thoughts to go from Hayato to Takeshi, from Ryouhei and Hana to Lambo, from Mukuro and Chrome to Kyouya. From Kyoko to Reborn, from the beginning to the end. From all that they had endured to all that they had accomplished, and how happy they had been, perfectly whole with all their broken pieces.

It had been a good life, even when it hadn't been a normal one.

"What'd you tell my school, by the way?" Tsuna asks.

"What makes you think I did anything?" Reborn asks back.

Tsuna loosens his arms and leans away, staring at the back of Reborn's head, willing him to hop off his lap. Reborn stays put. Classic. "I'm supposed to be sixteen, and it's a weekday, isn't it? If you want me to keep your story straight, I should probably know what you told my school, Reborn."

Reborn tilts his head up. He's a little older than when he had first come to Tsuna, looking closer to ten rather than five. It would take another year or two before the curse completely leaves his body, but when it does, when Reborn starts to grow into the age that he had been before the curse, the days of him looking up would be over. Tsuna resigns himself to enjoying it while he still can, because if he had to live things all over again (for however long that lasted), he might as well take his pleasures where he could.

"Thirty-six," Reborn murmurs, and Tsuna chooses to pretend like he doesn't know what Reborn means by that. Pretends not to hear, I raised you well. He pretends ignorance that neither of them believes, waiting until Reborn finally says, "You've been having explosive fits of vomiting since midnight. You didn't tell your mom because you didn't want to worry her. Gokudera and Yamamoto will be by to baby you after school. I've told them to bring your homework."

"Huh," Tsuna says. "That's actually kind of believable. Did I surprise you that much last night?"

Reborn elbows him in the gut.

Seeing his mom alive is -- a shock.

Thankfully, his alibi excuses the way in which Tsuna freezes in places, eyes wide and tight around the corners. It explains away how faint he feels, and the silence that constricts his throat, thorned and inescapable. It exempts him from the embarrassment of just standing there, staring at a woman that had died with his hand in hers, smiling the same smile that she's wearing now, warm and impossibly kind.

She's alive.

"Oh Tsu-kun," Nana says, clicking her tongue. "You really should've told me that you weren't feeling well."

"Sorry," Tsuna says on rote. He can hardly feel his tongue, and his eyes don't know where else to go but forward, staring at a woman that he loves so deeply, so dearly. Reborn is watching him from the kitchen table, over the curve of his mom's shoulder, and Tsuna is probably giving all sorts of things away, but he doesn't care, his mom's--

Tsuna swallows, and forces a queasy smile. "Sorry. I, just. I didn't want to worry you."

"I know, Reborn told me," Nana sighs. "You're such a silly boy, your mama should've been the first person that should know."

She'll never be the first to know. Not when he's sick, not when he's hurt. She'll never be like Reborn, where he admits to being dead at thirty-six, because that would break her heart faster than anything else he could say.

Which is saying something, seeing how Tsuna is the biggest name in crime. And how he had let Iemitsu die. How he turned his mom's hometown into something unrecognizable.

"I know. I'm sorry, mom."

"Enough of that. Are you feeling better, Tsu-kun?" Nana asks. She raises one hand to touch his cheek, tracing her fingers up along to his hairline where she can brush aside his bangs. There's the slightest twist of worry along the line of her mouth, but her smile never falters. It never does, never will. "You're looking a little pale. Do you still feel sick? How are your hands?"

Tsuna raises a said hand to catch hers in his, giving it a squeeze. He smiles like she's taught him to smile, fragile but strong, honest but empty. He gives without giving much at all, shaking his head in response to a question that he'll never answer with anything but, "I'm okay. Hands are okay. I could be better with your congee though."

His mom laughs, and it sounds like birdsong in his ears, light and lovely. Tsuna breathes it in, and feels that much more alive.

"How did she die?"

Tsuna doesn't answer, not immediately. His body stays relaxed where he lies across the couch, his legs too short for his toes to touch the armrest that Reborn must be perched on. He concentrates on his breathing like he had been taught, reorganizing his thoughts and realigning his priorities. He has something of a list when he's done, and it's all very organized except for how it isn't, because -- heck, who was expected to remember everything that's happened over the last twenty years?

The best he can do is to circumvent some personal tragedies that he does remember, not so much fixing the future as much as he was making it a little better. Improving it in miniscule ways, ways that shouldn't impact the flow of key events.

He'll still grow old enough to die again in the exact same way. That won't change, but the little things, like firing Iemitsu? He could change that, surely.

Because that had been among the first things that Tsuna remembers doing, dismissing most of the ninth generation of CEDEF to replace their ranks with those of the tenth. A necessary change, he had reasoned, to keep the balance as Primo had wanted. It had been a fine excuse, the first of many political moves that Tsuna would learn to make, the first of many selfish choices.

Because, he had thought then, where would Iemittsu go other than back to his mom when he was out of a job? Who else could he have turned to when he no longer had a convenient excuse for his absence?

Don't fire Iemitsu, he tells himself. Don't fire him, but move him back. Station him in Namimori, force him to stay. Leave him to monitor the region that would one day become one of their strongholds. Leave him within the reach of his mom when she eventually leaves them both.

Tsuna's eyes open. His head twists to meet Reborn's gaze, smiling crookedly at the odd show of patience. His brain feels busy. His heart feels heavy. The future feels far away and far too close all at once, but Reborn won't hear any of that.

Complaining would change nothing. Things will be fine.

"In no way that we could've prevented," Tsuna finally says in answer.

Alone, he doesn't say. Alone, without the man she loved by her side.

He never did forgive Iemitsu for that.

"Like you did?" Reborn returns.

Huh. It's very much like Reborn to make such a leap without much information at all. Not that Tsuna's surprised; he knows how resourceful Reborn can be. Tsuna had even become accustomed to it, counting on it on the odd times that he would ask an impossible favour of him, trusting him to come out of it alive.

Though in hindsight, that had been a shitty thing to do. Sending a friend out into a dire situation when Tsuna could have handled it himself? Who even does that? Not that Reborn had ever seemed to mind, accepting Tsuna's shittiness in stride. Apologies wouldn't have gone over well.

Sorry, Reborn, Tsuna thinks anyway, even as he says, "Yep," and nothing more.

"Do you consider me a friend?" Reborn asks after they finish eating, and.

Tsuna stares at Reborn in the same way that he might stare at a lemon that he's about to swallow, distantly appalled. Reborn would pull this card. Which is extremely telling, but still --

"That," Tsuna says, "isn't fair."

Reborn smirks. His expression shifts from the annoyed exasperation that he had worn through the whole congee ordeal, winding down into a sense of amusement that has Tsuna's mouth twitching in sympathy. Given the question though, Tsuna doesn't, heroically holding off a smile even when he feels full with congee and his mom's presence, warm and not at all hurting.

Not healed, and never whole, but -- enough. Just enough. Just enough that it has him thinking: this isn't so bad.

He knows where Reborn plans to take this, of course. He knows, and Reborn knows that he knows. Reborn is testing him as he's done for so many years, and if this had been his Reborn, he might've taken it as teasing. As it stands, though --

Fine. If Reborn wants to play this game, they can play this game.

Tsuna settles himself into the chair, bringing himself eye level with where Reborn is seated on his desk, legs crossed and dangling off the edge. Reborn's expression changes at whatever he sees on Tsuna's face, even when Tsuna only means to look earnest.

"Nope," Tsuna says, making sure to pop the p as he rolls it off his tongue. "You're not just a friend, Reborn. You're always going to be special to me."

"Don't be disgusting," Reborn says without heat. His expression doesn't change outwardly, but there are other tells, like how he doesn't make any attempts at causing bodily harm. Like, you know, leaping off the desk to deliver a flying kick to Tsuna's temple or something. "But if that's the case, then you won't have any objections to being honest with me, will you?"

"I never lied to you," Tsuna says, because it's important to do so.

"No," Reborn agrees. "But you're avoiding the question. That's as good as lying."

Tsuna shrugs. Reborn isn't wrong; there's more ways of hiding information than lying. Omission is one of them as Reborn had rightly pointed out.

Reborn narrows his eyes when Tsuna leans away, and -- Tsuna can guess at what he's thinking, but he won't. Tsuna is thirty-six and not-quite-dead; he knows when not to open Pandora's box.

"If I've learned anything from time traveling before," Tsuna says instead, "it's that I'm not going to be around for long. It's a bit weird that I didn't bring my body with me, but I can't see this time being any different. I'll wait until it's time for me to leave."

"You mean that you'll die," Reborn says. Again, he doesn't say.

"Well, yeah," Tsuna says. "But I'll live this life again for as long as I'm supposed to. Going to school, hanging out with my friends and stuff, I'll do that. I didn't want to change anything, but -- I mean, me talking to you has already changed things."

"But why wouldn't you?" Reborn says. "It's hard to believe that you'd want to change nothing."

"At sixteen?" Tsuna says. "Not really. Nothing that I can remember, anyway. What could I even change, anyway?"

"Aren't you cynical," Reborn says. "Whatever happened to your obstinance?"

"Nothing. It just grew up a little," Tsuna tells him.

And it had been a good life, even with the whole 'dying young' thing. They had been in the process of cleaning up Italy, the Vongola had been healthy and wealthy (not that wealth had ever mattered to Tsuna, except in how wealth tended to be the only way to change anything --), the Arcobaleno curse had remained broken, and Byakuran had avoided insanity. The relationship between the Shimon and the Vongola had lingered as a sore spot of missed opportunities, but some bridges had been in the process of rebuilding, soothing over old wounds with a sense of hope. Even Xanxus had been known to crack a smile here and there.

Everyone had been happy. Things had been good. Tsuna had been happy. He had died happy.

As for what he did want to change? They're the little things, the fine details. The footnotes, like not firing Iemitsu. Like making sure that certain people didn't die unnecessarily. Things that he could leave in a notebook for his younger self to find and act on, things that wouldn't make sense to anyone until the year that it was about to happen.

But those aren't the things that Reborn is talking about; those aren't what he's interested in. He's talking about only one thing in particular, and they both know it.

"You died," Reborn says with the subtlety of a punch to the gut. It must've been bugging him if he's being this upfront and obvious. "At thirty-six. Isn't that worth changing?"

No, not really. Tsuna doesn't say the words, but he doesn't have to. He's giving away more with his silence than if he had chosen to speak. It makes Reborn's mouth thin with understanding even as Tsuna smiles.

"I thought you'd be all for letting the younger me figure things out for himself," Tsuna says. It's performative. Just filling the silence while he continues to think. "Don't you think he could?"

"If he doesn't, I will," Reborn says. He says it like a threat.

Then again, even as Reborn had been the one to teach Tsuna the necessity of sacrifice, the importance of respecting the relationship between cause and consequence, Reborn had never been the one to discourage Tsuna from wanting too much either. He had never dissuaded him from trying to achieve too much, always bending to Tsuna's will after a token protest. He had always been the first to preach about limits while also being the one to push Tsuna past them, teaching Tsuna the rules while fully expecting him to break them.

It would stand to reason that Reborn had taught him to be exactly as Reborn, himself, is: woefully stubborn, especially in the face of something that might've been called fate.

And if Reborn wants to try like how Tsuna had once wanted to try, then who is he to stop him? It's only fair to give Reborn a chance.

"You can try," Tsuna says at last.

"Meaning?" Reborn asks, his voice going low. It makes Tsuna crack a smile, fond and amused.

He had to admit, it's kind of nice that Reborn's trying to save him this time around. And if, on the off chance that Reborn did manage to find something -- well. Tsuna as he is now would cease to exist, wouldn't he? His timeline would be gone with him alongside it. He would still be dead by some definition or another.

And maybe that's how things were meant to be, like how that one future with Byakuran had been erased. Maybe this is how history is meant to be spun.

So:

"I'm the Vongola Decimo, Reborn," Tsuna says. "I've been dying since I was fourteen."

There's a moment of loaded silence, first filled with confusion before it's rapidly filled to the brim with disbelief. Until it overflows with denial. Anger. It's not any different than how the Reborn of his era had taken the news.

"No," Reborn says eventually, just like Tsuna had known he would, "That's not how Dying Will Flames work."

"Really?" Tsuna asks. His tone is mild. Calm and collected in a way that he only ever feels when his Flame was burning atop his head, burning through more years than any of them had ever realized, more quickly than even Tsuna had known. His voice is measured as the voice of any boss worth his salt, and he sees the moment when Reborn comes to the same understanding: he is the Vongola Decimo, and he is dead, eaten alive by the very Flames that had brought them all together. "Says who?"

Chapter Text

In the end, Hayato and Takeshi don't come to him. He goes to them.

("Where," Reborn had said, "do you think you're going?"

"You know where I'm going," Tsuna had said. "You're literally following me."

"The why was implied."

"Okay, but you could've just asked why," Tsuna had said.

Reborn had looked ready to shoot him. Tsuna, in turn, had hoped he would for that touch of normalcy, but because Reborn never did as Tsuna wished, he hadn't.

"I'm supposed to be a student," Tsuna had said, "so I should be in school."

"You should be at home," Reborn had said. Hadn't said, resting. Doesn't say, figuring out how to save you.

"I'll be home after school," Tsuna had said. You worry too much. It wasn't as though he was going to die today, was he?)

He's standing outside the door of his classroom, his feet locked in place by a strange sense of anxiety. He wants to see them, needs to see them, wants and needs to see that they're safe and whole. He needs to feel them close, their Flames resonating with the ones that existed within the core of Tsuna's soul. He has to know that even if he doesn't have them as he remembers them, he'll have them as he's always had them, steady and present.

There's really no need to be worried. And yet.

Five minutes is how long it takes to talk himself into touching the door, seconds before the whisper of voices escalates into explosive proportions. And even in the future, years and decades after the effects of puberty have worn off, there's really only one person in Tsuna's immediate circle with that particular dial to his volume.

Just one person who acted this way for a single, ridiculous reason.

And that's a good reason to slam the door open, sending the classroom plummeting into silence. Wild eyes stare at Tsuna with varying degrees of alarm and relief.

"Oh. Hey, Tsuna!" Takeshi would be the first to recover. His face is bright, light and suspiciously free of stress as he peels himself away from where Hayato has a guy pinned to his chair by the collar to approach Tsuna.

"What's going on here?" Tsuna asks, accepting the weight of Takeshi's arm around his shoulders as a matter of course.

"Nothing, Tenth!" Hayato says, finally recovering. He lets his victim go with a warning slant of a glance, and the smile that he turns in Tsuna's direction is just -- so bright that Tsuna can't help but smile back, helplessly charmed.

God, he hadn't changed a bit through the years, had he?

"They were saying how you were skipping school," Takeshi says.

Hayato shoots him a betrayed look, but Tsuna knows better than to believe that there is nothing going unmentioned. They did this a lot, both now and in the future; Hayato would do things and Takeshi would cover, or vice versa. Not to hide, but because some things, they had believed, just weren't worth Tsuna's time. Then again, if they reported every time that they intimidated someone out of an obsessive need to protect Tsuna's honour and reputation, they would've literally drowned him in paperwork. Tsuna hadn't really cared enough to tempt that particular brand of torture.

"But Reborn said that you were sick, so Gokudera was just making sure they had their facts straight," Takeshi finishes.

How is it that Reborn's one, decent excuse still had this effect on the world? It's utterly baffling. And sort of impressive.

"Okay," Tsuna says. He turns his gaze on the boy that Hayato had pinned to his chair, and smiles. It probably doesn't look as benign as it feels. It's a smile that he had perfected since -- around this age, probably? That's when he'd started getting pulled into actual mafia affairs, where he'd learned very quickly that a smile went a long way. In this case, it apparently made the kid want to have an accident in his seat, because he turns as pale as his uniform. "Then there should be no more misunderstandings, right?"

"Yeah," says the kid with a noisy swallow. "Yeah, Sawada. Uh, glad to see that you're feeling better."

"Asshole," Hayato says, and Takeshi laughs.

He never enjoyed school, but he can definitely see the appeal in it now, years later. There's beauty in routine, something solid and real to be found in repetition. A certain sort of stability that could only be possible by following someone else's rules, someone else's standards. There's almost a sense of freedom in it, in knowing that as long as those rules and standards were met, your life was set because that was what was guaranteed.

Tsuna hasn't felt that sort of peace in a long, long time.

He suspects that it's Reborn's fault as all things are; sometime between now and the future, he had gone and talked the very fabric of reality into putting Tsuna at the helm of it. Somehow, he had convinced everyone that it would be smart to have a world where only Tsuna's rules mattered, where the only game worth playing was his.

It had been a terrible idea. It's a wonder that they made it out in one piece by the end of it.

"Are you sure you're feeling alright, Tenth?"

And that would be Hayato, asking the same thing for the sixth time in an hour. He's seated to Tsuna's right (and naturally, Takeshi is at his left), casting him worried little glances in-between the ongoing droning of their teacher.

Literature had always been more of a Kyouya thing. Something for Kyouya to read and enjoy while Tsuna had lain next to a seated Kyouya on the floor, staring up at the ceiling without seeing anything at all.

What are you doing, Kyouya would ask without looking away from his book. As if he hadn't already known.

Just listening to you read.

Kyouya's lips would curl in response, but there would be no answer, because it was beneath Hibari Kyouya to answer inane comments. Even when it came from Tsuna, even when Kyouya had dropped his last name and began calling him Tsunayoshi in the same way that he'd say Namimori, Hibari Kyouya would still be as Hibari Kyouya had always been.

Anyway.

"I'm fine," Tsuna says. "Reborn was just exaggerating."

"But he let you stay home," Hayato says, which. That's fair.

"He was exaggerating," Tsuna says again. Repetition didn't make something true, but it made people believe it, which was about the same thing. Not so much in this case, but he didn't particularly want to explain how he wasn't the Tsuna of this era, how he had died yesterday and somehow woke up today. He doesn't want to see Hayato's face cloud over with a storm at how Tsuna had died at all. Hayato would take it as a personal failure no matter what was said. Takeshi, too.

So Tsuna says nothing despite the lingering doubt and worry that he reads on Hayato's face, pretending not to notice how Takeshi has shifted to keep Tsuna in his line of sight. He closes his eyes to the tension in their bodies to focus on the hum of their Flames instead, young and not yet harmonized. There's potential rather than stability when Tsuna lets his own flames tickle at the edges of their consciousness, whispers and promises of a future.

Tsuna jerks. It's violent enough that his hand hits his pencil case, and Hayato looks at him again in worry.

Oh. Oh. Realization echoes through him like a broken bell.

There's emptiness where there should be completion. Cold, where there should be warmth. Transience, instead of absolution. A clawing sense of uncertainty where there should've been a home.

They're there, but they're also not. They're present, but they're not yet fully his, not in the way that they had been, would be.

He's alone for the first time in over ten years.

It's -- jarring. If feels wrong, awful to the point of perversion, and the dull roar of loneliness echoes out from the jagged, empty places that his Family was supposed to be.

It's all that Tsuna can do to open his eyes at the call of his name, breathing in the terrible taste of hollowness. His body feels incomplete, his heart fractured. How had he lived like this before? How had he been sixteen without knowing what it was like to harmonize with those most important?

It's awful. It's more awful than words could ever define.

Sentimentality, Kyouya would say, derisive. Dismissive, even as he would turn his eyes back to his book, opening his mouth to lend his voice to the written words, lending his voice to help silence the roar of Tsuna's unspoken turmoils.

See, see how the sun has moved onward while we talked. Nothing can stop it in its course. Prayers cannot halt the revolving of nature. It is the same with human life. Victory and defeat are one in the vast stream of life. Victory is the beginning of defeat, and who can rest safely in victory?

"Tsuna?" Takeshi is saying as the teacher says to Tsuna, "If you could finish reading this line for us, Sawada?"

Kyouya's voice had been such a calming thing, even when it had never quite lost that undercurrent of danger. A warm thing, deep and inflectionless, a lullaby for the Decimo, a momentary reprieve. He remembers how Kyouya used to read out loud when he hadn't needed to, filling in the gaps left behind by Tsuna's guilt. Drowning it out with distractions, offering a lifeline made of a kindness that Kyouya will never explain.

There was a reason why Kyouya had been the one to find himself in the company of small creatures, from birds to kittens. More princess-like than Kyoko in some ways, who had a mean streak that Tsuna fiercely enjoys.

"Sawada, the line?"

He picks up the book. Looks down at a line read to him by a different voice in a different world and breathes in.

Out, "Impermanence is the nature of all things of this world. Even you will find your ill fortunes too will change. It is easy to understand the impatience of the old, whose days are numbered, but why should you young ones fret when the future is yours?"

"But Tenth, are you sure--"

Tsuna stops, turns. He brings Hayato into full view, and chooses to focus on his exasperation and fondness rather than the hollow echo that exists where there'd once been a great storm, volatile yet reliable. Still, if he'd any doubts of whether Hayato was Hayato in all the ways that counted, it would be this weird argument over getting ice cream where said doubts would be crushed underfoot, wouldn't it?

"It's just ice cream," Tsuna points out. For the fourth time.

"But you weren't feeling well just this morning!" Hayato cries, his volume spiking alongside his palatable anxiety. The same guy that would sooner light a cigarette over a dead body than report it was twisting himself up in knots over the thought of letting Tsuna have ice cream. On the evening of a day that he believed Tsuna to be sick, but. Still. "Lactose can't be good for your stomach when you've been having fits of vomiting!"

"He's right, Tsuna." And that would be Takeshi, sounding oddly serious. In a way that he didn't sound serious at all but somehow still is, his tone wavering between the two. Tsuna hadn't ever had trouble telling the difference, but others always seemed to.

Which would explain the glare that Hayato whips in his direction, because to him, Takeshi probably sounds amused, laughing at both their expenses instead of, you know, worried. It's a glare that has Takeshi raising both of his hands in mock surrender with his usual brand of laughter on his lips, crooked and wholly insincere.

Or, well. Not insincere, just -- performative, maybe. There's no word for what Takeshi did, really.

"Hayato," Tsuna says, and blinks at the way in which that makes both Hayato and Takeshi stop and stare, the former colouring rapidly while the latter begins looking a little contemplative. What?

"Uh. Ye--" Hayato stops, coughs. Chokes, more like. "Yes, Tenth?"

Odd. "Ice cream isn't going to hurt me."

"But--"

"So let's go, okay?" Tsuna says brightly. Probably too brightly, because Hayato suddenly looks pained, his expression going tight with defeat. Not necessarily a bad thing, given the context; they were loitering around on school grounds after classes to have this discussion, and if they didn't hurry it up, he's fairly sure that they weren't going to get out of here without running into Kyouya, and that was an encounter that he wanted to stave off until --

Well. Maybe until he feels a little more centered. A certain level of energy is needed when dealing with Hibari Kyouya, and right now, he doesn't have it.

An arm settles around his shoulders as they walk, and a warm body follows. Tsuna stumbles under Takeshi's weight as Takeshi must have intended, and they both ignore Hayato's indignant squawk in favour of relaxing against each other, with Tsuna taking refuge in Takeshi's stability and Takeshi taking the opportunity to look for what he will (not) find on Tsuna's face.

"You want ice cream that much today?"

Tsuna looks up at him through his bangs, searching. Even at sixteen, he can see echoes of his Takeshi, hidden in the lines of his posture and the undercurrent of his voice. He's as much the killer that he'll become as he is one of Tsuna's best friends. The duality of his Rain has never frightened Tsuna, even after Takeshi had grown into the assassin that Reborn had always claimed Takeshi to be.

But echoes are just that: echoes. His Takeshi would have taken the opportunity to rest his chin on Tsuna's head, pulling Tsuna in so close that he'd have no choice but to rest his cheek against Takeshi's collarbone. His Takeshi wouldn't have bothered looking for answers in Tsuna's expression, instead indulging Hayato's worry by denying Tsuna ice cream only to show up with a full tub of it later, ready to face the wrath of Tsuna's Storm when Hayato inevitably found out.

Damn it. Death was supposed to free him of such sentiments, but he would be so lucky. And he is lucky, no matter how lonely he might feel in the absence of harmonization, for this chance to see them one more time.

Only --

Only, did harmonization have to be absent? There was nothing to stop Tsuna from taking that from them, especially not when Tsuna knows that his friends would agree to it at sixteen as readily as they'd done at twenty-one. He didn't have to be alone.

Tsuna reaches up to curl his fingers around Takeshi's wrist instead, hanging on. "Yeah. So come with me?"

Takeshi laughs and squeezes him some more. It's nice. "Yeah, Tsuna. Always gonna."

Tsuna is sulking. He's thirty-six, head of the largest crime syndicate in Italy, and he's sulking over ice cream. Did that make him childish? Probably.

"Did Reborn-san say when the Ninth was coming, Tenth?" Hayato asks when he's successfully bullied Tsuna into accepting a popsicle in favour of actual ice cream.

Changing topics, Tsuna thinks bitterly, from how he was having a proper soft serve while Tsuna was stuck with frozen water on a stick. Ugh.

"Nono's coming?" Tsuna asks, taking a morose bite of his popsicle.

Huh. Was it that time of his life already? He remembers the visit and the visitor, a tall, well-aged gentleman in an expensive suit. He remembers how Nono had taken off his fedora to offer his mom a greeting, and gave Reborn a nod to get one in turn. He remembers how Nono had turned to Tsuna with a gentle twinkle to his eye even when his smile had looked plastic, thinned with both regret and expectations.

He remembers it as another turning point in his life, because if Reborn had changed his life with his arrival, Nono had cemented that change with his. It had been when everything had fallen into place in all the ways that Tsuna had hated but had eventually accepted.

Tsunayoshi-kun, he remembers Nono saying, how do you feel about coming to Italy with me?

"Uh, yeah," Hayato says. He looks at Tsuna, his brows furrowed with question and worry, his face aged with his concern. Tsuna hates that look, hates that it's always him that seems to put it there. He hates how that look will eventually evolve into something that looks like a smile despite the deep lines of concern that'd weigh it down. It's the kind of smile that Hayato would offer him at the end of a long day, when Tsuna would start falling asleep upright, his fingers too tired to even hold a pen.

Tenth, Hayato would murmur in his ear. Let's put you to bed. I'll finish up here.

"Reborn-san told us last week, remember?"

No, he doesn't. For him, the week in question had been twenty years ago, too far back for Tsuna to remember all the finer details.

All he knows is this: Nono will visit, and soon. He knows what will happen when he does, how history will begin to unfold. He knows that this is when he will become a Vongola boss proper, starting his slow induction into the mafia that he will one day call his Family and home.

The hairs on the back of his neck stand, and Tsuna looks up. Looks right up at the tree that Reborn is hiding in (he's about ninety-eight percent certain that he's there), eyeing the shadows cast by the leaves, the crevices that a child's body could hide within. What did Reborn see when he looked at them now: Tsuna and his friends, or the Vongola Decimo and his Famiglia? Did he see a difference?

It's hard to believe that you'd want to change nothing.

Maybe in another life, he might have tried to change his fate. Maybe he might have struggled against the inevitable. Maybe it might have even been worth it.

But when he closes his eyes, he sees Hayato's smile, Takeshi's grin. Lambo's pout, Ryouhei's thumbs up. He sees Kyouya gazing back, feels Chrome and Mukuro standing behind him. He feels Reborn's hand against the back of his neck. Nothing is worth having more than the reality that he had left behind.

"You okay, Tsuna?" Takeshi asks. "You've been kinda spacey today."

"Are you still feeling sick?" Hayato asks, and just like that, the topic of Nono's visit is dropped. Dropped so fast that Tsuna is briefly worried that Hayato might've given himself a concussion with that whiplash.

Which is silly, because Hayato has always been like this, and for as long as Tsuna will be alive, he always will be. He and Takeshi are as predictable as sunrise, as reliable as their element namesakes'. Always faithful, always present. Always burning as the Storm and Rain within the Sky of Tsuna's Flames.

He misses them.

"Tsuna?"

"Uh," Tsuna says. "No, I don't think -- I don't remember if Reborn told me anything more."

Because that could go either way, really. Reborn could've told him nothing, or Reborn could've told him more than Tsuna could understand. But Tsuna doesn't need to remember to know, doesn't need the details to know the end result. The only thing to figure out now is whether Tsuna would do as he had so boldly proclaimed to Reborn about changing nothing, or --

Tsuna attempts a smile. "Sorry. I'll try to pay attention a little better next time."

Hayato and Takeshi exchange a look. Then Hayato is pretending to look away while Takeshi scoops up another bite of his ice cream for Tsuna to take, which -- uh? Okay?

"Don't worry about that, Tenth," Hayato is saying, still pretending not to look at how Takeshi seems intent on feeding Tsuna the rest of his ice cream. Which is very much appreciated, but the timing is odd. Had he said something weird? "I can find that out for you anyway! Just leave it to me."

Takeshi laughs, and so does the Takeshi of Tsuna's memories, twenty years older. It's a sound that echoes out from a time that had yet to pass, a sound that Tsuna observes with fondness. It's a sound that comforts him despite the ever present undercurrent of danger that Takeshi wears like a second skin, an unsheathed blade whose edges would never cut him.

Sounds like your Right Hand has this covered, he'd say into the crown of Tsuna's head, hauling him away from the paperwork that'd been trying to indent their words into Tsuna's cheek, let's leave it to him, yeah?

"You heard him, Tsuna," Takeshi says. "Let's leave it all to Gokudera."

"You trying to start something, asshole?" Hayato snaps.

"Haha! Uh, no? I just said--"

The things that Tsuna wants to change are nothing more than tiny little details of this gigantic mess that is his life. He hadn't been lying about that, because the things he would change are things that wouldn't matter much if they are changed, because all roads would lead to Nono's visit, to Tsuna's coronation and death. Surely, he thinks, making one selfish decision won't matter much.

His ears ring with what feels like approval, gentle and encouraging. Make them yours.

Reborn was going to make such fun of him. Tsuna's resolution to not change anything hadn't lasted a day.

"Hayato, Takeshi," Tsuna says, carefully ignoring the way in which Hayato sputters and colours again, how Takeshi stares at him as though he was doing something incredible, their impending argument left forgotten. "Do you guys have time to come with me somewhere?"

Tsuna had only half-expected to have to take Hayato and Takeshi back home to grab their weapons, so he probably has no business in feeling sad over how they don't. Both of them are ready with their respective tools when Tsuna asks them, and Tsuna honestly has no right to feel distraught over how the sixteen-year-old Hayato and Takeshi had already known to always carry dynamite and a sword on their person. It's for his sake that they did it, and they did it freely, so he really shouldn't be feeling bad about it, but.

He does. Of course he does. He would become the very thing that he had resented enough to destroy if he didn't feel a little sad, so. Yeah, it sucks.

Still, Hayato is a mafia child. Takeshi is the son of an assassin. Those facts are as immutable as the fact that they had only become as dangerous as they have (will) because of him. For him. Not because Tsuna had needed the protection, but because he had somehow tricked them into believing that he deserved it.

It saves us time. It just means less time wasted. It just means that they're ready.

Tsuna, though? Tsuna had left the house without his gloves that morning, apparently. That had been sloppy, but they're also supposed to be sixteen, so Hayato had only looked fondly exasperated rather than distraught, while Takeshi --

"We can protect you anyway, Tsuna," Takeshi says. He shrugs. "Making you fight is kinda overkill these days."

There's that too. It had been much the same in the future, with Tsuna stepping in only when the situation was dire. Or they needed to make a point, when it had become increasingly necessary for the Decimo to show off his strength. For when he needed to prove that he was the worst out of the monsters that answered to him, that he was capable of laying the world to waste if he so chose.

And he had, in a sense. He had chosen his brand of justice over tradition, had chosen what he had felt to be right over what he had been told. The world as the mafia had known it to be had burned as a result, bringing about chaos and death, arrests and reforms. Mukuro had especially loved it, had reveled in it, and his delight had been infectious enough to spread to Chrome. That had been when they had started hanging around the mansion with more regularity, seeking out Tsuna's company and council which had eventually snowballed into Mukuro adopting the unofficial and inevitable role as the Vongola's master barista.

Yeah, Tsuna's not sure on the details either.

We really, really like your coffee, Tsuna had told Mukuro once.

Mukuro hadn't seemed annoyed. Actually, he had appeared more amused by it than anything, his fingers almost gentle when they brushed up along Tsuna's hairline, flicking at his bangs while murmuring, you're lucky that Chrome likes it just as much.

Chrome, Tsuna remembers, had been more of a tea drinker.

Go, Sawada Tsunayoshi, Mukuro had said on another occasion, wry and half-mocking, I'll make sure that your drink is still hot when you return.

And if anyone had needed a reason to come back alive and sane from a mission that Tsuna had chosen to take on despite all protests, it couldn't get any better than that. Mukuro's coffee was that good. That it had been Rokudo Mukuro that was giving Tsuna a reason to come back and continue governing his (not-so-)criminal empire had been a smaller reason. A minor detail.

Besides, if he hadn't gone on that killing streak, he might have never realized that his gloves had become nothing more than pretty accessories to murder. Weapons made the deed easier, but they weren't necessary. Tsuna had found that he could burn without them just as easily. That it was even easier without them to limit him.

He's not sure what's worse: that he had forgotten his gloves because he had been sloppy, or because it had been a habit. But given the promise that Chrome had begged out of him, Boss, please, over the whole ordeal, Tsuna knows better than to burn without them. When he could prevent it, at least.

"Of course it is," Hayato is saying, his chest puffed out with pride, "I agree with this idiot for once. We don't need to get your gloves if we're going to rough up some people, Tenth."

"Mm," Tsuna says as they draw closer to his house, "I still need to get them. Give me five minutes." Or rather, "Maybe ten."

And where anyone else might've wondered why it'd take Tsuna ten minutes to fetch his gloves, Hayato just says, "Sure thing!"

He's so glad that he'll never change.

Tsuna's barely taken one step into his bedroom when Reborn says, "What are you planning?"

"Huh?"

Reborn's lips curl. "If you're going to play dumb, do it better."

"Sorry," Tsuna says with a shrug. He grins as he ducks beneath a Leon-generated BB pellet, heart feeling light with his decision, bubbly with excitement and anticipation over what the next hour might bring.

"You're taking them somewhere," Reborn says.

"Yeah," Tsuna says. "Guess you'll just have to spy on us some more if you want to know where."

"I'm the World's Greatest Hitman," Reborn says with a sniff. "I don't spy."

"Uh huh," Tsuna says.

"I could make you talk," Reborn says. Threatens, really. Except --

"Yeah, of course you could," Tsuna says, because why argue with what was true? "But why would you bother when you could just come along?"

There's another pause, another long look that Tsuna returns with a tilt of his head. Huh. Of all the things to catch him off-guard, it's the way that Tsuna talked? Well, given how Tsuna had absolutely no plans in changing how he spoke, Reborn would have to get used to it eventually.

His Reborn had, even if his Reborn had been there for the minutia, watching the changes take root. Such was the advantage of having shared their years together, in finding their equilibrium together, all while enduring all that the mafia and Tsuna's comically unfortunate luck had thrown at them.

Though with how Reborn is eyeing him, this Reborn shouldn't take much time in becoming adjusted to the new normal either. Not surprising; Reborn had always been a fast learner, a born survivor.

He just hopes Reborn doesn't get used to it just on time for Tsuna to die. Again.

"Nono's visit was in a week," Reborn says in the way of an answer, as though his statement didn't immediately give away the fact that he'd just spent the better half of the afternoon doing exactly what Tsuna had accused him of doing. Tsuna doesn't call him out on it though.

"Do you remember why?" Reborn goes on to ask.

"We're going to Italy," Tsuna says.

"Yes," Reborn says. Then, he smirks. "But now, you won't be."

Tsuna stills. "Reborn."

"Loser Tsuna," Reborn says, half-mocking and half-something else. "I didn't tell Nono anything. Just that you needed more time before you took that step. He'll check in with me in two weeks."

"I'll let Hayato know," Tsuna sighs, because as much as he wants to bury his face in his hands to whine and complain, he knows better. He's all but made this happen with all that he's told Reborn, and it isn't as though he's innocent in keeping to the timeline either.

That he's here at all will change things. Time is a fluid thing, adaptable and malleable, open to change without unraveling the universe at its seams. He can only hope that the reality that he had left behind would endure, that his people will stay happy. That their happiness endures in the future that this world is meant to have.

Maybe, he had wondered to Giotto once, their back and forth into the future and the past had been exactly as the world had intended, crafting the grander whole out of the little branches made from their time traveling. Maybe the timeline where Byakuran had gone insane was meant to be destroyed. Maybe their lives had always meant to be this chaotic, bouncing back and forth between possibilities.

Giotto had only smiled in reply. His ancestor would always have a wise thing to say except in these matters.

That hadn't stopped Tsuna from continuing his strange tirade anyway, not when that day had been particular enough to boggle even Mukuro. The whole Family had borne witness to how a forty-six year old Lambo had come back in the place of their twenty-six year old, taller and sadder than Tsuna had ever seen him.

Maybe, he had continued at Giotto, maybe Lambo was supposed to be untethered from time. It would make sense given how he couldn't seem to stop popping in and out of existence at whatever age, with his younger selves finding refuge in Tsuna's arms more often than not, while his older ones had been tragedies that'd needed to hold him.

Tsuna-nii, forty-six-year-old Lambo had rasped that day. His eyes had been so, so old, so wary and darkened with all that he had seen. His arms had felt both strong and fragile around Tsuna's body, much larger than Tsuna had ever remembered him to be. He had all but dragged Tsuna off his feet, his nose buried into the crook of Tsuna's neck and shoulder, murmuring only one thing.

I'm sorry, Lambo had said. I'm sorry. We're still looking. We'll save you, I promise.

Maybe, he had told Giotto, Tsuna's just meant to die.

Tsuna is more tired than he expects when he decides to use five minutes of his ten to lie down, arms spread out and his fingers lightly curled in. The ceiling of his old room is boring but familiar, and Tsuna studies it for a moment longer before he turns his attention back to Reborn, to where Reborn had settled on the mattress. His hand is hot when his fingers rest themselves over Tsuna's wrist, already big enough to (almost) wrap around the circumference of it. His gaze is even hotter when it meets Tsuna's, deep and dark and fathomless.

Testing him, no doubt. Watching and waiting to see if Tsuna would flinch, if he would turn away. Seeing how much he could push before Tsuna pushed back.

Once, he had thought of Reborn as mysterious. He had considered him difficult to understand, impossible to discern, an utterly chaotic element. He'd been young once, and so blind.

"You're coming, right?" Tsuna asks. To where he was taking Hayato and Takeshi. To Italy, with him.

Reborn's fingers don't tighten, but they very well might have for how they press Tsuna's wrist further into the mattress, pressing his weight forward as he leans over him. His face is still young enough to appear slightly round, but Tsuna doesn't have to stress his imagination to project the angles of his older face forward, the handsome profile that Reborn will strike when the curse finishes wearing off and Reborn grows back into the body that he had once lost.

"Naturally," Reborn says before releasing him.

"Naturally," Tsuna echoes with a grin.

The forest that they find themselves in is the same forest where everything else had begun. It makes sense; it's quiet here, and removed enough from Namimori that their chaos would go unnoticed.

It's almost a shame to disturb this peace, but it only takes looking inward, in feeling the gaping emptiness where Tsuna's Guardians used to (are supposed to) be, and that almost turns into a not. It's not a shame, because this is how things had to be. This is how Tsuna wants them to be.

Hah. Maybe he's gotten a bit too used to being the boss.

"What are we doing here, Tsuna?" Takeshi asks. He sounds curious even when his hand falls on the hilt of his sword. There's a touch of tension to go with his smile even as he seems to stoutly avoid thinking about what Tsuna was making very, very obvious.

After all, it isn't as though Tsuna put his gloves on for just anyone. Or for anything, rather. (He remembers a time when his gloves had been like this, soft and innocuous. Still mittens at sixteen, huh?)

"Tenth?" Hayato is saying.

"We're going to fight," Tsuna says, "Then, we're going to harmonize."

Chapter Text

Several things happen at once. Namely:

"Harmonize?" Takeshi wonders.

"Harmonize?" Hayato all but shrieks.

"No," Reborn says immediately.

No, Reborn says, as if he had any say in whether a Sky got to harmonize with their chosen Elements or not. Tsuna does him the favour of ignoring him. "Yeah, harmonize. It's about time, I think."

"But Tenth," Hayato chokes out. "Are you -- are you sure? As honoured as I'd be to... to harmonize, uh. With you, that's not something you can take back, and --"

"What is that?" Takeshi interrupts, looking from Hayato to Reborn before he decides on staring at Tsuna. Like always. "Harmonizing, I mean."

"Tsuna was asking you out," Reborn says.

A moment of silence, and then, "Haha, what?"

"Reborn," Tsuna says, exasperated. "It's not like that at all. Don't listen to him, Takeshi." At least, not one hundred percent like that.

"He was asking to make you his," Reborn amends in a way that totally doesn't help, because of course it doesn't. That would require effort on Reborn's part. "As a Sky and a boss."

"Huh," Takeshi says. "But aren't we already? I mean, I am."

"The fuck? So am I!" Hayato snaps.

"It's different," Tsuna says quickly. "I mean, I know you are." They're Family, after all, now and in the future. "But this is -- different. It'll make it more official, I guess?"

"But why do we have to fight?" Takeshi asks.

"Because," Tsuna starts. Stops.

Because that's how things are. Because the mafia had all sorts of traditions about Skies and Elements, one of which was for a Sky to test their Elements as a necessary step to harmonization.

But even setting that aside (because could Tsuna imagine ever testing Kyouya? In testing Mukuro?), few things activated a Flame hotter than adrenaline, than the rush of battle. Few things got an Element going than an opportunity to impress their desired Sky. It was the easiest way to pave the way towards total harmonization if a thousand years of tradition was to be believed.

It's a form of courtship, Reborn had told him once, a form of seduction. Compatible people doing compatible things. Coming together with raised heart rates, their Flames synchronizing with their blood roaring in their ears -- he had smirked his way through his whole explanation, his fingers warm and damning where they found themselves in Tsuna's hair.

Kinda like the other thing that people like to do together, isn't it?

"Cause I don't know if I could fight you seriously, Tsuna," Takeshi continues on to say. He almost sounds solemn before something cracks and there's laughter in his voice again. "You'd wipe the floor with us anyway. You've become really cool, you know?"

"He's always been cool," Hayato stresses, believing every unbelievable word coming from his mouth.

"It doesn't matter," Reborn says, "because you're not doing it."

"No?" Tsuna says. His voice sounds odd, almost hollow to his ears. It sounds quiet, like a prelude to a storm. The spark of a fire before it flickered to life atop his head. He hears Hayato and Takeshi shift, their feet shuffling against the dirt as they look between them, wearing their questions as loudly as any dynamite or sword. They look between them with torn loyalties even as their bodies angle themselves in Tsuna's favour, and Tsuna feels his shoulders relax in response.

"No," Reborn says. There's a line of tension along his body that Tsuna can make out, his expression outlined by shadows of annoyance. He had never enjoyed being challenged even after he had accepted Tsuna as his boss, even when he had begun to defer to Tsuna's decisions more often than not. "Not until Shamal's seen you."

"Uh," Hayato starts.

"Shamal," Tsuna repeats mildly. "That's how you decided to try?"

"It's a starting point, Loser Tsuna," Reborn says, "I need more information. You--" The shortest of pauses, a flicker of a gaze from Tsuna to Hayato to Takeshi and back, "haven't been looking well since yesterday."

And that would be Reborn, playing dirty like always. Damn it.

"I knew it!" Hayato exclaims on cue. He turns on Tsuna, his dynamites clanking against each other on his belt in an extremely concerning way. His fingers are desperate when they grab at Tsuna's shoulders, and there's real worry etched into the crease between his brows and the corners of his frown. It makes Tsuna ache to see it. "Tenth, why didn't you tell us that you still weren't feeling well?"

The threat of fire dims. His Flames quell in the face of Hayato's concern, and the world no longer feels sharp, his senses dialed back down to more manageable levels.

"Because I'm okay?" Tsuna tries even as he understands the futility of it. "Reborn's just exaggerating."

There's a hand that falls on his head with Takeshi attached, and Tsuna tries not to sigh. Takeshi's eyes are unrelenting when Tsuna angles his head back to look at him. "Tsuna, come on."

"I'm serious," Tsuna says, trying to feign calm. Trying, too, to appear very alive and very healthy. Anything to help ease their (completely exaggerated, entirely overblown) concerns. "I haven't felt sick since this morning. I'm fine now."

"Reborn-san wouldn't have called Shamal if it wasn't serious," Hayato says at the same time as Takeshi says, "You've been distracted all day."

Which. Fair.

Except the reason that Reborn had called Shamal isn't for any reason that Hayato could ever guess, and Tsuna had been distracted because -- well. There's a lot to think about, a lot to remember, a lot to re-experience. There is a memory to go with every touch and word and breath, all serving as reminders of what he had lost, what he stood to gain. Anyone would find that distracting, not to mention overwhelming. Twenty years is a long time.

Years that might or might not happen anymore, courtesy of Reborn's meddling. Which is also sort of Tsuna's fault, so yeah, he's been distracted. Of course he is.

"Maybe you're hungry!" Takeshi says with painfully fake brightness. "Bet you weren't able to keep anything down before you came to school, huh? I get all lightheaded when I don't eat all day too. Wanna go over to Dad's? I'm sure he has some leftover miso soup for you."

"For once, this idiot has the right idea," Hayato says. "We can harm-- harmonize later. If you still want to, of course!"

"Okay, Tsuna?" Takeshi asks without asking.

Harmonization foiled, says Reborn's smirk. Tsuna wishes he could be surprised.

The walk out of the forest is stilted, made awkward with an opportunity wasted. Tsuna feels the burn of his mittens through the layer of his jeans whenever they bump against his thigh, hanging from the straps that he keeps tied around his wrists. They feel heavy with potential, rusted with the blood that they have yet to spill. It won't be for another week (or two, or three) yet, but Tsuna doesn't need anything but his memories to know what that will be like, how it will feel.

It's a grim reassurance that he can still feel grief over killing. The worst way to be reminded that his heart is still beating.

Tsuna stares at the backs of Hayato and Takeshi with a sigh. He hasn't looked at Reborn yet, but he suspects the gradual distance put between him and his Guardians is Reborn's fault too.

Or more accurately: his Family's long-conditioned behaviour to leave Reborn and Tsuna to their spats, trusting that they'll work things out.

"I won't apologize," Reborn says when Hayato and Takeshi are far enough away.

Tsuna tries not to roll his eyes. He succeeds with some effort. "Yeah, I know."

"How old were you when you first harmonized?" Reborn asks.

He could lie. Tsuna could always lie, but Reborn would know that he lied and then the unspoken thread of trust would be broken. That isn't worth the petty satisfaction of befuddling Reborn for five whole minutes. Tsuna kicks at a rock instead, distantly hoping that it might somehow bend the space-time continuum to hit Reborn in the ass. "Twenty-one."

"What happened to changing nothing?" Reborn says, neatly side-stepping the rock to kick it back. At Tsuna's face.

Tsuna rolls his eyes while the rock sails past his head, letting it clip his hair as it whips itself into the tree behind him. "What happened to you wanting me to change things?"

"Don't answer a question with a question."

Was rolling his eyes twice in five seconds one too many times? Probably. It'll likely have him victimized by the force of Reborn's stink-eye, if not the sole of his foot. With maybe a couple of bullets to really drive the point home. The half-second that it would take for Tsuna's eyes to roll back was all that Reborn would need to make all of that happen. He is, was, and always will be, the World's Greatest Hitman, a legend of a man that could only be defeated by the likes of bad coffee and excessive paperwork.

The latter of which, Reborn hadn't even acknowledged half the time. He would sooner foist them onto Tsuna than write his own damn name on them, if he bothered to do even that much.

Hana, Tsuna remembers, had been disproportionately bothered by it all. Bothered enough that it would always become something of a show between lawyer and hitman whenever Reborn returned from an assignment. A show that no one but Tsuna had been willing to witness, much less partake in.

Then again, no one but Tsuna could partake in it for the very simple reason that neither of them listened to anyone else. Reborn lent his ear to Takeshi with the same level of frequency as Hana would give to Ryouhei, which was about half the time that they allowed themselves to be culled by Tsuna's attempts at playing boss.

He's your pet assassin, Hana had reminded him scathingly when Tsuna had begged, just once, to be left out of their attempts at domestic terrorism. She had never warmed up to Reborn, and Reborn had never cared for her regard, caring only that she served her purpose. And so she called him a pet with the intent to insult, in the same manner that Reborn would later tell him, she's your bloodhound.

What a word to use for the only woman in Tsuna's employ that had staunchly refused to throw a punch to the bitter end. She had been a force of nature dressed in high-end suits and even higher-end stilettos, both of which had been so expensive that they should have been illegal in several cities. Maybe even several countries.

What a word to use for the woman that had stood between them and the law as she saw necessary, dressing down society's attempts at destroying the Vongola.

A fitting descriptor, Reborn would later say, for the only person within the Vongola that could make a person bleed with nothing more than her words.

We're all your dogs in some way or another, Hana would later tell him. Even that gorilla that calls himself your tutor. He's full of shit if he thinks that he's the exception.

There's only one reason to do anything these days, she had added quietly. Her voice never lost its edge through the twilight hours of the day, a blade as sharp as the one that Takeshi wore at his hip and harboured in his eyes. She had been as dangerous as the rest of them, her rhetoric wielded like a weapon.

It scares me, Hana admitted. Just the once, in the aftermath of the legal disaster from which she had rescued them. When she had eviscerated the judge and jury, lying through her teeth to convince them of Tsuna's innocence. It should scare all of us, how much we're willing to do for you.

Be careful with that, Sawada.

Tsuna stops. Reborn does too, as does Hayato and Takeshi. They're still several steps ahead of them, the distance being just enough to keep them none the wiser to what was being actually said. Lucky them.

"Don't take this too far, Reborn," Tsuna tells him. His voice sounds tired, faraway. Echoing out from beneath the tides of memory, the inevitability of Reborn's actions. It's him, after all, that had set Reborn down this path. It had been Tsuna that had given Reborn the impetus to pursue the impossible.

Reborn doesn't answer, not immediately. He answers with his gaze, with his expression, and while he doesn't do anything so mortal as to sigh, there's an odd glint to his gaze that makes him look too brittle. It defies all that Tsuna knows about Reborn, and so Tsuna stops thinking about it. No point.

"Don't tell me what to do, Loser Tsuna," Reborn says eventually. His tone doesn't match his words, heavy with meaning despite the levity of his language.

"Isn't that what a boss is supposed to do?" Tsuna sighs, playing along.

Reborn won't even do his paperwork for me, Tsuna had said in a futile attempt to defuse the moment. To shy away from the truth that Hana had seemed ready to force down his throat. He knows better. I mean -- you all know better.

Hana had looked at him as though he was stupid, as though he was her favourite dim-witted houseplant. Try asking him for the world on a silver platter this Christmas, little monkey. See what happens.

"Walk faster," Reborn says, finally aiming a kick to Tsuna's kneecap. "A real boss wouldn't keep his family from getting good sushi."

"Hey Tsuna," Takeshi's voice rings out from a few steps away, from above where Tsuna had met the ground with his face, "need a piggyback ride?"

The restaurant is quiet when they arrive, made calm by the absence of the post-work horde. It would be another hour before the honest members of their society were released from capitalist labour, leaving the place to remain a haven for three hungry teenagers and their young chaperone, the four of them huddled into the table furthest from the door.

TakeSushi: good sushi, even better company, a place to sit in peace to weather the storm. It's one of the few life constants that Tsuna had managed to preserve even through decades of governing violence.

"How are you feeling, Tenth?" Hayato asks for the fifteenth time.

"I'm fine," Tsuna answers for the fourteenth time. The first time, he had been a little busy trying to stuff his face full of sushi, and he hadn't had the space in his mouth to fit the words. The first time, he had only nodded, which apparently hadn't been good enough because Hayato had taken that to mean that he needed to ask another fourteen times.

"You can tell us if you're not," Hayato says, finally changing tactics. He looks at Tsuna with large eyes, his fingers twitching with the obvious need to grab Tsuna by the shoulders and shake him. If Hayato had been ten years older, he might've. Probably. Well, he might've made an attempt, anyway. "You don't need to lie for our sake. You know that, right?"

A week, Tsuna thinks morosely, staring into the empty bowl of his miso soup. By that tone, by this pattern, Hayato is going to fret for another week before he lets this go.

"Shamal will be here in two days," Reborn says around his fifth piece of fat tuna. "Even Tsuna's body can't lie to a doctor."

"And when he tells me that I'm fine," Tsuna says, his voice increasing in volume with every syllable. It's about time that he grabbed this conversation by the horns to forcefully steer away from his nonexistent health problems. Other than suffering the low-grade migraine courtesy of Reborn, he's fine. Like seriously. He's fed, warm, and seated at a restaurant with three of his closest friends. What more could he ask for? "We'll harmonize. If everyone is okay with that, I mean."

A rhetorical question. Reborn slurps his tea loudly in Tsuna's general direction, a blatant non-answer that Tsuna will take the liberty to take as consent while Hayato rapidly colours and Takeshi leans back with a half-smile.

"Does that mean that we both get a date with you?" Takeshi grins.

"Get bent," Hayato snaps on cue. And in a moment of extreme hypocrisy, he continues, "Don't be crass. Har-- harmonization with the Tenth isn't. It isn't-- it's like--"

"Give me your hand," Tsuna says, taking pity.

Hayato does. He doesn't stop to ask why, doesn't hesitate. His hand is in Tsuna's as soon as Tsuna finishes asking, turning redder with every minute that Tsuna keeps it cradled against his own palm. It would be worrying if Tsuna wasn't already aware of how red Hayato could turn, how much embarrassment he can tolerate before Hayato finds it necessary to pull away.

It isn't as though Hayato isn't enjoying the experience, besides; the Flame that Tsuna feels beneath his skin, turning and churning like its namesake, cackles against the calmer hue of Tsuna's Sky, straining for more contact than just the physical.

As it should, he thinks. As it has, and always will.

Do you know what you feel like, Tenth? Hayato had asked on one occasion, sometime between now and the time where he and Takeshi had been hospitalized. They had been sitting side-by-side in that particular instance, with one of Hayato's shoulders serving as Tsuna's pillow, exhaustion existing as their shared language.

Tsuna's fingers curl against Hayato's knuckles, his nails catching at skin as he lets himself indulge in the memory, sinking into the melancholy that came hand-in-hand with loss. He misses his Hayato, misses the casual sort of intimacy that they had shared, the one borne of familiarity and the absence of expectation. If Tsuna closes his eyes, if he ignored the way in which Hayato had never gotten around to calling him by name, he could almost fool himself into thinking that they had been nothing more than two good friends. Just two guys that enjoyed each other's company, sharing everything that came from being married for the sake of his (their) children.

Just two guys and five (six, seven, several dozen) people that they called a family.

"Hayato's flame usually looks like this, right?" Tsuna says, and Hayato dutifully lets his hand fill with Storm, a writhing mess of a thing that bares its teeth and snaps out in shows of dominance. Takeshi's smile doesn't slip, but he wears tension around the corner of his mouth and eyes just as obviously as Reborn watches the display. Attentive and focused on how Tsuna cradles a certified bomb of a Flame against his fingers.

For the record: totally overreacting.

"This is an unharmonized flame," Tsuna continues. "Harmonization makes it do this."

"Tsuna," Reborn is saying in warning. Tsuna ignores him.

Though in hindsight, maybe he should've given Hayato a bit more warning than that.

His Sky Flames are an eager, hungry thing when Tsuna lets it loose, a pulsing glutton that snaps up to catch the flickering ends of Hayato's Storm. There's a sharp intake of breath that Tsuna ignores in favour of basking in the rightness of it all, when orange and red bleed into each other to make a cohesive whole. The volatility of Storm calmed by the Sky's immenseness, the Sky's emptiness filled with the Storm's character. Perfectly balanced, an alchemical reaction that had been in existence for hundreds of years.

His body feels warm. His soul alight. This feels right. It's the only thing that's ever felt right, ever since Reborn had appeared to claim that he would turn Tsuna into a mafia boss.

To me, it's like -- how do I put it, murmurs the Hayato of his memories. His mouth had been close enough to tickle Tsuna's ear with his breath, imprinting a first-degree burn in the shape of Hayato's devotion. Tsuna remembers shivering, can feel himself shivering now, blinking awake with an old understanding of the world. You know that feeling of climbing into an onsen? After a longass day?

Hayato looks at him as though he's seeing him for the first time, his eyes wide and wounded. Vulnerable in a way that makes Tsuna want to step in front of him, to cover him until he remembers how to put himself back together again. His fingers and palm are already looking a little worse for the wear, preserved only in part by Tsuna's Sky. Storm Flames hurt as a matter of course, coarse and volatile by nature, energetic in a way that was inherently different from Sun and Lightning. It would burn them from the inside-out if Tsuna let it, would leave even deeper gorges to fester along Hayato's skin if Tsuna gave it permission.

Tsuna wouldn't. The Sky exists so that the Storm could rage in peace, vast and welcoming of all its edges. Offering it the space to spread its wings and scream, stabilizing its violence into something natural, wholesome. That's what it's meant to do. This is how it's meant to be.

It's that first hit of relief, except it feels like that all the time. Everything that hurts suddenly hurts a little less. Anything that bothers you just -- doesn't, anymore. I mean, they're still there, obviously, but that's okay 'cause you know they're going to go away real soon. Everything feels like it'll be alright, you know? That make sense?

Hayato is looking a little strained when Tsuna remembers to come back to himself, finally releasing them with the reluctance of the tide resisting the moon. The world feels sharp and fragile around his ears when he does, and Tsuna shrinks into his seat at the sudden hit of loneliness when their Flames disconnect, his lungs filling with splinters of cold. There's a fog around the edges of his vision, a lack of focus that has him reaching for his cup of tea at an angle that would've had him knocking it over had it not been for Takeshi's reflexes.

"Gokudera," Reborn is saying. "Breathe."

"I'm sorry," Hayato says quickly, which. Good, he's still awake. Tsuna's Hayato had passed out as soon as he had succeeded in harmonization, a point of embarrassment that Lambo had never let him live down. Then again, today had been a transient thing made possible only by Tsuna's experience. Hayato might still pass out at the real thing.

"Huh," Takeshi is saying. "You sure this is something we should be doing, Tsuna? I mean, it seems kinda intense."

"It's fine," Hayato says quickly. He drags a hand beneath his chin to wipe at the gathered sweat, breathing out the last of his shakiness. "It's worth it. It's going to be worth it."

Takeshi leans forward. "Yeah? What's it like?"

"It's like -- fuck, I don't know. How do you feel when you hit a homerun?" Hayato is saying.

Tsuna leans back as he lets their words over him. He hears them without hearing them at all, his attention drawn inward, to the truth that Hayato was choosing not to speak but one day will, because all paths would lead them there. To that point in time where Tsuna had been allowed to own up to his own weakness, when Hayato had accepted the weight of Tsuna's grief against his own body, his fingers tightening around Tsuna's knee.

You're where I belong, Tenth. That's how it feels to me.

"That was reckless," Reborn says as soon as the door closes.

"In your opinion, yeah," Tsuna agrees without agreeing.

Reborn takes his turn to roll his eyes.

The day had ended on the notes of exhausted intimacy and a buzzing sense of anticipation, with Hayato and Takeshi escorting Tsuna back home with determined persistence. It had been an excessive show of care and consideration, but Tsuna had offered no words of protest; the two of them wouldn't have listened anyway, not while Hayato was riding the high of having tasted harmonization and Takeshi was beginning to harbour some great demon of an emotion. (The beginning of that envy that would come to grip Takeshi in a near chokehold in the future, unexpressed and unaddressed.) It had taken another fifteen minutes of goodbyes before Tsuna could finally shut the gate in their faces, promising to see them tomorrow at school, bright and early.

Bright, early, and healthy, he reminds himself. Because if he has to hear Hayato ask him yet again about how he was feeling, worrying about him to the point that Tsuna's ice cream intake would come back under scrutiny, he might actually lose it. In a way that would have his head hit his desk, which would set off another round of problems that he didn't actually want to deal with.

"Not just for you," Reborn continues, "but for Gokudera."

"I knew what I was doing, Reborn," Tsuna says, suddenly tired. Tired of being underestimated by the one person that shouldn't. Tired of being herded into toeing lines that he would rather burn to cinders. Reborn hasn't done this to him in years. "I know better than to put my Family at unnecessary risk."

Unnecessary, he says, because there were one too many times where the blood of his friends had to be spilt, where their wounds had been unavoidable as a matter of consequence. There had been situations that had needed handling, forest fires that had needed putting out, minor wars that had needed beheading before they could erupt and engulf the known world around them. There had been one too many of those for Tsuna to count and remember in detail, but he would be foolish to discount the possibility.

Problems didn't disappear just because he wanted them to. Even he didn't have that sort of power.

Or, for that matter, did Reborn. No amount of grumbling or threatening could make that a lie.

"Do you?" Reborn says. "Harmonization is a bigger ask than you seem to realize."

That's true. But it's also not. He knows of the risks that harmonization carries, its side-effects, of what could never be undone. There's a reason why it remains a closely guarded secret amongst the mafiosi, why Tsuna hadn't been introduced to even its foundations until much later. There's no take-backs in this, someone reminds him, but he can't quite place the voice, can't quite pinpoint why that's important, only that it is.

So he knows. He knows of the many lies surrounding what was so grossly romanticized and its ramifications. He's seen it happen. He knows.

Tsuna's stomach rolls at a thought that he can't quite catch, its words slipping out of his reach. Nothing more than wisps that has him wanting to shake his head, confusion leaving unseen bruises along his temples.

Running a hand through his hair feels more productive, ruffling it past the state of controlled chaos. Reborn follows the motion with more attention than the action deserves, but that came hand-in-hand with the calm that Tsuna had made it his business to own. Nothing peaked curiosity faster than a crumbling composure, and Reborn is nothing if not opportunistic.

"I do," Tsuna says at last, "I do know. And I know that that's what I want."

"Fine," Reborn says with a suspicious amount of acquiescence. "But it'll still be after your date with Shamal."

"Don't let him hear you say that," Tsuna sighs.

The house is quiet of his mother's presence when they finally move past the entryway, but even if it hadn't been, his mom had always been uncannily good at avoiding conversations of this ilk. An instinct, perhaps, honed by the fact that she had married a mafia man and birthed a mafia boss. She really had been rather incredible, hadn't she?

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to take a bath," Tsuna announces. He points an accusatory finger at Reborn's face. "Alone. You can ambush me in my room after, but not any sooner. Okay?"

"Did that ever work?" Reborn wonders after a moment. Apparently, the implication that his future self actually listened to Tsuna was baffling enough to stop him in his tracks, for his face to twist itself into one of consideration and a healthy dose of doubt.

Yeah, Tsuna didn't understand it either. Some days, he could hardly believe it.

"Yes," Tsuna says, because that's not a lie. "Even the great Reborn listens to his Sky."

Sometimes. When the mood suited him.

Or, as it turns out, when he's hit with a bombshell so big that he needs time to compose himself. Tsuna refuses to feel guilty over it, absolutely refuses to think about the repercussions of that particular confession. Or do anything but smile at what amounts to a stunned silence from Reborn, shutting the door in the face of one of the world's greatest.

Against all odds, Reborn leaves Tsuna alone for the full duration of his bath, leaving him to mourn his own reflection in the mirror.

He looks tired. There are shadows that present themselves like burn marks beneath his eyes, shadows that betray his exhaustion along the lines of his face. There's a dull shade of amber printed deep within his irises, an undeniable proof of what is to come. A promise of the changes that would befall his younger self by how brightly they burned, and how much more they were destined to set ablaze. Those eyes will turn fully amber with every passing year until his Flames live within his veins, embodying all that he was until no one could tell the difference between Tsuna and the Decimo.

It's a thought that used to scare him. When did it stop doing that?

Maybe, he thinks, when he had come to understand that change was inevitable. That he was too far into this life to change courses now, too old to change himself into what else he could have been.

Change hadn't been unique to him anyway. Hayato had become indistinguishable from that of his Right Hand, and Takeshi had ceased being Yamamoto Takeshi in the eyes of their enemies, his name blotted out of their minds out of reverence and fear. Lambo had shed his crybaby skin to become something infinitely more terrifying, and Kyouya had only grown more fearsome and graceful throughout the years. Mukuro and Chrome had become a single entity with two heads and an endless amount of Mist and cruelty, nightmarish beings that only answered to the Decimo. Hana was his bloodhound, and Ryouhei --

Well. Ryouhei hadn't changed much, had he? He had been the sole exception, existing outside of the corrupting effects of Tsuna's influence. Existing just enough outside of Tsuna's orbit to avoid being pulled in entirely. There had been no better place for Tsuna's moral compass to exist, though he supposed that was no more than a byproduct of a failed harmonization. In how Ryouhei had come to the realization that there were some things that he just couldn't give up.

Some days, Tsuna had been of the opinion that Ryouhei should've been thanking Reborn for offering absolution with his treachery, however selfishly driven that solution had been.

The ceramic feels cool against his palms when Tsuna spreads his hands out on either side of the sink, his head hanging between his shoulders. He closes his eyes against his reflection. This body hadn't been through nearly as much as its current spirit did, unblemished beyond that of the nonsense of their middle school years.

What would his younger self be doing right now? Certainly not standing in front of the bathroom mirror, bemoaning time already experienced and time lost.

Reborn is sitting behind him at the edge of the tub when Tsuna raises his head next, silent as a gargoyle with double its intensity. Still reeling, then, from the bombshell that Tsuna had so unfairly dropped on him.

"Were you telling the truth?" Reborn asks into the silence.

"I wasn't lying," Tsuna says.

Reborn's mouth thins into something severe and judgmental. "That's not what I asked."

"Ryouhei never forgave you for it," Tsuna says in the way of an answer, eyes dropping to how the water clings to the edge of the sink, sliding slowly and inevitably to the waiting void. "Or me."

I know I'm being extremely stupid right now, Ryouhei had admitted to him, his voice soft with the hurt of betrayal. But it still makes me angry that you'd take another Sun, Sawada.

And then Tsuna had gone and died before an understanding could be reached, the hurt too deep to be soothed in the months that Tsuna had had left. Hana had only taken a few days to comprehend his decision, and she had slapped Tsuna hard enough to cut his lip when she had figured it out. He remembers the pain only vaguely, the feeling overshadowed by how he had been grabbed by the collar. He remembers more of how she had snarled unintelligible words that had sounded like understanding and apologies, dragged through gravel and the weight of her crumbling resentment.

That had been the one and only time that she would apologize to him with no sarcasm to cover for her. Both of them had been resigned to rebuilding a splintered relationship with bad wine and better ice cream shortly thereafter.

He doesn't plan on changing that either.

"I'm going to ask you what I'll ask Hayato and Takeshi, after Shamal," Tsuna continues. He turns. Finally, he puts his back to the image of his past to face the unavoidable future, the conclusions that he had reached once before and wants to reach again. That he has to reach again. "Are you going to say no?"

"You're a menace," Reborn says after a beat.

Tsuna grins, and feels his Flames settle in a satisfied purr of anticipation deep within his gut. "Takes one to raise one, I think."

There's a lot left unsaid in Reborn's gaze, nothing more than a reverberating echo of sentiments already spoken. There's no more talk of the future or harmonization when Reborn finally falls back into character to bully Tsuna out of the bathroom and into bed, reminding him of what awaited him in the morning: the socially acceptable slavery known as school. Tsuna pretends not to see the thoughts that churn behind the depths of Reborn's expression, the changes that were already taking place, choosing not to pry.

He doesn't have to. He already knows.

Chapter Text

He remembers falling asleep. He doesn't remember where, but that's okay, because when morning arrives, he knows who's next to him. He knows whose fingers are in his hair.

This person is important. He loves this person. They're his, from childhood to death.

Tsuna relaxes.

"You awake, Tsuna-nii?" Lambo murmurs.

"No," Tsuna groans, turning his face into the blanket. It must be a Friday today; it's always Lambo's turn to wake him on Fridays.

Lambo laughs, indulging and forgiving. There are telltale sounds of Lambo adjusting his weight, shuffling around until he decides to commit to sitting on the mattress with Tsuna, his fingers sinking more deeply into his hair.

"You used to be so small, huh?" Lambo murmurs. "I almost forgot that you were smaller than me at this age."

"Yeah, yeah," Tsuna grumbles. "Go away, I'm going back to sleep."

"Aw, Tsuna-nii," Lambo wheedles. "I'm sorry. You know you're the best brother that anyone could ever ask for. You're the light of our lives, and we'd be destitute without you. So please wake up."

Tsuna smiles against his pillow despite the obvious show of flattery, turning his face to crack an eye open. He looks up to Lambo smiling back. Looks up just in time to see that smile turn young and crooked. Wry, but no less genuine in his joy, his harmonized Flame crooning a low and beautiful note in Tsuna's ear.

-- Wait.

Wait, should this be happening right now? This conversation, between himself and this version of Lambo? In a place that shouldn't have been possible, because when was the last time that they had both been in his mother's house, in Tsuna's old room?

The truth: over five years ago. The last time that he had seen Lambo in his old room had been a week after his mother's death. Another truth: last night. The Lambo that had come over for dinner last night had been seven years old.

The moment stops. Pauses. The record-player music that is Lambo's harmonized Flame skips a couple beats as reality catches up, as the clock begins to tick again. As questions are asked where answers can't be given.

Tsuna sits up. Says, quietly, "Lambo?"

"Hi Tsuna-nii," his Lambo says. His Lambo, the one that Tsuna had left behind when he had died at thirty-six, a boy that had finally grown into his height, his limbs no longer hanging off of him in a gangly mess. A man that held enough lightning in his horns to stop another's heart with nothing more than a thought, the Guardian that his Family turned to when Tsuna needed saving from himself.

His Lambo, the one that was twenty-seven. The one that has been harmonized with Tsuna for years.

"Lambo," Tsuna says. If his voice sounds a little thick, choked up in odd places, Lambo doesn't mention it. His body trembles as it twists itself upright, his Flames reaching instinctively for what belongs to him. "What are you doing here?"

"How am I ever here?" Lambo says blithely.

Okay, point. But, "You're not--" dead, no, he can't say that, he doesn't want to ask that, what the hell, "You're okay, right?"

Lambo doesn't answer right away, which is an answer in and of itself. He just looks at him, deep lines of regret etched into his face like scars.

Tsuna doesn't think. He reaches for him, and Lambo falls into him.

Lambo is heavier than Tsuna remembers, but he doesn't mind. He won't let them drop. He lets Lambo press his face into Tsuna's shoulder with no complaints and pretends not to notice when Lambo begins digging his nails into the skin of Tsuna's back. He lets Lambo take what he needs, offering nothing more or less than what he's seeking. He doesn't push him away or pull him in any more than that.

They stay caught in a moment of stasis for seconds on end, content in the knowledge of each other's presence. Because eventually, Lambo will answer him. Eventually, Lambo will claim to be okay and Tsuna will pretend to believe him.

"Yeah," Lambo says as the script demands. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"I wish I believed you," Tsuna sighs, veering right off script.

"I'm okay. Really," Lambo offers. "I mean, I'm making Reborn eat his foot in jealousy right now."

"Have you gotten more delusional as you got older, idiot cow?" asks a voice from nowhere.

"At least I don't end up senile like you," Lambo snorts.

"Stop that," Tsuna says even as he muffles his laughter against his Guardian. He doesn't get far in trying to pull away, kept stubbornly tucked against Lambo's body by the eleven years that (physically, currently) exists between them. He gives up, instead accepting the permission to slump against Lambo, letting him support him. "Stop antagonizing him. You know you don't ever win."

"Oh," Lambo says. His voice sounds strange. Floaty, almost. "So it did work."

"What?"

Lambo presses his thumb into the knot that he finds along Tsuna's shoulder blades, smiling against his temple when Tsuna jerks. "Don't worry about it. I'm just happy to see you, Tsuna-nii. I missed you."

I'm sorry. We're still trying. We'll save you, I promise.

Tsuna pauses. Something about those words, that exchange, turns his body to ice, plunging him into the waters of realization. Something feels both incredibly right and so very wrong about that sentence, leaving nausea to churn in its wake. He can't make sense out of his thoughts with how strangely muffled they echo out from within, as though someone was shouting at him from behind two layers of glass. It feels unnatural, so incredibly wrong. Like the drag of tar at the bottom of his stomach.

Like the feel of a noose, threaded into him in six different ways. Holding him down. Not letting him go.

"More delusional and clingy. Your boss should've disciplined you better."

"How 'bout you stop being so jealous?" Lambo says in turn. "You don't hear me bitching about how you get to stay with Tsuna-nii, do you?"

Tsuna shakes his head to push all other thoughts aside. Those can wait. He might spontaneously combust with embarrassment if he didn't put a stop to this ridiculous argument. "Is this really worth fighting about?"

"Of course it is," Lambo says, his mouth pressed against Tsuna's scalp. He speaks through so many layers of hair that it's a wonder that Reborn hears him at all when he continues, "I just want Reborn to do his job and protect you. I'll never forgive him if he slacks off."

"He's my Sky," Reborn says, as if that explained anything. As if that explained everything.

Lambo says nothing to correct him, and Tsuna -- should probably say something. He should probably address how casually Reborn speaks those words, my Sky, but he can't. He can't look away from how Lambo's expression softens when he's finally allowed to lean away, because Lambo's time is just about up. Tsuna can feel the seconds counting down, from ten, nine, and eight.

No. Oh no. No --

"Tsuna-nii," Lambo murmurs.

Lambo touches his face with gentle fingers, tipping up Tsuna's head so that their foreheads could bump together. There is sunlight and lightning that breaks out across Lambo's expression as spots of determined joy. His mouth is working around words that Tsuna can't quite catch when they both feel the tug, and Tsuna finds himself reaching for Lambo again, reaching into the empty space for the beautiful stability of a harmonized Element even when he's aware of the futility of it.

"Hnrgh," Lambo, now seven-years-old, mumbles in the next beat over. "Huh? Tsuna? What's wrong?"

His head hurts.

His head hurts like a motherfucker.

"Language," Reborn tsks from his left, once again proving that he was somehow telepathic on top of everything else.

Tsuna waves him off without looking at him, only lifting his head to make sure that his mother's back is still turned. He pretends not to hear Reborn rolling his eyes, instead taking the time to let his elbows brace against the table so that he can drop his head into his hands.

The world hurts. It hurts a lot, godfucking damn it, and he couldn't do anything about it but tough it out, couldn't do anything but yearn for what he used to have but no longer did.

It makes him want to die. Again. And maybe one more time for good measure because knowing his luck, he would just come back to life or something equally ridiculous.

"You're being dramatic," Reborn tells him.

"Please shut up," Tsuna tells him. Pleasantly, even.

"Don't worry about him, he's fine," Reborn says. Loudly, the asshole. Tsuna thinks that he's answering his mother, but who could even tell anymore? "A doctor will be coming by tomorrow."

"Coffee," Tsuna groans.

He must really look like shit if Reborn does little other than to snort and slide a cup in Tsuna's direction. The warmth of the cup feels like a brand against his arm, and Tsuna closes his eyes again as he uses the heat to ground himself. Trying, desperately, to pull his flames back from where they struggle against space-time to find all those that are bound to him. Looking for the ones that would make this emptiness go away, for the pieces of him that would make him whole again.

Fuck, this hurts. It hurts on a level that Tsuna has never experienced before, and he had been beaten bloody several times in a row before. His bones had been broken an absurd amount of times. He had been shot and tortured, he lived with Reborn for most of his life, and none of that could compare to what's plaguing him now, this wrong (wrong, wrong, wrong) feeling of loneliness, of being a Sky with nothing to fill it. Nothing hurts as much as his head does now, when it feels as though it might just be easier to literally split it open than to keep it upright.

It hurts. The world throbs to a rhythm that he doesn't want to know, technocolour lights bursting into flames behind his eyelids. He aches, aches for those that are no longer here. Aches like he's missing several limbs, nauseated at the thought of having lost them at all.

Damn Reborn and his overprotective tendencies. He probably isn't even aware of them, the jerk.

One more day. One more day.

"These are delicious, Maman!"

And that would be little Lambo, still perched like a king in the chair to Tsuna's right, making short work of a pile of pancakes that are at least twice his height.

"Thank you, Lambo," Tsuna's mom is laughing, "Why don't you come sit with me, dear? It looks like Tsu-kun's feeling a bit under the weather today."

"No, that's okay!" Lambo's always been polite to Nana to such a degree that it had always been difficult to get irritated at how bratty he could be otherwise. At how he doesn't stop eating or chewing as he keeps talking. "Tsuna-nii usually likes having me close for hugs 'cause I give awesome ones, you know?"

Reborn puts his mug down.

Tsuna lifts his head away from his hands.

Nana looks between them and gets to her feet. She's wearing a gentle smile when she turns to Tsuna, and there's no hurt or accusation in her tone when she says, "I think I'm going to go buy more coffee for you boys. Do you want me to take Lambo while you and Reborn-chan talk, Tsu-kun?"

He loves her. Dearly and with all of his heart. He's going to cry big, ugly tears when he loses her again. There's probably going to be snot, and a lot of it. Reborn's probably going to make fun of him.

No. No, not even Reborn would do that. Not for that, not for mourning his own mother. The first time around, he had only clicked his tongue at how Tsuna had failed to cry at all, going so far as to grab him by the back of his neck to guide him away from prying eyes when the funeral had concluded. He had all but bullied Tsuna away from the proceedings, baring his teeth at any and all that had tried to approach. The rest of their Family had mobilized around them just as soon as they had realized Reborn's intent.

You should be crying, Loser Tsuna, Reborn had said in the safety of Tsuna's office, its lights kept off at Tsuna's request. Pretending, if only for that moment, that neither of them were capable of seeing in the dark, that Reborn couldn't feel Tsuna trembling against him. Stop pretending. Just cry.

"No, it's okay," Tsuna says, "Lambo can stay with me."

"Oh," Nana says. She looks between the three of them, her fingers twisting together while she worries at her bottom lip. She wrings her hands tight enough to turn her knuckles pale. "Is -- is he in trouble, Tsu-kun?"

"No! No, of course not, I just need to ask him some questions," Tsuna says. He swallows down the bile that catches at the back of his throat. "I promise, mom. We're just going to talk."

"Oh, of course! It's always good to talk things out first," Nana says, bright-eyed and smiling again. She circles the table to give him a kiss to the forehead, her lips warm and loving against his skin. "Do you want me to pick up anything else at the store?"

"No, that's okay. Thank you though," Tsuna says dutifully.

"Okay. Love you!" Nana calls as she hurries out toward the door, moving so quickly that she almost doesn't catch Tsuna's answer of love you too. Almost, but not quite missing it, and she answers with a smile that lights up the room with what feels like sunshine, with an impossible amount of affection. And when the door clicks behind her, it doesn't feel like the end. She'll come back, he knows, and Tsuna no longer feels as though he's drowning. His head stops hurting, the throbbing dialed down to about a two rather than two thousand.

For the record, his mom's amazing. A literal dose of magic.

"You're so obvious," Reborn says, mildly disgusted. As if he wouldn't readily hold Tsuna together when he fell apart over her death

As though he wouldn't be the one to fall with him, slowing Tsuna's crumble to deposit them carefully on the ground, pressing a warm hand along the length of his spine while murmuring, that's it. Cry.

"Hey, don't make fun of Tsuna-nii, jerk Reborn!" Lambo snaps, and.

Okay.

"Lambo," Tsuna says, "Wanna come get some candy with me?"

Lambo's favourite candy store is a little place near Namimori High, a tiny place with only an elderly man to speak of in the way of employees. It's a quaint old place, barely visible from where it had survived the great urbanization of Namimori, offering a dose of nostalgia in a rapidly developing neighbourhood. It's like returning to the roots of his childhood when Tsuna pushes past the door with Lambo's hand caught in his (or rather, his hand caught in Lambo's), his nose tickled by the sweet scent of candy, both new and old.

"Oh, this one's my favourite!" Lambo declares, dragging Tsuna over to where all the chocolate was on display, "It's super good, Tsuna-nii, you should try it!"

Tsuna eyes the chocolate with wariness borne of experience, his stomach turning at the idea of eating what was so obviously on display. It hadn't even been locked behind the paltry protection that a plastic case could've offered. Anyone could've gotten into that.

Logic would dictate that no one could have known that Tsuna would appear with his youngest Guardian today, just like how no one could have known that Lambo would gravitate toward this particular shelf, picking out this particular bar of chocolate. Logic reminds him that such paranoia was nothing more than just that, but Tsuna didn't survive to thirty-six, felled by nothing less than his own body, by always listening to logic.

He resolves himself to having the chocolate bar tested for poison. Bianchi should be in Japan around this time of year, taking turns in circling Reborn and terrorizing Hayato; it would be a small task for her to see if Maximum Stickiness (what in the world was this name?) was safe to consume. It would barely take her two minutes.

There isn't any reason for her to refuse him either. Not now, not when Reborn had yet to harmonize with him. When Reborn wasn't yet looking at Tsuna in ways that he would never look at her.

His head throbs with sympathy as his chest twists with yearning. His jaw clenches. His next exhale is too revealing, shaky at its foundations as his flame stretches out past the boundaries of his body, reaching, searching, seeking --

"Tsuna-nii?"

"Sorry, Lambo," Tsuna says, shaking his head. "Did you have any other suggestions?"

"Hmm," Lambo mumbles. His hand tightens around Tsuna's, and his eyes wander out toward the rest of the store. "Because Lambo-san is feeling generous, he's going to let you pick!"

What the hell. When has Lambo ever been this cute?

Tsuna laughs, and squeezes Lambo's hand right back. "You are generous, aren't you? I'm really lucky."

"You are!" Lambo says, his chest puffing out. "I mean, I finally get you to myself without that stinky Reborn to stink up the stinking place! I mean, you're my favourite person, you know? Or maybe after Maman... and maybe I-Pin, but don't tell her that, okay?"

"Promise," Tsuna manages, choking out the word between his shaking shoulders.

"And I like you way more than Tsuna too," Lambo adds, and.

There it is. The whole point of this excursion, the whole reason why Tsuna had been allowed some time away from Reborn.

Tsuna checks on the old man behind the counter, making certain that he appeared more or less asleep. His breathing hadn't changed since the first word of greeting that he had offered when they had ambled into his store, and he had barely even flinched at Lambo's rising volume, barely moving beyond the slow slide down the wall that he had been snoozing against.

... Okay then.

Leading Lambo further away from the counter is just the smart thing to do, as is making sure that Tsuna could place his body between his young Guardian and the door when he squats down to his level. "How'd you know, Lambo? That I wasn't your Tsuna?"

Lambo huffs with the full might of his prepubescent self-importance. "You're way nicer than stinky Tsuna, that's why. Oh, and, um."

Tsuna waits. Waits and watches without interruption, trusting Lambo to be honest in exchange for his attention.

Lambo doesn't disappoint. He shuffles his feet, and stares up at him with wide eyes. "You're just, uh. You feel warmer. Yeah! And you always look a little sadder. You know, than stinky Tsuna? Like you're about to cry but isn't ever gonna 'cause you're too cool to cry."

And Tsuna resolutely does not burst into tears because he's apparently too cool to do that. He thinks of the happier times to deter himself, like the time that Lambo had gotten his license, and he wouldn't let anyone else drive Tsuna around for at least a month. When Hayato had been pelted with his own birthday cake, right in the face. The times when Kyouya would sit with him to read or to watch the sky, shoulder-to-shoulder in their shared silence. The moments when Chrome would take the time to weave what had ultimately turned into a characteristic braid in Tsuna's hair, letting it dangle down from the left side of his face, right before the ear.

His flames croon low. Longing.

He thinks about how Reborn had looked when the two of them had left him at home, when he had been bullied into staying back. It had helped that Lambo had so loudly declared that he had wanted nothing to do with Reborn, that he was going to the store with Tsuna-nii and Tsuna-nii only, wailing until it had become clear that they would get no answers without bending to some of Lambo's whims.

There were some whims that you had to curb in children. Tsuna knows that, and he had struggled his way through adoptive parenthood with that nugget of knowledge that Kyoko had pressed into his brain when Hayato had first brought back two brothers aged three and six. Some whims, though? As Lambo had proven, some weren't worth fighting.

He's a little young for you, Reborn the asshole had said in the way of goodbye. He could be so damn petty when he didn't get his way, and it made him no less of a brat than Lambo, honestly.

"But what are you doing here, Tsuna-nii?" Lambo is asking, "Aren't you supposed to be with the bigger and cooler me? Why do you look like Tsuna?"

"I--" Tsuna's eyes go back to the old man behind the counter before he turns back to Lambo, bringing their faces close as he raises a finger over his own mouth. "I'm here on a secret mission. Only you've been able to figure me out so far, so you gotta help me keep it a secret from everyone else, okay? Can you do that for me, Lambo?"

"Heck yeah!" Lambo whisper-exclaims, his excitement bubbling out in eager jitters of his legs. "You can count on me, Tsuna-nii! I mean, Tsuna!"

"You can still call me Tsuna-nii," Tsuna decides after a wince. "Just don't tell anyone why you're calling me that."

"Deal," Lambo says.

"Okay, then let's go check out," Tsuna says. "Are you sure you only want the chocolate?"

Lambo glances back at the treasure trove of a store, his lower lip wobbling with some sort of internal debate. But then he's jerking up his chin with determination, and then he's the one leading Tsuna towards the counter, loudly proclaiming, "I'm sure! Lambo-san can't be a pig around Tsuna-nii! I have to be cool like the bigger me."

He doesn't remember this. In no corner of his memory had he labeled Lambo-the-child as tolerable, much less cute. His memories of Lambo's childhood are full to the brim with little annoyances and minor confrontations, disagreements made between a child and a teenager over how the world was supposed to turn. None of it speaks to this, this sweet fool of a child with so much love and heart to spare.

That's it, he's decided. He's going to spoil the heck out of Lambo until his time is up.

"We'll just take this then," Tsuna grins. To the old man behind the counter, he says, "Oh, and Reborn? Your wig's crooked."

Reborn doesn't shoot him, but it's a near thing. It hadn't happened not because of a lack of desire, but because of Reborn's inability to let Tsuna win at anything, even in spotting his awful camouflage. He hadn't reacted to how Tsuna had lied to his face about the wig (it hadn't actually been crooked, Reborn wouldn't have made such an amateur mistake). He hadn't even reacted to how Tsuna had pointedly used his name in every other sentence, ringing them up for one hundred yen while wheezing out a thank you in his fake-ass old man voice, too stubborn to admit defeat.

Tsuna hadn't pushed it, had only grinned the whole time through, shaking his head with laughter on his lips. Resolutely pretending that his head wasn't pounding, that his flame wasn't flickering oddly, pushing it aside in favour of something better.

Lambo hadn't known any better, miraculously missing all the times that Tsuna had called Reborn by name, but he hadn't taken well to some random old man taking Tsuna-nii's attention away either. Which had then proceeded to escalate into Lambo escaping Tsuna's grip to try and kick at the old man (Reborn) right in the shin. Which had then had Reborn retaliating in a way that had sent Lambo flying.

But then it doesn't actually matter, he supposed, as to how they ended up street-side, just that they did. Because it's hardly a moment later that Tsuna hears something both terrible and familiar. Something that made all those details moot.

"Sawada Tsunayoshi."

Tsuna doesn't stop to think. He twists so that Lambo could be scooped up in his arms as he angles his body, his gut clenching with adrenaline as his intuition guides him down into a crouch. One hand goes flat on the dirt while his lower body twists, one of his legs swiping up to slam his (flame-fortified) foot on the lines of a descending tonfa, holding it away from where it had been aiming for his hairline.

Wow, he was flexible at sixteen. That didn't even hurt.

"Kyouya-san," Tsuna says from below Kyouya's line of sight. Something about his tone makes Kyouya pause, because there's no follow up strike even as Tsuna continues, "What's this about?"

"You," Kyouya says nonsensically.

"Me?"

Kyouya's lips curl. "You skipped school."

Ah. Oops? Then again, between Lambo's appearance in his room that morning, Tsuna's headache during breakfast, and Lambo's insistence at sticking to Tsuna as closely as he was allowed, there really had been no time to consider the mundane. School had been the furthest from Tsuna's mind when there had been time-bending antics on hand, when his head had felt like it was splitting, and his flames kept flickering, thin when it was normally so dense, stretched out in multiple directions, past the precipice of what was possible.

That Tsuna can't bring himself to reign it in probably just proves that he's as stupid as Reborn had always claimed him to be, clinging to the illogical while trying to obtain the unattainable. Either works.

"Sorry," Tsuna says, because what else is he supposed to say? He shifts his weight without warning, twisting the rest of his body along the ground so that he could swing with his other foot, forcing Kyouya to stumble back a step to block.

A step is all that Tsuna had needed, because the point had been to use Kyouya as the stabilizing point to kick his body off to some distance away with Lambo still in arms. With Lambo's arms wound tightly around his neck, in fact, his body trembling against Tsuna's with unspoken fear. At seven, Lambo had done well to do that much.

Tsuna tells him so, and Lambo offers him a shaky smile. Followed swiftly by a yowl of denial of how he wasn't scared, about how he was going to protect --

"Shh, Lambo," Tsuna murmurs, rising carefully to his full height. Which isn't much, but it still gives him more balance than if he hadn't even done that much. Though if his head didn't stop hurting, they might actually have a problem. "You protect that chocolate bar for me instead, okay? We can't share it if it gets stepped on."

"Oh. Uh," Lambo says, deflating. "Uh, yeah! That's right, you leave that to me, Tsuna-nii!"

Tsuna smiles. To Kyouya, he says, "I'll have my mom talk to the school. We had an emergency come up."

Kyouya looks bored. Kyouya didn't care much for propriety, didn't care about the school's rules as much as he cared about his own. There are things that had to be done, done in the way that made sense to Hibari Kyouya's world view. Attending school is one of those key tenets of those rules, both in middle school and high school, and no amount of pretty words and heartfelt excuses would erase what is a crime in Kyouya's eyes. Any deviation is a blemish that needs beating down, no arguments.

Ah well. Worth the try.

Tsuna sighs and rolls his shoulders back. He's forgotten his mittens again, but he doesn't need them, not when the aim is to help Kyouya blow off some steam. If Chrome hadn't made him promise not to do it, he might've forgone them altogether by now.

Kyouya watches him with rapt interest, hunger taking shape and form within his eyes. It shines like the metal of his tonfas, potent and dangerous and absolutely thrilling.

"Five minutes," Tsuna says. Warns, really, because five minutes is all that he is willing to burn. His younger self's years aren't his to bargain away.

He breathes in. He lets his fist catch on fire, thin and flickering, and waits.

What hits him on cue feels like a garbage truck stuck on reverse, heavy and wholly unnecessary in how much suffering it breeds. Given how Reborn must have jumped down from a roof (or a tree, or any place of higher altitude) to land squarely on Tsuna's back, that seems to have been Reborn's intent. At ten years old, his body feels about a hundred times heavier than when he had been five, and Tsuna feels his knees buckle under his weight. Reborn leaves him to it, offering faith where faith had no place, especially not when Tsuna would've been well within his rights to spill Reborn to the ground in a heap of fedora and bad attitude.

But Reborn, Tsuna knows, is also the only (other) person that Kyouya will listen to. He might be the only person that Kyouya will listen to at this age, making Reborn the only person that could help defuse this situation before it spirals out of control. It's probably to his own benefit that Tsuna hangs on.

"Shameful," Reborn says, "A boss should know how to control their underlings."

Tsuna lets himself grin.

"Fight him next time, Hibari," Reborn says. There's a serrated sigh to his tone, a growl. But such is the consequence of being the smartest person on the street, in being able to dissect a situation quickly enough to understand that they were being manipulated.

Given the twenty years of growing into the boss of Reborn's design though, Tsuna isn't sure if Reborn has any right to complain. There's no one else to blame but himself for how Tsuna had maneuvered Reborn into doing his bidding. He had learned from the best, after all.

"Tsuna isn't at his best right now. What's the point in measuring up against garbage?"

Ouch. He's laying it on a little thick.

"What's wrong with him?" Kyouya asks. From anyone else, that question might've amounted to concern. From Hibari Kyouya? The best that it could be is curiosity. Maybe.

"Too much to count," Reborn says, "But this most recent thing? We don't know yet. I'm working on it."

They did know, actually. It's his head. A head that's trying to break a record in the department of headaches and annoyances, so he really couldn't be blamed for using the quickest and easiest method to wrap this up, could he?

"Hm," Kyouya murmurs. His tonfas lower. "Then what about you? You can take his place."

"I'm babysitting," Reborn says wryly. "And we'll draw too much attention here. I'd take the I.O.U. if I were you."

Another noise of consideration, then Kyouya is turning to Tsuna in a way that's far more frightening than when he had been baring his teeth. Heated intent is the only way that Tsuna can pry out of that look, and Tsuna closes a hand around one of Reborn's ankles to help ground himself. Reborn doesn't kick him away, responding only with a tug to the hair that Tsuna will take as permission.

"Are you in trouble, Sawada Tsunayoshi?" Kyouya asks.

No. Just in pain. But Hibari Kyouya is not the person that he should be complaining to.

"No," Tsuna says, carefully and on beat. Pausing too long would give away his shock, as would answering too fast. He keeps his voice measured, and only adjusts his stance to help account for the way in which Reborn decides to rest his chin on top of Tsuna's head. "I'd tell you if it's something you had to know about, Kyouya-san."

"Liar," Kyouya deadpans, and before Tsuna could stop staring at him in stupor, he departs. Just like that.

Typical.

"He has good instincts as usual," Reborn notes.

"Let's go find Hayato and Takeshi," Tsuna sighs. "They're probably having a fit in front of mom's house by now."

"Learn to control your underlings and this won't be a problem, Loser Tsuna."

"Yes, Reborn," Tsuna says insincerely. "Of course."

"That's not fair, Reborn, I wanted the piggyback ride!" Lambo shouts from behind them.

Reborn proves his pettiness by slumping further into Tsuna, and this time, Tsuna lets them drop. They fall in a mess of limbs and bitten-off insults on the asphalt, and Tsuna laughs as Lambo hollars something and throws himself on top of them both, wrapping his octopus arms around Tsuna's torso as he kicks at Reborn. Nuzzling his face into Tsuna's chest as he gives into the giggles that erupt in response to Tsuna's snickering.

"Is this how a mafia boss acts in the future?" Reborn's saying. To his credit, he's not kicking back at Lambo, which is good. He really had no business acting like a seven-year-old.

"Mm," Tsuna says, stretching out against the cement. The world still feels a little too bright and too piercing for his liking, but -- that's okay. Right now, when he could laugh with Lambo on one side and Reborn on the other, everything feels okay. "You know that I learned everything from you, right?"

"Not everything," Reborn says. He sounds contemplative. Appreciative, even. But because Reborn can't let a moment be a moment in peace, he adds, "You've always been stupid. Even I can't fix that."

"Tenth!" Hayato cries in a volume that could break several sound barriers.

"Hey Tsuna," Takeshi laughs without actually laughing, eyeing him up and down until he settles on how Lambo is hanging onto one of Tsuna's hands. "We came to hang out."

"We were worried," Hayato snarls in protest. His expression softens as he closes the distance between them, taking hold of both of Tsuna's shoulders, looking like he's just barely holding himself back from shaking Tsuna senseless. "We didn't see you at school and your mother said you weren't home, and -- are you okay? How are you feeling? You should be in bed and resting, Tenth! Did the idiot cow make you go somewhere with him?"

"Hey!" Lambo snaps, jerking forward in Tsuna's grip to try and step on Hayato's foot. "You don't know what you're talking about, Stupid-dera! Lambo-san was a gentleman like I-Pin said he should be!"

"They were on a date," Reborn says like the asshole that he is.

"Date?" Takeshi wonders.

"Date?" Hayato shrieks, single-handedly destroying the ozone layer with the might of his offense.

"Yeah, date!" Lambo crows. "I'm gonna stay with Tsuna-nii for as long as, uh." He stops to glance at Tsuna in an absurdly suspicious manner before he changes course, "Uh, for as long as I wanna! You jealous? I bet you are!"

Hayato bristles with what Tsuna hopes is not jealousy. "Tenth needs rest, not looking after brats like you!"

"Huh! Say that to my face, stink-head!"

"I literally just did, you little--"

God, what a circus. It all feels so normal that it only has Tsuna relaxing, tilting into Hayato's grip with a smile at his lips. The only thing that'll change about this scene would be their ages, as well as the scenery.

The way that he's dragged away from the escalating shouting match between Hayato and Lambo is also familiar, especially when Takeshi is the one doing the pulling. Hayato whips his head back to them for a single moment when he feels Tsuna leaving his grasp, and he narrows his eyes before relinquishing his grip. It's a show of trust of a magnitude that Hayato probably isn't appreciating, but Tsuna won't be the one to tell him. The precarious relationship between his left and right hands is best left alone. They'll figure it out eventually.

Takeshi is warm where he's pressed up against Tsuna's back, his arms looped loosely around his shoulders while his chin rests itself on top of Tsuna's head. Tsuna closes his eyes and laughs some more, little snickers escaping him with every exhale.

"You sound okay," Takeshi observes.

"I'm okay," Tsuna says. "Just a headache. You guys worry too much."

"It's kinda your fault," Takeshi says.

"How?" Tsuna asks, amused despite himself.

"You never ask for help," Takeshi says. It almost sounds like an accusation, might've been an accusation if it had been missing that undercurrent of Takeshi-flavoured exasperation. "Next time, don't fight us. Just let us help you, yeah?"

There had been sunlight and lightning in his Lambo's eyes when Tsuna had seen him last, mere hours ago. He remembers being warmed by it in the same way that the winter sun would warm his fingers into frostbite, his stomach filling and clenching with pushes of nausea. He doesn't know why, still doesn't know why, but what he had once interpreted as joy transforms into something else before his eyes, jumbled by the filter of his memory.

Colours sharpen. Outlines twist. His thoughts feel like arrowheads against his skin, terrible and jumbled. Everything looks incongruent. Jagged.

He remembers. Remembers how Lambo had said something before he had to go, tugged away by the rules of time. He remembers the agony of being wretched away from one of his harmonized Elements, his breath coming out in a ragged rhythm that Reborn had talked him down from, a small hand pressed into the vulnerable curve of his neck. Working him away from the terrible reverberations that Lambo's last words had left.

We're going to save you. So don't fight us, Tsuna-nii. Okay?

Tsuna pretends not to feel the heat of Reborn's gaze boring into his temple, or how he uses the nudge of Reborn's foot against his own to remember how to breathe.

Lambo, he hadn't managed to ask, what did you do?

Chapter Text

Tsuna knows that Lambo, and all the implications that he brought with him, is a problem. Not the sort where people might die, but still a problem. His problem.

He knows, because Reborn has been giving him these looks all night. Long and careful looks, as though Tsuna held all the answers when all that Tsuna has are questions. They don't talk about it because neither of them want to; Tsuna doesn't know what to think, and Reborn can't be bothered to say what he probably finds obvious.

Because there's only one reason for a Guardian of a dead boss to be involved in time travel, only one objective to chase. Tsuna doesn't know how to feel about it.

He doesn't want to think about it either, and Reborn doesn't push. It's almost suspicious in how he leaves him alone, disrupting him only to threaten him into taking something for his headache. He leaves Tsuna to stare up at the ceiling with Lambo tucked under one arm and says nothing about how Tsuna's accidental time travel might not have been an accident at all.

That said, what else could they do? Either of them? Could Tsuna force his Lambo to come back and demand answers? Even if he did, what would that achieve? And at what cost?

Forcing his Lambo to come back would involve shooting little Lambo with the bazooka until he could do nothing but cry, his body and mind shaken and scarred. Tsuna could demand him to endure the strain of time travel, forcing his future self forward long enough to demand answers for a problem that can't be solved.

Worst of all, Lambo would let him. He would forgive him when it was done and finished. He would still call him Tsuna-nii and find comfort in his arms.

The bites of dinner that Tsuna had managed to keep down rolls in his stomach at the thought. Great waves of nausea grab him by the throat, and his fingers go numb where they go twisted into his sheets.

Here's the better version: don't shoot Lambo. Don't even think about shooting Lambo. Go to sleep, and do nothing. Because what else could he do? It wouldn't change the fact that Tsuna is dead.

Besides, if Lambo wants to try and save him like Reborn will try to save him, there's no reason to stop him. If Lambo had sent Tsuna back with the intention of getting Tsuna to save himself, that complicates things, but it would still change nothing. If Lambo and Reborn needed to try their hands at the impossible before they could find acceptance, there's no reason to get in the way.

Tsuna leans down to press his mouth to the top of little Lambo's head and listens to how Lambo mumbles in response. Not awake, but still aware enough of Tsuna's presence to welcome him. He hides his face into the curve of Tsuna's shoulder, and tightens his arms, mumbling something about protecting his candy and Tsuna-nii, and --

And Tsuna can't.

There will be no shooting. No forcing answers. If his Lambo comes back, they'll do nothing but talk. They'll talk about that movie that Lambo had wanted to watch, weeks before Tsuna's passing. He'll listen to Lambo moan about how some of their childhood favourite candies are no longer available in the future. They'll press their shoulders together and listen to their Flames sing in silence, content in the peace that harmonization would bring.

Because between Lambo's happiness and Tsuna's petty comforts, the choice isn't really a choice. Tsuna might have caved about becoming a mafia boss, he might have caved about committing murder, but he will not cave about this. Never this.

Reborn probably knows that too.

So Tsuna does nothing. The problem is left unaddressed, pushed aside and ignored just like how he ignores the consideration that weighs heavy in Reborn's gaze. He distracts himself with the mundane instead, like going to school. That's easy.

What isn't easy is the headache that continues to linger. Every blink is torture, leaving faint outlines of reality to linger behind his eyelids. He's in the middle of math class when he decides that he's had enough, disproportionately annoyed by the sunlight that claws at his awareness. The only reasonable way to escape it is to sleep, so Tsuna decides to do just that.

It's too bad that Mukuro isn't around. His Mukuro, the one that had perfected his mastery over his Mist and the art of putting Tsuna into deep and dreamless hours where nothing hurt and no one died.

But Mukuro isn't, so when Tsuna closes his eyes, he does so to the sound of Chrome in his ear. A dream, no doubt. Or better yet: a memory.

A memory of how she would often chide him, soft and fond and stern.

Boss, she had said, you really shouldn't let Mukuro-sama spoil you so much.

Chrome had grown into her confidence in the same way that she'd grown into her body: slowly and devastatingly. It had taken her years to adjust to how her limbs would now move as she commanded them, how she didn't have to hurt with every breath and intention. Living and existing had finally become two separate entities to her, differentiated by all the little nuances that made life so wonderful and terrible at once.

He loved her, Tsuna thinks. In a different way than he had loved Kyoko, the first person that he had fooled himself into believing that loving someone was the same as being in love with them. In a different way than he did Reborn, who had shown him that difference.

He had loved her as her family should have, swelling with pride at how she had learned to speak out against Tsuna when he was being stupid. When she could finally look Mukuro in the eye and tell him no.

Mostly in the little things, mind. Like refusing coffee when she realized that she enjoyed tea. Like disagreeing on the wardrobe that they were to maintain. Like how much she would allow Tsuna to look away from the horrors that he had committed, how long she would let Tsuna sleep.

You could lose yourself like this, she had said. She had drawn him back to the present day as she knew it with the deftness of a conductor, threading reality back into form around Tsuna's ears. Pulling anyone out of Mukuro's grasp is a tall order, but Chrome had been Mukuro's match in her mastery over Mist; if Mukuro helped Tsuna to sleep, then it was Chrome's job to wake him up.

And she does. She succeeds, even as a memory.

The dream ends, but sleep continues to cling to Tsuna's lashes like cobwebs when he blinks, struggling past the fingers that continue to tug at his consciousness. Dreaming always leaves him feeling disoriented, and it feels twice as bad now, when he had been dreaming and reminiscing at once.

He flattens his palms over his desk and lets his eyes take in the room: desks and chairs in rows, a whiteboard, kids with a single adult to overlook them.

Ah, right. He's at school.

Chrome smiles at him, the outlines of her already fading into the depths of memory when Tsuna lifts his head and sits up properly. He thinks he can feel her lips against his forehead, her voice tickling at the edges of Tsuna's consciousness.

Good morning, Boss.

"Tenth?" Hayato says quietly.

"I'm okay," Tsuna says. "Just a headache."

"You said that yesterday. You're really pale, Tsuna," Takeshi says.

"Yeah, you -- shit, I knew you should've taken today off too," Hayato says with worry pinched between his brows. He, on the other hand, is glancing between the teacher and the students, mouth set in a determined line. "When's Shamal supposed to visit?"

"Reborn said after school," Tsuna says, which could mean anywhere from immediately after school to midnight tonight. He knuckles at his eyes. He's tired. Awake, even when he doesn't want to be.

"We'll take you straight home then," Hayato promises.

It probably speaks to how Tsuna is feeling that he can't bring himself to do anything but smile in gratitude at the declaration. His vision is starting to go a bit blotchy, and his head feels like it's being split in half from the back. There's a heavy rhythm of nonsense being pounded into his skull. Things feel discoloured, a little washed out, and sounds are starting to feel like the screech of rust on metal.

He leans back into his chair. He has his arms folded across his chest and a thumb pressed to the bridge of his nose, lips parted around his exhales.

None of it helps. He wants to feel the butterfly kisses that Chrome's fingers left along his skin, damning and so damn lovely. He wants his Flames to settle inside his chest as it should, rather than reaching for what didn't yet exist. He wants Lambo to come back. He wants to know if Kyouya fulfilled his promise. He wants to be with his Family.

He wants to go home to Italy.

And abruptly, Tsuna thinks: Italy. He should go to Italy.

He threads his fingers over his desk as he leans forward, watching the teacher flit about, bouncing from idea to idea, equation to equation. Math still feels like a foreign concept to Tsuna, alien despite Hayato's attempts to convince him of the contrary, telling him how it's a language, crafted to make sense out of chaos.

Not unlike his inherited intuition, actually.

Go to Italy, his gut tells him. Chrome smiles at him from behind his eyelids when Tsuna blinks.

Go to Italy. It's a nonsensical thought, one that makes no sense at all, but it's been years since Tsuna's resisted the pull of his intuition. It's too clear of a thought to be anything but, unobstructed by the strange mist that seems to have settled across his thoughts. It's a thought that's strangely void of pain, and Tsuna will think about looking this particular gift in the mouth later.

Go to Italy, and things will get better. It'll probably make sense when he gets there.

Several things happen on their way back home. Random things, outwardly unrelated. Tsuna knows better.

Thing Number One: Lambo.

"Tsuna-nii!"

They're about a block out from the school gates when Lambo crashes into him, nearly knocking Tsuna off his feet with the force of his tackle. His arms are as tight as a child could make them go around Tsuna's neck. His nose is cold when he smooshes it into Tsuna's shoulder, rubbing it into Tsuna's shirt in a way that would've been gross if Tsuna had actually been sixteen. But he's not, and Lambo is warm and solid in Tsuna's arms.

He is Tsuna's, from childhood to death.

"Hey, Lambo," Tsuna says, warmed down to his toes at the bright, toothy grin that he gets in response. "You didn't skip school again, did you?"

"Nuh-uh!" Lambo says, "You said school was important, so I went. I just left early so that I could give you something! You should thank me, Tsuna-nii. And maybe just live with me instead of stinky Reborn!"

The last bit is what gets Tsuna laughing, and he adjusts Lambo's weight in his arms. He's a little heavier than Tsuna remembers, but compared to the weight of older Lambo imprinted into his arms, Lambo at seven feels like a gift. A precious one, easy and uncomplicated. He's unabashed in his adoration, and Tsuna tightens his grip.

Yeah, they won't be addressing the Lambo problem today.

"Get down, idiot cow," Hayato says, cutting off Tsuna's response in favour of glaring at a child. "Tenth's been feeling sick since this morning. You could've made it worse by running into him like that!"

"Shut up, Stupid-dera!" Lambo yells, right in Tsuna's ear. "I'd never hurt Tsuna-nii, he said my hugs always make him feel better!"

"Only 'cause the Tenth is too nice to say that you're a nuisance," Hayato growls.

"Yeah, well, I bet your poop smells bad," Lambo sniffs.

"Everyone's poop smells bad, you idiot," Hayato says, looking pained at the depths that he has to sink. "Well, maybe except the Tenth's."

Hayato and Lambo ponder that together while Tsuna tries very hard to do the opposite.

"You know," Takeshi says, scratching at his chin, "we could just ask Tsuna how he feels."

Three pairs of eyes snap to him at once, expectant. Tsuna sighs.

"My head does hurt," he admits, because he's not going to talk about poop. Before Lambo could dissolve into guilt-ridden sobs though, he adds, "But it's not as bad as before. What did you have to give me, Lambo?"

"Oh yeah! Here," Lambo says when Tsuna sets him down. He plucks out a slightly wrinkled note with a piece of gum attached to a corner and pushes it into Tsuna's very unwilling grip. Snot is one thing, but chewed gum that looks to be days old? That's another matter altogether. "I found it stuck on my bazooka today. Look! That looks like you, doesn't it?"

That being what appeared to be a cartoonish rendition of Tsuna's face, drawn with exaggerated proportions. The lines look scratched out rather than put there by pen, sloppily put together. It's a child's sketch, its subject made recognizable only by the hair and what appeared to be a flame on its forehead.

Tsuna's fingers tighten around the page. Every loving detail is one that he recognizes. Every blemish, every mistake that might result in a wail of dad! Shougo messed up my drawing! This would have been a gift in another world, another page to go with the myriad of others that Tsuna liked to keep in a folder in his office.

His head hurts.

"Tenth?"

"I'm fine," Tsuna says automatically. He carefully tucks the unread note into his pocket, gum and all. "Thanks for this, Lambo. I appreciate it."

"You're welcome," Lambo says, puffing up his chest. He puffs up his face too, looking a little red around the cheeks before he tips forward to give Tsuna's legs a hug. "I hope you feel better soon, Tsuna-nii."

"I will," Tsuna lies.

Thing Number Two: Hibari Kyouya.

They're at the middle of a small, unassuming intersection when they see Hibari Kyouya and his entourage, and Tsuna stops without knowing why.

Kyouya is eye-catching on the worst of days, but something about him today is just -- more. Brighter, more terrible, as enthralling as poison. Handsome in the sort of way that promises danger and death. Tsuna blinks hard and stares harder.

And Tsuna's head just -- hurts. It hurts to look at Kyouya, and every time he blinks, it leaves behind outlines of the person Kyouya will become rather than the person he is.

There's a hand at Tsuna's shoulder, quiet and attentive and inquiring. "Tenth?"

"Sorry," Tsuna says. "Just thought I saw something."

"Is it Hibari?" Takeshi asks from his left. "'Cause I see him too. Who's that he's with?"

"His people, obviously," Hayato snorts.

"His people?" Takeshi asks with a smile. "Or our people?"

Hayato looks at him sharply, then back at Kyouya. There's a crease between his brows and a downturn of his mouth that looks physically painful to wear, and Tsuna watches with mild amusement as Hayato clicks his tongue and turns away. There's a tick to his fingers that Tsuna recognizes, little twitches to his index and third fingers. They drum the air like they might tickle at piano keys, telling Tsuna all that he needs to read Hayato's expression without seeing his face.

It'll take nearly a decade before Hayato accepts Kyouya enough to see what Tsuna sees: the relaxed curve of Kyouya's stance. The sleepy droop of his eyes. The loose hang of his arms. The careless distance between his feet. In a decade, Hayato will see that this is Kyouya at his most relaxed in the company of other people. This is a Kyouya that is neither bored nor irritated, coasting on the edge of content.

Relaxed, until he isn't. Until his knees buckle, and he falls.

Kyouya falls, and Tsuna falls with him.

Hayato is yelling something. Takeshi is shouting his name. One of them is close, their arms secure around Tsuna's shoulders. He feels hot. Cold. Dazed. Kept upright only by how he's resting against another body. Every point of contact is a needlepoint of agony, and Tsuna wonders if he's screaming. He hopes that he isn't.

The world stops. Tsuna stands as the only living thing for miles on end, with only phantom hands to keep him company. His Flames are a livewire, sputtering and angry, licking layers of skin off his hands. There are fingers that try to brush up against them, and Tsuna shies away. It hurts to exist as the eye of a supernova, but it'll be undeniably worse to hear the screams of the dead, with their ashes buried into the dirt beneath his shoes.

He sees faces that he knows, hears voices that he doesn't know. There's grass beneath his feet. Marble beneath his hands. His body doesn't feel like his own; there are missing scars from his hands, and his shoes are too small. His shirt is too loose around his shoulders, and his hair keeps getting in his face with no braid to hold it back. His knee doesn't hurt. There's no hand at his nape to ground him.

Everything is wrong. Wrong in old, familiar ways.

I'm going to make you keep your promise.

Tsuna jerks and inhales sunlight. Reality pierces through all that Tsuna wants to think about. There's an arm around his body. Someone is talking in the background, voice grated with worry. Every stretch of exposed skin pulses with agony, and Tsuna finds himself struggling, twisting against the hands that try to hold him down.

What happened? Are his people okay? Had they been attacked?

His head is throbbing. Tsuna bites into his cheek, and lets the taste of copper ground him. His thoughts are like claws against his senses, and opening his eyes might be the hardest thing that Tsuna's had to do that day, but it's worth it.

It's worth everything to see Takeshi staring down at him. His face might be younger, rounder, and missing all the little scars that he had collected over the years, but he's still Takeshi. It's worth everything to see that he's alive and healthy, that he's not hurt. He's breathing as easily as it can be expected, and it's worth it.

Tsuna breathes in, and tastes relief.

"Takeshi?"

"Tsuna," Takeshi says. There's a light tremor to the arms that he has around Tsuna's body, loosening only when he seems to find what he's looking for on Tsuna's face. "Haha, that really wasn't funny. You don't get to do that."

"Sorry," Tsuna mumbles. He tucks his head against Takeshi's chest, listening to the steadying rhythm of his heartbeat. "Where's Hayato?"

"I'm here, Tenth!" says Hayato's disembodied voice. He sounds agitated, and he's shrieking at someone in the background. Who's he talking to? Why isn't he here, where Tsuna can see him?

"Whoa, hey." Takeshi adjusts his grip when Tsuna begins to twist. Pinning him down tighter when Tsuna tries to sit up, needing to see. "It's okay, Gokudera's just on the phone. Tsuna, c'mon -- hey, Gokudera!"

Gokudera Hayato has probably never moved faster, Tsuna thinks. Because one moment, he's nothing more than a voice, and in the next, the whole of him appears before Tsuna, mouth pressed into a line so tight that his lips disappear into the pallor of his face. The whites of his eyes are showing, and he nearly drops his phone when he catches the hand that Tsuna reaches out to touch him.

Hayato's whole too. Spooked, but unhurt. Good. Good. Then that just leaves --

"Kyouya-san?"

"Hibari will be fine," Takeshi says while Hayato stares at Tsuna, mouthing Kyouya-san like Tsuna hadn't been calling Kyouya by that name for years.

"Let me see," Tsuna says. He needs to make sure. His vision is still blurry, and there's a lot of black suits around where he remembers Kyouya to have collapsed, but he can almost make out the familiar outline of him. The glint of metal in the shape of tonfas. Hibird is an agitated pattern of flight that circles overhead.

Kyouya looks up. His whole body straightens as though being lifted up by strings, slow and boneless. There's little semblance of his usual brand of grace when he meets Tsuna's eyes, and hair sticks to his forehead, wet with sweat. He looks disoriented and vulnerable in ways that Kyouya never is, which is odd, but --

"See?" Takeshi says. He still hasn't let Tsuna go. His fingers are tight, borderline painful, but they're nowhere near as terrible as the smile that tugs at his mouth. "He's okay. Probably tripped, or something."

Hibari Kyouya doesn't do something so mundane as to trip. Tsuna knows that. Hayato and Takeshi know that too, but they probably didn't have the capacity to think about anything but Tsuna right now. Which is humbling, but also troubling, because there are few things as terrifying as Hayato and Takeshi joining forces to bully Tsuna back to health.

Time to change tactics.

Tsuna turns his attention back to Hayato. "Who're -- who're you talking to?"

"The ambulance guys. I've been trying to take you to the hospital for the past ten minutes," Hayato says. He's probably exaggerating. Tsuna hopes that he's exaggerating. "So the ambulance should be here in five seconds, right?" He's back to yelling at his phone now, looking increasingly murderous with every half-second that his demands aren't being met. "Not minutes? Shut up, you asshole, you're the one that doesn't understand--"

"No hospitals," Tsuna says, struggling to sit upright. His thoughts are slow to settle, falling back into place in tiny, clipped segments. They keep circling around the same beats: Hayato and Takeshi are okay. Kyouya is okay. His people are fine.

"But--"

Breathe in. They're okay. "I'm okay. Seriously."

"Tenth," Hayato says. He looks young. Lost, and scared for it. "Tenth, please. Please, we have to at least get you to a doctor. We can't help you if we don't know what's wrong."

Tsuna shakes his head, because no hospitals. No Vongola would be treated in a public hospital ever again, not while they had Shamal and Haru. Not while they had Ryouhei to step in during a pinch. Even Reborn could be counted on when it was Tsuna's life on the line.

No hospitals, Reborn had made him swear.

"Shamal," Tsuna forces himself to say. No hospitals. Shamal. "Reborn called Shamal. Didn't he? We can't keep him waiting."

"Shit, Tenth," Hayato is saying. There's an edge to his voice, tense and defeated, and Tsuna relaxes as Hayato pockets his phone. "Alright. Alright. No hospitals."

Tsuna closes his hand over Takeshi's wrist to help relieve the tension that continues to ripple beneath his friend's skin, nudging it with a touch of harmony even as Tsuna keeps his eyes on Hayato. "I'm fine. Really. I'll get Reborn to -- to make me something after Shamal sees me."

Takeshi tucks Tsuna tighter up against him as he gets them back on their feet. "I didn't know the kid could cook."

"When he wants to," Tsuna says, letting Takeshi hug him to his heart's content. He glances back at the flurry of activity surrounding Kyouya, smiling faintly at how Kyouya is irritably waving away his people's worry. It's a comforting sight. An irritated Kyouya is a healthy Kyouya.

"Come on, Tenth," Hayato says, already beginning to herd them away. (Where is this? A park? No, a couple blocks away from the park. They had decided to go the long way around, Tsuna remembers, because they had to hand Lambo off to I-Pin before Lambo would let Tsuna go anywhere else.) "We should move before the ambulance gets here."

"I told you not to call," Tsuna says, still staring at Kyouya. Staring at how Kyouya finally stares back.

Staring at how Kyouya's mouth is twisting itself around a familiar set of syllables. His Flames are translucent and deep, whipping out like an irradiant hurricane in a shade of purple that's only ever existed in one person. It's all-encompassing, and there's nothing flattering about it, at once too aggressive and too subtle, but it's familiar.

It's Tsuna's, from now until death.

"Tenth, with all due respect--" Hayato begins to say, and Tsuna finally looks at him. Hoping, and daring to hope, that today will be the day that Gokudera Hayato tells Sawada Tsunayoshi to shut up. Hayato wrinkles his nose and runs a hand through his hair instead. "You, uh. You didn't. Do you feel okay to move?"

"I can walk," Tsuna says, which isn't a lie. He can. Just -- not well, probably.

But the wail of sirens is a head-splitting reminder of why they shouldn't stay, why they can't. Public hospitals are the privilege of civilians, for those that didn't belong to the Vongola. For those that didn't live and breathe Tsuna's protection as well as his curse, because it hadn't taken long for someone to prove that there was no way to guard every point of entry, block every window, visitor, and staff. Basil had died in his hospital bed, his body already cool by the time that Reborn had found the assassin to leave a bullet between his eyes.

No hospitals. Reborn's hand had been warm against the back of Tsuna's neck, his fingers like steel. You get hurt, you come to me.

No hospitals, unless his mom makes him go. Which could happen if they stayed, if the ambulance got a hold of her on the account of his age, worrying her with how sick he looks, convincing her that he needs their care. So Tsuna lets Takeshi drag him away from where he can feel Kyouya and his Flames, lets him nudge him away from where Tsuna wants to be. Where he should be.

Kyouya's gaze is like a brand, and Tsuna feels it until they turn the corner. He hears the name that Kyouya had mouthed at him from afar like an echo of a broken bell, a burial chime for a lost beloved.

Tsunayoshi.

... No. It can't be.

Thing Number Three: Hayato and Takeshi.

"Over there," Hayato is saying.

It's five minutes into their walk that Tsuna had begun to lag, stumbling against the ache in his head and the drag of his feet. Takeshi had scooped him up when Tsuna's strength had begun flagging in earnest, and Tsuna hadn't bothered telling Takeshi that he was fine; Takeshi wouldn't have listened anyway.

They don't make it far, just a couple blocks out from the intersection that they had left behind, because no matter how small, Tsuna is still sixteen. His body isn't weightless and Takeshi is only sixteen himself. Takeshi had slowed before long, though not for the lack of trying. He had put up a brave front despite the light tremble in his biceps, obvious in his determination to carry Tsuna the whole way if Hayato had let him.

And naturally, Hayato hadn't.

The building that they choose as their shelter is an abandoned house, and it's not bad, as far as hiding spots go. It isn't a bad place, smelling only faintly of mold and dust and other unmentionables. That they had even found this place is mind-boggling, though not as much as how Hayato had jammed a dynamite in someone's mouth to clear the space out when the squatters had refused to share the space.

Tsuna doesn't know who he blames more for that particular incident: Hayato, for freaking out and forgetting his manners, the men for not recognizing the gleam in Hayato's eyes, or himself.

Well, that's fine. It'll be fine. They still have some minutes before they'll have to deal with that. Or rather, until Tsuna has to deal with it.

"Stay," Hayato snaps after the deed is done, pointing a finger at Takeshi's face.

Takeshi is gentle when he bullies Tsuna onto a rickety stool, standing close enough for Tsuna to tip forward and lean against him. "Haha, should I be saying 'woof'?"

"How about you shut up? Make yourself useful and keep the Tenth upright while I get him something to drink. Don't. Move."

"He's such a funny guy," Takeshi says when Hayato departs. He's smiling, actually smiling, as he stares down toward where Hayato had disappeared to. "How're you feeling anyway? Does anything hurt? How many of me do you see?"

Laughing hurts, but it makes Takeshi grin that much wider, so Tsuna will take the win. "I'm fine."

The truth: his body feels sluggish and uncoordinated, as though it weren't his own. Every sensation against his body sets off a different one, incongruent and confusing. The scuff of his foot against the wood feels like metal against his spine, and breathing in feels like he's not breathing at all. Everything feels heavy and disconnected. When his fingers move, they don't feel like his. The fingers that he sees move, but the ones that actually belong to him feel immobile and weak, detached from the rest of him. He feels less whole than the creaky stool that Takeshi had deposited him on, older than the aged walls of their current place of shelter.

It's weird, and vaguely concerning, but --

But nothing hurts too badly, and Takeshi's hand is warm and solid when they start rubbing circles into Tsuna's back. Real, and grounding. Anchoring him to the present, to the body that he inhabits now, rather than the body that had left behind to be cremated.

He takes a breath. "He's going to get you one too, you know."

"Hm?"

"A drink," Tsuna clarifies.

"Oh. Huh, you think so?" Takeshi sounds neither surprised nor particularly interested, but he's really just humouring Tsuna, allowing him to meander in and out of conversation as his head allows. He sounds amused, at least.

"Yeah," Tsuna says. "I'll share, though. If he doesn't."

"Thanks, but he's probably going to get you something healthy, like vitamin water," Takeshi says with a hum. "Oh, maybe he'll get you some aojiru. Oh man, I tried that once, and it was horrible. As bad as the commercials make it out to be."

That's totally a thing that Hayato might buy, and Tsuna's going to sigh a lot when Takeshi turns out to be right. Hayato would consider plain water to be too boring, and aojiru was marketed to be as healthy as it was disgusting. Which puts it right up Hayato's alley, basically.

Tsuna grimaces. "Then you definitely have to drink some. I might not survive otherwise."

"Tsuna," Takeshi says gravely. "I like you, but I don't like you that much."

"Yes, you do," Tsuna insists.

"Yeah, I do," Takeshi says. Easy, just like that. Tsuna's still trying to blink away the whiplash when Takeshi continues, "But you should finish it anyway. Every little bit helps, and you ever know what'll fix you up."

"Uh. I don't think a drink's going to cure me."

"Haha! Tell that to Gokudera." Takeshi quiets on that note, his words falling to an awful hush. "You really scared him, you know." You really scared us.

"I, yeah." Tsuna takes a breath. "Sorry. I didn't mean to."

Takeshi studies him for a moment, then, "Hey, Tsuna. Promise me something?"

"What is it?"

"Remember that we're a team, okay?" Takeshi's smiling, but his eyes aren't entirely committed to it when he continues, "So don't shut us out. Ever. If you need help, you tell us. Don't handle it on your own like your older self did. 'Kay?"

Tsuna closes his eyes in a brief moment of regret. Takeshi had been the one out of his Guardians to never quite forget what he had done in Byakuran's timeline, embodying forgiveness without the forgetfulness. It was a sentiment that would linger for decades more yet, one that would manifest in bursts of casual candidness and heavy-handed protectiveness. It would've felt overbearing if Tsuna hadn't already decided to shoulder the responsibility, owning what he hadn't actually done but might've in a different time.

The right thing to do would be to promise. Promise, and hope that his younger self will keep it better than Tsuna had.

Tsuna opens his mouth. He doesn't know what he'll say, but he's saved from saying it when footsteps cut through the silence between them, making them both tense for the two seconds that it takes them to identify the feet as Hayato's. It's another second before Hayato appears in the doorway, holding two drinks in his hands and a line of agitation along his mouth.

Ah.

"We got company," Tsuna says, pushing himself fully upright. Resolutely ignoring how the world does an immediate one-eighty before it thinks to settle.

"It's the assholes from before," Hayato says in confirmation when he fits himself back into the space to Tsuna's right. "Turns out, they're squatters with connections, shit. I could've taken them on myself, but." He glances at Tsuna, and sets his jaw. "I think it might be better if we just got out of here, Tenth."

Moderation. Hayato only ever chose that option when he was worried. If Hayato had chosen to come back to whisk them away, then he was expecting conflict, the violent sort. The sort that would've made a lot of noise and plenty of explosions, drawing Tsuna's attention and ultimately, his involvement, which was likely what Hayato was trying to avoid.

But running for it is probably out of the question when Tsuna still feels this uneven. It's absolutely out of the question when such actions might lead a bunch of unsavoury thugs to his mom's house if they failed to lose them completely. She had planted peonies in her front yard this year; if these squatters followed them home, if they disrupted so much as a single petal on his mom's hard work, Tsuna was going to have words. Possibly more than words.

Best to avoid that whole situation altogether.

"Let's go talk to them."

"But Tenth--"

"It'll be fine," Tsuna says. He flexes his fingers, and lets his arm drop, keeping his shoulders loose. "We're not here to hurt anyone. We'll just have a chat and then go home." Now for the magic words: "Trust me, okay?"

Hayato sighs in defeat while Takeshi shrugs, and when he smiles next, it's the kind that belongs to Tsuna, genuine in all its imperfections. "Of course, boss."

*

Said company isn't much. Just friends of the men that Hayato had chased away with his dynamites, sporting enough piercings between them that Tsuna stops counting. There are no tattoos that Tsuna can spy beneath their sleeves, just fraying seams and waning colour. Cuts and split skin litter the knuckles of the one that steps forward first, and one of his fingers is crooked when he raises it to point it at Hayato, spitting some vitriol about respect and boundaries.

But it's the quieter man to the loud one's right that draws Tsuna's eye. An average man, plain in height and weight, remarkably unremarkable with black hair and brown eyes. He looks young, college student young, with hair that's just long enough to be pulled into a small ponytail behind him. The old, deep scar dug into the left-half of his lower mouth is all that looks out of place, adding a layer of disorder in an otherwise orderly package.

Plain, average, standard. Just like Tsuna. A man that meets Tsuna's scrutiny with a tilt of his head.

"My name is Tsuna," Tsuna says. There's no need to offer his full name. They're just trying to get home. "We were just looking for a place to rest for a while. I wasn't feeling well, and my friends panicked. I apologize for trespassing."

"Furuya Giichi," the plain man says, which is interesting. Was his name supposed to mean something? "Kono says that he was threatened."

"Oh, that," Tsuna says. He scratches at a cheek, sheepish. "Like I said, my friends panicked. We want nothing to do with you, or your territory. We just needed a place to rest for a bit."

Giichi raises a brow.

"I wasn't feeling well," Tsuna says again. It's the honest truth, if a little condensed.

The loud man spits. Both literally and figuratively, stoutly unforgiving. Tsuna knows this sort; they're simple, but fiercely loyal. Bruisers by breeding and by choice, he would throw himself in front of Giichi if Tsuna so much as breathed too hard at him. He appears older, though it's harder to tell if that age had been earned, or had been put there by profession. Men like him wouldn't settle unless shown a bit of force, especially not when Giichi didn't seem intent on reining him in.

And naturally, Hayato can't let that go. "What was that, asshole?"

"You really think, oh, I'm sorry, is gonna cut it, you punks?" the man, Giichi's bruiser, scowls. He jerks his chin forward, and takes a step toward Tsuna that has Takeshi moving in response, slotting himself neatly in-between them. The man snorts at the display. "Pansy-ass bitch can't even fight his own battles, huh? You should've known better than to barge onto our turf."

"Hey now." Tsuna can't see Takeshi's face, but that tone? It's worrying. "Don't call my friends names. That's not very nice."

"Oh, we'll do more than just call him names--"

"Try it," Hayato snaps, bristling with more than just protective anger. "See what happens, fucktard."

On one hand, Tsuna could let this play out. People of this caliber likely knew nothing of Flames, and guns are a rare breed in Japan. Hayato and Takeshi at this age had already taken on the Varia, Byakuran's insanity, the Shimon, Daemon, and the whole Arcobaleno debacle. They were capable. Tsuna had no reason to doubt them.

On the other hand, the very thought of them getting a scratch is rather unbearable at the moment. Especially when he could do something about it.

His people, his responsibility.

"Enough," Tsuna says. Murmurs, really. Just loud enough that it cuts through the posturing. His Flame doesn't ignite above his forehead, but he feels it flicker beneath his skin. He ignores how the room plummets into a stunned silence, never letting his eyes stray from the men caught before him.

Hayato carefully steps back to his right. Takeshi does the same to his left.

Tsuna doesn't do this, not often. He hadn't needed to, not when his reputation had been what it'd been. But there had been the odd time where people couldn't look past his exterior, those that only saw a small man, dwarfed by the people that surrounded him. Appearing almost demure, unassuming. Forgettable. Those that had needed convincing that while Tsuna had inherited the Vongola by blood, he had earned it through merit.

People can be so willfully blind, Chrome murmurs in his ear. They don't always see what really makes you beautiful.

"You're being rude," Tsuna says mildly. "We already apologized. If you let us leave in peace, we won't bother you again."

The bruiser tears himself free of the pressure that Tsuna weaves into the air with no more than a hint of Flame, already yelling his demands in clipped, uncertain words. Yowling profanities and demanding their pounds of flesh.

Giichi says nothing, staring at Tsuna with a hard squint that could mean anything.

Tsuna sighs. His head still hurts, and the men are beginning to blur together into one, annoying entity. He doesn't want to fight, much less burn, but the thought of something happening to Hayato and Takeshi is still worse.

His people, his responsibility. Tsuna would sooner leave the world in ashes than letting them get hurt.

The Flame ignites. Just a spark, no more than a lick of power that feels barely present when it collects at his forehead. Hayato tenses next to him, and Tsuna can almost hear him say Tenth. He can feel Takeshi reaching for his shoulder, trying to hold him back.

Neither happens, because either would be to undermine him. It's not as though they care for the man that Tsuna steps forward to face, but they likely don't believe this to be worth his time.

And maybe it isn't, but Tsuna's not in the mood to put his people in harm's way.

"Giichi," says another man from the back. He's taller than Furuya Giichi by half a head, his voice low and insistent. An interesting man with a mole under his right eye and a gun that Tsuna can just barely see, hidden under his coat.

It's then that Giichi also steps forward, his arm extended as a way of holding back his posse. Warning them off from approaching the living flame that Tsuna had been ready to become.

"You're right, we are being rude. Sorry, consider your apology accepted," Giichi says, glancing at the man with the gun. "You can go."

"Thank you," Tsuna says. His Flame eases, and the world dials down to something less bright. Less prickly.

Giichi cracks a smile. The first since this whole miserable, juvenile affair. "I think that should be my line. Thank you."

For not killing anyone, Tsuna assumes. There's little else that Giichi could thank him for.

The air outside the building is a welcomed reprieve from the poorly concealed hostility that they had waded through, cutting past the gaggle of people who had stared at them in varying degrees of interest and disgust. Giichi has quite the hours ahead, trying to talk his people down from the ill-advised task of attacking Tsuna. Or his friends.

Not that Tsuna cares; that isn't his business.

What would be his business is if he saw any of their lot at his mom's house, but given Giichi's apparent understanding of the conditional nature of Tsuna's mercy, that probably won't be an issue.

Probably.

... Maybe he could play sick for a couple days. Stick close to mom for a while.

"I'm sorry," Hayato says at once. "You shouldn't have had to deal with shits like them."

"It's okay. Really. I'm just glad no one got hurt," Tsuna says. "Let's go before they change their mind."

They won't. Furuya Giichi had seen what Tsuna had wanted him to see. Few people went back on their word after a display like that.

Furuya, though. Furuya. That's a name that he's supposed to know, he's pretty sure.

Tsuna ducks his head. The sunlight stings his eyes, and his hand can only shade him so much.

"Are you sure we can just leave him?" Hayato asks, falling into step. Hovering as usual. "We don't know what he'll do once he figures out who you are."

Furuya Giichi.

The Furuya Group.

Yakuza.

Ah, right.

Tsuna stops in the shade of a fence, ducking his head to press a knuckle up against his brow. "They're just yakuza. If they try something, it shouldn't take long to take care of them."

Furuya Giichi won't break his word, not yet. But his Group eventually will, because history is nothing if not repetitive.

The smart thing would be to take this Group out soon, well before they could be an issue. Tsuna could do it after he sees Shamal, he thinks, after harmonization. After he relocates all of his important people to Italy, where the might and fortune of the Vongola could protect them from the backlash of going after organized crime.

His knuckles ache. There's a pang in his knee, familiar and misplaced, nothing more than a memory that hasn't yet occurred.

The three months that it had taken to wipe out the Furuya had been bloody. Long. It will traumatize the whole city, smothering it in a layer of violence that it will never recover from.

He doesn't want to do that again. The very thought makes him feel nauseous. But he needs to protect his people, and destroying the Furuya Group before they became a problem was likely the most efficient way.

Even so. Was there really no other option?

A hand closes over his shoulder. "You okay, Tsuna? Does your head hurt again?"

"I'm okay," Tsuna says, blinking hard against the light. Rubbing at his forehead, as though that could chase this ache away.

Hayato steps in front of him with creases where they had no business existing, the line of his mouth pressed together and stressed. Shadows fall over his gaze as he looks to Tsuna and beyond him, at Takeshi, at the men that they had left behind. The men that Tsuna had just vowed to take care of.

"Tenth." A moment of pause, accentuated by a deep intake of breath. "If -- if there's anything that I can do to help you, you know that I'd do it in a heartbeat, right? We both would."

We. Tsuna lifts his head to glance at how Takeshi moves to stand behind Hayato and all of his disarming sentiments, staring back at Tsuna steadily. Unflinching. Terribly resolute, even at sixteen.

Tsuna blinks. "I know."

"Anything, Tenth," Hayato says, pressing emphasis into every syllable. "No matter how crazy. I mean it. So don't think that you need to do this alone. Or -- or, uh, anything, really."

Don't push us away again, Tsuna. We're yours for life, remember?

"I know," Tsuna says again. I know. He knows what Hayato is saying, what Takeshi is asking for. Knows, too, that it isn't something that he can give. Not now. "Yeah, I know. Thanks. For, you know. I really don't know where I'd be without you guys."

"At the hospital, probably," Takeshi says, offering a moment of levity while Hayato takes the minute to compose himself.

Tsuna grins. "Yeah. Yeah, probably."

Chapter Text

Reborn meets them at the front door. His scrutiny is as heavy as it is piercing, and layered with just as many questions, but all he says is, "You're late."

Hayato and Takeshi look at Tsuna, at each other, and ultimately hold onto their silence while Tsuna decides to summarize their trip back as, "Sorry, we got held up."

"Hm," Reborn says. His eyes bounce from Tsuna's face to Hayato's to Takeshi's, to how they're probably standing a little too close. Tsuna doesn't wonder what he sees; he knows. "Did you win?"

"Well," Tsuna says. "We didn't lose?"

"You're a disgrace."

"Missed you too, Reborn," Tsuna sighs, handing over his bag when Reborn gestures. Which is creepily nice of him, but Tsuna's head hurts too much for him to question it. "Is Shamal in?"

"He's been delayed," Reborn says with a click of the tongue. "Something's been happening in Italy."

Italy. Tsuna sets his jaw against the shiver that spiders down his spine. He raises a hand to his forehead, fighting off another pulse of pain.

Italy. Go to Italy. Chrome.

"Huh," Takeshi is saying with an odd smile. "Must be something bad if he had to break a promise."

"Hey," Hayato says, holding up a hand to quell him. Tsuna appreciates him as much as he appreciates how Takeshi settles. "Shamal's a lot, but he wouldn't hold the Tenth up without a good reason. Isn't that right, Reborn-san?"

"So I was led to believe. I'll let you know when I get more information."

"Thanks," Hayato says after a moment. A smart move; it would be faster to fly to Italy and figure out the situation for themselves than trying to pry information out of a Reborn that wasn't looking to share. "About the Tenth, he's -- he's not feeling well. We can't go to the hospital, but I'm sure we can find some other doctor. Someone's gotta be making housecalls."

Reborn raises a brow. "Did something happen?"

"He's just not feeling well," Hayato repeats. He doesn't glance at Tsuna, but Reborn does. Tsuna looks at neither of them. "That's why you called Shamal, right?"

"Ah," Reborn says, sounding bored. "You know better than to appear weak in front of your people, Loser Tsuna."

Tsuna grimaces. "I'll be sure to be sick around just you, next time."

"See to it that you do."

"No! No, it's better that we know," Hayato says, his hands curled tightly at his sides. "We can't help you if we don't know, Tenth."

"And," Takeshi adds with a smile that's incredibly worrying, "there's more than one doctor in the world. We could just bring you another one if the kid's don't show."

"I hate that I agree with you, but I agree with you," Hayato says, looking contemplative. "They might not be at Shamal's level, but I know a few doctors that might do house calls."

The thought of having a stranger in his mom's house while his head is actively trying to split itself into three is so alarming that Tsuna finds himself speechless with all that he can't quite voice. There's so much of it that he's not sure where to start, can't even be sure if they're good enough to deter his friends from bringing around the said stranger, so he does the only thing that he knows how to do without fail.

Tsuna looks at Reborn.

Reborn rolls his eyes.

"What your boss needs is to toughen up," Reborn says, "and maybe sleep. Bring the doctor if that'll make you feel better, but make it tomorrow."

"But," Hayato starts, his jaws set in protest. His throat moves, Adam's apple bobbing back and forth. "But, Reborn-san--"

"No," Tsuna says, finally finding his voice, "Reborn's right. Tomorrow would be better. I'm tired, and one night's not going to change anything."

"Stop fretting, Gokudera," Reborn says. "I'll call you if he gets worse overnight."

He's lying. Reborn would never call Hayato or Takeshi over something like that. Hayato wears the pained look of a man that knows that very well, a look that grows further constipated when Tsuna offers him no leeway.

Takeshi looks between them in silence, head tilted in consideration before he finally takes that moment to step in close to fold Tsuna into a one-armed hug. "We can't change your mind, huh?"

Tsuna shakes his head with some effort. Pain paints little black spots over his vision, and his stomach rolls with the aojiru that he had stubbornly refused to drink after the first ugly sip. He manages his expression by hiding it against Takeshi's shoulder, and masks his silence with feigned regret over his own stubbornness. He only feels vaguely guilty that Takeshi accepts the act as easily as he might accept the truth.

"Okay," Takeshi says. "Then let the kid help you 'til we see you tomorrow, yeah? Cause we'll be here. With a doctor."

Tsuna sighs. "Fine. Just know that you're totally overreacting."

"Whatever you say," Takeshi says, calling Tsuna a liar without so many words. "Gokudera, you ready to go?"

"Yeah," says Hayato as he also takes a step closer. His hands are lighter when they fall on Tsuna's shoulders in weight, but there's a solemnity to them that Takeshi's friendly camaraderie had lacked. More reverent and respectful. Attentive in a way that makes Tsuna feel vaguely ashamed. "Promise me that you'll let Reborn-san take care of you tonight, Tenth."

"I'm pretty sure that Reborn would sooner drown me than do that, Hayato."

"Promise me," Hayato says stubbornly. "Don't joke about this. Please."

"Sorry," Tsuna says, slumping. "I know. I'm sorry for--"

"Don't apologize for being sick, Tenth," Hayato says gently. "Just let us help. Okay?"

"Okay," Tsuna says, laying his hand over Hayato's. "Okay. I promise."

"Reborn-san, you too," Hayato says, which has Reborn lifting his head. They lock eyes with such intensity that Hayato wilts beneath it, cowed by Reborn's presence, but not cowed enough to stop him from saying, "Please. I mean, unless the Tenth is willing to let us stay over--"

"Gokudera," Reborn says, silencing Hayato mid-rant. He studies him for a moment before his mouth quirks in a light smirk. "Your loyalty is to be commended. Even if it's to a deadlast like Tsuna."

"Hey," Tsuna says.

"I don't make promises," Reborn continues. "But I have a personal interest in making sure that this idiot stays alive. Take that as your assurance."

Hayato is quiet for a moment before he breathes out. In relief, Tsuna hopes. "Thank you."

Takeshi's expression is soft when Tsuna glances at him, real and free of worry. "That's that then, I guess. See you tomorrow, bright and early."

Tsuna sighs, attempting nonchalance. Valiantly holding onto his lunch, swallowing his nausea down as he says, "Not before coffee, you won't."

"Haha! That's what you think."

"Takeshi."

It's hard to blink. Impossible to think. Nausea hits him with every breath, and his eyes feel wet with annoyance. Pain. Longing.

The door closes, and Tsuna crumbles. He had taken one cursory inventory of the state of the house (lights dimmed, void of his mom's footsteps, no smell of dinner) before he had. He sinks into a crouch when a glance at Reborn confirms that there's no one home but the two of them, pressing a fist to his forehead as he breathes out in short and even exhales.

"What's your problem with hospitals?" Reborn asks, his tone quiet when he crouches in front of him.

"They're not safe," Tsuna rasps. He sets his head against a drawn knee, swallowing thickly. "You made me promise. No hospitals."

"Idiot," Reborn says without heat. "You're twenty years too early to be worried about getting assassinated. You're not that important yet."

He is, actually. That's the problem. Tsuna closes his eyes.

"Maybe," he says. "What happened in Italy?"

The hand that falls over the back of his neck makes him tense on reflex, accentuating all the ways in which he's vulnerable. A part of him struggles against it, his spine attempting to straighten until Reborn tightens his hold in warning and encouragement, both. The grip is smaller than what Tsuna's used to, but there's no mistaking Reborn's touch.

Kyouya might have been the first to officially harmonize with him, but Reborn had been the one who had felt inevitable. Reborn, who had brought both pain and purpose to Tsuna's life. Reborn, who had never hurt him without reason.

It still takes five seconds for Tsuna to settle. Reborn waits without complaint.

"Mafiosi were found dead," Reborn says eventually, beginning a slow knead into the tight muscles of Tsuna's neck. "People that were predicted to take over certain territories in a few years. By your reaction, I'll assume that this didn't happen to you."

Nodding would mean moving his head, so Tsuna speaks his agreement through silence.

Dead criminals are a dime a dozen in Italy, an occurrence as common as debates about football. The question, therefore, usually becomes about who and how and why. (Who died? How? Who killed them? Why? Why did their deaths matter?) His Reborn would've led with those answers, the words rolling lazily off his tongue, his voice a low and intimate thing in Tsuna's ear while they passed a single cigarette back and forth. Enjoying the silence and each other before Reborn led them back to reality.

Dead mafiosi are a dime a dozen in Italy, but depending on who killed them and why, Tsuna remembers sometimes laying his head on Reborn's shoulder, hating how he has to ask:

Can you handle it?

Tsuna opens his eyes and looks down at his hands. They're young and unblemished, free of the scars that Reborn would press his lips against, murmuring against his knuckles.

Not for free. You know that, Loser Tsuna.

It's not anything that Tsuna could ask of a Reborn that is untried and untested, a Reborn that was still so naive to the all-encompassing effects of harmonization.

This Reborn hadn't been with Tsuna for decades, hadn't yet experienced the grief of loss and the elation of shared success by his side. This is a Reborn that doesn't yet know how thoroughly Tsuna could be broken, hasn't yet watched Tsuna pull himself back together again and again, as many times as his Family needed him whole.

No, this Reborn had been downright careful in how he'd delivered the news, and Tsuna could laugh at how that is what drives home the fact that this Reborn isn't his.

He's still too gentle. Still liable in underestimating the Sky that he had raised with his own two hands.

Tsuna leans back to let Reborn's hand fall away. The fingers attempt to linger, tracing the side of his neck and catching themselves at his collarbone, but without the excuse of easing Tsuna's headache, they had no reason to stay.

It's cute; this Reborn still needed his rationalizations, it seemed. Tsuna's Reborn would have simply dragged him in, intent on taking advantage of a level of privacy that they so rarely got to enjoy.

Then again, Tsuna is only sixteen. Reborn's only ten in body. At least for now.

"Which ones?" Tsuna says, his voice scratchy with pain. "From which Famiglia?"

And there's that smile again, the one that bled of pride. It's smaller than the first one that Reborn had worn, speaking to the familiarity that was already starting to set in. Maybe in a few days, Reborn will even stop looking as though he was praising his puppy for not sleeping in his water bowl or something. "You're starting to get annoying."

"Because I asked you a question?" Tsuna asks, just to be a pain. "Or because I asked the right one?"

"How's your head?" Reborn asks snidely, also to be a pain.

"Broken, apparently," Tsuna says. Fine, if they were going to play who could be more annoying, then Tsuna wasn't sorry to say that he had that market cornered. For years, even. "It obviously hurts, not to mention how I'm also hungry. I want a better massage than what you gave me, what even was that? I want coffee, and I want to know where my mom went. Then I want to go to Italy. Which Familgia, Reborn?"

Reborn's fingers twitch, likely missing his gun. His voice is just scathing enough to hide the nuances of his tone when he says, "You have a lot of demands for some dead-last boss."

"Yeah," Tsuna says, "'cause someone decided to turn me into one. This is actually your fault."

"You're a menace," Reborn snorts. "Go take a bath. It'll help."

"You're not going to ask," Tsuna observes.

"Because you're not going," Reborn says. There's iron in his voice, and Tsuna resigns himself to a long and drawn out battle of wills that they both know that Tsuna will win. How long it will take him to win, how long Reborn could stave him off and keep him away from Italy, is what they would be fighting over, really. "And they were from the Piovra and the Lumaca."

"Those two don't exist anymore," Tsuna says after he finds his voice. "In my time."

"I see," Reborn says. He doesn't sound surprised. "They've always been a pain to the Vongola."

"Just them?" Tsuna asks because he has to. This was important. He didn't know why just yet, not when his head wouldn't let him even think -- "No other Families?"

"Just them," Reborn says, getting to his feet. "Just the ones that would've stood in your way when you took over."

Piovra, Lumaca, Furuya, says the note. Written in a messy streak of crayon, it says, Trust us.

How unintentionally ominous. Tsuna would have laughed if laughing didn't hurt so damn much.

Piovra, Lumaca. Dead mafiosi. Furuya. Furuya Giichi. As Reborn had always liked to say, coincidences aren't coincidences when you're a boss, Loser Tsuna.

Piovra, Lumaca. Two Families that had always moved as one. The Lumaca followed where the Piovra had led, into both war and death. That particular conflict had been a bad one, and Tsuna remembers killing more that year than he had in the previous five combined.

It hadn't been as bad as what had followed, that ugly and personal massacre, but it had still been the worst that the Vongola had weathered under Tsuna's reign until then.

Furuya. The yakuza that had tried to dethrone the Hibari clan as the largest and most influential. It had taken three, bloody months to put them down.

Piovra, Lumaca, Furuya. All names that Tsuna had deleted from history with his own hands.

Tsuna draws in a breath and drapes an arm over his eyes, letting the page hang loosely from his grip.

What the hell. Why were things changing? What was changing them?

It's an easy task to turn all suspicions onto himself, onto his own actions, but Tsuna had been careful. Nothing was worth fixing to the degree of upsetting the timeline, in rocking the foundations upon which his future had been built. It hadn't been a perfect outcome, but it had still been his. Theirs. A future that he and his Family had eked out together, finding happiness even as they struggled past the violence that not even Tsuna could fully tame.

But then, he was supposed to be in Italy by now. Doing nothing was sometimes as damaging as doing everything. Tsuna should know.

You ever wish you could stop playing this mafia game, Tsuna? Takeshi had murmured once. The hand that he had threaded together with Tsuna's had been similarly bandaged, a grip that Takeshi had used to tug their tied hands onto his lap. I do. Sometimes. I mean, I don't have a problem with all of it, but.

But. There's always a but.

Sometimes, Tsuna had said. Sometimes. But we're still -- still only in the sixth inning. Right? As long as we keep playing it together, it'll be okay.

Takeshi's answering laughter had been a blessed thing in Tsuna's ear, rumbly and pleasing. It's a sound that Tsuna would do much to hear again, to make certain that it would exist again.

Yeah. Yeah, guess so. Well, I'm with you all the way. Right into overtime if we gotta. All of us are.

"Trust us," Reborn reads outloud like a creep. Tsuna startles at the voice, and his next breath catches on inhale. Reborn pauses at the sound, but thankfully chooses to just say, "Sounds like you have some stalkers on your hands, Loser Tsuna."

"That was a private message," Tsuna manages.

"Then you should've hidden it better," Reborn says, matter-of-fact. "You were all but inviting me to read it."

"Most people would've asked," Tsuna sighs, pushing aside the reverberations of memory to drag his arm away from his face. "You know, 'what is that'? Or maybe, 'can I read that'?"

"It was your mistake for trying to measure me by your standards."

"Right," Tsuna says, rolling his eyes despite the pain. Rolling his eyes is a civic duty at this point. "My mistake."

Reborn smirks. He hops onto the mattress by Tsuna's head, resting his hand flat against the space by Tsuna's left ear. "How's your head?"

"Guess," Tsuna says. "I can barely think right now."

"So no different than usual."

"You know, you could be a little nicer to me," Tsuna says, "seeing how I'm dying and all."

"Stop being dramatic. You're not going to die," Reborn says, his hand climbing onto Tsuna's face. It's just a couple of fingers at first, just whispers of touches along his bath-damp hairline before the palm flattens right over his hair to push it back. "Where did you get that note?"

"Lambo," Tsuna mutters. "He gave it to me. Said the drawing reminded him of me."

Reborn kneads his fingers into Tsuna's temple, offering momentary respite from the pounding ache behind Tsuna's eyes. "I suppose I could see the resemblance. Does that matter?"

"No," Tsuna says, because it doesn't. It holds no significance, except for how it had been drawn by his children, the two boys who had never quite outgrown sleeping with Tsuna even at their age of three and six. Children that had wanted nothing but to hold his hand some days, eager and thankful for any time that Tsuna could spare in-between his hours as the Vongola Decimo.

Would they remember him when they were older? How Tsuna had drawn their faces in crayon as often as they had drawn his, how they would steal cookies together before dinner while Hayato and Takeshi squabbled over what to cook? He hopes so.

He hopes so.

"No," Tsuna says again. "Not really."

"Hm," Reborn murmurs. "Fine. In any case, you know better than to believe anything to be a coincidence, don't you?"

Coincidences aren't coincidences when you're a boss, Loser Tsuna.

Tsuna knows. He puts his hand over Reborn's and basks in the comfort of his touch, in how the darkness behind his eyelids doesn't seem to claw at his brain like everything else. It's a smaller hand than he's used to, but it's still just as warm. Still comforting. A touch that Tsuna can trust no matter what, a touch that steadies the ache in his chest and head.

"I know what you're trying to say," Tsuna says, "but I can't say I'm convinced."

"Oh?"

"Lambo gave that note to me after school," Tsuna says. "You know, the little one? He's seven, Reborn. He's special for a seven year old, but I doubt he could go to Italy and kill all those people. Someone would've found out about it."

Then they would be having a totally different conversation with new stakes, arguments over how to handle a situation that would've teetered on the narrow boundary between war and peace.

Or perhaps they wouldn't; Tsuna had gotten uncomfortably good at handling such matters over his tenure as the Decimo. His Reborn had grown to trust his choices, even when that had meant allowing the crusade that'd left the Sicilian mafia in pieces. There was no reason for this Reborn to be any different.

Then again, Reborn had never cared for the mafia, not like Iemitsu had. It had always been a means to an end for him.

Nothing, Reborn had said when Tsuna had asked what that end had been, and how Tsuna could help him achieve it. All in exchange for condoning the destruction of the only world that Reborn had ever known. But if you insist, try not to get yourself killed with this stupid plan of yours. Your life doesn't belong to just you anymore, Tsuna.

"The baby cow couldn't," Reborn says in acquiescence. "But we both met a version of him that could, didn't we?"

"Careful not to let Lambo hear that," Tsuna says. "Or you'll never live it down."

Reborn rolls his eyes so hard that Tsuna doesn't have to see it to be able to hear it. It's actually kind of impressive. "You're deflecting."

Tsuna sighs. "Sure. Or maybe you should tell me why you think a guy with a five minute time limit could do all that. Last I checked, it takes longer than a couple minutes to get to Italy from here."

Reborn removes his hand, and Tsuna instinctively reaches for it, his fingers brushing along his wrist before he remembers to pull himself back. There's something heavy that weighs in Reborn's gaze when Tsuna opens his eyes, considering and damning all at once. It makes him feel small and seen, stripping away all of his bravado to leave Tsuna feeling all of sixteen again, young and stupid and vulnerable. It's impossible for Reborn to have missed it.

But all that Reborn says is, "And if there was a way around that?"

A way around -- the five minute limit? Quick travel between Italy and Japan hadn't existed even in Tsuna's time, so that seemed like a safe guess. But the trick of circumventing the five minute limit had never been successfully created either, not while Shouichi and Spanner were promise-bound to never try. So what's this then?

Tsuna squints up at Reborn. "Do you know something?"

"It was a hypothetical question, Loser Tsuna."

"You don't do those." Reborn would sooner choose silence than indulge in hypotheticals. Either commit fully to bullshit or don't say anything at all, he used to say. Hypotheticals gave too much away, offering more insight into one's inner workings than one might intend. A dangerous thing to be doing when you were the World's Greatest Hitman. Or the Vongola Decimo. "What did you mean by that?"

"Exactly as it sounds," Reborn says. "Answer my question and I'll consider answering yours."

Tsuna sighs. Well, that was as good of a deal as he was going to get, so, "I guess? I mean, if there was a way around that time limit, sure. Lambo could do it, but I still wouldn't send him for a job like that. His methods aren't exactly, uh, quiet."

More to the point, Tsuna wouldn't have sent Lambo back at all, regardless of methods. Lambo aged that much more with every trip back or forward in time, and it changed him. It changed him in visible, heartbreaking ways, and Lambo bounced around in the timeline often enough without Tsuna's interference. The advantages won through those five minute intervals hadn't ever felt like fair compensation.

It's okay, Tsuna-nii. It's okay, Lambo had said, clutching at Tsuna with cold and clammy fingers. His eyes had been red and glassy in that moment, his mouth set in a wobbly line that betrayed more than what the forty-six year old version of him had revealed. We have time. We still -- have time. We won't make the same mistakes. I promise.

It hadn't been fair that Lambo should have to become aware of Tsuna's fate so soon. It hadn't been fair to the rest of them, learning by secondhand account. It hadn't been fair to Tsuna, who had felt more resigned than upset.

None of it had been fair. But that was life, wasn't it? Terrible and unfair and blissfully finite.

Reborn looks intrigued when Tsuna blinks his way back to the present, his head tilted at an angle that usually implies curiosity. "Then who would be your choice?"

"Depends on who and how many need taking care of," Tsuna says, hating how easily the answer comes to him. "But Chrome, probably. Mukuro, too, if we need it done quickly."

"Hm." Reborn's not disagreeing, which is as good as approval. "Is that how you took care of them in your time?"

Sure, if Chrome and Mukuro had the firepower to wipe out two large Famiglias on their own. They didn't, because only one person in the Vongola would ever have the means to do something like that.

"No," Tsuna says with a shrug. "But I don't want to talk about it. All that matters is that we took care of them."

Pretty easily too, but only when Tsuna had decided, enough. Enough. Only when they had started putting his people in danger, had put his family in danger, had he thought: enough.

Reborn grabs at Tsuna's nose. He doesn't shake him, but it makes Tsuna's mouth pop open with shocked indignation anyway. "Don't get cocky. That's a surefire way to get yourself killed."

The wrist that Tsuna reaches for is impossibly warm, and the pulse beneath his thumb is loud, oppressive and distracting. "In case you haven't heard, that already happened."

"As far as I'm concerned, you're still alive," Reborn says. "Whatever's happened in your time hasn't happened yet. Which means that it can be changed."

Something about those words --

"I think," Tsuna says, pulling his nose free, "that it's your turn to answer some questions. What did you mean by your question before? The hypothetical one."

"You're an idiot," Reborn says. "But not one so stupid as to need this spelled out. You know exactly what I meant."

"Pretend that I don't," Tsuna says, his stomach rolling with an impending sense of dread. "Spell it out for me."

The line of Reborn's mouth is severe and judgmental, but Tsuna only has to wait a couple seconds before Reborn indulges him. He changed so little in twenty years. "You can't bring a dead man back to life. But you can stop him from dying in the first place."

Tsuna wishes he could shake his head. Given how his head is starting to pound again, he knows better than to try. "And you think Lambo's trying to do that?"

"The cow, yes," Reborn says. "But not just him."

Not just Lambo, which includes Kyouya. And any number of his Guardians. And Reborn.

"Okay," Tsuna says carefully, slowly. "But even if it is possible, why kill those people? There's no reason to go after those two Families. Like I said, we handled them just fine, the first time around. Everything worked out. We were fine."

"So you keep saying," Reborn murmurs, "But the more I pull out of you, the harder I find that to believe."

Tsuna sets his jaw. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"The Piovra and the Lumaca aren't small organizations. They've been a pain since the Ottavo's generation for a reason," Reborn says, almost offhand. "But you said that they no longer exist in your time. Why was that necessary, Sawada Tsunayoshi? Did you handle it personally?"

He did. He had to. He couldn't ever forgive them for what they had done. But did that matter?

No, Boss.

"That," Tsuna says, "Has nothing to do with this."

Reborn smirks. "Did I touch a nerve?"

"Yeah," Tsuna says, because there's no point in lying to Reborn, now or in the future. "You did. So make your point. Where are you going with this?"

"Assuming that your Family buys into your inane theory about how you died," Reborn says, his tone dropping to an octave that instantly puts Tsuna on edge. "How do you think that they'd try to prevent your death?"

A rhetorical question. The answer to which Reborn had already taken steps to entertain by preventing harmonization, by jumping on Tsuna's back against Kyouya.

Tsuna sits up slowly. It doesn't feel right to stare up at Reborn right now, not when there's a roar in his ears and his stomach is in knots. His fingers curl into fists so tightly that he can feel his bones creak. Pins and needles dig into the base of his skull, and Tsuna leans his body forward and closes his eyes.

He knows what Reborn is saying. He knows. He knows, he has known, but he wishes he didn't.

We're going to save you. So don't fight us, Tsuna-nii. Okay?

Tsuna's lashes tickle at the back of his hand, his forehead resting heavy against the knob of his wrist. "And this hypothetical of yours. Do you have any proof?"

About the killings. About time travel, Tsuna's Family. About what they might be doing.

"No," Reborn says after a moment, because of course he doesn't. Still, "It's an educated guess. But you heard what the cow said before he disappeared as well as I did. That note is saying the same thing."

An educated guess from Reborn is as good as the answers that come from the deep and uncomfortable place within Tsuna, a place that knew too much even when Tsuna knew so little. It's better than proof, second only to bearing witness to the truth in person. There's no sense in protesting what Tsuna already knows to be true. It had been a senseless question.

Okay.

"But this depends on whether they have a way around that five minute limit, right?" Tsuna doesn't care if he sounds a little desperate. He doesn't, not when something large and overwhelming was beginning to take hold of his chest. "The killer could still be someone else."

"Tsuna," Reborn says. His voice sounds odd. Faraway. Muffled.

"But I guess I'm here, aren't I?" Tsuna says. He breathes in. Out. In and out. "I've been here for days."

And he's dead. He's been dead for days. And if his Family was using the same method to send others back in time as they had Tsuna, then --

Tsuna stops breathing, and the world flickers.

*

The world flickers. Colours and monochrome strain against each other. His sheets smell of laundry detergent, and his desk smells of ink and unsigned paperwork.

The wood feels even colder beneath his hands when they come down, the sound reverberating out into the silence of the room. There will be no witnesses to whatever crime that Tsuna might commit in the next five minutes.

Is my life worth betraying my will?

Reborn looks back at him, his eyes flashing with more emotion than Tsuna feels like forgiving.

A hand falls over his eyes. They're small, callused in just the right ways. He can feel its counterpart in his hair, picking them into braids.

No, Boss. Not yet.

*

The world flickers. Bleeds. Colours flood back in bursts. Reborn's face is too young to be handsome when it comes back into focus, missing all the angles that Tsuna will one day find attractive. He's too small, and Tsuna's not old enough to be dead.

Tsuna, he remembers. Reborn had almost sounded panicked then, two days after Lambo had briefly become forty-six, after they had been shown proof of how quickly Tsuna had been burning out. Tsuna had collapsed in a heap, kept upright only by the grace of Reborn's reflexes, his hands warm and overly tight where they had found purchase along Tsuna's upper arms. If you wanted to fall into my arms, you only needed to ask.

Tsuna remembers laughing then. Out of breath and hurting, his body numb in odd places while cracks took shape along the surfaces of his heart. He doesn't have the energy to laugh now, not when his head hurts. Not when it hurts this much.

The echo of his Flames and the voices of his people sounds loud in Tsuna's ears. Twenty years suddenly feel too short, its reach too far. His throat burns, straining against the rope of bosshood that Reborn had fastened around his neck twenty-odd years ago, a noose that Tsuna had tightened himself with his own choices.

"Lie down, Loser Tsuna," Reborn says. He still sounds muffled and strange. Disconnected and out of reach. "Invalids shouldn't be moving around."

Tsuna takes a breath in. Blinks slowly as he exhales, out of breath and hurting.

"You should've known how I'd react," he says carefully. "So why'd you tell me?"

Seven seconds. Reborn holds onto his silence for seven seconds before he says, "Because you should have known better than to ignore your problems. I was getting bored of watching you try."

Tsuna laughs, soft and wounded. "I wasn't ignoring them. I accepted my death. You're the ones that can't seem to."

There's a hand at Tsuna's shoulder, a grip that hooks into flesh and bone like teeth. Holding him down, holding him steady, grounding him before these terrible and fluttering notes of panic can take flight. It's appreciated; panic attacks are hardly attractive, and Reborn would always click his tongue at how Tsuna had never managed to break that habit. Best to try and curb that whole mess at onset.

Key word being try. Tsuna's pretty sure that this isn't one that they can avoid. Still, the effort is appreciated.

"Lie down," Reborn says.

"I can't," Tsuna says, slowly beginning to release his hold on his composure to throw his legs off the bed, headache be damned. "Because I suddenly really, really need to go to Italy."

He can't stay here. He needs to find his people, to make sure that they're as happy (alive) as Tsuna remembers them to be. He needs to know if they're safe.

He has to go to Italy. He has to find Kyouya.

Reborn's hold doesn't budge.

"You're not going," Reborn says calmly. His grip is like iron on Tsuna's shoulder, tight enough to skirt at the edges of pain. "You'll accomplish nothing by running off now."

"No," Tsuna says nowhere near as calmly, reaching up to push Reborn off by the shoulders. Reborn doesn't budge, of course; Reborn had always been strong, regardless of the age of his body. "If you wanted me to do nothing, you shouldn't have told me. If that's my people out there, you can't expect me to do nothing. What if they're alone?"

And no Vongola would ever operate alone. It had been one of Tsuna's rules, and even Kyouya had come around to the idea for as long as his surveillance was handled by Tsuna, for as long as it was Tsuna that appeared as his support.

No Vongola would ever be left to die like Basil, alone and vulnerable when they should've had the might of a whole Family behind them. No member of his family should have to die with Tsuna's hand in theirs, their bloody fingers slipping against his gauntlets.

No. No, Boss. No, not again.

If it is his people out there, he would find them. He would make it so that they would be okay. That's what matters. That's all that's ever mattered.

Reborn moves before Tsuna can finish straightening his body, slamming him back into the mattress by the shoulder with enough force that Tsuna gags. The world explodes into colours that he could hardly even name, and Tsuna tastes copper in his mouth when Reborn's face comes back into focus.

"Don't be stupid," Reborn is saying. "Think, Tsuna. What do you think will happen if the Vongola Decimo suddenly showed up in Italy?"

He doesn't know. He doesn't know, doesn't care; he doesn't care as long as he can go and find his people. He has to know. What happened? Did they die? Was this a way for them to save themselves as much as it was to save Tsuna? Had he failed them, even in death?

Or --

The world goes fuzzy. (Flickers. Bleeds.) Swallowing hurts, Tsuna's throat struggling against a lump. A surge of emotion rattles his chest, untranslated and incomprehensible. His tongue feels thick, and his breathing is coming out in a short and ragged pattern. He hates it. He can feel himself being tugged in four different directions, his body not feeling like his own, and he hates it.

Reborn's hand is as hot as a brand when it closes itself against the side of Tsuna's neck, his thumb pressed to his cheekbone. "Breathe, Tsuna."

He is, damn it. Of course he's breathing. He needs to be breathing to go to Italy.

What he isn't doing is focusing. And that's just embarrassing. He's handled worse than this, had pushed through more than this sense of dread. He had to get a grip.

It's fine. Things will be fine. He just needs to break out of Reborn's hold, just needs to concentrate. He just needs his Flame, the rumbling giant that always answers when he calls. He can feel it answering now, catching itself at the ends of his bangs. It'll be fine.

Fire sparks. Flickers.

Reborn slams him into the mattress again. "Breathe."

Pain explodes behind his eyelids, and Tsuna chokes on it. Chokes on the splintered glass of his focus and any number of insults, too busy gasping for air to speak them.

Colours burst. Light sputters. Lines blur, and shapes coalesce into something both familiar and alien, and Tsuna feels floating above it all. Like he's watching his body from beyond its limits, watching it lie in bed with wires and tubing winding their way out of every inch of his skin.

What? Was that--?

No, Boss. Not yet.

Reality fizzles behind his eyelids, and when blinks next, there's Reborn. There's always Reborn.

And he's staring at Tsuna with the look of a caged predator, helpless in his vulnerability and angry for it. Which only means one thing, usually.

Reborn's worried.

It's at that thought that Tsuna thinks to breathe. Breathing as Reborn had told him to. He has to, if he wants to speak, if he wants to offer comforts that Reborn will snub but appreciate nonetheless.

The world swims back into focus, and the finer details of his room weave themselves back together, piece by piece. It invites bile to the back of Tsuna's throat, his eyes feel strangely tight, and his head throbs, throbs, throbs, but he can't look away from Reborn when Reborn looks like that.

"You look so ugly," Tsuna rasps. "All scrunchy-faced like that."

"No thanks to you," Reborn says. "Feeling better?"

His Flame keep sputtering inside his chest and his thoughts keep trying to scatter into short, staccato beats, but, "Yeah."

"Liar," Reborn says. His voice is still quiet. Gentle. It makes Tsuna feel oddly jittery. "Why did that happen?"

Tsuna runs his tongue over his lower lip and bites into the cracks that he finds there. It stings, and the taste of copper is thick in his mouth when Reborn watches the movement with interest, but he doesn't lean down to catch Tsuna's blood on his tongue, doesn't try to cage him in by bracing his arms on either side of Tsuna's head. He looks, but he doesn't touch.

He doesn't, because this Reborn can't. The Reborn that Tsuna feels beneath his knuckles isn't his, not in any of the ways that matters. This is the Reborn that looks all of twelve, decades too young. He's untried and untested, and his Flames flicker out of sync with Tsuna's own.

Tsuna blinks hard against the light, and tries not to think too deeply on the loss that spasms inside his chest. At the yearning for a man that both existed and not before him, at how fiercely his eyes begin to burn at the thought.

"Tsuna," says the Reborn that isn't his. "Focus."

"Sorry," Tsuna says. He closes his eyes and says it again, "Sorry."

"You should be," Reborn says eventually. "Now answer the question."

"They're my Family," Tsuna says, because the answer is just that simple. Always had been. "And they might be out there doing -- something. I should be out there with them. I didn't even know about it, and I'm supposed to."

"How were you supposed to?" Reborn says with a click of his tongue. "You were dead."

"They could've still told me when I got here," Tsuna says. "What good am I if they can't trust me? Or trust me to look after them?"

Reborn snorts. "Seems like they didn't trust you to look after yourself."

Tsuna startles himself with his own laughter, the sound punched out of his chest like a black eye. "I'm the Decimo, Reborn. I don't need looking after."

"The only person who believes that is you." Reborn presses his thumb up along the thundering beat of Tsuna's pulse. "But that doesn't matter. You said that you understood what it meant to harmonize. You don't get to act surprised by its outcome, idiot."

"I know. I know, but--"

Tsuna knows, but he also knows of Ryouhei. Of Bianchi. Knows how Hayato would describe them as bereft, how Takeshi had called them tragic. Lambo had been pitying, and Ryouhei had spent days in Haru's clinic after he had swung a fist at Kyouya's face. Retaliation, apparently, after being called weak. Weak-willed. Too weak to commit. Chrome and Bianchi had waged a cold war for reasons only Mukuro had known, the words that they had shared left in an angry, secretive hush.

He remembers how their misery had taken shape: Ryouhei, happily employed and even happier in his marriage. Bianchi, freely travelling the world, divorced from her obligations to anyone but herself and her brother. The futures that they had to look forward to, regardless of Tsuna's involvement.

That's what he had been hoping for, after his death. For everyone to find their way out, not this. Not this tangled, complicated thing that could undo the very events that had shaped them into the versions of themselves that Tsuna loved so dearly.

Tsuna draws in a breath. "But it's still not what I wanted. For any of you. I just wanted you to be safe. I agreed to become a boss to protect you all, and I don't know if I--"

Reborn's sigh is uncharacteristically loud and pointed. It rings like a warning in Tsuna's ears, a threat. Like an endearment spoken in hushed and secretive tones.

"Crybaby."

Tsuna's eyes snap to Reborn with shock and distant indignation, his ears ringing with deja vu. "I'm trying to have a moment here, not crying."

"You were," Reborn says, lying through his teeth. "You owe me a new suit for all the wet patches you left, Loser Tsuna. And therapy money for the secondhand embarrassment."

"What," Tsuna says, rapidly losing the distance from his indignation. "First of all, you need way more therapy than the Vongola can even afford, and second, you're not even wearing a suit."

"Your point being?"

Tsuna's going to murder him with a pillow. As soon as he had the energy to do it, anyway.

"I know what you're doing," Tsuna says instead. Accuses, really.

Reborn raises a brow.

"And it's working," Tsuna says, dragging an arm across his eyes to hide how they're beginning to burn. My crybaby Sky, Reborn would say, his nose warm and distracting where he would sometimes tuck it into the crook of Tsuna's neck and shoulder. Breathing him in, memorizing him. Basking in the Flames that sang and danced beneath their skins in the aftermath of a long week, reassuring in how their hearts beat to a single rhythm. "Why is it working?"

Reborn huffs out a breath. "You haven't changed as much as you think you have."

"Haven't I?" Tsuna asks. His voice sounds small and revealing, but there's only Reborn to hear it, only Reborn to judge. That's fine, surely.

"No," Reborn says. "You're still an idiot."

Tsuna gives in. His laugh is a tiny, choked thing, but it feels as real as the lump in his throat. It's real enough that it makes Reborn smirk, vicious and victorious, and Tsuna's definitely going to murder him with a pillow. Mark his words.

For now though, he just lifts a hand to brush his fingers along Reborn's cheek, knuckles to skin. He chooses not to notice how Reborn stiffens in surprise, and doesn't pull away when Reborn grabs him by the wrist. He simply waits for Reborn to focus on him, on how his whole body unwinds beneath that scrutiny.

"Tell me what'd happen if I go to Italy," Tsuna says quietly.

"You'll throw suspicion on the Vongola. Especially if the killer's pattern starts to change," Reborn says after a moment. "That's the best case scenario. Worst case, you'll throw off whoever is doing these killings and get them noticed. Possibly killed. Skies are distracting, Tsuna. More so if they're yours."

If they're his. Of course they're his.

"You never got distracted," Tsuna says. "Are you sure that I'm the Sky that you always wanted?"

"You said that you'd ask me after Shamal," Reborn drawls. "So you'll just have to find out, won't you?"

There's only ever one answer that Reborn will give, but Tsuna lets them pretend otherwise, letting them live in this illusion of choice. Just for now.

He cracks a smile. It feels crooked. "You're the worst."

"Shut up and sleep, it'll help your head," Reborn says, dropping Tsuna's wrist.

"Will you stay?" Tsuna asks lightly.

There's a pause, heavy and pregnant with anticipation. No words follow, just action, the rustle of movement as Reborn snorts.

"Clingy, aren't you?" Reborn says, already stretching out his legs to nudge the shape of his thigh against the top of Tsuna's head. He's solid and real where the Reborn that he remembers isn't, his fingers warm and gentle rather than hot and branding. Soothing, rather than weighted with all that they'd left unspoken.

Tsuna, his Reborn whispers, and he's dragging him in, dragging him down, and Tsuna closes his eyes.

"Sleep," says the Reborn that exists, and Tsuna breathes out to do just that.

Chapter Text

His head hurts marginally less when he wakes, his body jittery with the knowledge of having a stranger in the house. He lingers in the space between wakefulness and not, but he can feel his body moving, his hands twitching for the gun that won't be there. His legs draw up, and he would've sat up with Flames at his fingertips if his hair hadn't stayed tangled with something. With someone's fingers.

Someone he knows. Someone he trusts.

Tsuna calms, but not entirely. Who's in the house?

"A doctor," Reborn's voice is saying, floating down from somewhere around the vicinity of Tsuna's right ear. "With Gokudera and Yamamoto. Nana's making you coffee. She came back last night."

Oh. Right. They had promised to find one, hadn't they?

"What time is it?" Tsuna asks, peeling open an eye. Just the one; the light did his head no favours, and Tsuna wasn't feeling up to courting pain so soon after sleep.

"Eight in the morning," Reborn says. "You owe me for this neck cramp, Loser Tsuna."

"You get cramps?" Tsuna mumbles around his smile. He stayed the whole night? That's -- "That almost makes you seem human."

"It does, doesn't it? As human as you?" Reborn sighs, drawn out and dramatic, emphasizing his non-existent suffering. "How far I've fallen."

"Yeah, how terrible," Tsuna says. "You might even have to start brewing your own coffee soon."

"And rob you of your purpose? Please."

"The coffee would be better if you made it. You know that, right?"

"Loser Tsuna," Reborn says with faux patience. "That's exactly why you're doing it. How could you hope to improve if I baby you?"

"Say that after you've babied me over something," Tsuna grouches. "Which you haven't, by the way. Not even once."

"Stop your whining. You should know better than to beg for handouts," Reborn says. "Bribery works much better."

"With how much coffee you keep stealing off me, I shouldn't have to bribe you for anything."

"I haven't taken nearly as much as I could've. Be grateful."

"I'm not going to thank you for something you shouldn't be doing in the first place!"

"Thirty-six and still so whiny," Reborn says with a shake of his head. "How shameful."

Tsuna is going to kill him. With love and affection, but he'll still kill him. "You seem to like me well enough. Now and in the future. What's that say about you?"

Reborn doesn't answer, not immediately. He's quiet and contemplative when he tangles his fingers back into Tsuna's bangs, his knuckles scraping gently against Tsuna's forehead when he catches the hair into a fist. "We're not talking about me."

"We are now," Tsuna says, suitably subdued. "You change as much as I do, you know. So you're going to give in about Italy eventually."

Reborn flicks Tsuna across the forehead. "But not today."

Damn it.

"Probably not today," Tsuna sighs.

"If you're done whining," Reborn says, "get up and get dressed. The least you can do for your Family is to pretend that you're alright."

Who are you hoping to fool, Sawada Tsunayoshi, Mukuro had asked once. What is the point of pretending now?

Tsuna sits up for what feels like the umpteenth time. He runs a hand down the length of his face, and carefully avoids his own reflection in the mirror. Reborn is an infinitely more interesting subject to observe, the careful way in which he moves his head back and forth to work out the kinks. Reborn doesn't complain, but he wears his stress around his mouth, in the little grooves that deepen with his annoyances. There's no mistaking the angle that he sets his jaw, the very same that suggests that Reborn was about to go to war.

Reborn really doesn't change much at all.

It's habit that has Tsuna reaching out, his finger tangling itself with a side-curl that he's tempted to pull. Bringing Reborn's attention back to Tsuna, away from the dangers that lurked behind his thoughts.

"Does that include you?" Tsuna asks.

Reborn's jaw locks for an entirely different reason, but he doesn't pull away. "Don't ask stupid questions."

"You look awful, Tenth," Hayato says upon seeing him, looking like he'd stubbed all of his toes at once. Tsuna forgives the fretting on the account of how Hayato immediately hands him a cup of coffee without prompting.

"It's my hair," Tsuna says around his third, desperate sip. "I didn't know you guys were coming this early. I didn't get to comb it."

"Does that actually help?" Takeshi wonders, pulling out a chair at the table for Tsuna to drop into.

"Sometimes," Tsuna lies.

The doctor isn't anyone that Tsuna recognizes, a true stranger amongst the faces that he knows and remembers. The man brings with him no echoes of the future, his hands cool and clinical. There's no fussing or charged glances when he makes Tsuna lift up his shirt, no memory or story attached to the way this stranger presses his stethoscope against Tsuna's back, nothing old and beloved to recall.

It's -- nice. His head still hurts, but Tsuna can forget about this man tomorrow with no consequence. There would be no harm in just remembering him as a doctor and the way that his mom thanks him for his time.

"Have one of your friends pick this up," the doctor says at the end. Hayato snatches up the prescription and is out the door before Tsuna can lift his hand from the table. The man looks at the door before he just turns back to Tsuna, clearing his throat. "-- Well. When he's back, I want you to take one pill every twelve hours. I don't care at which hour that you take it, as long as you keep to that schedule."

"What are you giving him?" Reborn asks from Tsuna's left.

"Something for his migraines," the doctor says, snapping his briefcase closed. "It should help. If the symptoms persist into the week, I want you to come by at my office. There's only so much that I can do on a housecall."

"Thanks for coming," Takeshi says brightly. Too brightly.

The doctor smiles wryly, but says nothing, choosing instead to turn his attention to Nana. Tsuna eyes him, then eyes Takeshi, making note of how his friend carefully avoids his gaze. "Please keep your son at home for at least three days as well. Ideally a week. I will provide a note that you can submit to the school."

"Oh," Nana says, wringing her hands. "Is it that bad, doctor?"

"Just a precaution," the doctor says, glancing at Takeshi. "Migraines can get worse with stimulation. And high school fits that bill, unfortunately."

"Did you threaten him?" Tsuna asks when the man leaves, seen out the door by his mom. His head is starting to hurt again, feeling as hollow as an echo chamber that only had one thing to say: Italy. Go to Italy. Find Kyouya. "Please tell me you didn't threaten him."

"I didn't threaten him," Takeshi says cheerfully, and he's not lying. Tsuna makes the mistake of relaxing, because as soon as he does, Takeshi adds, "Gokudera did. I just showed off my sword a little."

"Of course you did," Tsuna sighs. Of course. Was Hana a lawyer yet? Or was high school too soon for that?

Well, whatever. Hana wasn't the only lawyer in the Vongola's employ, and the law wasn't the only way to handle a spooked civilian.

More importantly though, "Hey, Takeshi?"

"Yeah, Tsuna?"

Tsuna glances at Reborn, then leans forward on the table, fingers folded together. "Find Lambo for me. I'm going to need him to stay with me for a while."

The week begins on a whimper, its first three days dragged into oblivion with headaches and boredom. Tsuna takes the drugs, his mom pampers him into a blissful stupor, and his friends visit every day after school. Hayato tutors him through math that they'll stop using after graduation, and Takeshi takes him out to the backyard to throw a ball at his face, fully expecting Tsuna to throw it back.

Lambo stays with him for the whole duration of it, stubbornly reading his favourite books to his Tsuna-nii despite the myriad of words that he still can't pronounce. He doesn't change, not once. Not in body nor in mannerisms, nothing to suggest that he was no longer seven years old.

Reborn catches Tsuna with the bazooka a day into Lambo's extended stay with them. Tsuna had been tracing its shape with his fingers, mulling over the choice that he had already decided not to make. But Tsuna had still thought about it, had considered it, for four quiet seconds before he set the bazooka aside, choosing to let it collect dust in the corner and look away from how Reborn's shoulders had relaxed in response.

Sentimentality, Kyouya might say.

It isn't, Tsuna would say back. It'd only be a half-lie in how he would say, I'm just selfish.

He won't shoot Lambo. He won't demand explanations from someone with such transparent motivations. There are no answers that would be worth the pain that would scar Lambo's face if Tsuna even dared.

On a lesser note, nothing could change the events that had already been set in motion anyway, this strange new route that the timeline would now take. Minimizing the damage is the best that Tsuna could likely do, to soften the changes that must already be overtaking their future.

But to do that, Italy is where he needs to be. Not here in sleepy Namimori, where Tsuna's hands are tied down by this strange net of safety and silence, a purgatory that threatens to drown him with its monotony. There's nothing here to feel but this pounding headache, this gaping hole where his heart is supposed to be, and a Flame that was missing pieces of itself.

Well. Maybe a couple less pieces, but Reborn's vigilance had left no opportunities for Tsuna to sneak away. No chance to stumble his way to school to find Kyouya, to see how many questions he'd tolerate. Sending Hayato and Takeshi in his place had yielded nothing but a set of matching black eyes on their faces, just a pair of boyish smiles that they had worn at Tsuna's apology.

They don't change either.

It's a relief in the same way that it's not. It comforts him in the same way that resignation does, in how he has to look at them and think, good.

Good, they're still themselves, not yet corrupted by the versions of them that Tsuna feels anchored to. It's a small but welcomed relief amidst the news of dying mafioso, the crushing headache, the near-constant pull to Italy.

Which is to say nothing of how his body also keeps feeling disconnected with each pulse of his migraines, or how he can only find relief when his mom is around. They're details that not even Reborn is privy to, kept as footnotes to a grand revelation that Tsuna is waiting for.

Simply put: things were beginning to get complicated, and everything kinda sucked.

"I miss the days that you'd kick me out of bed," Tsuna says up at the ceiling on the fifth, boring day.

Reborn glances up from his phone, his expression flat and unimpressed. "That can be arranged."

"Don't make promises that you won't keep, Reborn."

The bed dipping with Reborn's weight had also become an increasing occurrence, particularly when his headache dialed itself up to what in the actual fuck levels of agony. Reborn would stay by Tsuna as readily as Lambo would in those moments, sitting by his head while Lambo would tuck himself into Tsuna's arms, sniffling until the pain would ebb just long enough for Tsuna to fall asleep. Now is not such a time, but Reborn comes to sit with him anyway, slapping his hand down on Tsuna's forehead.

It's nearly harmless, as far as retribution goes.

"Where's the cow?" Reborn asks.

"Mom took him on a shopping trip," Tsuna says. "He was starting to go a bit stir-crazy. I told her to call me if anything happens."

"Hm," Reborn says, tangling his fingers into Tsuna's bangs to give them a tug. "Your head's not gotten any better."

"And you're still the World's Greatest," Tsuna says. You know, if they were going to be sharing the obvious and all.

Reborn's snort is only half-scathing. "Flattery's not going to get you out of this, Loser Tsuna. You're going to the doctor's tomorrow."

Tsuna sighs. "In case you weren't aware, the only place I need to go to is Italy."

Reborn rolls his eyes. "You can barely get out of bed, idiot. How are you going to get on a plane?"

That's not true. He's overreacting.

"You're overreacting," Tsuna says, wishing he could roll his eyes. He had stopped doing that around two days ago, when his civic duty to do so had sent him on an hour-long stint of dry heaving into a bucket. Not exactly his brightest moment.

"Did I ask for your opinion?"

He asked for it more often than Reborn would like to admit, but Tsuna knows better than to point that out. So he asks with a broad gesture at Reborn's phone, "What happened?"

"Don't change the subject," Reborn says, but allows it nonetheless. "Nothing's happened. Nothing new. More deaths, and no leads. Whoever it is, they're good."

"Of course they are," Tsuna says.

The next slap isn't nearly as nice and light.

"You don't get to be proud of their work," Reborn says with a click of his tongue. "They could set off a war if they're not careful."

"Between who?" Tsuna says with a wince. "Will it involve us?"

"It might. But it won't involve you."

The sunlight breaks past the curtains to cast the room into scarlets, aging the walls with watermarks and the furniture with dust. The air feels stale with the absence of care, but that does little to muzzle the colours. They live like people, desperately and fleetingly. Tsuna had always thought the sunset to be brilliant for that reason, appreciative of how it burned like the last moments before death.

He closes his eyes, basking in Reborn's lie for as long as his conscience would let him.

"You know that's not true. If it involves my people, I should be involved. I should be the one handling it."

Because something will give. Something always gave. Too many people would be dead, too much damage would have been done and dealt, too much to take back. Too much to fix, leaving destruction as the only recourse.

Too much, too much, too much. Too much for even Tsuna, who had made a career out of keeping forward momentum through bullets and bullshit. Never learning how to pull back even when he had started outpacing Reborn, his Family, the world at large.

People had died for that mistake, dying a death that couldn't have been prevented.

He blinks. No, Boss. No, that hadn't been his fault. Nothing about that had been his fault.

"Handle it later then," Reborn says, distracting Tsuna away from how his stomach clenches. "Stop fretting. These deaths should mean nothing to you. They're doing you a favour."

"You're right. I don't really care who died," Tsuna says after a moment, and wow, what a sentence. "I mean, I guess I should. But I care more about who's killing them. They're a friend, Reborn. I don't want anything to happen to them."

"Then you'd better hope that they're as good as you think they are," Reborn says.

They're not. They're better, much better.

Thy will be done, his Family had said with their actions. Accomplishing what few people ever could. Always coming back to the one who held their leash, their rings worn willingly around their fingers. Reborn had worn his on a chain around his neck, calling it a collar without so many words.

"They are," Tsuna says. "But I still worry."

The look that Reborn wears is a nostalgic one, comforting in all of its disappointed familiarity. "A boss should know to trust his people."

It's not about trust, it's about selfishness. It's about Tsuna feeling physically sick at the idea of losing them, any of them.

But that would invite a side of disgust to go with Reborn's disappointment, and Tsuna doesn't want to argue. He wants to go to Italy, wants to fix this. He wants to make sure that they're okay. He wants to know if they're still happy in the future that he'd left them with.

He wants -- "Yeah. I know."

Disagreements aside, Reborn's right, of course. Tsuna wouldn't get far in his quest to Italy if he can't get to the doctor's office without gagging. Twice.

Small mercies of an empty stomach. He had stopped tolerating even congee last night, though he'd done his damned best to choke down more than a couple bites. The hours that he had spent curled around the toilet with Reborn's quiet vigil as company had been worth it though, worth the tiny piece of relief that his efforts had brought his mom.

He must've fallen asleep with his face on the toilet, because Reborn had appeared much larger than he should've been when he helped Tsuna back to bed, a walking heartbreak with sharp features and effortless grace. He must've been dreaming, because Reborn had been twelve again when Tsuna had been shaken awake by a longing too great to name.

"Hello Sawada-san," the doctor says in the present. The examination room is even cleaner than the waiting room, books and folders tucked neatly into their shelves.

Today brings a more thorough approach than what the doctor had managed at home, and Tsuna stays still through it all. He can't focus, there are too many things moving and shifting for his attention to remain pinned on just one thing. There's an itch beneath his skin and his chest feels cold and hollow.

An anvil would be easier to carry around. It's getting a little exhausting, feeling like this.

It's not any later than when they take a single step outside of the building that Tsuna says, "That was a waste. I don't know why you thought a regular doctor could tell us anything."

"You should always rule out what can be fixed with modern medicine before jumping to anything else, Loser Tsuna," Reborn says. "And I still haven't ruled it out."

Which meant an unnecessary trip to the pharmacy before heading back home. Ugh.

"Even when we both know that it's harmonization related?"

"We don't know that, idiot. Don't jump to conclusions."

Tsuna settles down on the sidewalk for the taxi that he trusts Reborn to have called, fielding his nausea. Decides: this isn't worth arguing about. What would he even get out of it other than a second headache to go with the first?

"Okay," he says. "Do you think it can be fixed?"

"Maybe," Reborn says after a moment. "I'm working on it."

Tsuna tilts back to angle his head up towards the sky. Towards the clouds, the sun. His body feels strangely distant, like reality itself is slipping away. A strange thing to feel when he could also feel a rock digging into his right buttcheek. "You don't usually take this long to figure something out."

"Because it's not me that it affects," Reborn says.

Ah.

"It's been a while since I had you drag me around," Tsuna says in offering, knowing that Reborn will talk when he's ready. He won't badger him. "I kinda missed it."

"Maybe you should try asking next time, Loser Tsuna," Reborn says. His shoulders are more relaxed when Tsuna glances over next, his mouth loosened into his customary smirk. "Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one."

"Yeah, well," Tsuna says, tucking his head against the shoulder of an outstretched arm. Reborn stands close enough to brush up against his knuckles. "It just didn't seem right to. We don't have a lot of time for things like this. In the future."

"But did you ask?" Reborn says again, as if it's that easy.

Maybe it is.

"No," Tsuna says, closing his eyes. "Silly me, I guess."

The pharmacy is a quiet place, quaint as most places in Namimori are. Privately run and cozy, its aisles are too narrow to be shared, leaving just enough space for Reborn to squeeze in next to Tsuna. The advantages of being small and young aren't many, but leave it to Reborn to find one to capitalize on at exactly the moment that he needs it.

Tsuna's fingers spasm against the shelf behind him, narrowly avoiding the tight display of meds. Dust makes for a slippery grip, but Tsuna's fairly certain that it's the foot that hooks itself behind his ankle that sends him sprawling to his ass, not the dust.

Reborn's lucky that Tsuna doesn't throw up on him, right then and there.

"Ow, damn it. Reborn--"

A hand slams into the wood to his right, definitely not avoiding the meds. Boxes rain lightly around Tsuna's shoulders, hitting him at the same tempo as the pounding in his head. "You'll drink it."

"No, that looks gross. Are we actually going to pay for that?"

"If you ate like a normal person, the doctor wouldn't have ordered this and we wouldn't have to pay for it, idiot."

"Yeah, because someone chooses to be nauseous. What's the point in these anyway? Weren't we waiting for Shamal?"

"I told you that you should try modern medicine before anything else. This is modern medicine."

"That's not modern medicine, it doesn't look modern at all!"

The feel of Reborn's fingers on his face, bruising and forceful around his chin is also familiar. Too familiar. It might have even been enjoyable if Reborn hadn't been trying to pour a horrifying concoction down his throat. "I wasn't asking. Either you drink it on your own or I'll have the cow hold your nose while I make you drink."

Tsuna scowls past the black spots that litter his vision. "Try it. See what happens to your suit after I throw up all over you."

"Aren't you arrogant? You really think you could hit me with your dead-last vomit?"

"Vomit can't be dead-last, that doesn't even make sense -- get that away from me."

The interrupting cough is delicate, almost sheepish. Tsuna doesn't look because he can't, his face caught firmly in Reborn's grasp, and looking past the corner of his eye would make the world spin too much. Besides, Reborn doesn't seem any tenser than before, and that's as good of a measure for danger as any.

"Sorry," Furuya Giichi says from outside of Tsuna's line of sight. "Bad time?"

Tsuna carefully lays his hand on Reborn's wrist, giving him a single tap to the underside of it. Reborn looks at him, then at Giichi. Then back at Tsuna. "Friend of yours?"

"Sort of," Tsuna says, squeezing his wrist. Reassurance and a request for acquiescence as he says, "Go pay for that and meet me outside."

"Five minutes," Reborn says after he watches Tsuna struggle to his feet. He's looking at Giichi when he adds, "Conclude your business by then."

"You keep interesting friends, Tsuna-san," Giichi says when Reborn steps away. Still within eavesdropping range, but Reborn looks all of twelve; Furuya Giichi had no reason to suspect him of being anything but. Unless he had done the smart thing and looked into the kind of company that Tsuna likes to keep, of course.

"I didn't expect to see you again so soon," Tsuna says, carefully leaning his weight against the shelves. Giichi's shirt is a light blue today. Harmless and unremarkable like Giichi pretends to be. Tsuna sympathizes.

"Well," Giichi says. He sounds wry, and he squats down to start cleaning the mess that Reborn had left behind. "It didn't seem smart to not pay my respects to the Vongola's heir."

Ah.

"Did you come to do business with the Decimo, then?" Tsuna asks. His arms go folded across his chest, loose and easy. Defenseless in how he tilts his head against the shelf, exposing his throat. His Flames spark weakly beneath his fingers, lightly singing the sleeve of his shirt.

"Not exactly," Giichi says, stacking the meds back into place. Slowly enough to be intentional. "That kid you were with--"

"He's Reborn," Tsuna says, "The World's Greatest Hitman."

Giichi raises a brow.

"It's a mafia thing," Tsuna says, because no one could explain Reborn's existence in five minutes. "We have about a minute left, Giichi-san. If you don't want to deal with Reborn, you might want to state your reasons for stalking me."

"This could hardly be called stalking," Giichi says. To his credit, he doesn't sound guilty, just amused. "But alright. The Hibari. Are they yours?"

"One of them," Tsuna says as he tells himself: don't sigh. Don't sigh. It's fine. "Did Kyouya-san do something?"

"Kyouya-san, huh?" Giichi mutters. "No, not exactly. But the Hibaris will be meeting with my dad tomorrow. We're not looking for trouble, Vongola. It's not personal. Whatever happens, I just want you to know that."

"I appreciate that," Tsuna says. Thirty seconds. "As long as you don't hurt one of ours, the Vongola won't come looking for trouble either." Until later. Until Tsuna has to kill them. "We look after our own."

Giichi's smile is strangely knowing. "That's something we can agree on, then."

Tsuna returns the smile and carefully nudges past Giichi. It's a tight fit, especially given Giichi's larger size, but to go around would be bad for form. Maintaining form was half the battle when dealing with the yakuza. The mafia, too.

"Oh, and. Please don't stalk me again. I won't stop Reborn from shooting you next time."

"Scary," Giichi says. He doesn't sound like he's joking despite the attempt at levity.

Reborn is standing next to a tall man when Tsuna makes his way outside, a man that carries his body like an athlete, with a deep and practiced understanding of all his limbs. There's a mole beneath his right eye, and an interesting scar that starts at the same ear, drawing Tsuna's attention up into the man's dark and unkempt hair. His casual dress does little to hide the gun that he keeps hidden in a holster strapped to his chest, easily seen past the edge of his coat. There's an edged quality to the look that he gives Tsuna, blatantly assessing until Reborn casually steps in-between them, and that's --

That's too much. Too much for his head to make sense of right now.

The man's mouth twitches, and he inclines his head at Reborn before stepping past them to wander into the pharmacy.

"Interesting friends you've been making," Reborn says, looking Tsuna up and down, eyes lingering at the sleeves of his shirt.

"Not mine. Kyouya-san's," Tsuna says, walking toward where their taxi is waiting, fully expecting Reborn to follow.

Reborn does, though not without aiming a kick to the ankle that he allows Tsuna to avoid. "Are they going to be a problem?"

Probably. But, "Maybe. But Kyouya-san's business is his own. He's my Cloud; he'll find me if he wants me to get involved."

Which he will, Tsuna suspects. Piovra, Lumaca, Furuya. Trust us.

He'll tell Reborn about Kyouya then. It would just be easier to explain that way.

Tsuna wakes with the taste of coffee and acid in his mouth. Someone's in bed with him, someone small and precious, and it would've been easy to fall back asleep to soft snores and muffled nuzzles if his ears could stop ringing with get up, get up, get up. He knows better than to ignore his intuition when it begins to take the shape of words.

His gait is wobbly, and Tsuna's fingers leave streaks of weakness along the walls as he works his way down the stairs. The nausea is better tonight, and he had actually managed to keep down the smoothie that his mom had made even after Reborn had force-fed him the prescribed nutrient drink. He can still feel her fingers against his forehead and her kiss at the crown of his head, warm with affection and gently grounding.

Her hand had been warm with life when he had squeezed it in thanks, and the ache in his head settles at the memory.

The world outside is a study of cool blues and tinted greens, the chilly breeze doing much to settle the fever beneath his skin. They're things that he would have enjoyed if Reborn doesn't startle badly enough that he points his gun at Tsuna's chest, his expression shifting from dangerous to thunderous.

"Go back to bed," Reborn says, lowering his gun.

Why does Reborn bother? He knows Tsuna's not going to listen, especially when Tsuna had already made the effort to follow him. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Reborn says. He's not lying, but he's not saying everything. Omission had always been Reborn's favourite tactic in deception. And deflection. "You're looking a little better tonight. Not as melodramatic."

"Melodramatic," Tsuna sighs. He looks between the front porch and the ground. On one hand, no grass stains. On the other hand, the wall of the house would make for great back support. Possibly head support when vertigo became inevitable. "It's mom. I don't know why, but she always makes me feel better."

"Nana does seem to have that effect," Reborn says, holding off just long enough to appear reluctant in joining Tsuna on the grass, back to the wall. They're almost the same height when they're seated shoulder-to-shoulder like this, with the top of Reborn's head just reaching Tsuna's eyes. It wouldn't even be that uncomfortable if Tsuna tipped sideways to rest his cheek against Reborn's shoulder; he's about eighty percent sure that Reborn would tolerate it too.

Anyway.

"Is there something I should know, Reborn?"

The answer is yes, of course. Reborn had remained distressingly vigilant at Tsuna's side all week, and if Tsuna hadn't already been accustomed to having no personal space, he wouldn't be looking to have a conversation, he'd be having a fit. It must have taken something important enough to have pulled Reborn away at an hour when Tsuna had been asleep with no other Guardian but Lambo to fill Reborn's shoes.

Sure enough, "Shamal called."

"What'd he say?"

"Nothing important," Reborn says with a snort. "But I'll be going to Italy in two days."

Setting aside the fact that Reborn was probably planning on going to Italy without Tsuna, that's -- a little concerning for some reason. Tsuna furrows his brows, drawing up his legs to press his wrists against his knees.

Shamal, Italy, Reborn, Tsuna. If Shamal called Reborn, then it was likely that his trip to Namimori had been once again postponed. Reborn would accept no answer short of the truth, no answer without an entourage of reasons and justifications. An answer that could pull him away from his role as Tsuna's second shadow suggested it to be of some magnitude, a brewing storm that kicked up enough debris and uneasiness that not even Reborn could ignore it.

Which suggested what, exactly?

Intuition throbs like a heartbeat in his head, and Tsuna sighs at the sudden obviousness of it all.

Oh. Of course.

"Did he ask or did you offer?"

Reborn glances at him by the corner of his eyes. "What are you asking, Loser Tsuna?"

"You're going to Italy to go get Shamal, right?" Tsuna says, tucking his face against an elbow. "You might as well tell me the details. I like knowing how many favours we owe someone outside the Family."

Reborn raises a brow. "We?"

Interesting word to fixate on. "Yeah, we. I'm surprised you agreed, though. You always said protection detail was beneath you."

Reborn pauses. He looks at Tsuna like he's seeing him for the first time, eyes narrowed and his mouth set. Tension sparks like static electricity between them, nipping at his nerves like teeth against skin, like a scraping bite along his collarbone. Pain doesn't do it for Tsuna, not really, but Reborn had long conditioned him to enjoy that slight ache of too much, so it's really not his fault that he almost shivers under that gaze.

Almost. If Reborn had been older in body, it might've been a sure thing.

"How did you come to that conclusion?" Reborn asks at last.

Other than how his intuition was a cheat button that Tsuna couldn't ever turn off?

"Mm," Tsuna says. He doesn't actually have an answer, nothing that would satisfy that burn of curiosity that he can hear in Reborn's voice. It had been a long time since Tsuna had to field that question; his people had learned to accept his intuition as just is, and his Reborn had only ever rolled his eyes at it. "Lucky guess?"

"A boss doesn't take lucky guesses."

"Intuition, then." Tsuna shrugs. "It doesn't feel any different to me."

"What a disgrace. Giotto must be rolling in his grave."

"Actually," Tsuna says lightly, "he's pretty happy with all I've done. He never seems to have any complaints."

"Then he's as soft-hearted as you are," Reborn says. "Now stop stalling."

Tsuna makes a low noise, a hum, that makes Reborn twitch in mild irritation. Too easy. Tsuna grins. "I figure Shamal's too smart to stand me up, much less you. If he called you, then there's no way that he wouldn't have talked about what's taking him so long."

"And the protection detail?"

"That one was actually a guess," Tsuna says. "I mean, you did confirm it pretty quick. Considering what's been happening though, something must've spooked him pretty bad." Something big enough to pull Reborn away from Tsuna and deliver him into Italy. "What was it?"

Reborn gives him a long look, a look that turns shadowed when he says, "Giulio Lumaca was found dead last night."

Tsuna takes a breath and holds it there, right against his ribs, tamponading a heart that keeps trying to escape them.

This is what he remembers about Giulio Lumaca:

Learn how to keep your dogs under control, Vongola. The words had been spoken on a snarl, shortly after the spectacular destruction of a table by Ryouhei's hand, jagged with unforgiveness. He had been a tall and imposing figure, two heads taller than Tsuna and twice as broad, bristling with fury and insult. Anger had made him appear that much larger, his body half-shielding Luca Piovra in the same way that Ryouhei had stepped in front of Tsuna.

It had appeared as easy as breathing. As desperate as taking in a large gasp of air after breaking past the precipice of drowning, in a way that Ryouhei would never learn.

He remembers the fire in the man. He remembers Flames. Not the kind that destroyed, but the kind that came from within, burning with the same characteristics as Ryouhei's. Like Reborn's. Less refined but no less pure, wholly devoted to the Sky that had stood behind him. A Sky that had met Tsuna's eyes without flinching, as natural and as polluted as Tsuna had been.

History repeats in a sick and cyclical pattern. Tsuna doesn't think anyone could appreciate that phrase as literally as he could in this moment.

"Luca is going to be upset," Tsuna says, enunciating every syllable as carefully as he can manage with a numb tongue. "Is Nono absolutely sure that none of this is falling on the Vongola? And their allies?"

"No," Reborn says. His tone is derisive; his respect for Timoteo had been waning since the Inheritance Battle and had been on a downward slope ever since. In ten years, he would only acknowledge Timoteo's death in passing, choosing instead to focus on how Tsuna had inherited the Vongola in full. Celebrating it, kissing his knuckles with a smile so wicked that it had felt illegal. "They're already pointing fingers. It's putting people on edge."

Of course they are. Tsuna has no love lost for Luca Piovra, but there's no need for love when he can taste the sympathetic grief and rage on his tongue.

He had burned down the world as they had known it for a similar offense, in fact.

"I see," Tsuna says quietly.

The wind picks at their hair with soft and ticklish fingers, and Tsuna lets it help tip him sideways to land his head against Reborn's shoulder. The shoulder stiffens beneath his weight, but it holds strong. Unmoving. It doesn't punish him for his impudence, in how Tsuna's presumptions impose themselves upon Reborn's personal space.

His Reborn had stopped pushing him away years ago, but maybe Tsuna could've started doing this earlier than even that. Food for thought.

"If I wanted to kill a Vongola boss," Tsuna says, "I'd hire you."

"People have died for saying less," Reborn says, chastising. "Did you have a point to that?"

"You wouldn't kill me. You're too invested."

Case in point: Reborn had let Tsuna lean his head against his shoulder. The irony lay in how Tsuna knew that and Reborn didn't, in how Tsuna was fully intent on taking advantage of it, safe in the preemptive knowledge that his Reborn would have allowed that too. His Reborn would've allowed almost anything for as long as Tsuna had had reasonable justification for it.

"Besides," Tsuna continues, "it was just a hypothetical."

"Don't say bullshit if you're not willing to commit to it, Loser Tsuna."

Tsuna hides his laughter in his next exhale. "Who said I wasn't going to?"

Reborn pauses. "Meaning?"

"If something happens between us and those two Famiglia, I need a guarantee that Nono will let me handle it. If he doesn't, I'm going to force his hand. No matter what it takes."

Reborn's silence is heavy with all that Tsuna leaves implied. It's heavy with more than just that, measured by the brutal and honest realization that they both knew to be true, strained by the queasy sense of fatality.

Tsuna stays relaxed against Reborn, pointed in his show of trust, his neck open and vulnerable in how it curves towards him.

The touch, when it comes, isn't particularly nice. Nails dig into the skin of Tsuna's nape, but it's the sort that would only leave bruises, not blood. It's not approval, but it's also not disapproval. It's a question.

"The killer is one of mine," Tsuna says in answer. "And I don't trust Nono to prioritize their life over trying to play nice with Luca. I won't stand for that, and a civil war during this would destroy the Vongola. I need you to make sure that he'll let me handle this, Reborn."

Reborn lets him go slowly. The shapes of his fingers linger and throb on Tsuna's skin like a promise.

"Fine," Reborn says. "I'll have a chat with him. But next time that you want a favour, you'll ask. Properly. Don't give me this ridiculous runaround."

Tsuna huffs out another laugh and closes his eyes against the nausea. "Thanks. I owe you one."

"Yes," Reborn says thoughtfully. "You do, don't you?"

Chapter Text

Twenty years into the future, Reborn will have a burner phone with a limited number of minutes with a single number programmed into it, an encrypted number that could only be dialed by pushing two then seven. It's a phone that Reborn will use just once, but it's something that he will guard as jealously as the ring that he wears on a chain around his neck.

Supposedly, anyway.

The phone that Reborn presses into Tsuna's hand now isn't the same one. The model is different. Older, clunkier. In short, Reborn got him a flip-phone.

"Wouldn't want you to get separation anxiety," Reborn says in the hours of dawn, minutes before he's to leave for the airport. "You do remember how to use a phone, don't you?"

Reborn isn't sentimental by nature. It's hard to remember that sometimes.

The phone is smooth beneath Tsuna's thumb. So new that his fingerprints stand out against the black plastic. Tsuna slides his thumb along the edges, blurring away the blemishes, and grips the phone tight.

"If you're this worried--"

"Who said I'm worried?"

"If you're this worried," Tsuna says, "You could just let me come along."

Because Tsuna, apparently, doesn't get to go to Italy. There's no argument strong enough, compelling enough, to move Reborn as he is now, to make him reconsider. He remains unmoved by the desperation that thrums beneath Tsuna's skin, because there's no way to truly explain the way in which Tsuna's throat tightens at the thought of his Guardians, close but not close enough to those that makes him feel complete.

Reborn can't understand, not until he has his gun leveled at Tsuna's head and Tsuna's fist at his throat. Not until they were surrounded by the scars that their harmonization battle had left in the landscape.

He won't know until he feels his mouth stretched around a ravenous grin, until Tsuna answers it with the grim determination of hyper mode.

Alright, Tsuna. I'm yours.

Reborn doesn't know, so he will never agree.

"We're not having this conversation again, Loser Tsuna."

"You know that I could just follow you anyway, right?"

"That would be impressive. Seeing how you can barely get out of bed."

Reborn isn't wrong. He's never wrong, the asshole.

Tsuna slumps. "About what I asked--"

"I remember," Reborn says. He straightens his tie and reaches for his fedora. Or at least, that's what Tsuna assumes; trying to make sense out of smudges and blurs of colour is getting really old. "Now go back to sleep. I'll see you in a few days."

*

It takes two days after Reborn leaves for Italy that Tsuna manages to brave the migraine to sit outside, slumped on the front step of his mother's house. A sunny day to be enjoyed in comparison to the rain that Italy was said to be expecting, and Tsuna hopes that Reborn suffers nothing but soggy socks and ruined shoes for his whole trip. Or was that too petty?

Whatever, he's allowed.

On the bright side, having Reborn be an asshole about keeping Tsuna in Japan might finally give him a chance to speak to Kyouya without the hovering, far away from prying eyes. He might even manage to get a couple answers out of Kyouya, which is -- hopeful, but.

Maybe Kyouya will bend. Maybe Tsuna will be lucky and catch him in a good mood.

The door squeaks open behind him. He really had to oil that for his mom; maybe he could do it tomorrow, his head allowing.

"Tsu-kun? There's someone asking for you," his mom says, handing him the cordless phone.

"Vongola," Furuya Giichi says when Tsuna puts the phone to his ear.

His stomach twists. Bile bites into the walls of it. The phone in his hand creaks beneath his grip, and the flip-phone in his pocket feels hot.

"I don't have a lot of time," Giichi continues. He says nothing of Tsuna's non-response. He's talking fast, his voice quiet. Too fast, too quiet. "The -- talk, the one with the Hibari, it--"

Tsuna looks up. The sun feels prickly against his skin, and Tsuna wipes miserably at the cold sweat that he feels at his chin. He looks up without knowing why until his eyes are drawn toward something yellow, inconspicuous enough in this part of Namimori that it shouldn't have been able to catch his attention through his migraine. It catches his eye twice before Tsuna notes it to be a car, standard size, make, and model. He counts three heads (all men, clean-cut) when it passes his mom's house for the third time.

Ah.

"Go back inside, mom," Tsuna says, carefully getting to his feet. His knees feel wobbly, and the wall does most of the standing while Tsuna does most of the slumping.

"My dad isn't happy with the terms," Giichi says in a rush. The static in Tsuna's ears erupts into a roar, muffling the words. "He's going to demand another meeting, and wants you there as leverage. If you leave now, you could probably--"

"Thanks for letting me know," Tsuna says, because that's all he needs to hear.

Behind him, his mom lingers. Held back, no doubt, by the tension that Tsuna hadn't been able to hide in his voice. By how he grows still at the sound of a car being parked, its doors slamming shut in the distance.

He can't do this. He can't put her in danger. He won't let her die, not over something like this.

Not again.

"I'll see you soon."

"Shit, no -- Vongola!"

Tsuna hangs up. He doesn't have time for this. His mom's still here, and there's only a few precious seconds before the men will come into view. It'll probably take them no less than ten steps. Nine steps. Eight --

"Mom," Tsuna says. He feels her flinch even when he doesn't turn to look at her. He hates using this tone with her, but they're running out of time. He holds out Reborn's phone, trusting her to know to use it if she has to. "I need you to go to TakeSushi."

"Tsu-kun?"

"You need to go," he barks. "Now, mom."

"I-- of course. Yes, of course." Her hands are shaking when she takes Reborn's phone, clammy enough that Tsuna hears it slip against the plastic. "I'll-- I'll pick up your favourites for you. Okay, Tsu-kun?"

"Thank you," Tsuna says, managing to keep his voice level. "Go. Now."

She steps past him, her steps hurried and anxious as she shuffles around the concrete fence of the house, narrowly avoiding the attention of the men that appear two seconds later. They trample at least a dozen peonies by the time that they're within arm's reach of him, their feet heavy and disrespectful. "Sawada Tsunayoshi?"

Tsuna breathes in and stands straight. He smiles. "That's me. How can I help you guys?"

*

It's a polite event, as far as kidnapping goes.

No one hits him. No one raises their voice, though they had been quite clear in their intentions when they had walked him to the car, going as far as opening and closing the door for him, discouraging any thoughts of escape. They don't even have him in handcuffs, assuming his compliance. It's almost insulting.

But expecting the likes of yakuza to be wary of a scrawny kid, no matter his pedigree, was probably expecting a bit too much. These men are from a time before the Decimo's name had become well-known in Namimori, naive fools that served an equally foolish boss, blind to what Furuya Giichi had recognized so readily.

Though that's not fair, he supposed. It's not their fault that they don't know. It is, however, to Tsuna's advantage that they stay that way.

So he rests. Quietly and timidly. He rests his head back against the car seat, his hands folded in his lap. He swallows down the nausea and closes his eyes at the agonizing throbs of his migraine.

Everything feels sharp against his senses. The men's measured conversation, their easy breathing, the smell of cigarettes that cling to their bodies -- it's too loud. Overwhelming. Needlessly detailed, but that's what the world is, when in hyper mode.

Well, half. Half-hyper mode, where there's no crown of fire to wear, just the dead calm that comes with it. No outward show of power, only clear and intuitive hits of knowledge, like how the driver enjoys using his fists to fight, his rings clinking together as both decoration and knuckles. The man in the passenger likes to use knives, and carries no less than three at a time. The man sitting with Tsuna in the backseat has a gun.

The two at the front talk quietly about Tsuna's demeanour. Voices their confusion over his role in it all. They trade speculation like currency. The man to Tsuna's right is a familiar face with a mole under his right eye and a long scar that seems to stretch well past where it starts at his ear. He keeps his eyes on Tsuna, more wary than his constituents. More aware. It automatically makes him the most dangerous of the three.

Tsuna flexes his fingers carefully. They curl on command, and he feels the tiniest spark of Flame in the circle of his fists. Nothing more than a whimper compared to what his Flames could achieve, but he still has them.

That's more than enough.

*

They bring him to Kokuyo Land. Tsuna doesn't need to look around to know, he just does. It's all there in the details, from the blur of rubble to the taste of mist in the air. Remnants of human existence persist here, years after its abandonment. He knows.

He knows, too, why one might choose this place for a meeting. A place away from Namimori, abandoned, quiet. Far away from curious eyes and far away enough from the seat of command for both sides. It's a fair place to conduct business. That they seem to stand unaware of its connection to Tsuna, to Kyouya, is an unfortunate oversight on their part.

There are two cars moving together, going in the same direction, stopping at the same place. They unload its passengers to a total of six men, not including Tsuna.

"Thank you for coming, Sawada Tsunayoshi," says one when they're all upright. He owns the features that Furuya Giichi had inherited, down to how they wear their wealth: loosely, like a statement, with a clean and lightly shaved face. His jaws are more square than Giichi's, but the rest is the same. He has confidence in spades, and he wears it like armour. Like it would protect him from murder, whether it be by gun or knife or flame.

Stupid. But that's fine; overconfidence is easy to break.

By the father are two men. Both show off their tattoos in careful, tasteful ways, letting them peak out around the drawn sleeves and open collars. None of their visible scars are prominent enough to slow them down in a fight, so Tsuna doesn't make note of them. No point.

They're all very terribly well-mannered. Experienced, as far as yakuza goes. They probably have families.

But so had Hibari Kyouya, whose father had been beaten and knifed to death in an alleyway like a dog. So had Kusakabe, the only person that Kyouya might've called a friend.

So did Tsuna, who feels every loss like a phantom ache even now, right down to the hairline fractures that hold him together.

His head hurts. The world visits him in spots of colour. Ink bleeds into his vision, souring the edges. Sunlight stings his eyes.

But his hands can still move. He's staying upright. His Flames answer when he calls to them, and they stabilize him just enough to matter. He's handled worse; everything will be fine.

"It'll be a few minutes before we give the Hibari a call," Furuya Masa says. "I'm sure they'd be open to having another meeting once I tell them of your attendance."

Ah. Maybe he would be getting his talk with Kyouya after all. Sooner than expected, even.

"Given your -- association with Hibari Kyouya, I assume you're aware of the situation?"

"No," Tsuna says. He hadn't asked, because this was supposed to be Kyouya's business. Any attempts at getting involved would've been disrespectful; Kyouya wouldn't have wanted it. He would've hated it, actually. "Kyouya-san didn't tell me anything."

"Kyouya-san, hm?" Masa says in a way that makes Tsuna's skin crawl. "Well, we're hoping that seeing your face might make your Kyouya-san a little more agreeable to our terms. Especially if you play your part."

And because it's expected of him, because Tsuna's beginning to lose all sense of care over dead men walking, he asks, "And if I don't?"

Masa smiles. It's not particularly nice. "We're hoping to conclude this peacefully, Tsunayoshi-kun. I don't want to have to talk about incentives if we don't have to."

"You sent your people to my house," Tsuna says. To his mom's house. They had scared her because of, what, exactly? To show him that they knew how to get to him? Ridiculous. "You're trying to use me. If you'd done more research, you would've known that this won't work."

People have tried to use Kyouya against Tsuna before, but Kyouya would never allow anyone to use Tsuna against him that way. He never would've put on his ring, otherwise.

"No? Well, I'd hope for your sake that it does. I mean, you have quite the beautiful mother, don't you? She might find herself on the market for a new husband if we find your cooperation lacking. As collateral, you understand."

White noise boxes him in. His hands curl into fists. Heat collects at the pit of his stomach, and the back of his throat burns with acid. There's pleasure and victory on Masa's face at whatever expression is twisting the lines of Tsuna's, and Tsuna decides: enough.

Enough.

Threatening Kyouya is one thing. Kyouya, who could bring a country to its knees with nothing more than his teeth, is one thing. Kyouya, who always smelled faintly of blood and metal, is worlds away from the delicate normalcy that defines his mom. Kyouya would find more offense at being protected than being threatened, and would sooner welcome violence than stagnancy, but his mom? Tsuna's mom, who tended to her peonies with soft fingers and an unburdened smile --

No. He won't allow it. There will be no compromising her safety. Not now, not ever.

Not again. Never again.

Tsuna's ears fill with the roar of his Flames as he ignites.

*

The world, Tsuna's found, looks a lot different in hyper mode.

It's brighter, for one. The colours are sharper in both sight and taste, and the air stings every time it brushes up against his skin. The sun is only a degree cooler than the Flames that Tsuna commands, and he can hear everything from the stuttered breathing of men and the scruff of shoes on cement. Everything is just more when he's like this, his intuition left to expand and roam, filling his head with more information than Tsuna could possibly comprehend.

Except, of course, when he wears his Flames like the inherited mantle that it is.

He breathes in. Out.

He's ready.

The first man goes down when Tsuna drops to a crouch and sweeps out his leg, his ankles caught on Tsuna's. He dies with a gurgle when Tsuna slams his elbow into his face, deep enough to crush his nose down to the back of his mouth.

Ah. That hurt. He's used too much force; he's not used to a body like this, young and full of vigour. That's fine though. Nothing's broken. He can still move.

The second man shouts something. That's all that he manages to do. Tsuna's too fast for him to draw his knife on time, and he, too, gurgles when Tsuna spin-kicks at his neck, cracking the spine. Not dead, but paralyzed for life. No longer a threat.

Good. Next.

Third and fourth go down with quick sidestepped movements to avoid the crazed swings of a knife and a baseball bat. A snap of his hand, palm to chin, leaves a man's head to swing backwards, the back of his head hitting the back of his neck. The fourth goes down on a punch, his cheekbone splintering beneath Tsuna's Flame-encased fist.

Something is bleeding. It's probably him. That's fine too; nothing hurts. He can still move.

There is a gun. The barrel slides into place on a click, and Tsuna feels the shot going off even before he hears it. He turns and brings his hands together in the diamond shape of the Zero-Point Breakthrough to infuse the bullet with Flame.

Infusing it, then sealing it in mid-air. Fire, then ice. Neutralized. The bullet falls to the ground, useless.

It's a flashy move, just shy of being unnecessary, but the man would have wasted the rest of his bullets otherwise. Tsuna had wanted to make the fifth man falter like he does, mouth falling open with disbelief.

It's as planned; laying claim to that gun had been the goal. Guns are useful, and they're a commodity in Japan, difficult to get ahold of. The man's wrist breaks between Tsuna's elbow and knee. He falls to the ground with a sharp grunt, his broken arm cradled against the rest of his body.

Tsuna won't kill this man yet. This one belongs to Furuya Giichi. He will be useful.

Now. For the father.

"Furuya Masa," Tsuna says.

Tsuna's Flames flicker when he takes a step forward. Snaps like a broken bone. His head throbs like the swan song of a heart, one loud beat to dot the exclamation mark that shatters the world around his ears.

Agony is the only word that can describe what comes next.

The world spins. It bleeds. His knees buckle, and Tsuna's --

*

On fire. He's on fire. Outside of himself, within the deepest parts of him. He's always been burning, ever since he was born. Burning bright. Burning out.

Burning away, leaving only regret in his wake. Has it always been that way?

Hey, hey, this isn't supposed to happen, is it?

Of course not, you idiot! Hurry, we have to stabilize him, or--

Memories. Images. Experiences. Snapshots. There are years upon decades that pass him by unaddressed, flickering behind the moving darkness of his eyes. Laughter, pain. Anguish, affection. It's all there, blended together to create an exquisitely nostalgic beat, filling his ears with a crescendo of noise that he wouldn't mind listening to the end of his days.

That he is listening to, near the end of it all.

Did you call him yet? I told him not to wander far!

Stop your yelling, he's on his way.

Don't tell me not to yell, don't you see what's happening? We're losing him!

Apologies linger. Longing tastes sour. Remorse stings, like needles (like a bullet). Passion roars with emotion that surges up as a cacophony of amputated parts and missed opportunities. Only if, what if. If he'd only made a different choice then, if he'd only been aware of the consequences sooner. If only, if only.

If only.

And yet, regret is transient. It slips through his fingers like threads of water, cool and forgiving. He burns, but doesn't burn enough to ignite past the surface of the lake that takes its place within him, calm and serene and endless. Absolute. Infinite, and impossible to invalidate.

There's no take-backs in this.

A hand slips itself over his eyes. Warm, large. Callused, familiar. A touch that he yearns for.

"No," they say. "Not yet. Did you really think that I'd let you go? Stop underestimating me, Loser Tsuna."

And Tsuna's --

*

Awake.

He's awake.

He blinks awake to an ache in his elbow. Split knuckles, stiff fingers, discoloured arms. His whole left side stings with dusted burns, dotting and peeling the skin where his Flames had burned the hottest. Too hot. Had they always hurt him? He can't remember. (Who cares, really?)

The smell of burnt rubber is distracting, but he doesn't have to look any further than his shoes to know why. Most of the blood under his nails isn't his.

He runs a tongue along his teeth. There's blood in his mouth, and that's his. That's comforting.

It's comforting to be reminded that he's still human enough to bleed.

Tsuna carefully wipes his mouth against his shoulder, trying to blink away the sting of sweat from his eyes. Things are starting to look a little fuzzy at the edges, and he's pretty sure that he's supposed to be hurting right now, but -- adrenaline, and all. Other than his head, nothing hurt, at least for the moment. Silver linings.

He sits up. Around him are the bodies of nameless men and the body of one named man. Three out of the six are alive. The numbers could've gone slanted in favour of the dead if his Flames hadn't sputtered to nothing, extinguished by the headache that feels like an anvil against his consciousness.

Tsuna braces an arm against a drawn knee. His head feels heavy when he lets it hang, and his exhale is wet and slow. His stomach is blissfully empty, clenching around nothing but bile as the nausea ebbs.

"You're a real handful, Vongola," Ken complains from his right. "What kind of boss are you, huh? Did you just walk into this like you walked into Mukuro's trap?"

"Chrome will worry," Chikusa adds quietly with the force of a sledgehammer.

"You owe us big for this," Ken continues. Complaining for the sake of complaining, fighting back the silence with nothing more than his half-feigned disgruntlement and thinly veiled worry. Not for Tsuna, but for how Chrome might react when she sees Tsuna with enough burns and bruises to fill a potato sack. "Not only do you barge into our territory, but you bring more assholes with you? And you basically turned out to be useless! Don't you have five other Guardians? What about that fucking tutor of yours?"

"Sorry," Tsuna says. His throat feels scratchy. He can't get this blood out from under his nails, and he really needs to find a place to clean up before he goes back home. Where could he even go for that? (He's lying, he knows exactly where to go for that.) His mom --

His mom. Did she make it to TakeSushi okay? Did she call Reborn? Was she safe?

"You'd better be," Ken huffs. "How'd you even get caught like this, huh? Aren't you some big name boss now?"

"Where's Chrome?" Tsuna asks instead, getting to his feet. That was more important than trying to explain the series of misfortunes that had ultimately brought him here.

"Not here," Chikusa says, which is -- interesting. Both his answer, and the ambiguity of it.

But before Tsuna can ask further, Furuya Masa groans against the dirt.

Ah. Right.

Masa is the only one that Tsuna hadn't hit, left to the tender mercies of Ken and Chikusa's timely intervention. He wonders if the man is Sun-natured; they're always so sturdy. Ryouhei had been nay-indestructible before Tsuna had made him promise to stop killing himself, to only use his activation if his life was in imminent danger.

It had made for some interesting contrasts between him and Reborn. Ryouhei had wanted to save everyone. Reborn couldn't have been bothered to save anyone.

Except Tsuna, of course. Tsuna was always the exception.

Tsuna scrubs at an eye against a shoulder and squats down, bringing himself down to where Masa could hear him comfortably. His shoes scuff against the cracked concrete, and this close, the smell of burnt sneakers is overpowering.

"I told you that this wouldn't work," Tsuna says quietly.

The man rolls to stare up at him. Or maybe he's looking at the sky. It's hard to tell. "You. Do you realize what you've done?"

"Yeah," Tsuna says. "But whatever happens, the Vongola and the Hibari will survive it. What happens to your Group will depend on your son's decisions."

"My son," Masa rasps, "will bring you and the rest of you foreign scum to your knees."

Tsuna looks at the man with the broken arm, the way in which he braces it against his body. All lines of violence have bled out of him, seeping into the dirt alongside the rest of his brethren. He isn't submitting, but he's smart enough to know the futility of resistance.

Tsuna thinks of Furuya Giichi and the men that had stood behind him. The people that Giichi had stopped before they could throw themselves onto the blade of Tsuna's judgement like his father. It's curious to see this man sitting here with the father rather than the son, but Tsuna knows that things will be better if he lets this man live.

Masa, though. Masa can't live. Tsuna knows this game; he's played it before.

"I don't think you know your son as well as you think you do," Tsuna says. He stands, and adjusts the gun that he had swiped from the ground. The barrel slides easily beneath his palm, falling into place with a click. "But if he tries, then we'll deal with him too."

"Hey," Ken says from behind them. He sounds odd. Nervous, maybe.

Tsuna doesn't turn to look at him, instead leveling the gun at Masa's head. His hand is steady. There's a roar in his ears that sounds awfully like his heartbeat, the sharp intake of breath.

He can't let this man live. He can't let any of them live, save one, not when they had made this personal. To back away now would expose the Vongola's weakness, and the Hibari's by association.

He can't let them leave, not when they had come after him first. Not when they threatened his mom, to use her suffering for their own ends. They still might.

He can't make the same mistake again. He won't.

It has to be done.

"Hey! Hey, Vongola, just--"

Two pulls, and -- it's effortless. It always is.

Tsuna turns away with a lump in his throat and his heartbeat falls to a low hum. Safety back on, Tsuna wedges the gun between his spine and the waistband of his pants. Three bullets left; he won't need them, but it's still better to have than not. Better than having nothing.

The world keeps blinking in and out of focus, his thighs are trembling and his knees keep locking, and the nausea is a constant weight in his stomach. It hurts to blink.

He's tired. He wants to see Chrome. He has questions for Kyouya.

He needs to call Reborn.

"Thank you," Tsuna tells Ken and Chikusa. His tongue feels swollen, heavy. He coughs, clearing his throat. "If you hadn't stepped in--" If they hadn't taken down Masa when Tsuna had faltered, this might've gone very differently. "Um. Thanks."

Ken spits and turns away. His hands are shoved deep into his pockets. There's an ugly sheen of green along his cheeks, and he growls words that he doesn't intend to be understood. Tsuna allows him the privacy and looks to Chikusa instead, who had apparently bitten through his lower lip. He's tonguing at the blood, and the red makes quite the contrast against the pallor of Chikusa's skin.

Beneath the heaviness, his Flames flicker, and Tsuna breathes in ashes and resolution. His forehead feels warm with phantom pains. He flexes his fist to remind himself that he's still here.

Still awake, still alive. Still hurting, still human.

Still here, even when he should be dead.

"Can either of you drive?" Tsuna asks after a moment. He could, but the world feels like it's pulsing, its colours bleeding out past the boundaries put there by reality. To drive in this state would be irresponsible of him. "There's someone I have to go see."

*

The ride back is stilted and awkward.

Tsuna doesn't push for conversation that he doesn't actually want, resting his elbow against the arm rest as he watches Namimori take shape with every mile covered. It hurts to rest his chin against his palm like this, especially with how his fingers keep brushing up against a million micro-cuts and gigantic bruises, but it's better than the alternative. There's a twinge to his knee that feels brutally familiar.

His wounds aren't severe in the sense that they would linger, but he still wishes he didn't look quite so much like a murder scene. Five minutes at a bathroom is all that Tsuna would've needed to clean off the dried blood, but Chikusa had been driving uncomfortably fast and Ken still hasn't looked at him, so Tsuna doesn't mention it. It's probably not worth it.

It's fine. Everything's fine. Everything will be fine. He could have been dead like Furuya Masa and his men, save one. He could've been the one left on the concrete, broken and bleeding.

Next to him, the man with the broken arm sleeps. Knocked unconscious by the butt end of his own gun. The irony had been worth the effort.

The glass is cool when Tsuna leans his forehead against it. It helps soothe the cut courtesy of a wayward piece of glass, though it does little for the ringing that continues to linger. His legs feel better for no other reason than that he's off his feet. His mouth still tastes of blood.

That's okay, though. He'll live.

"Chrome said," Chikusa says. He's the first to speak since he started driving, the first voice to break past the low hum of the car. "She said -- that you'd be different when we saw you next."

"Fucking Chrome," Ken mutters.

Chikusa continues, "She said that we shouldn't judge you. She asked us to protect you above all else."

Tsuna closes his eyes. Dread is a heavy drag against his lashes, as sticky as the mist that continues to cling to them. The knuckles of his left hand tug and sting when he pulls his fingers into a fist. "Chrome's not in Japan, is she?"

"No," Chikusa says after a moment. "She left for Italy about a week ago."

Surprise would've been a kinder thing to feel. Okay. "Then, about the bodies--"

"We got it," Ken says. "You think this is our first rodeo with cleaning after you mafia fuckers? Fuck right off, Vongola."

They aren't doing it for him. Even in the future, these two had never been Tsuna's, not really. Perhaps they had belonged to him by proxy, their loyalties decisively belonging to his two Mist Guardians, but Tsuna had never considered them to be Family. Not in the way that would allow him to offer protection without insulting them.

They aren't doing this for him. Tsuna still feels like he should apologize.

"Thank you," Tsuna says instead.

*

They take him back to the rundown building with the creaky stool, the walls that wear the colour of poorly aged wine. It's by his request that they're here, at this abandoned house that looks so out of place in a town like Namimori, a town that liked to pretend at normalcy. A visible reminder that violence and treachery could exist anywhere, even here.

Tsuna can feel his feet dig into the cement with every step, and he feels every pound of weight that he carries on his bones. Ken and Chikusa don't fight him when Tsuna requests privacy, proudly disengaged with Tsuna's business.

He appreciates it.

Furuya Giichi is sitting on that creaky stool, his back to the door. His shoulders are slumped, and his spine is curved out, exposing the back of his neck. Bold in his show of vulnerability.

There are only two other people here with them, both wearing familiar faces: Giichi's bruiser, and the man that Giichi had called Kono. They're insignificant to Tsuna, but they must mean something to Giichi if they're here as witnesses.

Tsuna makes note of them. Their knives, too.

"Thank you," Tsuna says. "For trying to warn me. You didn't have to."

Giichi turns on the stool, his hands resting easy on his thighs. He's smiling, but that doesn't mean much when his eyes look that red and the tip of his nose looks a little raw for the wear. "It didn't change anything, did it?"

"No," Tsuna says, stepping into the house proper. The gun is a cold shape against his spine.

"And -- his people? The people that he took with him?"

"They're dead too," Tsuna says quietly. Well, most of them.

Giichi draws in a sharp breath. "How did he -- how did you kill him?"

"Two shots to the head. I tried to make it quick." He feels hollow. He thinks he should feel sorry, but, "You said it wouldn't be personal, Giichi-san. Your dad made it personal."

And the Vongola always took care of their own.

"My dad. Right." Giichi clenches his jaw. It looks painful. "You know I tried to tell him. About you."

Of course he did. "I wish he'd listened."

"Hah. Yeah, me too." Giichi's smile turns harrowed. Like the blunt edge of a knife. Edged with regret, but not in the ways that might be expected out of a man that had just lost his father. But then, Tsuna hadn't cried over Iemitsu either. "I kept trying to tell myself -- it would've happened sooner or later. That he was going to get all of us killed over his stupid prejudices. And when we became too much of a liability to you--"

They would've died. Tsuna would've killed them, and Tsuna --

Tsuna can't refute that. Not when he had decided that very thing upon meeting Furuya Giichi. Not when he had borne witness to how Furuya Masa's pride had taken priority over self-preservation, over the preservation of his Group's existence. They had abandoned their chances at survival for a chance at reclaiming their pride, killing Kyouya's father and Kusakabe for such petty reasons. They had threatened his mom again (again? No, Boss. No, this should be the first time), and Tsuna had responded in the only way that had made sense.

But Giichi isn't his father. He had let Tsuna's people go without a fuss. He hadn't come after them. He'd even tried to warn Tsuna, had tried to save his father despite knowing the futility of it.

Even still, Giichi is only human. So Tsuna's not surprised when Giichi continues, "But I doubt I could ever forgive you, Vongola."

History and its many inevitabilities weigh heavily on Tsuna's limbs. "I know."

"But the Furuya won't come looking for revenge. Not by my order," Giichi says, blinking hard and fast at the ground. His hands are fists over his thighs, knuckles bleached white. "I won't throw away the lives of my people for something like that. You said you looked after your own. I just want a chance to look after mine too."

Tsuna slips his own hands into his pockets. Relaxes his posture. "Where does that leave us then, Giichi-san?"

"I always planned on expanding the family business to Tokyo. I guess we can make that move a little sooner than expected," Giichi says. "Namimori has always felt a bit too small for my tastes."

"Not everyone will be happy," Tsuna warns him. His voice sounds distant, buried beneath layers of dirt and experience. "You know that, right? Especially your dad's people. You're going to have to work hard to keep them off my Family."

"I'm aware." Grief is what outlines Giichi's expression when he looks up. A show of mourning that Tsuna thinks that he might see on his own face if someone had somehow managed to kill Reborn rather than Iemitsu. "But you can't honestly expect me to keep them all off your back, can you?"

Tsuna studies him for a moment, then turns his back to the third boss of the Furuya Group. "Let's talk outside."

Outside, where Ken and Chikusa are waiting with the car, quietly stewing in their discomfort with the only man that Tsuna had thought to spare.

"This person," Tsuna says. "He's yours, right?"

"Ryou-san," Giichi chokes out on cue when the man is carefully dragged out. He rushed forward to catch the man against his own body, tucking his head against the man's temple. He looks up at Tsuna with wide eyes, watching him as though he was seeing something impossible. There's a layer of wetness to his gaze that wears more gratitude than Tsuna deserves.

Tsuna looks away and rests his hand against the car door. "I'm just asking you to try, Giichi-san. Keep your people away from mine. Don't give me a reason to kill anyone else."

This is not mercy. This is pragmatism. Death only begot more death, breeding anger and sadness and grief that anyone could weaponize against his Family. Revenge was cyclical, and keeping his people safe had always been Tsuna's greatest goal.

His people, his responsibility. Tsuna would protect them to his dying breath, but --

"Thank you," Giichi whispers. "Thank you."

But if there was a way to keep this conflict to a bodycount of five, then Tsuna had no reason not to. History had already changed. There is no reason not to try.

Chapter Text

The Hibari estate is a looming presence of a thing, a property that feels alive for all the character that it boasts. Designed by tradition and maintained by culture, its walls impose their height over any that approached, beautifully managed despite their obvious age. There are dragons adorning the rooftops, acting as great guardians of the family that had called this place their home for generations.

It's all very scenic, almost artistic. White walls, purple roofs. Hints of green from the trees that tower over the buildings. The faint sound of water, trickling in from the distance. It doesn't feel like coming home when Tsuna steps away from the car, but it's close enough.

Though, he supposed, that might have more to do with the person standing at the gates than the estate itself.

When his heart beats next, it's not so much a beat as it's a punch to the chest. The sputtering mess of his Flames expands colour into the tips of his fingers, and when Tsuna opens his eyes again, the day smells fresh. Painless. His body feels like his body again, with nothing flickering out of place.

The ever constant ache in his head eases, the tides receding. Not enough to stop the world from throbbing, to stop its boundaries from closing in, but Tsuna finds that he can stay standing nonetheless.

Ken and Chikusa don't bid him goodbye when they leave. Tsuna doesn't bother offering one either. He'll see them again, whether they want to or not.

Kyouya leans away from the door after their departure, unfolding like some great tragedy. His steps are soundless and graceful when he stalks forward, every bit the predator that he prides himself to be. A hunting falcon that cuts through the air with his dive, his fingers like talons when they find themselves along Tsuna's jaw.

And together, they inhale. Synchronized and whole.

If Tsuna had any doubts about who this person was before, he loses them now. There's no mistaking the Flames that he feels lurking beneath the surface of that touch, airy and dense at the same time. Cold as the condensation that sits in the sky, and just as incorporeal. But it's real, and they reach for Tsuna, snapping into place as it makes itself at home within the vastness of Tsuna's Sky, stabilizing him.

Tsuna's vision blurs. His knees almost buckle. He feels drunk on the purity of Kyouya's Flames, drawn to them as easily as he had been drawn to Lambo's.

This Cloud is already tested. This one is his, from now unto death.

"Kyouya-san," Tsuna says. Or so goes the attempt; his voice cracks midway, a little hoarse, and it would've been embarrassing if Tsuna had any dignity worth sparing. "It's good to see you."

Sentiment safely delivered, Tsuna passes out.

*

Sometime in his twenties, Tsuna had decided to condense all that he could do during his college-appropriate years into one, hectic month. He'd picked out a band to obsess over, a hobby to pursue, dated a man for a week, played at being in love with a woman for two, and collected a sticker set that had somehow amassed a value into the thousands by the time that he was thirty.

And on the second-last day of that week, freshly single and high on the feeling of being normal, he had pushed concert tickets into Reborn's chest and told him, come with me.

The lights that burst and burn behind his eyelids now are not unlike the lights that he had seen then, bright and sharp and painful. It scrapes at the edge of his consciousness, filling his ears with an insistent buzz. The noise that bruises the space around his ears is reminiscent of the bass that had pounded the concert grounds, of how he had been but one of many faceless strangers that night.

There's something draped over his eyes when Tsuna reaches up to touch his face, adding a layer of artificial darkness to his vision. Every movement makes his body ache, and his fingers feel scratchy and tight, wrapped in what feels like freshly applied gauze. Actually, his entire left arm feels that way; his whole body feels that way, not unlike how it feels on those weird days that Haru managed to trap him in her infirmary.

Pushing that something away lets him blink up at a ceiling that he recognizes. For him to be able to sit up to stare into a room that he remembers. It's a small place, small but cozy, its walls decorated in deceptively comforting colours, with a small, high window to coax in some natural light.

It's a place he knows well; this is where Kyouya liked to be when he wanted nothing to do with the world at large, when people got too loud for his liking. A fortress made of wood and paper, with only a kotatsu and two sitting cushions to give it character.

It's a place that should be in no way offensive to the senses, but somehow, it is. To Tsuna's, it is. To Tsuna's, which had been waging war against the persistent vertigo and crippling nausea since the day has started, it's almost too much.

He's not sure what gives him away, but it's not soon after Tsuna's stomach gives its third lurch that someone says, "Tsunayoshi."

"Kyouya-san," Tsuna returns. He presses the back of his non-bandaged hand against an eye. It does little for the persistent rattling in his head since Furuya Masa had stared up at him from the cement, but -- better than nothing. "How long was I out?"

"Three hours."

Ah. Well, given how his head had been feeling before his impromptu nap, that wasn't as bad as it could've been.

"Sorry about that. And thank you, for doing this," Tsuna asks, lifting his bandaged wrist. Kyouya would have never allowed anyone else to touch Tsuna while Tsuna was unconscious.

There's a rustle of movement instead of an answer, and a touch to his chin. It's a light touch, a light grip, and Tsuna blinks past the spots of black to watch Kyouya stare him down, tracking the trajectory of Tsuna's wounds with his eyes. Taking stock, no doubt, of the hurts that he'll deal twofold upon the next person to cross his path. Tallying up the blows that he would need to return to the ones that had dealt them first.

Tsuna lets him.

Because it helps. The familiar melody of Kyouya's Flames is a balm against Tsuna's senses, untangling the cacophony of agony that pounds at Tsuna's skull. It soothes as Lambo's had soothed, and by all accounts, it's probably the best that Tsuna's felt in days. At the very least, he finds that he can roll his head against Kyouya's grip without wanting to empty both intestines, so. Yeah.

It helps.

Tsuna smiles, shaky with relief. Wobbly with more emotion that he could ever name.

"I should bite you for your incompetence," Kyouya says, speaking at last. His voice is low and irritated, and -- that's comforting. An irritated Kyouya is a healthy Kyouya. "Who?"

"Not even a hello, Kyouya-san?" Tsuna says, wry and impossibly fond.

Kyouya narrows his eyes.

Ah. Not in the mood to tolerate small talk. Got it. Tsuna must look worse than he feels.

"It's okay," he says. "I'm okay. I took care of it."

"No." Kyouya's jaws are set in a line so tight that Tsuna wants to reach up and touch it. He doesn't, of course; to do so while Kyouya was in this mood would be just asking for it. "You were sloppy."

"Yeah," Tsuna says quietly. "They said that you tried to strike a deal?"

Which isn't like Kyouya. At all. Striking deals, talking it out, attempting compromise -- that's always been Tsuna's thing, never Kyouya's. Hell, only Hayato had been surprisingly decent at diplomacy while Takeshi sucked at it, Lambo and Ryouhei were best kept far away from attempting it, and Chrome only ever used mind control to get her way. Mukuro had stopped trying even that years ago.

Kyouya had never tried, period. Before now.

"Their fealty for their lives," Kyouya says. In summary of their supposed 'talks', which.

No wonder Masa had been mad.

Tsuna sighs. "You really should've come to me."

"You weren't meant to be involved."

"I know," Tsuna says, because that's not a lie. That much had been obvious. "What I don't understand is why you bothered with the talks at all. That's not like you."

Kyouya tilts his head. Feline, but also still very much a bird of prey. Dangerous. Assessing.

"I owed a favour," he says after a moment, saying so much while saying nothing at all, because there's only two people that Kyouya would think worthy of reciprocation, and Tsuna had been dead for weeks. "If I hadn't, I would've bitten them all to death."

If he hadn't, Kyouya would've beaten half of the Furuya to death within a day and show off the bodies. He had been asked not to, and he had complied.

Setting aside the curiosity of what Reborn had done for Kyouya that merited so big of a favour, the question still remained as to why. Why bother?

"If you had," Tsuna says slowly. Thinking out loud, really. Working it out, following the line of Reborn's logic. "You would've taken out their main body. Probably even a big majority of their people. But even you wouldn't have been able to kill all of them. Some of them would've made it out."

And then Tsuna would've gotten involved anyway. He killed five men with old tattoos and unwavering loyalties today, might've had to kill the same five regardless. Men that had likely had families, just like Kyouya. Like Tsuna.

But how many had Tsuna killed, the first time around? When he had brought down his version of justice upon the Furuya's heads? How many weeks of violence, how many dead in the streets? Namimori had known no trauma of that magnitude since its inception, had never suffered such an ordeal since.

How many would have Tsuna killed again if the Furuya had descended upon his Family, fueled by fury and a want for revenge, if Kyouya had been allowed to do as he wished?

Five deaths, instead of dozens. Instead of twenty, fifty. Hundreds, if counting the number of people impacted.

But if the talks had gone well, there would have been none. If they had gone poorly, as they had, and Tsuna had to get involved, as he had, Tsuna would've taken care of it. It's a plan that makes sense.

It's a plan that Tsuna, himself, would've made, contingencies and all.

If you want to protect your people, then learn, Tsuna. Learn, and plan for the worst. Never hope for the best.

Watch. Learn. Plan. Reborn had always been direct in his lessons.

"Regardless of the plan, you still burned," Kyouya says, a touch waspish. "Over those bottom feeders."

"But at least I only had to burn once," Tsuna points out.

Kyouya gives him a baleful look.

Tsuna smiles despite himself, despite how it feels on his face. He feels like he's floating, his body liberated from all the tension that he had been carrying along his shoulders. "Thank you. You didn't have to accept the terms, but you did. So, thank you."

Neither Kyouya nor Reborn had had to do this. They didn't have to minimize death and damage. It hadn't even been the most efficient way to do things. Dead men posed no threat, offered no uncertainties of future loyalties. They had no reason to spare anyone, except for the one.

"Always so sentimental," Kyouya sneers.

"I'll be sure to tell Reborn that you said that."

Kyouya dismisses the teasing with a flick of a hand. It's really not fair how graceful he can be, even when he's telling Tsuna to shut up without so many words.

It makes Tsuna want to laugh. He can't, obviously, because it would hurt his head to laugh, and Kyouya wouldn't take well to it. Tsuna might actually stay dead if he took a tonfa to the head right now.

"Though I wonder," Tsuna says lightly, "why you bothered to send me back if all you wanted was to keep me out of the way."

"It was necessary."

"You know that doesn't tell me anything."

"Because that doesn't matter." Kyouya stares back when Tsuna lifts his eyes, unerring and noble as he always is, wielding the truth with brutal precision. "Those answers don't matter. We're already here."

Because the deed had already been done, he's saying. Already committed. Permission given now was as worthless as any protest. They hadn't sought Tsuna's approval for a reason.

What Tsuna hears is this: this is what you are owed. For what he had done to the world, how he had acted on the assumption that acceptance and forgiveness were fair things to sacrifice in exchange for change.

Tsuna's smile feels heavy and uncomfortable in his gut, rolling with sentiment that he doesn't know how to digest.

"Yeah," Tsuna murmurs, drained. "I guess you're right."

Once, when Tsuna had actually been sixteen, digging his heels and protesting his ascension as boss had affected no one but his immediate circle. The price of Tsuna's inaction had gotten progressively more expensive since then, and at thirty-six, the price would be nothing short of weeks of violence and dozens of corpses. Possibly even the death of those that he loved.

It's a cost that Tsuna knows that he can't pay. A cost that he won't pay, not ever.

It's why he had sent Reborn off with that request. It's why he had killed five men and spared one, why he had to go to Italy. There would've been no point to setting those stones in place otherwise.

History had already changed. He might as well change it as he'd like it to be.

"Okay," Tsuna says, taking a breath in. "I know that Chrome's here. Anyone else?"

"That man. Your other jackal," Kyouya says after a moment. "He's with Dokuro Chrome in Italy."

"Do you have a way of contacting them?"

Kyouya's looking at him, unwavering and unblinking, as Tsuna stares out at a world that was coming into sharp focus past the muddied colours of his migraine. There's no frown, no furrow between his brows, no creases to read around his lips. His pupils are invisible against his irises, and his gaze feel like iron on Tsuna's skin.

If Reborn dealt his moods in subtext, Kyouya dealt his in the absence of them. No annoyance, no impatience, no tactile show of displeasure is as good as Tsuna could expect. More to the point, Kyouya's not disagreeing with what Tsuna's implying. He's just waiting for a push. A show of teeth.

"Kyouya-san," Tsuna says, meeting his gaze. Says, this is me, baring my fangs. Kyouya won't heel, but when Tsuna was as serious as he is now, he bends. He's gotten better at it with every year that they spent together, the way eased by harmonization.

"I will speak to her," Kyouya says at last.

"Thank you," Tsuna says for the third time. He reminds himself: he's done this before. Things will be fine. "And while you do that, I have some people that I need to talk to."

*

First thing's first.

"TakeSushi," Tsuna tells Kusakabe. "I need you to make sure my mom is there, and that she's safe. Then I need you to find Gokudera Hayato and Yamamoto Takeshi and bring them here."

Kusakabe pulls his ever-present toothpick from his mouth and looks at Kyouya. For confirmation, most likely.

"I would go," Tsuna says, half-apologetic. "But Kyouya-san won't let me."

Kyouya ignores the teasing in the haughty sort of way that makes Tsuna grin despite himself. He still can't laugh, and he doesn't dare roll his eyes. He knows why he can't go, besides.

He knows, and he knows that Kyouya knows too.

Kusakabe gives Tsuna a consolatory pat on the shoulder with renewed understanding. "Got it. Then keep Kyo-san company for me, will you? He's been crabby since you stopped coming to school."

"Lying is a punishable offense," Kyouya says blandly.

And because Tsuna can't pass up on a chance to rib Hibari Kyouya, he tells Kusakabe, "Which means you're in the clear."

Kusakabe looks at Kyouya, presumably at how Kyouya is scowling without making moves to bite Tsuna to death, then back at Tsuna. He shakes his head. "I'll go out on a limb and assume that it's probably best if I don't ask."

Smart man, Kusakabe. Too smart for the likes of the mafia, but he's been Kyouya's since elementary school, and some decisions stayed with you for life. Or, in this case, defined your life.

Tsuna sympathizes. He's been Reborn's since middle school.

"Probably," Tsuna agrees.

*

Next is a conversation that he doesn't actually want to have, but knows the necessity of. Not unlike many other aspects of being a boss, really.

"Dad," Tsuna says when the call connects.

There's exactly two seconds of pause. Tsuna knows, because he counts. It stings in an old and familiar way; he had expected Iemitsu to be silent for at least four. One second for every emotion that he had ever felt for Tsuna, but there's only half of that before he decides to settle on, "Tsuna-fish? How did you get this number?"

The actual answer: Basil told him. Not in this timeline, but in Tsuna's. Neither of them could tell the other as to why Basil had scribbled the number onto the back of Tsuna's hand in a glittery gold sharpie one year, but Tsuna remembers the number, had stared at it long enough to burn it into memory. It had been the last thing that Basil had ever done for him, offering the gift of his counsel and company before Tsuna had failed him.

That the number was valid now is a bit of a problem. A mistake that he'll be rectifying, among many others, once the boss' mantle was back to being his.

The only answer that matters: it doesn't actually matter how he got Iemitsu's number, how he had called Basil and how Basil had given it to him. Iemitsu wouldn't care for those particular details, at least not over the one that Tsuna offers in his next breath.

"The last time that I called you Papa was probably kindergarten? Some kids made fun of me for it, so I stopped," he says. "I used to own a stuffed elephant. It caught fire when I started grade school. You came to see me with Nono after that."

Iemitsu exhales through his nose, loud and explosive. Still disbelieving, but now for different reasons than questions of Tsuna's identity. "Tsuna-fish. It really is you! Papa's so happy to hear from you! What's new? Tell Papa everything!"

God. He's way too tired for this. "I need you to do something for me, dad."

Iemitsu falters, but only by half a beat. Barely noticeable, but enough to count. "What kind of 'something'?"

"I need someone to watch mom, just until I get back." Someone that was strong enough to deter any bad ideas, someone that the Vongola could lose without even the younger Tsuna crying over them. The list of people that fit those criteria was both unfortunately and blissfully small. "Can you do that for me?"

The silence is heavy with all that Tsuna doesn't say, all that he leaves implied, and he lets Iemitsu have the moment unharassed. "What kind of trouble did you get into now, Tsuna-fish?

Personally, Tsuna thinks, he would have asked for a name. Protection implied an aggressor, and there are few things as valuable as knowing exactly who the aggressor is. He would've kept it a direct question rather than an open one, because there's no need to play softball when Tsuna had already set the stakes as high as protecting his mom's life.

It's strange to feel so viciously vindicated alongside his disappointment, to feel vindicated by the disappointment, but Tsuna's feelings toward Iemitsu had always been a little complicated.

"This and that. Can you do it or not?"

Iemitsu laughs. The loud and annoying one that was so obviously a stalling tactic. "It is a bit short notice, but if it's for Mama, I'm sure I can make it work! Let me ask around for some--"

"No," Tsuna says mildly. Quietly. Controlled in the same way that he would be when driving a fist through someone's chest. "I want you to do it."

This time, Iemitsu is the one that loads the silence. With his own share of annoyance and disappointment, emotions that he would've known better than to point at a Vongola Boss if he would only allow himself to recognize the steel in Tsuna's voice. "You know better than to ask that."

Tsuna leans against the wall by the phone, lifting his gaze when Kyouya appears to his right, lightly dressed and barefooted. Ah, Kusakabe must be back.

Time to wrap this up.

"I was being polite. I wasn't actually asking."

"In case you forgot, I don't answer to the Tenth, kid."

"Yeah? Then expect a call from the Ninth in fifteen minutes."

"Is that how we're playing now?" Iemitsu asks, his voice sucked dry of his usual humour. "Are you sure you want to play this game, Tsuna?"

"No games. This is how the mafia is, isn't it? You made me the boss. Your boss. Or maybe not, if you feel that the Vongola is no longer your place to be."

And he lets that sit, lets that threat take hold and fester. Sawada Iemitsu had the fatal affliction of valuing his life as a mafia-made man over anything self-made. It makes him predictable, because it leaves him with no answer but the one that he eventually bites out.

"I can be there in two days."

"Make it one."

"Hah!" Iemitsu says. "I don't know if I like what's happened to you, Tsuna-fish."

Tsuna looks to Kyouya, at how serenely he stands at Tsuna's side, casual but refined in how he keeps Tsuna's company, invested but not curious. Interested, but not enough to pry. It's exactly what Tsuna needs, and Tsuna wonders if that's intentional, if one of them had volunteered Kyouya for this role precisely for that reason.

He looks away.

"Should've thought twice about letting Nono send me Reborn, then."

"Oh, don't worry," Iemitsu says with a barking laugh. "I'll be having words with him too."

"Mm, let me know how that goes. Wear your Kevlar."

*

The room that Kyouya leads them to is well-lit and beautiful, decorated lightly with another kotatsu and several tatami chairs. There's another sliding door on the opposite wall from where Tsuna steps in, opened just enough to allow for sunlight, to tease at the gardens that lay beyond it.

It's a room that's deceptively relaxing and breezy, peaceful in design, but Hayato is giving him a wide-eyed stare and Takeshi was giving him a narrow-eyed one, and no amount of ambient wallpaper could help undo tension like that.

Tsuna gives them a couple seconds, letting them take him in undisturbed, blinking slow and relaxed until Hayato inhales sharply and Takeshi moves in a blur, already stepping forward to make his way toward Tsuna.

Smiling stretches the cuts on Tsuna's face in vaguely uncomfortable ways, but it's worth it. "Hey."

"Tsuna." Takeshi's voice sounds strange. Small. Eerie in how it lacks humour, thready with emotion. He says Tsuna's name like a prayer, and Tsuna feels his throat closing up in sympathy.

"Tenth," Hayato says. His voice is rougher, barbed with anger. There's a tremble to his fingers when he grabs Tsuna's upper arms, clumsy and disoriented but still gentle. Always so gentle. "Shit. Those -- fucking shits. Tenth."

Tsuna catches both of Hayato's wrists in his and brings his hands further up, up to where he can plant each against a cheek. "I'm fine. See?"

Hayato flinches, but he doesn't pull himself away from dragging a thumb beneath Tsuna's eyes, his gaze lingering on the same cuts and bruises that Kyouya had so painstakingly catalogued. Takeshi laughs from somewhere to Hayato's left, wry and wounded.

"You haven't looked into a mirror recently, huh, Tsuna?"

"I'm alright," Tsuna says again. "I promise, it looks worse than it is. I'm okay."

"When Reborn-san called, I--" Hayato says. There's a choked quality to his words that makes Tsuna tighten his hold, fighting Hayato's attempts to pull away. "When he called us, he -- shit, Tenth, you can't do that. You can't just disappear for hours and then -- and then show up looking like this. Who the fuck did this, huh? I'll never forgive them, I'll--"

Takeshi steps back when Tsuna glances at him, his mouth quirked into an angle that somehow conveys permission and petulance at once. He steps back so that Tsuna can close himself entirely around Hayato, keeping his arms loose enough to be pushed aside if Hayato's claustrophobia becomes too much.

"I'm fine. Really," Tsuna murmurs. "Did Reborn call you about my mom?"

"Yeah," Hayato says, clearing his throat. He doesn't sound as damaged as two seconds ago, but when he puts his head down against Tsuna's shoulder, he does it with a short and shaky exhale. "Yeah. Nana-san called him, and he called me."

"Then he called me," Takeshi says from the side. "And Kusakabe got us from my dad's. She's still there with him."

"Sorry," Tsuna says, turning to look at Takeshi past the silver of Hayato's hair. "I didn't know where else to send her."

"Hey," Takeshi says, finally cracking a smile. "You owe us a lot of sorry's, but not because of that, yeah? My dad didn't mind."

Hayato leans away at those words, sniffly and embarrassed, to gently nudge Tsuna over to where Takeshi can catch him. The arms that come around him next are surer and firmer but no less wrought with emotion, buried beneath all that Takeshi tries not to give away. It's a hold that's as warm as the summer rain that had caressed Tsuna's face one year, as tender and fragile as the quiet that had stretched on around them. Takeshi had been there too, standing steadfast at Tsuna's side, watching him instead of the bodies that had surrounded them, watching his boss mourn what they had become.

We're going to need new rules, Takeshi had said then, just like how sixteen-year-old Takeshi also says, "We're gonna need new rules. It's not fair that you have to look like this, Tsuna."

Takeshi's heart sounds loud against Tsuna's ear, and Hayato's next inhale is telling. They stand in sharp contrast to Kyouya's easy acceptance, his absolute trust, and Tsuna blinks at the whiplash.

Right.

"We will," Tsuna says. "I'm working on it."

"Can we help?"

Tsuna feels Kyouya move past him, stepping into the room to settle against the wall that could keep Tsuna and both sliding doors in view. He inclines his head when Tsuna glances at him, crossing his arms as he watches Hayato and Takeshi pull their composure back together.

"Maybe," Tsuna says. "But there's a few things that I need to tell you first."

*

Would you believe me if I said that I'm thirty-six?

*

The dial tone echoes loudly in his ears even after Tsuna sets the phone down, hands braced on either side of the small table that it sits upon. Relief is a strange weight to shoulder, and it tastes a bit like guilt, bitter and lingering, but it's nothing undeserved.

"Nana-san?" Hayato asks quietly from Tsuna's right. He's standing at the boundaries of Tsuna's peripheral vision, a spot of colour in a sparsely decorated hallway that Tsuna had found this phone.

He's holding himself in an open posture. Unthreatening, even when Tsuna can see the tension that Hayato wears along his jaws, can hear the warble in his voice.

"Yeah." Tsuna leans away and schools his face into a smile. "Hey, Hayato."

Hayato opens his mouth. Snaps it closed. Glances away while shoving both hands into his pockets, unable to voice the unhappiness that bleeds from him. Or perhaps he didn't feel like he deserved to, spiraling as quickly into self-loathing as he seemed to be.

And Tsuna can't stand for that. Not when none of this is Hayato's fault. It never is.

"Want to sit with me for a bit?" Tsuna asks. He gestures at the floor and the wall by the phone table, and twists his smile into something rueful. "I could use the company."

It's neither a lie nor an exaggeration. His mom's voice had been deceptively light, and her words had been wholly supportive, as warm and as loving as she always is, but Sawada Nana has never worn her emotions quietly. Every syllable had carried a thread of hurt and worry, distressed by what Tsuna could only assume to be a mother's instinct.

Because he couldn't bring himself to tell her. Not about what had happened with the Furuya, and why. Knowledge could cripple those that didn't know how to wield it, could kill someone who didn't know how to protect it.

His mom might've married a mafia man and birthed a mafia boss, but she will never be what they are. She would never choose to.

Tsuna would never want her to.

Hayato settles into the space to his right, and takes two whole minutes trying to decide whether he wants to cross his legs or straighten them. He scowls down at his thighs as though his limbs were committing mutiny before he chooses the in-between, drawing one leg up in a fold while stretching out the other.

It would've been an amusing dance to watch if Tsuna couldn't read the anxiety that thrummed beneath Hayato's skin, far too close to the surface.

Hayato clears his throat. "You should go see her. She was really worried."

"I can't," Tsuna says. He can't, on the off chance that Masa's people were looking for him. He can't lead them to her again. "You know how it is."

Hayato looks stricken. And impossibly, uncharacteristically sad. "Yeah. Yeah, I -- yeah."

"I told her about my trip," Tsuna says to fill the awkward silence. "And I asked if she could stay with Takeshi and Yamamoto-san for a while. She took it okay."

Of course I will. I'd do anything for you. I just wish I could do more.

"Oh," Hayato mumbles.

Tsuna leans back against the wall, tipping his head into it. There's a knot in his chest that he can't quite undo. His fingers feel cold when he folds them over his lap, and it takes several swipes of his tongue to help wet his mouth enough to properly speak again.

Hayato won't look at him. He's staring down at his hands when Tsuna glances at him, fingers curled so tightly that he can almost make out the welts that Hayato will bear as scabs for a couple days. Every second of silence is agony, filled with the occasional creak of wood, a whisper of footsteps, and the jingle of wind chimes.

"Actually," Tsuna forces himself to say, "she took it kinda bad. I mean, she wasn't upset with me or anything, but. She knew that I wasn't telling her everything, and she, uh. She knew more than I expected her to. It kinda caught me off guard."

Hayato looks up. Surprise adds colour to his pallor, and he swallows so roughly that he coughs. Several times. "Ugh, sorry. Sorry, uh. Something caught in my throat. Anyway, what, uh. If you don't mind sharing, what did she--?"

Oh, Tsu-kun. I don't even know why you've been so sad lately.

"I thought I was doing a pretty good job at pretending to be, well, me," Tsuna says. He shrugs, self-deprecating. "Turns out, I wasn't."

"Oh," Hayato says again. He opens his mouth, and grimaces. Silent again, but it's not the torturous sort, not this time. No, this one is a bit more --

"You can say what you're thinking, you know," Tsuna says dryly.

"I'm really, really sorry," Hayato says immediately in a single breath. Like the pressure of a balloon being released. "But Tenth. You sucked."

Tsuna blinks.

"Sorry. Sorry! I still think you're awesome, and you're the best damn boss that anybody could work for, and you're probably taking over the world to bring about world peace and adopting criminals to give them a second chance even if they don't deserve it or something, but--" But. Oh thank God, Hayato seems about done with his ridiculous fantasies. If he had gone for much longer, Tsuna would've had to step in and that never went well. For either of them. "Fuck, Tenth, you called Yamamoto and I by our names from day one. Day one."

"I," Tsuna says. He blinks again. A longer one as he ransacks his memory for what Hayato was referring to. "Names?"

"Tenth," Hayato says with a snort. Tsuna's glad to hear the humour in it. "You've been calling us by our surnames for ages. We couldn't get you to budge, and then one morning you start calling us by our first names? We knew something was up."

Ah. Amateur mistake. No wonder Hayato had reacted the way he had.

"You know," Tsuna says, half-conversational and half-desperate to hide his embarrassment, "you should tell me that I suck more often. My ego could use it."

"Thanks for the offer," Hayato says, "but with all due respect, that's bullshit. I think you need to hear that you're amazing more often. I mean, you never believe me when I say it, do you? Don't think I don't see you dismissing it!"

At sixteen, they're still children. Still innocent of the crimes that they'll commit in Tsuna's name. Even still, blueprints of Tsuna's best friends live within these children, a rough sketch that will take twenty years to mature, and that is more comforting than any touch.

Tsuna presses his mouth against a fist and laughs. Laughs and laughs, laughs until Hayato's face loses its confusion in favour of cautious delight.

"Oops," Tsuna says when he manages to stop. "Guess I wasn't subtle about that either."

"You're not really subtle about anything," Hayato tells him, which had to be a lie. How had Tsuna survived to thirty-six as a boss if he didn't know something about subtlety? That's crazy, Hayato had to be-- "I'm not lying. Or exaggerating. It used to stress me out a bunch, you know? Like, you're awesome, but fuck if you're not like any mafioso that I've ever known."

"I can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"It's good," Hayato says. He's looking at his own hands, down at the welts that Tsuna knows to be there. "It's really, really good. I wouldn't change you for the world, Tenth. And the thought of you going to Italy without us is--"

He gives Hayato two seconds, three seconds, before he gently reaches for Hayato's wrist, making him look up. The blush that overtakes his face is as charming as how his fingers spasm against Tsuna's when Tsuna twines them together, tugging their fused hands closer to let them rest on his thigh.

Then, he waits. He waits for as long as he knows that Hayato needs to organize his thoughts, to field his apprehension against speaking his mind.

"I wish you'd let us go with you," Hayato says. His voice is small and resigned, laid bare with a hurt so deep that it might take years to dig out. He had shouted his protests, yelped out his hurts, and had taken hours before he could brave the pain to approach Tsuna. The laughter that he uses to hide it is still so terribly bruised, and Tsuna wishes he could say something other than what he's about to say.

Tsuna breathes in, stalling.

"I know." Another breath, another second. "But I need you here. With Takeshi, Lambo, my mom, and everyone. I trust you to keep them safe. I need that more than I need you in Italy."

"That's not all though, is it?" Hayato asks shrewdly. His hold tightens into something that skirts at the edges of too tight. Tsuna lets him. "You're so obvious, Tenth. But what good are we as Guardians if you gotta protect us, huh?"

Ones that might live to an old age. Ones that will survive the conflict to come. Ones that would stand by his side for however long they lived.

Tsuna can't bring himself to say any of that. "You don't let me protect you guys at all in the future. Let me have this."

"There you go again," Hayato snorts. "Seriously, you might be older than the Tenth I know, but you're definitely still the Tenth."

Tsuna shrugs and smiles, a little sheepish. "Sorry?"

"Don't be," Hayato says. "Don't ever apologize for being you. Especially not to me. Just -- just promise us that you'll be okay."

Just promise me that you'll come home, Tsu-kun. Promise me that you'll be okay.

"I'll be okay," Tsuna says, meaning every word. "Maybe I was freaking out about a few things in the beginning, but it's okay now. Kyouya-san will be with me."

"Okay. Okay, right. Well, that bastard better take good care of you. I'll kick his teeth in if he doesn't," Hayato grumbles.

"Mm. And the next time we meet, it'll be in twenty years."

"But after that, we'll have another fifty years to terrorize your brats," Hayato vows. He falters. "I mean, if. If you have kids, of course, I don't mean to assume anything!"

"I have two," Tsuna says. He's not laughing, he's just grinning really, really wide. "Two boys. Their names are Shougo and Nozomu. Want to hear about them?"

*

I'm going to Italy soon, and I need you both to stay here. I need you to keep an eye on things while I'm gone. I need you to protect the people that might get hurt because of what I'm about to do.

*

Takeshi waits until sunset to ambush him, waiting by the door to the bathroom that Tsuna had unofficially claimed as his own. Waits with crossed arms, an unsmiling mouth, half-lidded eyes. He says nothing of how water lingers on Tsuna's bangs when Tsuna steps out, or how the bags under his eyes have gone deeper with the day.

He says nothing of how Tsuna had spent the better part of an hour in the bathroom, staring at a reflection that wasn't his, trying to wash away the exhaustion that might be left as scars beneath his younger self's eyes.

"Hey Tsuna," Takeshi says. "How are you feeling?"

Always an interesting question, that. Takeshi would never ask that question without looking at him, filing away all the ways in which Tsuna could lie. The last time that his Takeshi had asked him, Tsuna had been standing in the middle of a warehouse with dead bodies at his feet, soot on his face and shoes, Lambo's blood on his suit, and Takeshi's hand on his shoulder. Tsuna's appearance today is a little less dramatic, but it probably means something for how it doesn't change his answer.

"I'm fine."

"Haha," Takeshi says, his voice light, "I don't know if I can believe you when you say that anymore."

Tsuna smiles, wry. "Probably not."

Takeshi smiles back. "Okay, then how's your head?"

"It feels fine. No, really," Tsuna says at Takeshi's snicker. "It's gotten a lot better since I've been with Kyouya-san."

"Is that why he gets to go with you?" Takeshi is smiling that awful smile where he's not smiling at all, where his voice is flat and inflectionless. He had taken to Tsuna's request no better than Hayato, but in Takeshi, it had manifested as damaged silence. As a grudge that will likely make Takeshi overcompensate for years. Possibly a decade. "Because he can do that and we can't?"

Yes and no. Yes, because Tsuna needs this newfound stability to do all that might need doing in Italy. Yes, because Kyouya won't be moved by what will need doing, won't ever flinch or look away from the violence. Yes, because the Kyouya that will come with him is Tsuna's in every way that matters, a stable presence that Tsuna had learned to trust for over two decades.

But also no, because it's never been about what Takeshi can do, was willing to do. It's always been about how Tsuna felt about it all. It's about wanting to keep Takeshi untouched by it for that much longer, to protect him from what Takeshi had tried to protect Tsuna from in turn.

Takeshi might understand if Tsuna tells him as much.

"The people that did this," Tsuna says instead, gesturing at his face, "and the people that I'm going to meet in Italy, they'll cut a deal with each other, in my time. It caught us off guard. It didn't end well for us."

So many weeks of bloodshed. So many months of trauma. So much time lost to violence borne of sentiments that Tsuna couldn't understand even now. Power, money, tradition -- who had ever thought that those were good reasons to kill people?

He grimaces. "That's what I'm trying to prevent. I could save so many people if I play my cards right."

Takeshi cocks his head. "Are you going there to kill them?"

What a question. Deceptively straightforward with promises of terrible consequence if Tsuna didn't know what it is that Takeshi is asking. What Takeshi is offering. What Takeshi is thinking of offering even at sixteen even when he had no reason to.

"No," Tsuna says. "We've killed these people once, so I'm sure we can do it again. If we have to, I mean. But if things don't have to be like that, if there's a way that things can be different -- I want to make that happen. That's what I'm going to Italy to do."

Even if it's a stupid idea, he wants to try. Even if it's overly optimistic, idealistic, he has to try. If his Family was so determined to change, he might as well make them do it on his terms, by his script, to save as many people as possible.

Might as well make this romp through time worth it, right?

Takeshi's smile is a slow thing to bloom, but it's wide and genuine when it takes shape. "You know, even TV bosses are always like, 'kill them all', or something. What you just said doesn't seem very boss-like."

No one's said something that nice to him in a while. Tsuna almost wants to hug Takeshi for it. "Well. I've never been really boss-like."

"Guess not," Takeshi says, faux-thoughtful. "You're just Tsuna. Same old Tsuna."

Tsuna snorts. "Emphasis on the old?"

"Haha! You said that, not me."

When Tsuna smiles back, it feels silly. Warm, but silly. Too open to belong on the face of a boss, but that's fine. For now, that's perfect. "Reborn said the same thing. Not the old thing, but that I haven't changed. Still a bit of a loser, but somehow has the best Family ever."

Takeshi laughs, but his expression is edged with something mean and unrelenting. "Hey. That's one of my best friends that you're insulting."

Tsuna's face is going to fall to pieces if he keeps smiling like this. Oh well. "Sorry."

"But this game of yours," Takeshi says, non-sequitur. "I don't know if I like it anymore."

"I haven't liked it for a long time," Tsuna tells him. A quiet secret that Takeshi takes without complaint, indifferent to the weight of it. "My younger self is going to hate it, actually. And it'll be pretty awful for a while, but it'll get better. I promise."

"I trust you," Takeshi says. Just like that.

Tsuna looks up past the small window near the ceiling, set high on the wooden walls, to where he can see the sky fade out from blue to red, to those fleeting colours that reminded him so much of the last dying gasp of people. The last flicker of life before their bodies hit the cement.

"I won't always make the right decisions," Tsuna says, shaking himself free of the future to come. "I'll make a lot more mistakes before I start making the right ones. You're not going to agree with a lot of them, and I'm going to disappoint a lot of people before I start getting it right. I might even disappoint you, sometimes."

Takeshi is silent for a moment. Then, "You worry too much, Tsuna."

Tsuna glances at him, both exasperated and fond. "I'm trying to have a moment here."

"So? You still worry too much," Takeshi shrugs, wholly unapologetic. His smile is crooked but real, as fleeting as this moment. "Bet you have some mad wrinkles in your future, huh?"

"I do not have -- I'm thirty-six!"

"Haha! My dad started getting them around then too!"

"Oh my God. If I have them, you have them too," Tsuna grumbles. "More, even."

"That's okay," Takeshi says. His tone makes Tsuna glance at him, at his smile and the way in which he watches Tsuna. "As long as we both have more wrinkles than scars, I think that'd be a pretty sweet deal."

Takeshi always had a strange way with words, a musical quality to his illogicality. There's moments of clarity, small and infrequent, but they were exceptions rather than the rule. It made people dismiss Takeshi even when every ambling road had significance, presented in a way that let people ignore it if they so wished.

It's a kindness. A kindness that Takeshi offers without a price, giving people the chance to look away from what lurked beneath Takeshi's skin. The same kind of beast, Tsuna knows, that lurked beneath Reborn's.

Fortunately, Tsuna was well-practiced in embracing what scared him.

"I don't think I can promise that," Tsuna says carefully.

"But I can," Takeshi says.

He can't. Speaking a promise was a whole different process than trying to keep it. There's no way that Takeshi can ward off all that the years of violence will carve into their skins.

"Okay," Tsuna says anyway, wanting to believe him. "Let's bet on it then."

Takeshi tilts his head, considering. "What are the stakes?"

"Winner's choice," Tsuna offers.

More quietly, more intently, than a simple, silly promise should merit, Takeshi murmurs, "Okay. Twenty years, right?"

"Twenty years," Tsuna says. "I hope you win."

*

This isn't like the time with Byakuran. Things are fine. Our future isn't bad, and some of it is really great, but it can be better. I'm going to make it be. I swear it.

*

The room is dusted with the colours of flickering candlelight when Tsuna blinks awake, when he finds that he can keep his eyes open. The vertigo lingers still, but the nausea is no longer crippling when he does, and the ceiling has stopped trying to multiply itself into threes between then and now.

Always a good sign.

Kyouya is reading cross-legged when Tsuna turns to look at him. He's seated past the sliding doors, by the edge of the engawa. Facing the bamboo garden with a water slide that makes a measured, echoing sound when it comes back up, reverberating past the trees. It's loud enough that it pierces through the chill white noise of trickling water, but not enough to break the past the calm. It's no less part of the landscape than the bamboo trees that the Hibari clan keeps, the large stones that they had left carved and smoothed out to serve as benches.

The night is as quiet as the walls that enclose them. Peaceful. As warm as nights can be in the season that exists between spring and summer. A single cicada cries in the background, calling for its brethren, blissfully unaware of its loneliness.

And in the distance, the water slide clanks. Clanks. Clanks. Loud and definite, like gunshots.

Tsuna rubs a hand over his eyes. How long had he been out this time?

"You've been asleep for five hours," Kyouya says.

Oh. That's -- not as bad as Tsuna had been expecting after passing out for the second time today.

Tsuna carefully eases himself onto his back and stares up at the complicated latticework of the roof that he can see past the wood beams of the ceiling. "Did you send them back? Hayato and Takeshi?"

"No. I've given them one night, and one room," Kyouya says. He's not scowling, but it's a near thing. "They're worse than puppies in need of discipline, pining after you as they are."

Says the Guardian that jumped through time to prevent Tsuna's death.

"Thanks for letting them stay," Tsuna chooses to say, because he doesn't want to start a fight that he can't finish. He doesn't want to be the one to point out how the only difference between them is how openly Hayato and Takeshi wore their loyalties, and how obsessively Kyouya wore his. If Kyouya didn't know by now, then that's an ignorance borne of choice.

Kyouya turns his gaze back to his book and says nothing else on that matter. Apparently, Tsuna wasn't the only one that was feeling a little tame tonight. "You didn't tell them."

Of course not. If he'd said a word about his death, Hayato's face would've crumbled to pieces and Takeshi's would've smoothed out into something terrible and empty. If they couldn't learn how to blame Tsuna for his own death in twenty years, then there was no way that they could do it now. Their anger and anguish would find no outlet, no conclusion. They would live for decades with the belief that they had failed him.

No truth is worth that. Better to let them live in blissful ignorance.

"For the same reason that you didn't tell me about this plan, probably," Tsuna says. Well, maybe not exactly the same. "Did you even cremate me like I wanted?"

"Cremation is for the dead. You will not be."

Well. That's true, he supposed.

Tsuna sits up. Carefully, gingerly. The world starts spinning until he closes his eyes, slumping his shoulders and bracing his elbows against his knees. His stomach clenches uncomfortably, and Tsuna wonders why he'd bothered until he feels the cool metal of the gun pressed against his hip.

Kyouya must've noticed how Tsuna had kept it within reach for those five hours. He must've noticed how it showed signs of use, must've put the clues together when Tsuna had told him about the Furuya and Masa, but he'd neither said nor done anything about it. To Kyouya, there likely had been no reason to.

Reaching for the gun is an easy distraction away from the thoughts that Tsuna leaves untouched. The metal complies easily in his hands. Unlike his gloves, guns are cool and selfish, far removed from the crime that they are designed to commit. No intimacy, so very unlike twisting a fist through a man's chest. Or to inhale the smell of burnt flesh as Flames raged beneath violence and will, sundering any that stood in its path.

"What are you reading?" Tsuna asks eventually.

"Yoshikawa Eiji."

See, see how the sun has moved onward while we talked. Nothing can stop it in its course. Prayers cannot halt the revolving of nature. It is the same with human life.

Tsuna displaces the magazine from the rest of the gun and the bullets. Three left, just as he remembers. "Victory and defeat are one in the vast stream of life. Victory is the beginning of defeat, and who can live safely in victory?"

"Rest safely in victory," Kyouya corrects. He lowers the book to his lap, and Tsuna catches his look in his peripheral vision. "You remember."

Yoshikawa Eiji was Kyouya's preferred reading material when Tsuna was in the mood to listen. Easy to understand but not lacking in depth, penned with the sort of grace that Kyouya wielded like a weapon. They're words that Tsuna has heard many times over, enough that he could recite passages from memory, each moment squirreled away as gifts from a man that would never offer comfort in any other way.

"We read it in school. In class," Tsuna says. The barrel slides beneath his hands, falling into place with a click. "I liked it."

"You understand it," Kyouya says. He says it like a question. Not quite doubt, but not quite acceptance either.

"Yeah," Tsuna says, staring down at their hands and the gun trapped beneath them. In the distance, the water slide goes clank, clank, clank. Like gunshots. Like the fall of bodies against the cement.

"And?"

Tsuna smiles, and it feels ill-fitting on his face. He squares his shoulders and gets to his feet. It's easier with Kyouya so near, and the night stretches out before him when he steps outside of the room and onto the engawa, to stand by where Kyouya was still seated. He looks toward the shadows that lurk past the trees, the many unknowns that no one could prepare them for.

"Did you know," Tsuna says into the sanctuary that Kyouya provides, "that I wanted to change nothing for a while? That's all I could think about when I first got here. I wanted things to change as little as possible. I wanted us to have the future that we fought for."

It had been a future that they had created together. A future that they had all bled for, where Tsuna's goals hadn't been achieved, not entirely, but on their way to be. Where his people had been prospering. Safe.

"You were supposed to have been happy," Tsuna says, his voice thick. "You were supposed to have been able to move on without me."

Kyouya's hand is warm when it reaches up to close itself around Tsuna's, when it falls over both his fingers and the gun. Their Flames spark and dance beneath their skin in harmony, pushing back Tsuna's ever-persistent migraine into a dull throb. It doesn't eliminate it, not entirely, but it lingers as a persistent discomfort rather than the debilitating agony that Tsuna had been fielding for the past week or more. The colours exist as they should, and light doesn't pester his stomach into nausea. The world stops spinning around them, and acid stops biting into the bottom of his stomach.

Harmonization related, he'd said to Reborn. It only makes sense for it to have gotten better around Kyouya.

"If that was your wish," Kyouya says, uncharacteristically subdued, "then you should've tried harder to stay alive."

"You make it sound like I died on purpose."

"Did you mean to die?"

"No, but that's not--" That's not the same thing. Not even remotely. The only world that they might be is in Kyouya's, and Tsuna supposed that Kyouya had never been one to operate under the rules of another. There's no point in arguing this. "No. But as it turns out, I have another chance to not."

When Reborn had asked, would you do it again, being Decimo, all Tsuna had said is, who knows.

Who knows, he'd said, who knows? There had been no reason to think about it then, not when he had been so assured of his death. He hadn't wanted to think about it when Reborn had actually been asking about want rather than would, because that answer was complicated. Too complicated for a dead man. Now, though?

Now, he finds his answer is this: no.

Or more accurately: he's tired. The title of Decimo was a heavy mantle to carry, a responsibility that he's never wanted. He's done his time with it, and he doesn't know if he wants to do it again. He's lived, laughed, loved, and lost, had even accepted death as an inevitability that discriminated against none. He's tired.

But when Tsuna blinks, he can see Hayato and Takeshi. He can see them bumping shoulders at the sink of their shared kitchen, squabbling over pizza toppings just as easily as he feels them standing on other sides of him, vigilant and loyal. When he glances away to the side, there's Lambo, bright with boyish enthusiasm over his new car. Looking at his hands reminds him of Mukuro and Chrome, the way in which Mukuro would run his knuckles over Tsuna's, how Chrome would drop butterfly kisses to the tips of Tsuna's fingers.

When he curls said fingers, he does so around the memory of Kyoko's, the memory of her shoulder pressed against his on Hana's couch. Of how dinner had sat so comfortably in their bellies as they shared gossip back and forth, how they would share a laugh over the stories of Ryouhei's latest mishaps.

He can feel Reborn's hand on his neck when he exhales, can feel the way his calluses would catch on Tsuna's skin, the smirk that he would press against Tsuna's mouth. He remembers their morning afters, of how the sunlight would blind Tsuna just enough to make it impossible to see Reborn's expression in full. How, too, that he never had to see to know.

He's tired, but the night sky is clear when he looks up. Cloudless. Vast. Filled to the brim with memories, moments that have gone and passed, reminding him of the Family that loved him enough to kill in his name.

A Family that he loves so much that he changed the world to protect them. A Family that he can't ever forsake for reasons as petty as being tired.

Trust us.

In the distance, the cicada continues to sing.

"You might not like my answer though," Tsuna adds. "You know, on what I plan on doing. I'm going to be breaking a lot of rules."

"You promised me your life," Kyouya says in an apt and embarrassing summary of the vows that they had exchanged on the eve of their harmonization. "What you do beyond that and Namimori isn't my business."

"Even if I burn?"

"Do you plan on burning out?" Kyouya asks.

Tsuna glances at him. He feels more settled than he has been in weeks, and the weight in his gut feels familiar in that worn sort of way. "No. Not this time. Not if I can help it."

Kyouya studies him for a moment then dips his head in a strange approximation of a bow. "Then do as you wish."

The world won't thank his Family for what they're doing. It might never even forgive them for what they will allow Tsuna to do. But Tsuna would be damned if he would ever let them weather the retribution of that choice, not when they had only been as selfish as Tsuna had been. As selfish as Tsuna would've been, if the situation had been reversed.

Tsuna flexes his hands and looks straight ahead. "Don't I always?"

Chapter Text

Two weeks before it happens, Reborn wakes up knowing that he's lost time. Not much, just a few hours. Hours' worth of hazy images, muffled sounds, and a fuzzy sense of being in the backseat of a car that he should've been driving isn't much, but it's enough.

He wakes in his loft above Tsuna's bed feeling things. Some are strictly physical, like the tightness around the eyes and deep within his chest. Some aren't. Neither will kill him, they're not the sort that would kill anyone, but they're annoying all the same.

Thankfully, there's only so many ways that body-snatching could happen, and the note in his hand is as big of a clue as any.

Written in his own handwriting, it reads, I expect to get him back.

It'll be another two weeks before Reborn understands the full significance of those words.

*

Sawada Tsunayoshi at sixteen is a collection of neuroses that only Reborn is determined enough to take on. He's loud, contrary, and headstrong, stubbornly convinced of his incompetence despite all that suggest otherwise.

Because at sixteen, Tsuna had killed a madman, eased the suffering of a lingering will, and broke the Arcobaleno curse. The people that surround him adore him, and the Ninth holds great hopes for him. The First had acknowledged him several times over.

Most importantly, Reborn chose to stay with him.

Sawada Tsunayoshi at sixteen is a promise. A promise of greatness, of boundless potential. He's the culmination of a promise that Reborn had made to himself: if there is no Sky worthy of him, he'll make one. He's the closest that Reborn's gotten, the only one with Flames so pure that it enthralled all that beheld him.

Tsuna's persistence at ineptitude is annoying, but Reborn's not a man that could be deterred by annoyance.

The whole world is annoying. Everything about it is annoying. Its people are even worse. Reborn has carried on nonetheless.

But there are things that even Reborn can't stand, and repetition is one of them. Needless repetition. The sort that accomplishes nothing.

Tsuna's insistent wailing at not becoming a boss is one. A lie that Tsuna hasn't stopped telling himself since meeting Reborn, it's a lie that only Tsuna, himself, now believes. Even Nana knows better.

It's on the night of the day that Reborn forces Tsuna to concentrate his Flames into his naked hands that it happens. They practice, Tsuna complains, Reborn barks orders, and they come home. Nana wraps Tsuna's hands, smiling through Tsuna's clumsy lies about somehow falling into a bonfire, only glancing at Reborn for affirmation that Tsuna is, in fact, alright.

He's not sure what it is about Nana that fools the Sawada men into believing her to be naive, but Reborn doesn't care enough to investigate. It's harmless. He gives Nana her confirmation and leaves it for another night.

That should've been the end of it. Naturally, it isn't.

Reborn isn't sure what it is about tonight that makes the argument more heated than usual. Context is important, and Reborn imagines it to be a combination of burn pain, new school jitters, the impending trip to Italy, and Kyoko's new boyfriend that makes Tsuna that much more emotional. It's enough to grate even Reborn's nerves, which means the night's already doomed to being one where they go to bed with unspoken resentments and disappointments.

Not a good look, but Reborn isn't worried. Tsuna would apologize in the morning. He always did.

Except the idiot drops the idiot act sometime at two in the morning, sitting up so quietly that it instantly draws Reborn's attention. The change is in the details, in what's missing: the nervous energy, the psychosomatic lies, the undertone of blame. When Tsuna calls to him at two-oh-six, he's not the Tsuna he knows, but the Decimo, a boss in a boy's body, the greatest Sky in the world.

*

Sawada Tsunayoshi of the future isn't annoying. He's interesting. Impossible to look away from. He burns with the ease of a king, cloying and inviting. Burning brightly enough that he makes it impossible to escape his orbit, only a mistake away from taking the whole world down with him.

His eyes are as old as Reborn's, and he smiles like it's his job. Every movement is measured, almost calculated. Practice turned routine. He's competent now, and he screams it with every action. He draws Reborn in with an embarrassing lack of effort, and Reborn lets him touch him without retribution.

Tsuna only grins. Acts like it's his given right, and it's as infuriating as it is intriguing. And horrifyingly attractive.

"Let's talk," Tsuna says, and they do.

Sasagawa Kyoko doesn't get married, but she does have children. Tsuna paints her as single and capable, a talented diplomat. Tsuna is frugal on her professional details, instead focusing on her human attributes. About how she would keep him company when he wants to mope and get drunk. He still loves her, but not in the way that he was convinced at sixteen. Love comes in different forms, and it's gratifying to see that Tsuna will one day learn the difference.

The stories of his Guardians go on in similar manners.

Gokudera wins the proverbial lottery by marrying his boss, going so far as to finding them kids to lord over and terrorize. (The more likely reality: Tsuna probably made for an eerily competent parent despite the many failings of Iemitsu.) He earns the privilege to stand at Tsuna's right, capable in both Family matters and the matters of his boss.

And from the sounds of it, from what Tsuna says and doesn't, Gokudera also comes to learn the real purpose of the Vongola's Right Hand.

Vongola bosses are infamously unstable in a million invisible ways, and for all of Tsuna's attempts at appearing otherwise, he's no different. All living legends need managing, and this one is under Gokudera's; valiant is all that Reborn can think with respect to Gokudera's work. Valiant, and stupid. Reborn would've never taken the job.

Yamamoto Takeshi is a story of unfortunate victories. Even Tsuna, with his crippling need to see the best in his people, can't seem to be able to deny the dangers that lurked beneath Yamamoto's smiling facade. The recounted stories of the Decimo's Rain fills Reborn with second-hand pride, as dim and distant as pride tends to be.

A born assassin, as Reborn has always known. A dog of the Decimo. A jealous one, but Tsuna seems unwilling to acknowledge it, purposely ignorant of the dangers of leaving such emotions unchecked.

He's lucky that Yamamoto's loyalty to his Sky seems to trump all other emotions. Tsuna says nothing of harmonization, but it's not hard to read between the lines.

People like Yamamoto and Reborn didn't behave like Yamamoto did without good reasons. Harmonization-level good reasons.

It's all conjecture, obviously. Possibly made of hope and expectation rather than logic, but Reborn can't look at the calm that this Tsuna exudes without wanting. Without believing that his work has paid off.

Sasagawa Ryouhei draws his interest for that reason, because while Sasagawa might be the Sun Guardian in name, he didn't have to be this Sky's Sun as an Element. That would be tradition, but Sawada Tsunayoshi had the fortunate disposition of casually disregarding hundreds of years' worth of it.

There's nothing surprising about Sasagawa and his marriage to Kurokawa. Reborn's more interested in how detached Tsuna sounds while speaking of committing murder, in how uses Sasagawa's acquiescence to justify it. Why would the Decimo need or want justification for what must be done? It's baffling in the same way that an ill-fitting puzzle piece tends to be.

But Tsuna is once again sparse on the details that Reborn craves, moving swiftly along to the child that Iemitsu had, by all definition, kidnapped and groomed into becoming Tsuna's Lightning.

That said, Bovino doesn't surprise him either. The idiot cow bounced around so often through time that nothing about him should come as a surprise. His role is unusual as far as Lightning Guardians go, but Tsuna speaks of Bovino with enough fondness to make Reborn's teeth ache, so he lets it go without comment. That the idiot cow grows up to be useful is reassuring enough.

Mukuro, however, is going to take a while to digest. Tsuna dials himself back down to Loser Tsuna with that tale, putting the full might of his idiocy on display. Sawada Tsunayoshi would find a way to be competently incompetent.

The embarrassing recount of Hibari Kyouya's courting habits adds little to that disastrous little image that Tsuna plants in Reborn's head. It's vaguely impressive how deft he is in avoiding Reborn's questions, instead regaling him with tales of how the Tenth Generation handled their boss. At how even the aloof Hibari had been dragged into it.

Frankly, Reborn's not surprised, not when he'd read that inevitability since he had started piecing the Tenth Generation together. Tsuna, though? The idiot is surprised. Still surprised despite commanding Hibari's vicious brand of loyalty for years.

Sawada Tsunayoshi had always been a mess. Give him a few years, and he apparently turns into a competent one.

*

Thirty-six. This Tsuna is thirty-six, and dead.

No, he's worse than dead. The same boy that had refused to accept Reborn's resignation over his then-inevitable fate against Bermuda and Checker Face, the same boss-to-be that had vowed to stand against the world and its many, bullshit rules, is resigned to being dead. Despite being twenty years younger in body and two decades older in mind, all that Tsuna claims to want is nothing to be changed.

Even with this chance to undo the tales of trauma that he carries like open wounds, the sleepless nights that he somehow projects onto a body that's only ever slept soundly, the immeasurable grief and loss that catches in his stare, he claims to want everything to stay the same.

He doesn't even want to try, and that's more infuriating than anything.

"No. That's not how Dying Will Flames work," Reborn bites out into the silence that Tsuna commands.

"Really? Says who?"

Blasé. He's so very blasé about it. Reborn wants to deal with him as he dealt with everything else that annoyed him a degree too far.

"I'm not going to let you shoot me, you know," Tsuna says, amused. His voice is warm despite his words, affectionate despite having to bear the weight of Reborn's irritation. "That won't do much for the timeline either. I still have twenty years ahead of me."

He should've had fifty. At the very least, forty. He should've lived past Timoteo's age. He should've been the best that the Vongola's ever had since Giotto. Reborn wouldn't have accepted anything but perfection, or Tsuna's best imitation of it.

"Hey," Tsuna says, drawing Reborn out from the spiral of his thoughts. He does it as easily as he speaks. It's annoying. "It's fine. Really. I'm happy in the future. So are you. We all are."

"You're missing the point," Reborn says. His voice is cold even to his own ears, every syllable snapped out on the tides of a snarl. "You're deliberately missing it."

"I really don't know what to tell you," Tsuna says with a shrug. "That's really all I know too. I didn't believe it either. Not at first."

"If your next words are to claim that you did nothing to look into it, I'll personally make certain that your future will never exist."

Tsuna's eyes narrow. He leans back and folds his hands in his lap. Reborn wonders if the idiot understands the significance of his pose, the visible hands, a light tone of voice, a sharp gaze; it's the posture of a boss, a conductor of violence and lives. Reborn's been judged as a danger, but not as a threat. Not yet.

"It has something to do with my sealing. Supposedly," Tsuna says, low and measured. "Shouichi and Spanner have been studying it for as long as we've known about my condition. Talbot, too."

"All that talent, and that's all you have to show for it?"

"Reborn," Tsuna says, exasperated, "I'm not trying to hold out on you. Seriously, how many people have survived getting their Flames sealed? As young as I'd been too, even?"

So it had been Iemitsu and Timoteo's faults. It made sense in the same way that it made sense for the sun to rise from the east, for the earth to spin, and for Iemitsu and Timoteo to be absolute failures as parents, but something in Reborn wants to reject the idea nonetheless. It feels too simple, too overused. Iemitsu and Timoteo were but mortal men; how could they possibly manage to fuck up so many things around them?

"Are they still alive in your future?" Reborn asks.

"Nah," Tsuna says. He's smiling again, if a bit edged.

Hm. "Your doing?"

Tsuna snorts, and the sound is telling. It's also the most honest thing that Reborn's dragged out of him since their meeting. "God, no. That'd be bad for business."

To say the least. The words make sense, the context makes sense, but something about them feels -- off.

"If you still plan to change nothing," Reborn makes himself say, ignoring Tsuna's eyeroll at his tone. "You need to watch your mouth."

"That's literally your line."

Ah. That's what it is. Those words are his words. Reborn's line. Delivered in the cadence that was entirely unique to Tsuna, but that doesn't change the fact that Tsuna had lifted Reborn's words to make them his own.

"Exactly," Reborn says, resolutely ignoring the bite of disquiet in his gut. "If you start talking smart around anyone who knows you, you'll blow your cover."

People have a tendency to mimic the habits of those that surround them. The osmosis scaled with the intensity of those relationships, becoming that much more frequent with time. Tsuna had always been unusually adaptable, easily slipping into different roles for different people without losing sight of himself. But taking on Reborn's habits, speaking Reborn's lines -- was that a simple progression of that adaptability, or was there something that Reborn should know about the future that Tsuna wasn't saying?

Tsuna's eyes take on a suspicious shine, and Reborn waits. Waits for the obvious and baited line of, you think I sound smart?

Except what Tsuna says is, "You're right. Sorry. I'm a little out of practice talking like a high schooler, though."

Reborn pauses, and Tsuna waits without comment. Something about that whole exchange is making his jaws go tight, and Reborn can feel the phantom weight of Leon against his fingers. His Flames flicker beneath his fingertips. It grows heavier with every second that Tsuna allows Reborn to stew in silence. Even that casual respect for Reborn's silence is starting to get on his nerves.

He's never felt so known before. Not to this degree. It's unsettling and Reborn dislikes being unsettled.

"Why don't I tell you what we did figure out?" Tsuna says, his posture relaxing. Opening back up. Dragging Reborn away from the dark depths of his thoughts with a blatant show of vulnerability. It's too perfectly executed to be anything but calculated. "It'll give you a fair place to start looking."

He's being manipulated. Manipulated into feeling better. Ridiculous.

Reborn resists the urge to scowl and makes himself nod instead, sharp and curt. "Fine. Tell me everything."

*

Hours after Tsuna leaves for school despite Reborn's voiced displeasure, Reborn presses a phone against his ear and says, "Shamal."

Shamal takes exactly two seconds to respond, presumably needing the time to pull his cigarette out of his mouth.

"Hang up, and lose an ear," Reborn adds mildly.

Unsurprisingly, the call stays connected. "You know that I don't make a habit of picking up phone calls from men, Reborn. This had better be important."

"I wouldn't waste my time with you if it wasn't."

"Touché," Shamal says. He sighs. "Go on, then. Tell me what you want so I can tell you to fuck off."

Maybe Reborn will take out an ear anyway. Shamal didn't need both to do his job. "I need a favour."

Shamal goes quiet like Reborn had known he would. One did not turn down a favour from Reborn, not if they're smart. And fortunately for both of them, Shamal isn't as big of an idiot as he pretended to be.

There are only so many ways to survive the mafia world: be like Reborn, or appear useless. Or rather, useless enough as not to draw attention from those that would break Shamal's fingers in a concerted effort to recruit him.

One wouldn't dare do that to Reborn. No one bothered to do it to Shamal. A doctor that didn't treat the vast majority of the mob is useless as a mob doctor. His skills aside, there are simply better candidates to chase.

It must be agonizing, Reborn thinks without sympathy, to try and compromise the understanding that one did not refuse Reborn and the reputation of lechery that Shamal had taken years to perfect and internalize. It must be agonizing to know that his favour to Reborn will become a poorly kept secret within days of his departure from Italy.

Not his problem, obviously. Shamal's hangups aren't Reborn's business.

In the distance, the school bell rings, echoing out the declaration of freedom. Reborn can see the excited jitters of people-shaped shadows in the windows, the bodies of eager children looking to enjoy the rest of their day. Somehow, Reborn doubts that Tsuna is one of them. He had been, back when his mental age had matched that of his body, but as he is now, he's probably watching the rabble with a smile.

A small, fond smile. Likely losing himself in his thoughts as he was now prone to doing.

Eventually, though, Shamal speaks. He can't stall forever, and Reborn can be patient when patience suits his needs. Shamal could've never outlasted him. "Did something happen to the Decimo?"

Naturally. He wouldn't dare call someone about himself; Reborn knew better than to advertise a weakness.

"Not exactly," Reborn says, watching for the familiar mess of hair amongst the dozens that begin spilling out from behind the school doors. "It's a suspicion at best. I still want you to look him over and tell me what you find."

"You're calling me for a physical? Of a guy?" Shamal asks. He seems to have found his footing. A shame; it's always more fun to deal with people when they're off their game. "No offense, but fuck off."

"Interesting," Reborn murmurs. "When did I start giving people the impression that they could refuse me?"

Charged silences are Reborn's favourite weapon after his gun. Making people sweat with the promise of violence is as effective as holding a gun between their eyes; the human imagination has a great capacity for horror, and not taking advantage of it would be foolish.

"Don't threaten me," Shamal says, pretending at bravado despite how loudly he swallows. "There's plenty of other doctors that can look your Decimo over. Japanese ones, even."

His Decimo. Interesting. Did the rest of their world view Tsuna as such?

Honestly, Reborn's more bothered by how he's not bothered by the prospect.

"It's not his body that I need you to look over."

Tsuna appears past the doors at last, flanked by both Gokudera and Yamamoto. The idiot doesn't seem any worse for the wear, though there's something to his expression that makes Reborn take notice.

Had someone bullied him again? No, even his Tsuna had stopped getting upset over that months ago, and Gokudera and Yamamoto would have never stood for it.

So why did Tsuna look like that?

"So there is something wrong with the kid."

"That's what I need you to tell me," Reborn says, getting to his feet. He's on the roof of the gym, just far enough to be missed by those that didn't know what to look for but not so far that he couldn't catch the minutia of the Tenth and his Guardians. "So you can take this job as a favour to me, or you'll do it at gunpoint. Your choice, doctor."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. I'll be there by the end of the week," Shamal mutters. "This better be worth my while."

"That depends on how much you value your life," Reborn says, and hangs up. He had a Sky to stalk.

*

Reborn wonders if Gokudera and Yamamoto have any idea as to what stands before them. This man in a boy's body, a bred and proven Vongola boss, the type of Sky that surfaced maybe once every century. The last time that Reborn had felt this drawn to another's Flames had been decades ago, back when Luce had been at her prime.

It had only been a spark, but Reborn has seen enough. Tsuna had laid himself bare in that moment, when he had been ready to test Gokudera and Yamamoto for a chance to stand at his side, offering an opportunity that many would kill for.

That Reborn might have to kill for.

Inevitability is just a longer word for fate, and Reborn's always taken to both as everyone should: with defiance. The concept of having no choice over matters of his own life is annoying, particularly after his years as a child. But the longer that Reborn remains within Tsuna's orbit, this Tsuna's orbit, that's how it feels.

It feels inevitable.

Inevitable precisely because of choice, because Reborn knows himself well enough to know that he will not accept a compromise. Not with regards to this.

This is the Sky that he's raised. He made this.

It really is a shame to cut Tsuna's display short, to stop him from coming fully alight. It almost feels blasphemous, but with how little Reborn knows of Tsuna's condition, of how he still doesn't know, it's best to play it safe.

There will be time to admire those Flames later. For much longer than for twenty years if things go Reborn's way.

The line of Tsuna's shoulders is tight, but resigned, as they make their way back home. No, not resigned; accepting. He's accepted. Not defeated, but understanding. It's dignified, a loss accepted with a certain amount of grace, and Reborn's --

"Don't take this too far, Reborn," Tsuna says.

Warning him, as gently as Reborn will allow.

There's a myriad of things that Reborn could say. There's too much building between them, too much in a short period of time. Reborn has only known this Tsuna for about a day; he has no reason to feel as he does, all of these terrible, unnameable emotions.

On the flipside, this is Sawada Tsunayoshi. His Tsuna, his ridiculous student. His Tsuna, who grows up into this.

There's not much that Reborn can say. Not without giving away too much. Not without breaking this fragile sense of peace that they had managed to build by Tsuna's acquiescence and Reborn's deference.

So he says the only thing that he can in a situation like this, and lets the day unfold as it should. He watches and observes as he does, fingers curling against a knee beneath the table when Tsuna's demonstration leaves Gokudera winded and Yamamoto curious, holding back the want to stake his claim.

Harmonization requires both consent and demonstration, and Tsuna would never agree if his Sun was Sasagawa Ryouhei. There's no force powerful enough to deter Sawada Tsunayoshi's loyalty. If Tsuna could defy Checker Face at sixteen, he can defy Reborn at thirty-six. Forcing it wouldn't win Reborn any favours.

As it stands, his best chance was to pry that information out of Tsuna directly, then work to change his mind.

Or simply wait long enough, because it doesn't take much to get Tsuna to say, "Yes. Even the great Reborn listens to his Sky."

Because Tsuna asks, "Are you going to say no?"

Reborn doesn't bother gracing that with an answer. Tsuna had likely known Reborn's answer before he had asked anyway.

*

Still, the words stay with him. They linger like a touch, a kiss. A caress. What purrs in Reborn's gut is anticipation of a fervour that he hasn't experienced much at all. Not since his mama's death, probably.

Not since Reborn had killed her and set himself free, kicking the door to the world wide open with a single bullet. Not since his first experience with the cold satisfaction of committing a clean kill, with the understanding that he's found his calling.

He sleeps with that tucked in the corner of his mind, sleeping only as deeply as he would ever allow himself. Which means he's snapped awake when the door creaks open, and a presence that is both familiar and alien walks into Tsuna's room. Into the room where his Sky is sleeping, shockingly oblivious to the intrusion.

Which leaves only a couple possibilities of what (and who) the intrusion could be. That said, Reborn's not in any mood to take chances with Tsuna's life.

It's only when he has his thumb on the safety of his gun, the barrel aimed at the trespasser's head, that he comprehends what he's looking at.

The Bovino puts a careful finger over his own mouth, willing Reborn into silence. Or rather, inviting him to quiet conversation.

"I'm exactly who you think I am," says Lambo from the future. Twenty years into the future, to be exact. "Otherwise, Tsuna-nii would have blasted me to Pluto already."

Reborn lowers his gun slowly as Lambo settles onto the bed by Tsuna's legs. No one seeks to deceive with an expression like that.

"How is he?" Lambo asks quietly, his face shattered open with unspoken sentiment and longing. "Is he angry?"

Interesting how he says so much with such a simple question. How much he leaves implied.

"No," Reborn says, tucking those quiet revelations aside to watch how Lambo touches Tsuna's hair instead. "So he's still capable of anger, is he?"

"Sometimes," Lambo says. He doesn't look at Reborn, and Reborn doesn't blame him; if he had recently lost his Sky, if he was in this unique position to see him alive again, he wouldn't bother with the world at large either. "Usually at himself, and before, well."

Before he died. Before his Guardians had let him die.

Before even the Reborn of the future had let him die.

"Do you know who he is?" Lambo asks. "Did Tsuna-nii tell you?"

"He did," Reborn says. The details of how Reborn had come across that knowledge didn't matter. Lambo likely didn't care, and Reborn didn't care to tell him.

"'Kay, good. It would've been a pain to explain it to you," Lambo says. "We're working on it, by the way. Before you ask."

"It never should've gotten to that in the first place," Reborn says.

Lambo, to his credit, doesn't flinch. "Yeah, well. You weren't there."

No, he supposed not.

"You got five minutes," Reborn says instead. "Talk to him."

"I got ten. Shouichi-nii's kinda awesome with technology," Lambo says, finally looking away from Tsuna to find Reborn's gaze. His expression is grim, heavy with the maturity of loss, and Reborn has to remind himself that this is Lambo Bovino, a brat with more snot than common sense. "We'll take him back when we're ready. But until then -- take care of him."

Tsuna stirs then, and Reborn leans back to watch how Lambo's attention falls entirely to Tsuna, his conversation with Reborn already forgotten. Pushed wayward in favour of a Sky that he had lost, a Sky that he was determined to save.

*

That the headaches start with Lambo's departure isn't lost on Reborn. Tsuna curls into himself, trying to hold himself together as his body readjusts to being alone.

It's said to be agonizing. Skies are rare and precious creatures; Skies that survive the loss of their Elements are even rarer, and even rarer still are those that speak of what it's like.

Rare doesn't mean nonexistent though, so there are some. Recorded memoirs that speak of experiences that could undo the best of men.

Agony is how they describe it. A yawning schism within your very being that will never find relief again. Pain and grief of such magnitude that it becomes poisonous. They describe it as starting as a headache, followed by anger. Then depression. Death follows shortly thereafter, their Flames turning inward as it seeks the bonds that it had lost.

Flames that killed the one from whom they came. It's too similar to the story of an idiot Sky for Reborn to ignore.

There aren't enough documented cases of splintered harmonized units to make absolutely certain, but it makes a vicious sort of sense. Sawada Tsunayoshi would die of heartbreak. He would let his heart kill him. It makes sense.

But Tsuna hadn't spoken of having lost anyone that he'd harmonized with; his tales of his Guardians said as much. Reborn has a handwritten note that he, himself, is very much alive in the future. They say that Skies die within months of a broken bond. Years, if they were particularly hardy.

Elements fare a little better, but a little better than death isn't much better at all. It takes years into decades for their healing to be complete. And so Lambo appearing relatively healthy is a curiosity too, one that doesn't quite fit the story that Reborn's trying to piece together in his head.

It's frustrating. Reborn's intuition may not have the near-precognitive capabilities of the Primo's, but his gut was as close as it gets. Where Tsuna had inherited his instincts, Reborn had honed his through experience.

And this? This is correct. This is the answer. He's just missing the details. And the solution.

Reborn's on the roof of the Sawada Residence when his lamentation is disrupted, on a rare day that Reborn had decided not to stalk Tsuna and his Guardians. Neither Gokudera nor Yamamoto would allow any harm to come to Tsuna, and they were strong enough now that Reborn shouldn't need to hover.

"Ciao, Reborn," Timoteo says when Reborn answers his phone.

"Nono," Reborn returns. He might not hold much warmth for this man, but there's little reason to be outright hostile. For all of his failings, he's still the Vongola Ninth. Not a person that Reborn would care to have as an enemy. "What happened?"

"Not even a hello?" Timoteo says with forced humour.

Reborn doesn't sigh. He's the World's Greatest, a legend, and one of his station didn't do something as telling as sighing into the ears of the Vongola Ninth.

He isn't above silence, however. The kind that is loud in how it judges, and how it judges you to be inferior and lacking.

Timoteo just laughs. It even sounds genuine.

"I'm well, thank you," Timoteo says against the creak of leather. He must be in his office, sitting in that terribly gaudy chair of his. "How's Tsunayoshi?"

Ah. So that's it.

"Well enough on the surface," Reborn says, relenting. Sometimes, even Reborn has to give a little, giving a little to get what he wants. Not having to play politics is a boon of being so renowned, but Timoteo was one of the rare few that could make Reborn play. How unfortunate. "But I'm not convinced."

"Hence, Shamal," Timoteo says. "Is it urgent?"

Reborn's mouth thins into a line of annoyance. There's only one conclusion to be drawn from a line of questioning such as this. "The health of your successor versus whatever it is that you're dealing with. You tell me which is more urgent."

Timoteo rides the silence for as long as he can before he sighs. "Ah. As sharp as always."

And so, they're back to Reborn's original question. "What happened?"

"Assassinations," Timoteo says, finally getting to the point. "There's been several in the past couple days alone."

What a waste of time. Assassinations are a dime a dozen in the mafia. Just another afternoon. "And you're calling me, why?"

"Targeted assassinations," Timoteo says with emphasis, "of the Piovra, specifically. We suspect that deaths amongst the Lumaca will follow."

Now that. That's a lot more interesting.

"I've heard nothing about them," Reborn says, which is concerning in its own right. Assassins are godawful gossips amongst each other, as bad as middle-aged women out on brunch, safe in the knowledge that they could not betray each other's confidence without the threat of death.

Reborn might not be as active as he used to be, but he still has his contacts. And none of them had whispered in his ears about this. It must be new, then. Very new.

"I see. I suspected not," Timoteo says. He sounds tired. "We've had to pull our people in. The Piovra have already started pointing fingers, and I have Shamal tending to some of them. I wouldn't be surprised if you see them lurking around your parts soon."

"If they come near Tsuna," Reborn says, "I'll kill them."

"I suspected as much," Timoteo says. "Then, I suppose, the Decimo might be the safest man alive."

He is. Reborn isn't about to lose him to a couple of thugs in suits. The Piovra and the Lumaca had been the Vongola's heel-nippers since the Eighth's Generation, tireless in challenging the Vongola's power and influence with wealth and brutality. Together, they are as big as the Vongola, but a lot less respected. The black sheep of the major Families, left alone and ignored until they start making noise.

That they had become obsolete in Byakuran's future isn't surprising. Loud dogs that bared their teeth at the truly powerful often got put down.

"Shamal doesn't treat men," Reborn says. "I threatened his ear to have him come to Japan. What did you do?"

"Ah, well," Timoteo says. "I am the Vongola Ninth."

Few people could refuse him, he doesn't say. Only people like Reborn, the other Arcobaleno, and Checker Face could. Shamal, for all of his talent, could not hope to rank among a list like that.

"Call it a curiosity, Nono," Reborn says. "What did you do?"

"Depending on how things develop, perhaps I will have the chance to tell you in person," Timoteo says.

Thankfully, Reborn did qualify for the list of people that could refuse the Vongola Ninth. He was at the top of it, given Tsuna and his impending inheritance. "No. Those assassinations are your problem, not mine. Leave me out of it."

Timoteo's voice goes quiet. "Sometimes, I wonder if you forget who employed you."

"I'm well within my rights to cut my ties with you," Reborn says. He allows annoyance to bleed into his voice. Annoyance, and the threat that that sentiment inherently carries. "And the Vongola won't be yours for much longer. I hear its next head is rather fond of my methods."

Then, silence.

Not the damning sort, but the considering one. Timoteo's always thought a little too loudly for Reborn's tastes, but that's why Tsuna will have his loyalty when Timoteo never has.

In twenty years, Tsuna will look at Reborn and write a monologue of hurt and losses in his head with only soft eyes to show for it. He'll keep his secrets while also putting his heart on display. He'll have moments of silence like Timoteo is having now, but where Timoteo wears it like a bulgeon, Tsuna will hone into something elegant. Almost seductive in how it shows vulnerability, inviting predators close enough to be ensnared.

He must be absolutely lethal at diplomacy. Reborn's looking forward to seeing him in action.

"Very well," Timoteo says. To his credit, he doesn't sound insulted. He sounds amused, and a little defeated. "We can discuss sending Shamal your way in a week."

"I'll be waiting," Reborn says, and ends the call. Tsuna should be home soon. There's no reason to spend any more time on a man who still might have contributed to the death of Reborn's Sky.

*

In hindsight, Reborn should've known to keep his thoughts to himself.

Or rather, he should've known better than to think that Sawada Tsunayoshi would've accepted all that Reborn has had to say about his Family in peace.

Tsuna's relationship with his composure has always been a shaky, tenuous thing, one that had apparently become even more nebulous with time. What a way to be reminded.

Lambo, the Piovra, the note, and Tsuna. The story had written itself, even when Tsuna tried to stop it. There are questions, of course, holes where Reborn would've preferred answers, but there had been enough there for it to become a coherent whole. For Reborn to weave something out of nothing.

Time travel is not a casual thing. Even in a world like theirs, where one's will becomes power, it's not something that can be done lightly. The Ten Year Bazooka had that limit of five minutes (or, in Tsuna's era, ten minutes) for a reason. Their stint into the future is just that: the future. Things didn't go backwards, things moved on. Nature, for all that it makes allowances for the Vongola and its bosses, had been stubborn about that.

For that one rule to be broken, for it to be forced to break, it needed a reason. A good one, to say the least. One that was meant to change everything.

Ah, he thinks as he holds Tsuna together. As Tsuna works his way through his panic at the very thought of his Family being involved in this nonsense called time travel in his name. In how his Family had apparently chosen to spit in the face of nature and its laws to save him.

It should've struck Reborn as weird. It should've made him question why.

Mostly: why would a man that didn't want things to change come back to the past? Why would a man so keen on accepting his death choose to live on in a body twenty years too young?

The answer, obviously, is that he wouldn't. But Tsuna is still here, still present in every way but in body, impossibly interesting and excessively enticing. Which should've lent itself to the next question: who, or what, had sent him back?

Once again: obvious. Reborn really should've figured it out sooner than he does.

Ah, he thinks again one night, several nights after he's talked Tsuna down from his panic-induced need to run off to Italy where the Piovra and Lumaca could gun him down. After the headache had long-since progressed into nausea, when the last thing that Reborn remembers is standing next to a Tsuna that had been retching into the toilet.

It's the last thing he sees before his world goes suspiciously black, before he's looking at the Tsuna of the future, a body connected to more machines and IV lines than Reborn cares to count.

Ah.

"Terrible, isn't it?" Miura Haru says from his right. She's terribly put together, with deep bags under her eyes, a downturned mouth, and an ashen face. Her fingers are tight around both ends of the stethoscope hanging around her neck.

This is a doctor at war. The face of a stubborn and loyal member of the Vongola, squaring her shoulders against the very rules of the world for daring to take her boss away.

Reborn had always thought that she would've made for a good member of the Family. No amount of vindication helps ease the tightness in his chest at what he sees when he steps closer to Tsuna's bed.

He's awfully thin. His eyes are sunken in, and his lashes are as prominent against the pale pallor of his skin. His lips are cracked, dry despite a doctor's best attempts at nursing him. There's something wretched about how Tsuna clings to sadness even at death's doorstep, that anguish that Reborn can likely trace with his fingers.

Reborn steps closer to the bed. Haru doesn't stop him, but Reborn glances at her anyway. He will defer to her if she stops him out of deference for the Decimo, out of his own selfish need to see Tsuna in better health than he needs to touch him.

She doesn't though, only tipping her head forward in quiet approval. There's no need to hesitate after that, and Reborn takes one step after another until he can touch that anguish that lingers on Tsuna's face, feeling a little frayed and that much more insane.

"He's still alive?" Reborn asks.

Haru wisely says nothing of the state of Reborn's voice. Hers isn't any better. "Yes. I mean, his body is."

There's a multitude of questions that rise at that simple, pointed answer, but Reborn has five minutes. Ten, if he's as lucky as Lambo. Neither is long enough to justify spending a single second on his curiosity when there's questions that need asking.

"How long do we have?"

"Hard to say," Haru says, and she shrugs when Reborn glances over. "Time's kinda funny. For Lambo, it moves at comparable speeds. When we were in Byakuran's timeline, it hardly moved at all for us. I'll have to ask Reborn-san when he switches back with you."

Reborn. His future self. The same one that had left that note.

"The idiot said that this was because of the seal put on him," Reborn says.

"Yeah," Haru says in a light hum. "Guess that's part of it."

"And the other parts?"

"Harmonization," Haru says, all but confirming the hypothesis that Reborn had been incubating since Tsuna's headaches began. "Or, well. The effects of it. I don't fully understand everything, but it's basically dying of heartbreak, isn't it?"

She steps closer to the bed then, still short enough that the top of Reborn's head reaches halfway up her upper arm. Something ugly and violent spasms in Reborn's chest when she reaches down to brush pieces of Tsuna's bangs aside, but he doesn't slap her away like he wants.

Miura Haru has done more for Tsuna than Reborn here; he has no right to deny her the comfort of touching her boss. "Tsuna-san would die of heartbreak, wouldn't he? Such a stupid man."

"The idiot doesn't want it any other way," Reborn says, the words bitter on his tongue.

"We figured," Haru says. "That's okay. We're all prepared to apologize to our dying breaths. But he needs to be alive for us to do that."

Reborn brushes his knuckles along Tsuna's cheek. "Even he might find it hard to forgive this."

"That's okay," Haru says again, finally looking down at Reborn again. She's a mess, right down to the frayed edges of her pants, but there's something fierce and hopeful in her gaze when Reborn meets it. "Really. Everything will be fine, just as long as we get him back."

This is her, asking a question. With her imploring eyes and earnest voice, juxtaposed perfectly against Tsuna's bedridden state. It's almost too perfect of a picture for it to be anything but purposeful.

It reeks of manipulation. Of a set-up. A desperate one, one made by a Family struggling to save their dying boss. A plea, made by fools that sought to stand against nature.

Reborn looks back at Tsuna, and finds that he can't even be annoyed by it, by how blatantly his emotions are being toyed with. There's no time for that.

"What did you need from me?"

*

Tsuna can't know what happened. Not yet.

You'll meet up with Chrome-chan in Italy. She'll fill you in there, Haru said. We'll find a way to get you there without raising suspicion, so just wait until then, okay?

She had said nothing of bringing Tsuna along, which is telling. She said nothing of Tsuna's involvement in all of this, which is telling. Reborn doesn't need to be Reborn to be able to read between those lines; Tsuna isn't to know. He's to stay in Japan, where it was safe, where Gokudera and Yamamoto can die for him if they must.

If Reborn's a little excessive in his caretaking after his romp through time, then that's his business. Tsuna doesn't seem to notice the difference. Tsuna allows Reborn's hovering and excessive need to touch, which spoke more of what Tsuna was used to than what Reborn may or may not be feeling.

There's a story to how Tsuna's glances linger a moment too long, and how he leans in Reborn's direction, but that's not his story to know or own. Not yet. It's not part of his story, but it will be. He'll earn it, and have many decades to savour it.

He's Reborn, the World's Greatest. He won't fail.

*

The man that stands with Reborn outside of the pharmacy is dangerous. His gun aside, it's all in how he holds himself. If Reborn's got to guess, he would guess this:

"Military?"

The man with the scar glances down at him. There's no recognition in his eyes. Not a yakuza-born man, then. This is a man that had used to live on the easier side of society before something (or more likely: someone) enticed him to cross that boundary.

"Ex," the man says eventually. He tilts his head down at Reborn. "Are we going to have problems, signor?"

His accent is atrocious. Reborn rolls his eyes at it, and looks away, summarily dismissing the man as a threat. "No. As long as you keep your hands off what's mine."

"Understood," the man says, amused, proving himself to be a competent man with a sense of humour. Reborn will forgive the accent on that alone. "We're alike in that, then."

Reborn smirks, and tips his fedora. "Understood."

*

The chance to go to Italy arrives in the form of Shamal. The man sounds more exhausted than Reborn ever remembers him to be, but given the speed with which the Piovra and the Lumaca are dying in Italy, he also understands why.

"Giulio Lumaca," Shamal says when Reborn asks. "Last night. He died by asphyxiation, but there's not a mark on him. It's as bizarre as all the other deaths."

Giulio Lumaca, Reborn remembers, had a crippling fear of water. An unfortunate disposition for a Sicilian, but it had been a weakness that had found more ridicule than exploitation. He had been a giant of a man, too big to corner, much less drown. Or choke. Or however else someone can be killed by asphyxiation.

"It could've been an accident," Shamal says ruefully, "but obviously, no one believes that."

There's one way that someone could die by asphyxiation without a mark on them. If the mafia didn't know by now what Reborn had figured out within minutes, then they deserved to die.

"If you want me in Japan, you're going to have to come get me," Shamal says. He's been in the business too long to beg, or sound afraid when he could sound tired instead, but he gets pretty damn close. "I doubt the Ninth is going to let me go without a fight. The Piovra heir is starting to get a bit unhinged, and people are starting to turn up with more holes than I care to treat."

It's a recipe for disaster. It makes sense that Shamal would want to find sanctuary in Japan. In Namimori, with the Decimo and his entourage of teenagers destined to change the world.

Reborn agrees to leave tomorrow but not before being saddled with a favour from Tsuna. He couldn't even be mad about it, not with how Tsuna had wrested the promise from him. It had been a skillful piece of work, if a little heavy handed, and Reborn had accepted the terms with more respect for the Decimo than he had ever thought possible.

Because he'd been right about Tsuna's skills with diplomacy. He would've preferred to be an outside observer rather than the recipient though; Tsuna is owed more than a couple flying kicks to his temple for that.

Still, it's fine. Reborn hadn't come out of it empty-handed; a favour from the Decimo will pay off its weight in spades. A favour from Tsuna might help save Tsuna's life. Reborn intends to take full advantage of it.

*

He has been in Italy for two days before she finds him.

The cafe that he's haunting is a quiet place, a hole-in-the-wall that a local had recommended. It has four tables for two. The counter is chipped, and the espresso machines are loud with age, but it's quaint and loyal to its roots. Reborn doesn't hate it, so he lingers, watching the rain catch and drag on the windows that he can see from the corner where he's seated.

He lingers even when he feels a mist settle in, deftly woven over the interior of the cafe. So deft, in fact, that if Reborn hadn't been Reborn, he's not sure that he would've noticed its presence. It's impressive.

"Reborn," Chrome says demurely when she settles into the seat in front of Reborn.

Reborn takes a moment with his espresso to watch her. The casual and lethal grace with which she folds her hands over her lap. The confidence. The ease. How comfortable she is in her skin. This is a woman that can drown a man on dry land. An assassin that can kill members of a large Familigia for a week without leaving her prey none the wiser to her identity.

This is a Vongola Guardian, the Mist of the Sky that they will one day share.

"Do I pass?" she asks, amused.

That sounds like something Tsuna might say. Reborn raises a brow. "Lifting your boss' lines, are we?"

"Ah," Chrome says, suddenly embarrassed. "Yes."

Then, she smirks. "My dear Chrome likes to mimic Tsunayoshi when she wants to be polite."

"He's the best person I know," Chrome says stubbornly. Not necessarily to Reborn, but to --

"Interesting," Reborn says, setting down his cup. "Is the other one also running around with your future memories?"

Mukuro lifts Chrome's finger to her lips to cut his smirk in halves behind it. "Now, now. We have much to speak about, and not as many minutes as we'd like, Arcobaleno."

"I apologize for cutting the pleasantries short," Chrome says grimly. "But there's a lot that you must know."

And then, she talks.

Of the Vongola. The mighty presence of the Vongola Tenth. How the world changes and bows to his will, forced to sing and dance to the tune that he sets. How the mafia's way of life shifts and cracks beneath the casual violence that the Decimo conducts with a flick of his hand. How easily his Guardians had acted as his sword, but had struggled to be his shield.

"Not from them," Chrome says sadly, "but from himself."

Sawada Tsunayoshi is a man that commands the loyalty of people who can disrupt the stability of the world. He may not be the wealthiest of them, but what he lacks in money, he holds in influence. What he lacks in influence, he commands with power. What he lacks in power, he wins through charm. The loyalty of others is the most potent currency of all, and that is one that Tsuna has never struggled to acquire.

But just the same, he is a Vongola Boss. A living legend with a thousand hairline fractures, unstable in a million invisible ways.

"For such a powerful man, Boss has always been so easy to hurt," Chrome says. The world around them strains, the fabric of reality creasing with how she stares down at the table in the same way that someone might glare.

This is a woman that can kill with her mind. An assassin whose only purpose is to save a man that doesn't want to be saved.

Reborn sympathizes.

It's easy, she says. Hurting Boss is as easy as hurting one of them. And unlike Boss, the rest of the Vongola are fallible. Nothing more than mortals in comparison to the Decimo. Few went after Boss anymore, not after the last serious attempt, but them?

"We're free game," Chrome says.

They're not easy prey, but they're easier. And if hurting them hurts the Decimo, there's little reason as not to go after them.

"The Piovra's idea, I assume?" Reborn asks, because the Lumaca have always followed where the Piovra leads.

"Quite. Specifically, they were trying to make Sawada Iemitsu talk," Mukuro says. His method of addressing of Iemitsu is interesting, but not interesting enough to interrupt. "And that man had never been very careful about his pressure points."

"And the Piovra commissioned the Furuya," Chrome says, closing her eyes. Her lips thin, and her throat bobs with abortive swallows. "While we were trying to get to Sawada Iemitsu, they sent them after the one person that no one dared to involve before."

Tsuna had said nothing of losing anyone. Not anyone that he had harmonized with officially. But there is one person that he had lost, that he had been ever so obvious about losing, from the very beginning. One that he'd expressed his love for, over and over as the ever faithful son.

"Nana," Reborn says, his stomach cold with understanding and anger.

"There you go," Chrome says.

*

Caution dictates that they move locations, so they do.

They find a pub with enough noise to drown out a murder, tucking themselves into the corner of the dimly lit room. Their waiter is a thin, haunted thing, taking little notice of how he can never keep his eyes on Chrome for too long, or how he instinctively refuses to meet Reborn's. He takes their modest order and drags his services elsewhere, shoulders slumped with exhaustion and defeat.

"So what do you need from me?" Reborn says, turning his attention back to the matter at hand. "Protection detail?"

How ironic, if so. You always said protection detail was beneath you.

"No. You've always pushed Boss to be, well, the boss," Chrome says, betraying her nerves with how tightly she holds her hands together. "This time, we need you to do the opposite. We need you to keep him as Tsuna."

Reborn leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. He doesn't speak for a moment, long enough for the waiter to come back with their two waters and a coffee. Long enough that he has to wave the boy off, and wait for Chrome's subtle mist-work to ward off any eavesdroppers.

"I was under the impression that Tsuna should be kept away from Italy."

"That's what we're hoping for, not expecting." Chrome smiles, fondly defeated. "Boss always has a way of surprising us though, so we're operating on contingencies."

Reborn raises a brow.

"It's unfortunate that we had to pull you away," Chrome says with a sigh. "It leaves Boss unattended. He'll definitely get into some trouble."

"You are a terrible worrier," Mukuro says, leaning back against the bench with Chrome's body. He throws an arm over the backrest and tilts Chrome's head up towards the ceiling. "Hibari is there. Even Tsunayoshi cannot miss that man's grotesque lack of subtlety."

"With all due respect, Hibari-san is even worse at holding Boss back than you," Chrome says flatly. It sounds practiced, but no less accusatory.

Mukuro says nothing.

Chrome shakes her head and brings back her hands to fold them back over her lap. "We've sent Hibari-san to deal with the Furuya."

And herein lies the power of experience, some twenty years' worth: a Guardian's prediction about her boss isn't so much of a prediction as it's a premonition. Reborn thinks back to the pharmacy, the man with the scar, and how Tsuna had said Kyouya-san's business. "He's already made contact with the Furuya."

"I see," Chrome says. She doesn't sound surprised. "Then he'll be here soon. If Hibari-san doesn't go to him first, then Boss will find him. It's just a matter of time after that."

"Do the opposite, you said," Reborn says. There's no point in lamenting over inevitabilities. If Tsuna is going to land in Italy, then the best that they can do is be ready. For Reborn to be prepared to do what must be done. "Explain."

"It's exactly as it sounds, Arcobaleno," Mukuro says. "Normally, you are quite the -- enabling influence on our Tsunayoshi. He never hesitates doing what he believes to be right with you around."

"You're not any better," Chrome says, chastising. "But Mukuro-sama is still correct. Boss will eventually figure out the truth of what's happened. What happened with Nana-san, and what Mukuro-sama has had to do. And when he does, his reaction won't be a kind one. That's when we'll need you to step in. He'll listen to you."

Understandably. Reborn hadn't taken particularly kindly to Mukuro's admission to having altered Tsuna's memories either. Necessity didn't excuse betrayal as deep as this, and Mukuro had only smiled, tight and edged, when Reborn had pointed out that fact.

I'm fully aware, Mukuro had said.

"You could have come back to Namimori to protect Nana. Make contingencies around that rather than this mess that you're making," Reborn says, carefully pushing those thoughts aside.

Chrome smiles. It's not a nice one. "We're aware."

Revenge isn't a good look and barely even cathartic for the effort often required, but there's no point in telling them what they already know.

"Boss will tell us to kill," Chrome says, stepping past that particular line of logic with practised selfishness, "and we need you to keep him from doing that."

Reborn frowns. "That seems counterintuitive."

"Killing a couple of key figures will be enough," Chrome says. "Neutering the Piovra and the Lumaca is easy. Their people never pledged their loyalty to the Family. Not like us. None of them are innocent, but the little people weren't involved in Nana-san's murder. Ordering a bloodbath of that scale will haunt Boss for a long time, and despite what he might believe, we are trying to help him."

Reborn takes another moment to think when their food arrives, to be pushed onto the table alongside their untouched drinks. The waiter mumbles a pleasantry that Reborn doesn't pay attention to, and leans back in his seat, studying the killer in front of him.

"Can't you refuse that order?" Reborn asks when the waiter walks away. "That idiot would never punish you for sticking to your beliefs."

"I don't know if I should be honoured or insulted that you believe that I can say no to Boss," Chrome says, picking up her fork and knife to begin separating her panzanella into bite-sized pieces that she won't be eating. "If I may give you a piece of advice?"

Reborn inclines his head.

"Forget all that you think you know about Sky Attraction," she says, her smile sitting incongruent with her words. It's a soft smile, an affectionate one. Warm with anticipation. Reborn doesn't need to guess to know who it is that she's thinking about. "You'll see. When it's your turn, you'll see."

"But until then," Mukuro says, "consider this as an opportunity, Arcobaleno. To take responsibility for what you've unleashed."

Take responsibility for what you've turned him into, he doesn't say. Just like I am.

*

No less than hours after Chrome leaves Reborn, he gets a call from Nana.

The call comes from the phone that Reborn had left in Tsuna's hands, the only phone in the world that should know the association between that number and Reborn. She calls him in a panic with Yamamoto Tsuyoshi's worried voice in the background, telling him about Tsuna's abrupt change in demeanour after a call to their landline.

Reborn's body turns cold. It's not panic, but it's a near thing. It's the closest that Reborn's gotten to panic since becoming the World's Greatest.

"I knew there was something wrong with him," Nana says, her words warbling with impending tears. "He wasn't my Tsuna anymore for a while, but I didn't think-- this is-- oh, should I call Iemitsu, Reborn? Do you think--"

Having Iemitsu anywhere near Tsuna after what Reborn had learned of the future is so appalling that Reborn can hardly think of anything more disgusting.

"I'll handle it," he tells her.

He doesn't bother with the Furuya. Tsuna will take care of that. Alerting Gokudera and Yamamoto, telling them to protect Nana with their lives, took precedence, because they can't lose Sawada Nana. Everything rode on that woman's wellbeing, and Reborn would rather find Tsuna new Guardians while he's yet to harmonize with them than lose the woman that Tsuna had died mourning.

Making calls is all that Reborn can do from an ocean away anyway. Making calls, and waiting. He waits with an uncomfortable weight inside his gut, tense but patient. Trusting, but only because he must.

It's a terrible experience. He hates every minute of it, but wait he does. Waiting, too, until the little note in his pocket takes on another line of dialogue.

Both instances of patience get rewarded when Reborn comes awake to the feel of a buzzing phone against his thigh. Coming awake from another instance of remembering hazy images and muffled sounds, that fuzzy sense of being in the backseat of a car that he should've been driving.

Still, first thing's first.

"Loser Tsuna."

"Hey Reborn," Tsuna says. He sounds like he's in one piece, no longer on the verge of breaking. Everything worked out, then. "How's Italy?"

"It's Italy," Reborn says.

Tsuna laughs, soft with understanding, and Reborn finds that he can breathe that much easier. "Did you miss it?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Reborn says. "But speaking of ridiculous, I hear you got kidnapped."

"Oh. Yeah," Tsuna says like it's an afterthought. Just another day in the office. Reborn's going to break his ankles and keep him in a bunker in Switzerland. "It's been a while since someone's tried. I forgot how tedious it is."

Reborn rolls his eyes. What an infuriating man that Tsuna's grown up to be. Who raised him? "What did you do?"

"Why do you always assume it's my fault?"

He's whining. He's whining like he's not who he is. He's whining, and the world feels stable beneath Reborn's feet again.

"Loser Tsuna," Reborn says with faux patience. "You couldn't stay out of trouble even if I shot everyone dead. Twice."

There's a small noise in the background, too far to belong to Tsuna. Tsuna, for his part, makes no noise at all, filling it with all that he chooses not to say.

He seems fond of these silences. These poignant moments where he simply looks and waits, trusting his thoughts to be known. Silences that should be awkward but aren't, because Tsuna only needs to smile or sigh or breathe to put someone at ease. Reborn's only slightly disappointed in himself to have fallen victim to it.

"There was a situation that needed to be handled," Tsuna says eventually. "So I handled it."

Reborn raises a brow. Loudly. He expects Tsuna to hear it. "Hibari's business?"

"Yeah," Tsuna says heavily, obviously resigned to the ribbing to come. "That one."

"The one you said wouldn't be a problem?"

This beat of silence is just immature. "Yep."

"The one involving the yakuza and their hired assassin?"

"Yeah," Tsuna says, a bit slower than before. Surprised, but enough to ask how Reborn knows. Good; the answer doesn't matter, and it can be inferred. There's no reason to offer Reborn another upper hand when it doesn't matter how Reborn knows, only that he does. "Which is why I need dad over here for a while."

Sawada Tsunayoshi is Reborn's greatest accomplishment. He will be. Reborn won't accept anything less.

Still, "You should know better than to leave loose ends."

"I didn't," Tsuna says. "He's just insurance."

Sawada Iemitsu. What a conundrum he is. A traitor by every definition but Tsuna's. Reborn's quite certain that Tsuna would be happy to never see Iemitsu again, to never hear his name uttered in the circles that he frequents. He might not even get terribly upset if Reborn silenced Iemitsu for the good of them all.

But a father is still a father. He's the husband to a woman that Tsuna had died mourning. That, and Tsuna had called Iemitsu to Namimori. That alone denotes him as useful, as someone with skills that Tsuna needs. Reborn knows better than to touch him.

It's still a shame.

"He gave me a call," Reborn says. An exceptionally annoying call.

Tsuna takes a breath. "Yeah, he said he would. Sorry about that. I might've been a bit forceful during my chat with him."

Forceful. That's certainly a word for it. "I know. He told me in great detail."

"That must've been annoying," Tsuna says. He sounds like he's wincing. "You didn't kill him, did you? I still need him."

"He wasn't worth the effort."

"Thanks, Reborn."

Reborn leans back into his chair. The hotel that he'd opted for is fancy and excessively expensive, but seeing how it was coming out of Nono's pocket, Reborn had had no reason to go for anything but the best. The view outside is a lovely one, quessientially Italian for how chaotic it is, how beautiful, harmonizing the cacophony into a symphony that Reborn will one day share with his Tsuna.

Tsuna had been raised in a little town convinced of its own normality. Reborn had been raised here, in this loud mess of a country, determined to self-destruct but also simultaneously survive.

"You sound better," Reborn says, resting his hand over the note that he'd been studying. "Are you actually managing to stay upright?"

Tsuna sounds like he might be smiling. "Yeah."

"You'll be here soon, I assume," Reborn says, and is gratified when Tsuna doesn't ask. Respecting Reborn's space and secrecy, implicit in his trust that Reborn will share what Reborn must. Sentimental fool. "When are you leaving?"

"When dad gets here," Tsuna says. "Kyouya-san also has a few things that he needs to take care of."

"He's coming with you then?"

"Yeah. Hayato and Takeshi are staying. They're going to handle something here for me." Tsuna pauses. Reborn doesn't wonder if he's with Hibari now; of course he is. Chrome had told him as much. It's a surprisingly annoying thought. "We'll see you soon."

"Text me your flight details later," Reborn says, and in a rare fit of petulance, he adds, "Chrome sends her regards."

And the line goes dead. On Reborn's side first, of course.

He smiles at the face that he can imagine on Tsuna's face, and stares down at the second line on the note from his future self.

And if you don't? Reborn had written to himself in a fit of insane genius.

He smiles despite the violence to come, the blood that will be spilled when the Decimo arrives in Italy. Smiles despite the civil unrest that a competent Vongola Tenth will bring about within the ranks of the Family, the shifts in power and influence when the world watches the Vongola move on Tsuna's command.

There will be blood, treachery, heartache. There will be loss. Tears. Grief. Reborn will hold Tsuna through all of it, and he will succeed, because his future self had answered:

You will. You already have.

Chapter Text

They leave for Italy on a Tuesday.

It can't be a Monday, and waiting any longer would have them leaving on a Wednesday, or worse, Thursday. Bad luck, Thursdays. Anything that wants to go wrong always went wrong on a Thursday, and the Vongola had only ever needed one bad instance to turn a superstition into their truth.

Hayato and Takeshi stare at him blankly when Tsuna says as much. Kyouya, on the other hand, simply smirks.

But like all else that came before, there is business that needs handling, both Tsuna's and Kyouya's. Tsuna's, at least, is as easy as showing up at the airport with Hayato and Takeshi at each shoulder, meeting the man that Tsuna calls dad out loud but not in his head.

Iemitsu has a severe slope to his mouth when he sees them, but he's perfectly civil in his pleasantries. He's perfectly compliant when Tsuna repeats his expectations in the car that Kusakabe drives. Hayato and Takeshi watch the verbal volley with poorly disguised horror and fascination respectively, but it is Kyouya that Tsuna has to keep calm, his hand left on his Cloud's knee for the ride back to Namimori.

"He's still useful," Tsuna tells him later, after Hayato and Takeshi take Iemitsu to TakeSushi. "Please let me use him before you kill him. He owes me that much."

Kyouya sneers, but he doesn't knock his tonfas on Tsuna's head, so that's that.

On the other hand, Kyouya's business takes much longer, but that's not really surprising; loose ends always do. Furuya Masa might no longer be a problem, his body and the body of his men still unaccounted for, but the yakuza have never been the quiet sort. They never really need a reason to be inconsolable. Furuya Giichi does his best, but not everyone can be culled by an heir's pretty platitudes.

Not all violence can be avoided. Tsuna knows that. He's learned. He's even learned to be fine with it.

And so the Furuya that refuses to heel fall on the sword named Hibari Kyouya. Tsuna does his part by staying out of the way, by being present when Kyouya returns from his hunt.

His legs are dangling off of the engawa on one particular night, alive and whole and hurting that much less. Kyouya returns smelling distantly of blood, but Tsuna welcomes him back anyway. The stench is a small price to pay when weighed against the relief provided by Kyouya's presence.

Kyouya's sins have been Tsuna's for a long time, besides. This is not a new cross to carry.

The bamboo garden is freckled in blacks and blues and a touch of yellow. The cicadas are out in full force, but Tsuna can hardly hear them over the gentle hum of Kyouya's Flames. Kyouya, for his part, has his head against Tsuna's thigh, lazy in his contentment.

It's been a good day today. Almost peaceful, if one ignored the dozen men that Kyouya had put down. It feels like home, where Tsuna is the Decimo in both title and name and Kyouya is just another monster that the Decimo keeps. It feels like their version of Italy, where they balance the taste of peace alongside the violence on their tongues.

Kyouya nips at Tsuna's leg, sharp and fleeting and demanding, because he only ever bites when he wants something, and Tsuna sighs and puts his hand back in Kyouya's hair.

"Your head?" Kyouya asks eventually.

"Better," Tsuna says. He lifts his own eyes away from Kyouya, but lets Kyouya watch him to his heart's content. It's the night before they will be flying to Italy, to where Tsuna will be expected to perform. To where he can no longer just sit in a room and track the hours by the position of the sun.

Kyouya doesn't look away, his eyes glinting like the dull edge of a knife, watching. Questioning.

Tsuna huffs. "I'm fine, Kyouya-san."

He's fine. He feels well enough to fight, to ruin the mafia as he once had. He could turn the whole world to ashes if he was so inclined, and the only people that could stop him wouldn't.

Be careful with that, Sawada, Hana had once said, in reference to Reborn.

Maybe she should've said that in reference to them all.

"When we get back home, I'll prove it to you," Tsuna says, looking back at Kyouya. At how Kyouya's attention never wavers from Tsuna's face. Tsuna runs the back of his knuckles along Kyouya's bangs and smiles when Kyouya catches his wrist. Not squeezing, simply holding, pressing a thumb to the pulsepoint.

Kyouya drags Tsuna's palm down to where he can press his mouth against it. A kiss by another's standards, but in Hibari Kyouya, it's simply, "I have your word?"

"You do," Tsuna says easily. As easily as he's said anything as of late, his hurts eased by the potency of Kyouya's presence, the comforting hum of his Flames.

His mom is pointedly absent when Tsuna steps past the precipice of the Hibari estate two days later. Hayato is there, misty-eyed while standing next to the brittle smile of Takeshi. It hurts not to see her, but the circumstances that had prevented Tsuna from seeing her last week haven't changed.

Risking her health and wellbeing for a moment of personal satisfaction and selfishness isn't worth it. He won't lose her, not like that. Not again.

Tsuna blinks and flattens his palm against an eye. The world shifts before him, colourful mists threading together a new reality. The true one, the story that he must believe, one that says, no, Boss.

Hah. Right.

At least he doesn't see Iemitsu either, which is something. A relief, maybe.

He offers a smile at Hayato and Takeshi as a means to distract them while leaning back against the hand that Kyouya presses into the small of his back.

"Well," he tells them both. Tells Namimori, his past. The memories of ordinary days. "I'll see you guys in twenty years."

"Call for anything, Tenth," Hayato says fiercely, just as Takeshi says, "Leave everything to us."

Tsuna's smile widens. Softens with honesty. "I know. Thank you."

*

The flight to Italy is an uneventful one, much to Kyouya's half-irritated relief. Or is that chagrin? Hibari Kyouya isn't the type to sigh in relief or sigh at all with anything but disappointment, but when he steps onto Italian soil with Tsuna at his shoulder, he's tense. Stiff with the twitchy, itchy need to strike people with his tonfa.

Tsuna sympathizes. Really, he does. There's nothing more suspicious than peace and quiet, but.

He lays a hand along Kyouya's upper arm, drawing him down to where Tsuna's hand glows warm with a thin layer of orange, warm and stable. A settling force, even when his stomach rolls at the thought of, we're here.

They're here, in Italy. In Italy, back at the heart of the mafia, an old beast that Tsuna will one day put down.

"Nothing's going to happen," Tsuna says. "Not here."

Not here. Something will, he feels it in the air, tastes it on his tongue, but that something won't happen here.

Kyouya would do better without that knowledge though. A tense Hibari Kyouya is tantamount to handling a nuclear bomb, and Tsuna has been actively trying to avoid setting off a world war since he'd been fourteen.

"Come on," Tsuna says, drawing his hand back. "We shouldn't keep him-- them waiting."

Getting through customs takes a little longer than Kyouya's patience barely makes allowance for, but it really only takes a call to Nono for them to be released, so. It's fine. No harm done.

Palermo will never hold them in the way that its government wants to anyway. It can't. Won't, actually; it's been the heart of the Vongola for too long, a stronghold of history and misfortunes. It's a city that Tsuna will learn to call home one day, a city that will feel more like home than Namimori in the near future.

That used to be a sobering thought. Now, it feels like fate or thereabouts.

The people waiting for them beyond the gates are older men in expensive suits, with heights that easily tower over Tsuna and Kyouya, both. They're as grey as they are wrinkled, as dangerous as they are powerful. They're the kind of people that paradoxically draw eyes and discourage staring at the same time.

"Hello, Decimo," the Storm says when Tsuna approaches. He inclines his head in a perfectly respectful nod, barely a bow by Japan's standards but a grandiose one by Italy's. "How was your flight?"

"Good, thank you," Tsuna says, smiling despite himself. Smiling, even as Kyouya glowers at the person standing before them. "But, um. Wasn't it a bit overkill to send you both?"

"Perhaps," the Storm says. His tone suggests that he disagrees.

"Not taking any chances, huh?" Tsuna says ruefully. "Has it gotten that bad?"

"A most subjective question," the Rain says, ushering Tsuna forward. Kyouya follows with neither prompt nor violence, which is as delightfully surprising as a properly caffeinated Reborn. "By whose definition of bad are you asking?"

"On a scale of Reborn's coffee and mine," Tsuna says, letting himself be led.

There's a large hand at the small of his back, larger and older and foreign in the same way that it's familiar. It unmoors him as much as it guides, proprietary in every way that's both wrong and right.

Kyouya snarls. Vaguely, but -- yeah, that's definitely a snarl.

Tsuna attempts to twist, to put himself in front of Kyouya before Kyouya can cause an international incident, but the hand on his back holds strong.

"That's quite the scale. Can't say I'm familiar enough with it to use it," the Storm says lightly, as though he's grown deaf to such threats.

"But if I may hazard a guess," the Rain says, "then let us say yours, Decimo."

Ah. Pretty damn bad, then.

"Remove your hand," Kyouya snaps. His patience is thin on a good day, a rope frayed with all that Kyouya finds annoying. Seeing this man's hand on Tsuna likely tops the list, second only to being crowded. "Or I will."

*

The walk to the parking lot is blissfully short after Tsuna talks Kyouya down from attempted murder with a small black Fiat waiting at the end of it. Tsuna breathes out with relief; that it's a Fiat rather than something conspicuous like a Maserati is both a wonder and a relief. That Nono had allowed it is a curiosity, but, well.

Tsuna glances up at the Ninth's Storm. At the Rain. Maybe it's not so curious.

"Is it to your liking?" the Storm asks.

Tsuna flattens his hand against the hood, smoothing his palm over the cracked texture of peeling paint.

"Yeah," Tsuna says.

It's not his Fiat, not the first and only car that he's ever had, but it's close. It's closer to that than the many other cars that he had been gifted, many that others have used to drive him in. This is nostalgia on four wheels, closer to the first car that he'd ever bought for himself, a homely little thing that he'd found at the discount aisle of some seedy second-hand dealer that Reborn had allowed him to wander into.

It's also the first type of car that Lambo had chosen to buy, back when he'd been deemed responsible enough to own one. Lambo's had been an ugly and green, beloved by Lambo as his second love. Second, he'd say, only to his Tsuna-nii.

The two cars had made quite the sight when parked side by side, Tsuna remembers. Ugly and terrible, one that never failed to make Hayato look severely constipated, but he'd left them unharassed. In the language of Gokudera Hayato, that's as good as benediction.

I want to drive Tsuna-nii around, Lambo used to say.

So you can monopolize him for hours, idiot cow? Fat-fucking-chance.

Tsuna-nii, Lambo would whine in his characteristic deadpan. Let's elope.

Elope, he said. Like they had anywhere to go, like they could find peace in that mysterious and impossible place. Elope, he said, with the same sort of desperation that he would later use to say, let me help. Let me help, let me help, let me take you away, let me help save you.

Tsuna remembers ruffling Lambo's hair then, if only because he could. He remembers Lambo letting him even when he had long-since become someone taller and broader than Tsuna, when he'd have to start bending slightly to make the process easier.

Tsuna hadn't asked him how. That would've been a cruel question to ask. Help, how? By taking on the burdens that Tsuna, himself, had created? By taking the bullets and collecting ugly bloodstains on his new suit as Lambo had done when Tsuna had been stupid enough to make a pattern out of their outings? A pattern that the Decimo's enemies had taken advantage of?

The metal warms under his hand. The air sizzles. The world bucks, straining at the seams.

"Tsunayoshi," Kyouya says.

Tsuna blinks. Blinks past the echo of Lambo's sad face and sad voice and sad everything. So very sad when he should've been angry. Because nothing short of Tsuna's idiocy and selfishness could have landed Lambo in the infirmary, his face breaking into a smile when he realized that Tsuna hadn't gotten hurt --

Kyouya grabs Tsuna by the chin, his fingers bruising and grounding.

"Enough," Kyouya says.

It's the Italian air, Tsuna thinks. Always smelling of seasalt and bullets. It takes him back, takes him away.

Tsuna breathes out. Thinks ruefully of how the Reborn of the past had been strangely merciful in how he had allowed Tsuna's days of reminisce go unharassed. How he had let Tsuna look back at his future-past with nothing more than a long look of consideration. Curiosity, perhaps, for the days that still awaited him and his Tsuna, twenty years too young to know the thoughts that plague the Decimo's mind.

Kyouya, in contrast, has lived those moments. Has seen them happen and has let them pass him by. Always lingering just outside of Tsuna's consciousness, watching the many ways in which Tsuna could splinter and fall apart. A one-man army that Tsuna can deploy to destroy those that threatened Tsuna's own.

"Are you okay to ride with me in the back?" Tsuna says. His voice sounds muffled. Like he's underwater. He pulls his hand away from the Fiat. "It'll be a little crowded."

Kyouya studies Tsuna for a minute longer than most people would find polite then lets him go with a grunt. He's visibly annoyed, but it's a blow that he won't aim at Tsuna for as long as Tsuna is looking to cut himself on his teeth. Kyouya had never been a purporant of self destruction, and would never allow himself to be used in such a way.

It's beneath him anyway. Tsuna's wounds are Tsuna's own to carry. It had never been Kyouya's job to wield them.

"Your shoulder will suffice," Kyouya says.

Tsuna smiles. It even feels genuine.

"It'll get bumpy too," Tsuna says and fields all three stares with a shrug. "Just a feeling I get."

"I see," the Rain says, opening the door for Tsuna. "And on a scale of Reborn's coffee and yours, how bumpy are we feeling?"

"Reborn's," Tsuna says, slipping into his side of the backseat. "Don't worry. They're just saying hello."

*

True to form, Kyouya immediately falls asleep in the ride, implicit in his trust in both Tsuna and the two that ride in front. Neither of which is worth the headache that would ensue if pointed out, but Tsuna only needs to meet the eyes of the Ninth Guardians in the rearview mirror to know that his amusement is known and shared.

"Why do you look like that?" Tsuna asks when Kyouya starts making soft, huffing noises in a strange approximation of a snore. It's kind of adorable and Tsuna needs to distract himself before he does something stupid like petting him without his consent.

"I'm not sure if I understand what you mean," the Ninth Storm-that-isn't says.

"At least tell me that it's an illusion," Tsuna begs, well aware of how he's asking to be lied to. The alternative would make him acknowledge reality for what it is, and he shouldn't have to if he didn't want to. He usually never wants to.

"Decimo," the Rain-that-really-isn't says, raising a brow, "I assure you, we are both fully real. As I'm sure you're already aware."

Just as he's aware of how the one lurking behind the eyes of Nono's Storm and Rain are neither of those men, no doubt. Like how Tsuna knows that he's staring at a political landmine. Given his destination though, he can't deny how he's also staring at an advantage either. At how he's being given leverage against one of the most powerful men in Italy.

Tsuna rests his head against Kyouya's and sighs. It's fine. It'll be fine. Chrome wouldn't let Mukuro do anything too stupid. Neither would Reborn. Surely they wouldn't.

The ride is otherwise quiet and is as uninteresting as the day will get. The last stretch of calm before Tsuna wrests the mantle from Nono. There is predictable chaos on the road, angry drivers in the form of loud honking and squealing tires, but there are no showers of bullets, no spilled blood, no goodbyes to be had as her hand grows cool and limp in his.

It's more than he can ask for. That he's ever thought to ask for.

"Take the turn here," Tsuna says as he taps Kyouya's knee with a finger. One to wake him, twice to warn him.

Kyouya rouses like a serpent, irate but expectant. The two sitting in the front are deceptively relaxed, but when one of them meets Tsuna's eyes in the rearview mirror, they are half-lidded and heterochromatic.

Tsuna, for his part, rolls his shoulders back and breathes in. His resolve always smells vaguely of smoke and that is what Tsuna smells when he lets the world fall into sharp focus.

His head: aching, but easily ignored. His body: jetlagged, but it'll move. His Flames --

His Flames curl around his fingers. Licks at his skin with vows of absolution and judgement in the colours of violet and indigo.

Good.

"Shall we pull up?" the Storm says.

It's an offering. An easy escape from the responsibilities that Tsuna has resigned himself to shouldering a second time. It's kindness, the likes of which Tsuna didn't deserve.

More to the point, it's a waste of time.

"No," Tsuna says, shrugging off his seatbelt before looking at the hand that curls around his wrist.

"Ten minutes," Kyouya says in warning.

Ten minutes. How generous. If Tsuna couldn't take care of this problem in five, then he had grown duller than he should've been allowed.

"Okay," Tsuna says.

Kyouya's hand tightens. Hard enough to bruise, tense enough to anchor. Pointed enough to serve as a reminder as the world goes bright and beautiful. Reminding Tsuna of his mortality even as all the world's imperfections lay themselves before him.

Tsuna looks. At the crease between Kyouya's brows. The heavy set of his lips. The unnamed emotion that adds the smallest of tremors to Kyouya's grip. It could be desperation. It could be defiance. It is most definitely devotion.

Hibari Kyouya, the first that became Tsuna's. Still his, even after all these years.

"I'll be fine," Tsuna says quietly.

Kyouya's mouth curls, both derisive and petulant, a combination that is so characteristic of Kyouya that it makes Tsuna smile.

Tsuna gently slides out of Kyouya's grip and this time, Kyouya lets him. Tsuna rolls the window down. The two sitting at the front let him.

"Keep driving," Tsuna says to the two bodies sitting up front. "I'll catch up."

There is a moment of silence. Kyouya isn't looking at the Ninth Storm and Rain, but Tsuna's Guardians rarely need to look at each other to share in sentiment.

"As you wish."

*

When the world speaks its secrets to him, Tsuna hears this:

This neighbourhood is old. Indentured with crime, violated by hunger. Not for food, but safety. The people here are survivors first, citizens second. They will see the Decimo and understand that speaking of what they've witnessed is tantamount to death. Their silence does not need to be bought. They will give it to appease their hunger. They will forget Tsuna because they must.

The roads are thin. Riddled with disrepair. The government doesn't care to add cement to a fault line of this magnitude. This is a place of the wanting, of people beaten down by society. Tsuna's business will not be interrupted here. He will not be judged, only avoided.

They are going at 67 km per hour. At this speed, a crash can prove dangerous. Not a guaranteed death, but the possibility remains. Tsuna won't let his Family die. Tsuna can't let everyone in the other car die.

There's only one thing to be done.

The wind whips at his face as Tsuna flips his body up onto the roof of the car through the window. The metal feels warm and solid beneath his palm. There is a screech of tires that gives away the other car's surprise, the only other car that remains on the road since Tsuna had his Family swerve into this small neighbourhood filled with alleyways and destitution.

Breathe in. Out.

He's ready.

The air shrieks in his ear as Tsuna pushes himself forward. Their pursuers' car groans beneath the impact of Tsuna's weight and Flames when he lands, and at once, there are shouts, panic, fear.

There are shouts, characteristically Italian. There is mafia-flavoured panic. There is fear, because these are but mortal men.

Tsuna curls his fingers into the roof of the car, twisting the metal between flesh and blood and fire.

Flesh, blood, fire, then -- ice.

Momentum has Tsuna lurching off of the car as it grows roots into the cement, locked in place by frozen fire. Tsuna feels himself fly. He doesn't notice the landing. He doesn't remember walking back to the car, stopping at the driver's door, but he reads what lurks in the eyes that roll up toward him regardless.

Three men. Ages twenty-one, thirty-three, thirty-six. Two are friends. Another is a new recruit. Between them, there are four guns. Only one has killed before.

They are not the worst men that Tsuna will murder, nor will they be the best.

"I have a message for your employer," Tsuna says.

His chest feels heavy. His knee aches. He breathes and feels himself alive. This is the price of his Family's choices.

Just the same, this is the consequence of seeking to harm his Family. These aren't evil men, but nor are they virtuous. They deserve to die as much as Tsuna does.

Tsuna reaches into the ice and breaks the window with his elbow. His skin aches with abuse but Tsuna ignores it with ease, distracted with having to wrench a gun out from within the ice, from within the driver's coat.

Flecks of ice fall from the metal like dust. The metal warms in his grip. The air sizzles with intent. The barrel slides into place as easily as it always does.

He levels the gun. His hand doesn't shake. Tsuna says, "The first one that can close their eyes will be the messenger."

*

His Family is waiting for him when Tsuna rounds the corner, the crown of his Flames dimming to a flicker.

The ache in his knee is an old thing, an echo of a worn memory. The details are fuzzy around the edges; he doesn't remember who gave him that injury, or why. He knows it to be a bullet wound, the Decimo's first and only major injury. He remembers the weeks following the wound better than he remembers anything else.

It's a wound that Tsuna remembers by his Family's response, the weeks of babying and mortification that they had inflicted on him as an expression of their worry. Hayato had been beside himself, assigning himself in charge of working Tsuna through the physiotherapy that Haru had prescribed him. Takeshi had been one bad day away from carrying Tsuna on his back for the rest of eternity. Lambo had been inconsolable until Tsuna had agreed to try the knee brace that Shouichi and Spanner had designed. Hana had to talk Ryouhei down from putting a bullet into his own knee in apology, calling him an idiot among other things.

What good are you crippled? You think you'd be any use to Sawada then?

They had yet to marry then, but it hadn't been long after that incident that Ryouhei had seemed to accept that she is, indeed, the woman that he wants to call his wife.

Kyouya in his typical, enviable predictability responds to Tsuna's weakness exactly as he had responded then.

Tsuna leans away from the tonfa. Leans away from the other one. He twists and dances away before raising a forearm to block the last strike that Kyouya aims at his head. Flames immediately ice the bruise that Tsuna can already feel forming. The bones of his arm shudders at the impact regardless.

Still, he doesn't flinch. He isn't hurting, with regret or otherwise.

Kyouya narrows his eyes but he lowers his tonfas, momentarily satisfied. "How many?"

"Two," Tsuna says. He won't remember the men's wide-eyed terror after today. This isn't the first time. He'll be okay.

Kyouya watches him, eyes dark and assessing. Tsuna doesn't wonder what he sees, already knowing what Kyouya is looking for. He knows his role, knows that he's meant to stand still and unhurt, whole enough to function.

Kyouya sneers at the unspoken sentiment, but he turns away to deposit himself back into the car, so. That's fine.

The Ninth's Rain approaches him next, shielding Tsuna from the sun with his height alone. His hand is cold when it cups itself against Tsuna's cheek, and his thumb is callused and scratchy when he rubs it beneath Tsuna's right nostril where a steady stream of blood has begun to flow.

Tsuna's Flame brightens against his skin. His breath hitches as indigo dances across his vision, cool and calming. Stabilizing. Colour chases away the monochrome, and his fingers tingle with warmth. Tsuna's head feels that much more settled, the ringing quieting into the pleasant croon of a harmonized Flame.

Tsuna looks up at him and leans his head against the Rain's hand.

"I'm glad you're here," Tsuna says quietly.

The Rain smiles and answers by pinching the bridge of Tsuna's nose, and Tsuna closes his eyes. Behind his eyelids, he sees that smile, the very same that Mukuro had worn when he and Chrome had sat by Tsuna's side after the drive-by shooting that left Lambo stranded in the infirmary and Tsuna minutes away from self-combusting. That terrible, edged thing that Mukuro hadn't worn since the first time that they had met.

It's about time that you let us cut you, Mukuro had said then, resting his elbows against his knees as he leaned forward in his chair.

Tsuna tilts his head forward when prompted. He can feel the blood welling up against the tourniquet of the Rain's grip. The pressure in his head dims against the hand, but his Flame flickers nonetheless, straining beneath its own weight.

And past the flickers, frustration lingers like aftertaste. Tsuna has two Guardians by his side and eight minutes is how long he could keep up his strength? That's not good enough.

Tsuna layers his hand over the Rain's and tries to shake off a grip that refuses to budge.

"We're wasting time," Tsuna says. He sounds petulant even to his Flame-muffled ears. His chest caves with the indignance at his own mortality. He's the Vongola Decimo; limits of his body were supposed to be a thing of the past. This isn't how things are supposed to be.

His people deserved better.

"We are," the Rain agrees. His voice is careful, his words blunted with the hesitance of a man handling a broken, beloved toy. "And we can stop whenever you see us fit to do so."

The blood in his nose congeals. It's unpleasant. "I need the practice."

"Please," the Rain says with a click of tongue. "Practice is not what you need."

The Flame above Tsuna's forehead sputters. Splinters like the thin lines of a fracture, inoperable and unacceptably weak. Tsuna sets his jaw against it. The world flickers, bleeds. Threatens to shatter into stained glass pieces.

Do you trust us, Boss? Chrome had asked, once upon a time. She had put her hand on Tsuna's bandaged knee, touching him like she could bear to do no less, her eyes huge and fractured. She hadn't been scared that he had been hurt, but fear had lingered on her face nonetheless.

"Stop fighting and let go," the Rain says. "Our deal still stands."

The world creaks around Tsuna's ears, filling it with sights and sounds and sadness that didn't happen, because no, Boss, not yet.

Not yet.

"Does it?" Tsuna asks mildly, blinking away the aftereffects of mist. He isn't angry. He can't afford to be.

The pause lasts all of two seconds, one for each promise broken. "Of course."

Of course. Tsuna's Family has never done anything to hurt him, not directly. The aches that befell him in consequence has never been any more than that.

It's on the tailend of that thought that Tsuna's Flame breaks, like lightning on drywood. Tsuna finds that he can no more keep his eyes than a forest can stop burning. The pain wells up with the roar of fire in his ears, awful and familiar in how it mutes out the world with one, blazing explosion of colour and sensation, and then --

*

Tsuna had been twenty-four when he had been gunned down in Byakuran's future. In his, where he had built his happiness on blood and corpses, prioritizing the safety of his Family over the stability of the world, he had been twenty when someone thought to shoot him.

He had been in power for six months before someone had thought, rather correctly, that Tsuna was a man better off dead.

It had been an exhausting, embarrassing affair, contextualized by how the Tenth Generation had floundered beneath the weight of all that they were responsible for. Tsuna remembers talking to Reborn about it, fighting Reborn about it, about what Tsuna wants to do with the Vongola and all of its responsibilities, and the day had already been so fucking miserable before Tsuna had gotten himself shot, and then none of it had ended up mattering anyway.

I get it, okay? he'd said to Reborn. I do. I don't know this world as much as you do.

He had come awake to Hayato (who had still been Gokudera-kun back then) grey with anxiety. To Takeshi (Yamamoto), rigid with antipathy. To Lambo, panicked in his youth. To Ryouhei (brother, Tsuna had never stopped calling him), wild-eyed with helplessness. To Kyouya (Hibari-san, until Kyouya had become Kyouya-san), cold with anger. To Chrome. To Mukuro.

To Reborn, who had always been Reborn, who had been reading in the faint light of the room that Tsuna had painstakingly transformed into something that he could call his.

It had been a tall and expensive room, so much so that Tsuna had initially thought it gaudy. Excessive. The ceiling had been an entire story higher than what should have been acceptable, and the walls had been cast in the colour of a cooling corpse until Tsuna had rolled up his sleeves and painted over it himself. All curtains (a dark blue rather than the bullet-proof ones that Hayato had tried to recommend) had been drawn closed that morning, leaving only a sliver of space for sunlight to squeak through. There had been hardly bright enough to see, much less read.

But that was what Reborn had been doing when Tsuna turned his head toward him. He was so tall, even when seated, and unfairly handsome. His hair had been strangely unkempt that day, his sleeves wrinkled in a way that had felt blasphemous to look upon.

But I don't want to learn this world. I don't like it, and I hate the idea of having to live in it even more.

Reborn looked up and met Tsuna's stare. Something dead and forbidden hammered up against Tsuna's ribs.

The book snapped closed. Reborn said nothing. Tsuna refused to say anything, his jaws set against the argument that he didn't want to rehash.

I'm not settling, Reborn. You didn't raise me to be a defeatist.

Tsuna's chair groaned as Reborn pushed himself out of it. The floorboards were quiet beneath Reborn's footsteps. The mattress dipped when Reborn leaned one knee into it, right by Tsuna's battered knee.

Reborn's fingers had been gentle when they had carded themselves through Tsuna's hair. Tsuna hadn't looked away. Reborn hadn't either, and his nails had dug meanly into Tsuna's scalp as he held them locked, just like that.

Why shouldn't I be selfish?

The room had been cold when Reborn left, the space between them empty with all that they would forever leave unsaid.

*

Tsuna opens his eyes to where he has his head pillowed against Kyouya's shoulder, in a tall and expensive room. The ceiling is an entire story higher than what should be polite, and the walls are cast in the warm colour of blood. There are grand windows that are made of both bulletproof and Flame-proof glass, and natural light pierces it oddly, leaving unnatural shadows along Nono's bookshelves, desk, and chair.

Kyouya's hand is tight and grounding on Tsuna's thigh when Tsuna leans away. There are needles beneath his skin and his brain feels oddly scrambled. His body doesn't feel like his own.

Tsuna flexes his hands and watches as the fingers obey with seconds' worth of delay.

"How long?" Tsuna asks.

"Thirty minutes."

Ah. That's not bad at all.

"Nono?"

"On his way," says the Ninth Storm's mouth.

Tsuna looks at him. At the body of the Rain that stands apart at the door, guarding the space inside when he should now know to do the opposite. What good had it done anyone by protecting Tsuna?

"How did you get me here?" Tsuna asks, wincing as he rolls his shoulders back. His muscles feel fragile, tender with overuse. His head feels no better, but there's little trouble piecing his thoughts, memories, and dreams together. There's no vertigo, no nausea. The colours don't pulse. The world quiets its whispers.

His body feels like a body with all of its human limitations back in place, and Tsuna feels very much alive.

"You were carried," Kyouya says, which is mortifying.

"Thank you," Tsuna says, because the alternative would have been worse. He breathes out and gently sweeps Kyouya's hand off his thigh.

Tsuna stands. His Guardians straighten their posture as Tsuna loosens his. Grows stern where Tsuna gentles. His Family holds strong while Tsuna pushes aside thoughts of aches and pains as the Vongola Ninth steps into the room.

Nono's face is no older than when Tsuna had seen that face last, laid to rest in a casket full of petunias. His suit is still that awful, chocolate brown. His moustache is in desperate need of a trim. He looks tired, worn down.

He looks vulnerable, in as much as a Vongola Don might ever look. He looks like a man that has not yet learned the price of weakness.

"Ciao, Nono," says the Vongola Decimo. "It's been a while."

Chapter Text

Life, Tsuna has found, is nothing more than a series of challenges.

Take school, for example. School has always been difficult, a microcosm of the world. It had been the training grounds for all the rules that you would need to know and follow, all the rules that you, within your place in the world, were allowed to break.

Namimori Middle had taught Tsuna of his value. Of his place. Had humbled him before Reborn could put him at the apex of everything. It had taught him of the rules that he should know and follow. Namimori High, in contrast, had taught him how quickly those rules could change. How now, he was allowed to break them.

Like, the whole bullying thing. It had only taken two weeks into high school for everyone to learn that Tsuna wasn't to be touched. Those rules had changed. To treat him as they had treated him in middle school was to tempt third-degree burns, baseball-induced concussions, grenades tucked into your desk, invitations to run a hundred laps with Sasagawa Ryouhei, bites to the death, or nightmares until you were sixty.

It had taken two days into high school for Tsuna to learn what had happened. How the rules had been changed. How his Family had suddenly become a weapon for him to wield, a weapon that he was meant to use when he graduated into the mafia. His friends, family and Family were pieces of a game that others expected him to use, and thus would find fit to take from him.

Stop it, Reborn had told him when Tsuna had come to that cold conclusion. Tsuna had been sitting on his bed with his head in his hands while Reborn had been sitting on Tsuna's desk chair with his legs crossed, looking all of fifteen years old. You're an idiot, but not so stupid as to believe that freaking out will help anyone.

Reborn is another one of life's difficulties, the most difficult of them all. He was hard to be around, but he was also Tsuna's founding rock, so large in presence that Tsuna felt more stable in his presence despite being the cause of it all.

Yes, and, Reborn had said next, and Tsuna focuses on it. Hyperfocuses on it, memorizing a memory, using it as a guide post through a conversation that he must have had. You're stressing over nothing. It comes down to one question, Loser Tsuna. What do you want, and how are you going to get it?

I don't know, Tsuna had told Reborn then.

Today, at this moment, Tsuna says to Timoteo: it's been a while. And Timoteo says, "It has. How was your flight? Better than your drive here, I'd hope?"

The sleeve of Tsuna's jacket is dark with the blood he'd spilt when he put his elbow through ice and glass. When he had shot two men shortly after. The survivor had scrambled away without looking back, and people of all shapes and ages had approached the scene with weary deference, looking to Tsuna for permission to gut the car of its valuables. Naturally, Tsuna had let them; the more hands fell upon that car, the harder it is to trace the crime back to Tsuna.

But Nono isn't asking about that. All he knows is that there is dried blood on Tsuna's jacket and his bandages are stained with gunpowder. He's asking for information. He's asking if Tsuna is okay.

So Tsuna says, "Um, yes. Much better. I'm just glad that no one got hurt."

"You did," Kyouya says in a blatant, horrific break in procedure.

Tsuna grimaces. "No, I didn't-- I already said that I'm okay."

What he means: no one important got hurt. No one that Tsuna needs alive, no one that Tsuna wants alive. The distinction is important, and Timoteo inclines his head in understanding while Kyouya's nostrils flare with irritation.

"Have Shamal see you after we are finished here," Timoteo says kindly.

"He doesn't have to," Tsuna tries. "Really. I'm fine."

"Then you can be assured that he will keep the visit short," Timoteo says.

Tsuna sighs.

"Now," Timoteo says, the cadence of his voice dipping with just enough emphasis that it has Tsuna straightening in his seat. "Shall we talk business?"

What do you want, Tsuna? Reborn had asked him. And how are you going to get it?

How much was Tsuna willing to do, how much was he willing to pay?

Tsuna tips up his chin. His shoulders relax. His forehead feels warm with the phantom scratch of his Flames.

"How much has Reborn told you?" Tsuna asks, crossing a leg over the other and folding his hands over the elevated knee.

"Only as much as he believed it necessary for me to know," Timoteo says, telling Tsuna both nothing and everything. He leans back in his chair, and his eyes go past Tsuna at his Storm and Rain. "And to allow you the opportunity to do as you wished, for the good of the Vongola."

Liar, Tsuna will later tease Reborn. They all know that this isn't about the Vongola, not really. Tsuna's only cared about the Vongola when Family became synonymous with it, and today, right now, it isn't. Not while Timoteo wears the mantle that neither of them wants.

Not while Timoteo hangs onto the mantle that Tsuna needs.

So he says, "You didn't agree."

Kyouya tilts his head. Both Ninth Guardians go so still that they might as well be puppets, inert with their master's anticipation.

"Would you have?" Timoteo asks, his eyes back on Tsuna. "There will be questions, such as why the Decimo would choose this moment to intervene. Why he's suddenly chosen to come to Italy. What he means to hide. Who he's trying to protect."

Any of which could spark a war if the answer wasn't to the Piovra's liking.

"Giving them the perpetrators would be the simplest way to resolve this conflict," Timoteo says, answering nothing. "The Piovra are well within their rights to demand retribution if they find evidence of foul play."

If nothing else, the mafia recognizes a blood debt. It condones it, even encourages it. It is one of the wheels on which its world has persisted, a rule so deeply rooted that it had taken Tsuna over a decade to burn it away.

"Is that what you would do?" Tsuna asks. "If you knew who was behind these killings? Would you let the Piovra have them?"

"For the good of the Vongola," Timoeteo says. "Yes."

"Then that's where we disagree," Tsuna says mildly. It doesn't matter what he might be revealing, what implications he's confirming. He was already here. The time to act coy has passed. "And so I'd like you to reconsider."

"I thought you might," Timoteo murmurs, because for all of his failings, he is still the Ninth. Between the ten bosses of the Vongola, he will be the oldest of them. There is a reason for that, and Tsuna isn't shy to stare that reason in the face. "Do you know what you are asking, Tsunayoshi?"

Timoteo has his hands folded across his desk. His cane rests against the edge of it, well within reach. There's also a paper weight, several pens, a lamp, and the lamp's cords that could be used as weapons, not to mention the loaded gun tucked beneath an otherwise innocuous pile of paperwork. More importantly, the mansion around them is manned by Nono's Vongola, with people who had no reason to pledge allegiance to Tsuna at present.

If it were a number's game, Tsuna would have lost. But Tsuna has Hibari Kyouya to his right and Mukuro as the Ninth Storm and Rain behind him, one at each shoulder. Tsuna, himself, is right here, sitting in the sliver of sunlight that peeks past the curtains of the room's only window. He's not without weapons of his own.

Steady, Reborn murmurs in his head. His hand is a warm memory against Tsuna's spine, an ever-guiding force.

"Am I asking, Nono?" Tsuna says. He feels one of the Ninth Guardians step closer to him, steadying and supportive. A point driven home.

The world stills. It holds its breath as Timoteo lifts his head, his chin tipped up. His brows are furrowed. The corners of his mouth are taut and tense. His breathing is soft, even. Quiet. Assessing.

Tsuna tilts his head as the remains of his lunch twists in his stomach. He relaxes his shoulders despite the phantom throb of pain in his knee. He blinks slowly and keeps his expression from moving even when he keeps pulling at bruises with every breath, when he is aching with exhausted inevitability.

Tsuna will win if Timoteo reaches for his cane, and the Vongola will lose if Tsuna calls fire to his fists. They both know the score.

I'm going to force his hand. No matter what it takes.

"Let us say that I bend to your demands," says the Vongola Ninth. "Let us pretend that I allow you this great disrespect. Do you truly believe that you will come away unscathed?"

That is the risk. But for all of his failings in school, in maths, Tsuna can put one and one together to arrive at two. He can extrapolate and understand what a Vongola Boss of Timoteo's age must want above all else.

"No," Tsuna says quietly. "But are you willing to cripple the Vongola's future because of a small disagreement?"

Life is about difficulties. Tsuna knows that better than anyone. School is difficult. Learning is difficult. Reborn's lessons have been so damn difficult that Tsuna has cried over them, angry in his helplessness. To know that he put his Family at risk by doing exactly as he's been told had been so fucking frustrating that Tsuna had decided, right there, in his childhood room, with Reborn as his witness --

Tsuna asks, "What do you value more, Nono? Your pride or your freedom?" His pride, or a peaceful retirement, an uncomplicated freedom from the Vongola?

How much was Timoteo prepared to pay against Tsuna, who had decided, once upon a time, if what he wants is incompatible with the world, then why should he play by their rules?

"Bravo," Timoteo says after a moment, "ben fatto."

"Grazie," Tsuna says in turn.

Timoteo shakes his head, eyes hooded with sadness. With defeat. With growing, begrudging respect and pride. "When Reborn told me that you could handle this, I did not believe him. You've come a long way."

"I don't think so," Tsuna says. He makes himself smile. It feels watery, too shallow to mean anything, but still deep enough to drown a man. "Reborn says that I still have a long way to go. And that I'm going to make a terrible boss."

"Terrible is not the adjective that I would use."

Tsuna grimaces, both offended and flattered. "Please don't. That's the nicest thing that he's ever said about me."

Timoteo smiles back. It's small, maybe a little strained, but it is as real as the rusted gleam of his ring. There will be no bloodshed today, no retribution. Today, Tsuna is forgiven.

"I know I'm overstepping, Nono," Tsuna says, dipping his head in a half-bow. He won't apologize. He has nothing to apologize for, but. "I know that this isn't how it's supposed to be. This is so -- so messy, and I should have known better than to do this."

Timoteo, to his credit, listens. Just listens, without judgement, his smile never wavering. "But?"

"But," Tsuna says, his nausea calmed by the presence of his Guardians. By how he knows, with the certainty of a lived future, this is how it's supposed to be. "I'm Vongola, and we look after our own."

This is a mess that never should have happened, but regret is a hollow currency. Tsuna tucks it away with everything else that he knows to be worthless.

"We had a plan, you see," Timoteo says after a moment. He leans back in his chair and shakes his head, rueful. "We would call you to Italy this year, show you just enough to wet your tongue. When Reborn said you were ready, we were going to let you spend the next five years growing into the Vongola Decimo. Your father said that you would need at least that much, the gentle child that you are."

Tsuna waits. Silence can be as loud as any gunshot and just as uncomfortable. People always want to fill it, and Nono fills this one without prompting, with the desperate pride of a toppling empire.

"We laboured over the idea of having you stain your hands so young," Timoteo continues. "But I see that we have been worried over the wrong thing."

"Not wrong," Tsuna says gamely. "Just -- outdated, maybe?"

Timoteo laughs. It's a hearty thing, an edge away from genuine, but his hand is no closer to his cane than when they started. Understanding is not sympathy, and it is certainly not obedience. But it's also neither violence nor a grudge, and in this game of theirs, that's enough.

"Regardless," Timoteo says. "I suppose it was only a matter of time before it came to this. Giotto never played by our rules either, I hear. But promise me one thing, Tsunayoshi."

"Yes?"

"Don't lose yourself," Timoteo says gently, as though he hasn't seen the death of hundreds. As though he isn't responsible for hundreds more. "Your Family would not wish for that."

The words sour something in the pit of Tsuna's stomach.

"I know," Tsuna says. "Thank you."

*

Kyouya allows them exactly an hour of discussion before he gets to his feet. He reaches down to grab Tsuna by his wounded elbow without warning, grip tight and punishing. He bares his teeth when Tsuna thinks of protesting and settles only when Tsuna sighs with surrender.

Nono, for his part, watches the ongoing drama between the Vongola Tenth and his Cloud with indulgence. For a man who had been browbeat into acquiescence, he had been nothing but amicable, even approving.

But then, the Vongola Ninth had always been a purporant of delegation. Letting others take care of his problems had been a long-perfected habit.

"One more thing, Decimo," the Ninth calls when his Storm is by the door, ready to hold it open for Tsuna. "If Hayato Gokudera and Takeshi Yamamoto were taken from you, what would you do?"

Tsuna looks up at the heterochromatic eyes of Mukuro set in the face of an aged Storm, then turns back to Timoteo. Says, "Depends on what terms they were taken for."

Kyouya scoffs. Both borrowed faces of Mukuro's have their brows at their hairline.

"Hm," Timoteo says, amused despite himself. "Still a poor liar, I see."

"Sorry," Tsuna says, sheepish. That was pretty bad, yeah. "But I guess -- I'd burn them." He'd burn them alive down to their bones, into ashes. Burn them until not even their regrets remain. "I'd never forgive them."

Second chances were for those that knew not to hurt his people. Tsuna didn't care for the reasons of those that tried. It'd make no difference in the end.

"Then how do you suggest that I address what you've done with Coyote and Brabanter?" Timoteo asks like the landmine that Tsuna had known this would turn out to be.

But as fair as that question is, it's also very silly. The Vongola that belong to Tsuna will be of a different breed than those that belonged to Nono, revived with different values and priorities from the ashes of the Ninth's influence. Timoteo would never do what Tsuna will do, and it is that very difference that will account for almost all of Tsuna's problems for the next twenty years.

Timoteo is not Tsuna. He would never dare burn Tsuna. He can't, not without going through Kyouya and Mukuro first, and they both know that Tsuna would not allow Timoteo to raise his cane against either of them. Timoteo will not punish Tsuna for the same reason that he has allowed Tsuna to strong-arm his way into the Piovra situation.

The Vongola Ninth has always valued stability and tradition over anything else. The Tenth could not value anything less. Tsuna had stared down at the man's petunia-framed casket and had vowed to never become what Timoteo had been. The point that Timoteo seeks to make with that question is moot.

"I never planned on keeping them," Tsuna says in answer. "But I have some business next week, so. I can give them back after that."

If that's okay with you, Tsuna might have added, once upon a time. If he had been sixteen, he definitely would have. Now, he simply expects the answer to always be yes, Decimo.

"I want them back without a single hair out of place," Timoteo says lightly. So lightly that he utterly fails in hiding what must be simmering beneath the surface. "Or we will be renegotiating our agreements."

Tsuna turns to look at Nono and thinks: no. They won't. This is nothing more than empty threats from an old man motivated by love and worry. This is the sort of posturing that Tsuna finds exhausting on a good day, but it's also the sort of posturing that had made Furuya Giichi say, but I doubt I could ever forgive you, until realizing that he can, in fact, forgive.

It's the same sort of desperation that Tsuna himself had shown, running past these doors with his phone to his ear, her voice growing quieter and colder and --

Mukuro runs a gentle hand down along the slope of Tsuna's shoulder and arm, achingly tender.

"I understand," Tsuna hears himself say.

Twisting the arm of the Vongola Ninth is a dangerous ploy even if Mukuro hadn't been so kind as to give him Timoteo's Storm and Rain to use as leverage. It would've been foolish if Tsuna had been anything short of Timoteo's heir. It would have been impossible if Reborn hadn't thrown his support behind him many times over.

Tsuna turns away as Mukuro opens the door for him with the Ninth Storm's hand. "I'll be in touch."

*

The hallway that they take to the mansion's west wing is a quiet one, left implicitly abandoned by all but the don's closest. It's held true since Giotto's time, warded off by being so out of the way from everything that people were naturally disinclined to seek it out. There are high-set windows and bland wallpaper for decoration. In Tsuna's time, Tsuna will find an ugly painting to hang in the middle of it, much to his Family's exasperation.

There will be no painting to look upon today. It's twenty years too early for that. The wallpaper is a watermarked purple, and the windows are dusty with disuse. Mukuro is the fakest picture of tranquillity as he moves his borrowed bodies through it and Kyouya has absolutely no business looking as offended as he is, but contrary to Reborn's best efforts, Tsuna doesn't get to write all the rules.

Small mercies.

"That was rather heavy handed," Mukuro finally says.

Tsuna can only sigh at the hypocrisy. "Yeah. I guess."

"It is about time that the old learned their place," Kyouya says, dismissive.

Tsuna runs a hand down his face and decides, with all the wisdom won by having to deal with this dynamic for twenty years, that this is a conversation that they should not have. Talking about Nono is one of those rare cosmic events that will align Kyouya and Mukuro's opinions and sweep Tsuna up into the massively disrespectful practice of shit-talking his predecessor, and he --

He can't. He shouldn't. He's heard enough about Nono from Reborn, he doesn't need to hear it from Kyouya and Mukuro too.

"Why are we going to see Shamal?" Tsuna says, because the hallway is only so long. He needs to be asking questions now, before the walls regrew their ears. "It's not actually about my elbow, is it?"

"Please, I think you know precisely why we are going," Mukuro says.

Tsuna squints up at him. At -- one of him. "Since when do you do what Reborn wants?"

Mukuro makes both the Storm and the Rain look at him. At once, which is so incredibly creepy, ugh.

"Mukuro," Tsuna whines.

Mukuro smiles with the Rain's mouth and tugs at Tsuna's bangs with the hand of the Storm. "We've come to an agreement, your Arcobaleno and I. Ensuring your compliance with seeing Shamal was one of his stipulations."

Tsuna looks up at him. Looks and sees the man behind the puppets, the soft glint of indigo that sings for Tsuna alone. "And what do you get out of it?"

"His cooperation," Mukuro says, tracing a finger down the length of Tsuna's nose and flicking the tip of it. "For when you need it."

Tsuna wrinkles said nose and rubs the bridge of it, too confused to be insulted. His head is starting to throb again, a gentle lap of waves against his thoughts. It's not debilitating, not like how he'd been before Kyouya, but his thoughts can't seem to stick together. His senses feel muffled. Neutered. Like he's underwater. It's unpleasant.

"You didn't need to do that," Tsuna says, suddenly tired. "He would've helped us either way. You know how Reborn is."

Mukuro smiles, strange and enigmatic. It sits oddly on his stolen faces. "You're worrying for nothing. Just let it be, dearest Tsunayoshi."

Tsuna rolls his eyes. "You don't get to say that when you look like that." Speaking of which. "Why do you look like that?"

"Are they not to your liking?" Mukuro asks, catching one of Tsuna's wrists. The thumb that presses down against Tsuna's pulse is large and callused, incredibly foreign despite the Flames that lurk beneath them, which is anything but. "I thought you had a thing for older men."

"Oh my God, that's not what I, that's not the point," Tsuna says, high-pitched and whiny. Reborn would have kicked his ass for acting like this, but Mukuro simply looks indulgent while Kyouya -- might not be paying attention? Probably? "You got me in trouble with Nono! You could've helped me in some other way."

"Chrome wished to bring you the Ninth," Mukuro says, amused. "I did you the favour by only bringing you two of his minions."

Tsuna sighs, long and tortured. Mukuro lied about many things, but never about Chrome, not when Chrome was as extreme as Mukuro in different ways. Because Chrome, Tsuna knows, would have brought the world down to its knees for him if she believed him to need the spectacle. Using Nono as Mukuro's puppet would have allowed Tsuna maximum opportunity and power. It's efficient. Logical. Smart, even, if disregarding the many disadvantages of taking control of the Vongla Ninth like starting a civil war when someone inevitably found out.

"And you think I'm the one that needs supervision."

"Oh? Would you like a reminder of what happened with the Caval--"

"No, no, I'm good," Tsuna says loudly. "Thank you! For! Uh, leaving Nono alone."

The advantage of having Coyote and Brabanter is undeniable (or Timoteo, if Chrome had gotten her way), besides. History wasn't impervious to Tsuna's brand of stubborn willpower, but why struggle when the authority, influence, and wealth of the Ninth's right and left hands could accomplish the same thing with minimal effort?

"Sweet fool," Mukuro croons. He twists his grip to cradle Tsuna's hand and brings it up to where he can kiss his knuckles, and Tsuna lets him, choosing not to think about how strange (and creepy) it is to watch Coyote's body do what Mukuro did as easily as he breathed. At least Mukuro was being ridiculous where no one else could see.

No one but Hibari Kyouya, who suddenly snaps, "Enough," proving that he is, in fact, paying attention. He even shoulders past the Storm's body, neatly separating Mukuro from Tsuna.

Kyouya's natural calm has always been a fragile thing in Mukuro's presence, and Tsuna tries not to wince as Mukuro pounces on the moment with the delight of a professional shit-stirrer. "Oh? Is Young Master Hibari jealous?"

Kyouya snarls.

"Can we not," Tsuna begs. "We're almost there, can we please act like we're actually friends--"

*

If the Vongola Mansion is large and imposing from the outside, it is vast and needlessly spacious on the inside. Easy to lose yourself in. There are more hallways than necessary, more rooms than there are specks of dust. Wealth lives here in abundance, from the furniture to the people that use them, managed by service staff that is as dangerous as the staff serviced by them.

In the future, years after Tsuna gets used to being called boss, this will be home. It will have stories attached to its blemishes, inside jokes to go with the gaudy rug, the weird statues, the crayon drawings on the walls. It will be a home filled with people that Tsuna will call by first name, with people that will call him Tsuna within these walls.

At least until they step into the infirmary. Here, there will be no Family-wide personalization, no stories worth remembering. It will always be a depressing place, filled to the brim with memories of agony. It will remain a small place with four beds, a desk, and more medical machines than a private office should own.

It is a place that Tsuna will avoid with grim perseverance despite how every Vongola-allied doctor seems to develop some weird fixation on keeping him there. Even Shamal.

Shamal, at least, doesn't look at Tsuna like Tsuna is a walking, talking heartbreak. Not a heartthrob, oh gosh no, Haru had said, but an actual heartbreak. You're breaking everyone's hearts by looking like that, Tsuna-san!

And if you tell us to stop looking, Haru had added, her fingers curled tightly around both ends of the stethoscope hanging around her neck, I'm going to make you sleep for a week. Look at those bags under your eyes! They've gotten worse! Are you even sleeping at all?

"Lie down," Shamal says, staring at Tsuna with the irritation of a man-hater and the fascination of a doctor. It has the effect of making him look slightly constipated and very much exasperated. It's a much better sell than how Haru will one day look at him.

"I'm okay," Tsuna says. Again. For the third time.

"Vongola," Shamal says, sounding tired. Looking tired too. "You don't really think that I'm doing this for you, do you?"

Shamal has never been the most well kept of the Vongla's allies, but he seems especially awful today. His hair is messed up in a way that's faintly hilarious, and there's ink smudges at the corner of his mouth. The bags beneath his eyes resemble Tsuna's. The fuzz along his chin and jaws are days old. There's a used quality to a lab coat, worn with tears along the edges that Tsuna knows to be bullet holes.

"We could say you looked me over," Tsuna says a little desperately, "I can be a good liar."

"You can't lie worth shit," Shamal says. He settles on the chair by the bed and looks up at Tsuna with angry brows and twitchy fingers. He probably needs a cigarette. "Not to your overbearing Family, and especially not to your shitty tutor."

Overbearing Family. Shitty tutor. Both of which are true, but not in the context of the disgust that Shamal wears on his tongue.

Tsuna sets his jaws as he looks at Shamal. He looks and waits until the muscle along Shamal's jaw begins to twitch, until Shamal clenches his teeth and drops his gaze as if he'd been struck.

Good.

Tsuna sits. He says, "They're not overbearing, and Reborn is the best at what he does."

Shamal looks back up at him then, a heavy shadow set between the brows. "I'll give you Reborn, but your Family? You're kidding me. Anyway, I said to lie down, not sit."

Tsuna lies down.

"They're just worried," Tsuna says loyally.

"One of them threatened to bite me," Shamal says, offended all over again. It would be amusing if he didn't go on to say, "And the other two aren't even yours." Shamal narrows his eyes. "Or maybe they are."

He's digging. And the only reason that anyone outside of Tsuna's Family went digging is because they planned to rip open any wounds to pour dirt and gravel into them.

Tsuna reaches over to rest his hand over one of Shamal's. He holds on even as the man twitches violently and makes an effort to yank himself away, forcing him to feel how Flame sparks beneath Tsuna's fingers. How his Flames can make the world fall into a sharp silence.

"Please," Tsuna says. Their eyes meet. Enough, he doesn't say. "It's been a long day."

"Christ," Shamal says after a moment. There's a thin line of sweat beading the skin above his upper lip. His Adam's apple bobs once, twice. It looks painful.

"I'm only here because they asked me to," Tsuna says, settling again. Starbursts explode behind his eyelids as his Flames relax their hold, his chest caving with unwelcomed exhaustion. "And I understand that you're here because Reborn asked you to, so can you just... get this over with? Lying is still on the table."

"No," Shamal says tightly, shifting his chair back a centimeter. Anything to put distance between him and Tsuna, apparently. "Reborn would see through us both in seconds."

No, Reborn would see through Shamal in seconds, leaving Shamal to deal with what amounts to a death sentence. Or maybe Reborn will dismiss Shamal and the trauma-induced neurosis outright, seeing Shamal for what he is and declare him useless, just as Tsuna had. As Tsuna will.

Or, well. Not useless, but not useful either. Not in the way that Tsuna cared about.

Shamal is a man debilitated by fear. Fear of being tied down, fear of losing his independence. Fear of having to redesign himself by someone else's rules. He is a man that would steadily refuse the offer of sanctuary if the price of it was his loyalty. He is a man that will one day claim that the Vongola under Tsuna's rule to be too strong, too fast, too much, and that people like that --

People like you are always the first to be snuffed out, Shamal had said to him when they had been years older. And then where will the fools that follow you be? Where would I be, if I became one of your fools?

Tsuna presses his lips together and turns his gaze toward his shoes. The toes of them are still black with burnt rubber, misshapen and uncomfortable. They're marginally better than the pair that he'd been wearing when he had stepped back into Kyouya's possession, but they'll need replacing before long. He'll need to replace them before they meet back up with Reborn.

Because Reborn won't just see through Tsuna. He'll see Tsuna, and he'll keep looking. Waiting for Tsuna to lower his guard, to give that much more away. He's the type to prowl along the edges, dipping his fingers along the collar of Tsuna's shirt, dragging his nails up along his arms. He would pin Tsuna in place with nothing more than the weight of his presence, his voice warm and dark and welcoming.

You're seeing Miura, Reborn had said in that very voice after some meaningless day filled with gunshots and blood. Not a day worth remembering other than how Reborn's voice had felt like silk along the curve of Tsuna's ear, how Reborn had grounded Tsuna with the hand that he had curled around Tsuna's elbow. As soon as we get back. No buts, Loser Tsuna.

"What have you been doing with your Flames, Sawada?" Shamal is muttering in the present.

Be good, Reborn had mocked him that night. Pinning him properly against Tsuna's mattress, his body kept above Tsuna's own in a cruel tease. His other, bare hand feels prickly and half-painful where he fans his fingers against Tsuna's core. And we can talk about how I can reward you in the morning.

There's a flush crawling up the back of Tsuna's neck and he shakes his head for more reasons than trying to shake himself free of it. With any luck, Shamal will be cursory in his examination and dismiss Tsuna before long.

Shamal's hands are cool with his Flames when they begin to skirt down the length of Tsuna's body. They're oddly disinterested in the siren's song of Tsuna's Sky, stuttering only once when it brushes up against where Tsuna's Flames are the strongest. The place that Reborn will one day touch, a place that every Guardian will touch with reverence.

It stutters because it attempts to probe, and Tsuna catches Shamal at the wrist at once.

"Don't," Tsuna says mildly. "If you keep doing that, they'll come running. You just managed to chase them off."

Kyouya had grabbed Tsuna by the back of his head without staring at him. Mukuro had done nothing but, staring at him with four borrowed eyes while Kyouya had calmly threatened Shamal with his teeth. Shamal had been an absolute asshole over it all and Tsuna neither has the energy nor the motivation to deter his Family from trying to hover again if they came back.

Which really meant nothing in the face of what was the likely reality: they were already on their way back. (Reborn, Tsuna thinks, never would have left.) Kyouya and Mukuro were the most attuned to him by the nature of their harmonization -- his very first, and the one that he never should have had. He can feel them lurking nearby even now, their Flames a low croon at the back of his head, soothing him. Adoring him with characteristic viciousness, keeping the pain of separation at bay.

"Shut up," Shamal says slowly. He sets his palm flat against Tsuna's sternum, and --

Static. A radio dial on a dead channel. White noise trickles in and around Tsuna's head, pooling at his feet, licking at his ankles.

Tsuna blinks up at him. There's a ringing in his ear that he can't seem to rub away even when he squeezes it against his shoulder. He wants to stick his finger in them to see if he can clean them out. To see if he could get his ears to behave, the rest of him would stop itching.

"Sawada," Shamal snaps with the irritation of a man that's had to repeat his question many, many times. "How many?"

Tsuna frowns. How many--? "What?"

Shamal's expression twists and spins until it lands somewhere between worried and aneurysmic, which isn't unusual. People often looked at Tsuna that way. "How many people have you harmonized with?"

Ah.

Tsuna closes his eyes and finds that he can't open them again. There's an ache between his brows that he can't reach, filled with questions that he can't voice, with answers that he's not supposed to know. They stick to the sides of his throat, thorns made of mist and grief. Held back by acute agony that has yet to lose its edge even when it's been years, years of being surrounded by people that love him as much as he does them, the type of devotion that parted oceans and sent civilizations to their graves.

Kyouya, Takeshi, Hayato, Chrome, Mukuro, Lambo, Reborn.

His body is tight with longing when he answers, "Seven."

"Seven?" Shamal echoes. His voice is starting to reverberate off the walls, and he's getting harder and harder to understand. As though he's speaking a language that Tsuna can't possibly know.

"It's possible," Tsuna says before Shamal could tell him otherwise.

"You would," Shamal says derisively. Nonsensically.

Tsuna knits his brows. Would what, exactly? Make it possible? Do it at all? He had to, it wasn't like he could just leave Mukuro out, as entwined as he was with Chrome --

"Are you sure?"

The dials of that white noise radio cranks up. Trickle to stream to a flood, Tsuna can feel it climbing up along his knees, his thighs, his chest, and --

"Sawada," Tsuna manages to hear before he's consumed. "Are you sure it's seven?"

*

Later that night, hours after he's resurfaced enough to convince Kyouya into sharing a room and Mukuro into not in the name of world peace, Tsuna lies awake burning the patterns of the ceiling into his eyes. He lies awake with thoughts so large that his ears still feel full, numb with all that he doesn't want to think about. He deflects by turning in bed, curling up against Kyouya's side, taking refuge in the furnace of his body heat.

He puts it off by closing his eyes against Kyouya's shoulder, pretending not to hear Kyouya's irritated grunt. There's nothing to say even when Kyouya leaves his back to Tsuna, implicit in his permission for Tsuna to take what he needs for as long as Tsuna doesn't tell him about it.

And so Tsuna doesn't. He doesn't tell him: he's not sure. He doesn't know.

What do you mean you don't know. Shamal's brows had betrayed his worry, and his voice had been tight with -- something. Dread, maybe. Like a man that had seen the end of a world twenty years too early. Sawada --

I don't know, Tsuna had said again, staring down at his hands. As he stares at Kyouya's shoulder blades now, hours later. I don't know.

Chapter Text

This is what Tsuna remembers:

The morning had been overcast. The news had come at ten o'clock, but Tsuna thinks he might have known as early as eight. It still took until eleven-twenty-one for him to get on a flight from Palermo to Tokyo, and many more hours after that to be on a ride from Tokyo to Naimori.

Hayato and Takeshi had come with him, Tsuna remembers, which was an excessive amount of force to bring when Kyouya was already in Japan. The ramifications of bringing one Vongola Guardian was vast. Having three in the same place with Tsuna would inevitably become a statement, as something big and political and annoying. Tsuna hadn't cared, and neither had Hayato.

They can kiss my ass, Hayato had said. We're still coming with you.

Hayato had been unusually grim and disheveled that day, his hair unkempt with terrible bags beneath his eyes. He had been the one to tell Tsuna what had happened, but Tsuna can't remember what exactly Hayato had said, only how he had felt about it. Even now, many years later, what Tsuna remembers is how cold he'd felt, how shaken, how his Flames had erupted from beneath his skin until Takeshi had forcibly held his wrists and drowned him in Tranquility to calm him.

He doesn't remember the flight. He doesn't remember arriving in Namimori. He only remembers the rain when he had leapt out of the car to where she was lying. Where she was splayed out like she didn't matter, except.

Record skip. Static.

No. No, that's not what happened. She had been in bed. A cold bed. Tsuna had burst into her hospital room, not out into nowhere. The place smelled musty, the air heavy with preemptive grief. Tsuna can't remember any of the room's details, but he does remember how his hair had stuck to his forehead, getting in his eyes. He remembers the pressure building behind his chest, the agony of trying to breathe. His stomach had felt turned inside out at the sight of her, and his head had hurt so bad.

Rain on his shoulders, blood in her hair, cracked skin on her lips. Her fingers had been so cold when he'd held her hand in his, and Tsuna thinks he might have split open when she'd looked up at him, unfocused and in pain.

An illness, they'd said. Something that no one could have prevented. That's what he remembers, a sad but inevitable part of history.

But when Tsuna wakes, it's to the sound of Reborn's voice, to the question that Reborn had asked when Tsuna had woken up as sixteen. When Tsuna had woken up when he should've been dead, barely twelve hours into this world of the past.

How did she die?

*

"So," Tsuna says, hours later. Hours after waking, after sitting up in bed to breathe past the terror-horror-grief caught inside his chest. The brain fog of yesterday seems to have rescinded, leaving him oddly hollow but otherwise okay. It doesn't mean that he's any more inclined to leave the bed though. "How long are we here?"

"Here, as in?" Mukuro asks. He's preferring Brabanter's body today, Coyote's left slumped against the far wall, away from sight. He has his back to Tsuna, angled toward the kitchenette built into the room. "In Palermo? Italy? Or perhaps do you mean this room?"

"You know you're not allowed to be mean to me before coffee," Tsuna grumbles, because it really is too early to be sassed, much less by a man in a black-blue polka dot suit.

"Oh, Tsunayoshi," Mukuro says fondly. "The only person who believes that is you."

The kitchenette is as ridiculous as it is luxurious, as big as an apartment kitchen, missing only a traditional oven and dishwasher. Tsuna grimaces at the privilege of it as much as he grimaces at Mukuro, but seeing how Mukuro is currently moonlighting as Tsuna's private barista in said kitchenette, Tsuna figures he doesn't have any right to complain.

Their room is a modest one by Vongola standards, fit like a hotel suite with a king-sized bed, a couch that likely cost more than his mom's whole house, and large, bullet-proof windows outfitted with cozy curtains. It holds the same dimensions of the room that Tsuna will one day claim as his own, if a little hollow for its lack of character. Empty for its lack of personality and history.

For this room does not have crayon-drawn masterpieces taped to the walls, no odd trinkets and gifts laid out in display. The bed sheets are scratchy with disuse, the couch's colour is jarring, and Tsuna hates those curtains. They're too red, too -- much. The light hits them all wrong, spilling their colour all over the floor in terrible splatters, and Tsuna hates them. Hates them. The floor looks as cold as concrete and having red splatters on them is making the buzz in Tsuna's ears that much louder, and --

Tsuna rubs his eyes. Once, twice, three times. His tongue tastes like cotton. It's jarring and disjointed and how did she --

"Here, like. Here, in these bodies," Tsuna says, pinching the bridge of his nose as he brings them back to his first point. "We can't stay in this time forever."

Mukuro raises a brow. "I didn't realize that you were in such a rush to return, Tsunayoshi."

Of course he is. Sort of? It would be nice to see his people again, to see the family and Family that he knows. The ones that can rest against Tsuna without restraint, touch Tsuna without reservation, look at Tsuna with full understanding of what it is that they had accepted. Just like Kyouya, who has been using Tsuna's thigh as his pillow for as long as Tsuna's been awake, totally unbothered by how he's using the Vongola Decimo exactly as he might use one of his foot soldiers.

"I just want to know how long I have," Tsuna says. Doesn't say, to do everything that he needs to. To know how thorough he needs to be, how much he needs to do to set his younger self up for success.

"You have for as long as your body holds," Kyouya says from Tsuna's lap.

"You know that doesn't actually tell me much."

"Time is a funny creature," Mukuro says, finally approaching Tsuna with an offering worthy of the gods. "So you will have as long as you need. But try not to be tardy, Tsunayoshi. There are many that await your return."

Tsuna had been making grabby hands long before Mukuro had come within reach, so the coffee handoff is seamless when it happens, a blessed event even when it comes coupled with Mukuro's parting shot. Tsuna drags the mug back against himself, breathing in the coffee like the caffeine addicted loser he is, and --

He stills.

He stares down at the drink, inexplicably wary. Mukuro has been brewing coffee to appease Tsuna's addiction for years. He had even done it on the morning after the funeral, after Kawahira's visit, when Tsuna had felt so worn and tired and heavy that he had barely managed to sit up in bed. Chrome had been pressed against his side, her fingers tracing a comforting shape into Tsuna's palm.

He remembers staring down at the cup that morning, wondering why he had hesitated in drinking it then. Why he'd felt like he would be letting something end if he did, but also: why shouldn't it? There was so much to do, and things couldn't continue on like this, he couldn't be laid up in bed being useless when his Family needed him.

"It's just coffee, dear Tsunayoshi," Mukuro says when the moment stretches on too long. There's a tightness to his smile that Tsuna finds curious, almost as curious as the implications of his words.

"I know," Tsuna says, leaving the mug cradled in both hands. He doesn't drink. "Anyway, give me a time. Do I have weeks? Months?"

"Years," Kyouya says. He probably means to say that Tsuna's body will last for years. That he won't die again or something like that, which is sweet, but still not helpful.

Tsuna sighs and decides to let it go. He knows how to pick his battles. "Okay, well. I need to talk to Xanxus."

Mukuro looks at him expectantly.

Tsuna rolls his eyes and adds, "Kyouya-san can come with me." Not because he needs Kyouya, but because his Family had this strange superstition about never letting Tsuna do things by himself. Something about keeping him out of trouble. "While you get started on CEDEF."

"Oh?" Mukuro says, tilting his head.

"You're in bodies that they'd listen to." Iemitsu and Iemitsu's people were always going to be Nono's. If Tsuna was to change anything within CEDEF, it would be best to do it while he still had Coyote and Brabanter dancing to Mukuro's tune.

"Good to see you embracing my gift," Mukuro says smugly.

"I'm not. I mean, it's not nice, what you're doing," Tsuna says. He looks down at his coffee. He still hasn't drank it. He doesn't know why, but his stomach keeps twisting at the memory of Chrome curled against his side, warm and loving and so very sad. "But we haven't played nice for a while, so. I'm trying to make the most of it."

"Drink, Tsunayoshi." Kyouya says as he sits up, a long line of danger and grace sitting to Tsuna's left. There's a weird shade of irritation that lines his gaze that bypasses Tsuna, an intensity that Mukuro sneers and turns away from.

It's disorienting; Tsuna is often the topic of conversation, but his people aren't so blatant about leaving him out of it entirely.

"There's nothing in it," Kyouya says. His attention is on Tsuna again, the irritation softening to something more devastating. It's not pity, but something close.

"I know," Tsuna says. The cup stays away from his mouth while Tsuna refocuses on Mukuro, who stares at him with such care that it makes Tsuna feel itchy all over. "Um. Anyway, I need an inventory. Of CEDEF, I mean. I want to know who my dad's people are. And how badly they need cleaning up."

Mukuro dips his head.

"Don't kill them," Tsuna warns. "But--"

Kyouya looks at him. Mukuro does too.

Tsuna opens his mouth, a different set of words thick and heavy on his tongue. How did she --

"Maybe pick out a few," Tsuna says. He tightens his fingers around the mug and takes a sip. Perfect, like always. Just like the last time. "You'll want bodies when we return those to Nono, right?"

*

"I heard you landed," Squalo says three hours later, when Tsuna is standing in front of the Varia's main compound with Kyouya at his side.

Squalo's dressed casually today, looking oddly out of place without his customary leather get-up, his hair held up in a high ponytail. He's leaning on his sword with Mammon as a shadow by his side, standing some paces away.

"Welcome to Italy, our shitty-don-to-be," Squalo continues cheerfully. "Now get the fuck off of our property before the boss notices that you're here."

"But I need to talk to him," Tsuna says, already amused. He likes the Varia. They're an unchanging, ever chaotic force that will only ever learn to tolerate Tsuna and no further. They will never love him, but Tsuna likes them, likes that.

"Obviously," Squalo says, scoffing. "But he ain't gonna want to talk to you. Especially not when you're running with the Ninth's dogs. When did that fucking start, voi?"

The Varia, Tsuna's found, is dangerous not only because of their murderous tendencies, but because they've made a business out of weaponizing their neuroses. Squalo, in particular, is loud with purpose. He's in your face and so aberrantly ridiculous that he makes you forget that he is Xanxus' second-in-command. He's erratic and chaotic, and few notice when Squalo very purposely veers the topic off course to catch others off guard.

Tsuna notices. Of course he does. No one's better at this game than Reborn, and later Lambo, both of whom like to use different brands of charisma to make Tsuna admit to blasphemy, like you ate the last of my candy, didn't you, Tsuna-nii?

"I'm not-- it's not like that," Tsuna says, shaking his head. "The Ninth and I just have an agreement. Coyote and Brabanter are just helping."

"Helping isn't how I would describe what they're doing," Mammon says derisively.

Informant. Right. One that was also the Mist Arcobaleno, at that.

"The Ninth and I have an agreement," Tsuna says again.

Squalo narrows his eyes. He isn't leaning on his sword anymore.

And to his right, Kyouya jerks. He twitches as if struck, and when he straightens, his hands go straight to his tonfas.

Tsuna tucks his hand into the fold of Kyouya's right arm to keep him from putting his tonfa through Mammon's head.

"Don't do that," Tsuna warns Mammon.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Mammon says with a sniff. As if they hadn't quickly hidden their shaking hands into their pockets.

"You do," Tsuna says, his grip tight around Kyouya's arm. Kyouya is still glaring at Mammon, but he hasn't shrugged Tsuna off in years. He won't lunge for as long as Tsuna hangs onto him, no matter how annoyed he might be. "I'm really only here to talk. I don't want to fight."

"And what if we want to?" Squalo asks, eyeing them like one might eye a particularly venomous snake. While simultaneously thinking about poking it in the eye.

"Then I'll come back tomorrow," Tsuna says, desperately hoping that Squalo won't actually poke the disaster that is Hibari Kyouya. "And if you keep wanting to fight tomorrow and the day after, then I'll stop asking." He'll stop asking and go see Xanxus regardless of what others might have to say about it.

Squalo stares at him for a long, harried moment before his mouth splits into a grin. It's too toothy to be friendly, too drunk on anticipatory adrenaline to be comforting.

"You grew a pair while we weren't looking, huh?" Squalo says. "Voi! One day in Italy and you think you can strut in like you own us?"

Tsuna does, though. Own them, that is.

"Um," Tsuna says, caught between the truth that he can't speak and the lie that he must. "Sorry?"

"No, you fucking aren't," Squalo says, snorting as his hand falls away from the hilt of his blade. The naked apprehension still lingers on his face, as does the worn quality to his gaze.

Tsuna tilts his head and Squalo mirrors him. Mocking him even when Squalo has all but admitted to knowing that he's outmatched, that he's well aware of what will result from challenging Tsuna. Somewhere along the line, he's cottoned on to how neither Tsuna nor Kyouya consider the Varia of this era to be of any threat. How facing off against the whole organization will be a minor annoyance to them at best.

Not that Tsuna wants to, obviously. Like he'd said, he likes the Varia. He likes the people despite disliking their function.

"Mammon?" Squalo says.

"I'm fine," Mammon says after a suspicious amount of pause.

"Ain't what I was asking, dipshit."

"Fuck off, asswipe," Mammon says without missing a beat. It's hard to see their eyes on a good day, but it's especially difficult today. Tsuna thinks they might be squinting. "Anyway, he's fine to let through. The other two, too. Just don't make the boss do anything that'll land us with a bill, Sawada."

"Uh huh," Squalo says slowly, staring down at Mammon with narrowed eyes before looking back at Tsuna. "Whatever, you heard 'em. Throw your punches outside, you hear me? We just fucking renovated."

"I'll do my best," Tsuna says earnestly.

*

The first time that Tsuna punched Xanxus, it had been during the ring battles, fighting over a legacy that neither of them had wanted.

The second time that Tsuna had punched Xanxus, they had been much older. The second time, Tsuna had punched Xanxus hard enough to send him flying into the far wall. It had only felt right for Tsuna to wait out the daze with Xanxus in the aftermath. Xanxus, for his part, had pretended to be unconscious longer than he'd actually been, tolerating Tsuna's melancholy in a strange show of camaraderie. Maybe he'd thought that Tsuna needed the time.

Maybe he had needed the time himself.

Trash, Xanxus growled at Tsuna after minutes of silence. He shifted his jaw back and forth as he sat up, scowling at whatever ache he found. Anger would've been the predictable response, but Xanxus had been strangely reticent in punching Tsuna back, instead choosing to spit globs of blood on the floor. I should beat you blue for this.

Tsuna remembers just watching him, remembers the irrational calm of his Flames failing to dissipate even when it should've left him hours ago. A full day ago. He had slipped into hyper mode when Hayato had come to him with what Chrome had unearthed, pale and somber. Hayato had let Tsuna go when Tsuna had stood up mid-report, holding Takeshi back when Takeshi tried to follow Tsuna out the door. Presumably because Hayato already had sent Lambo to wait for him with Tsuna's Fiat.

Lambo, Tsuna remembers, hadn't tried to stop him at all. Knowing, probably, that it would've been futile. Pointless. The only thing that he'd refused was to let Tsuna drive, which was just as well. Tsuna hadn't felt like driving anyway.

Xanxus, Tsuna said when Xanxus was on his feet and Tsuna wasn't. The height difference had the fascinating effect of relaxing Xanxus. He must have been hurting, and badly; Xanxus would have never allowed anyone to manipulate him this way if he had been thinking straight. Next time, come to me.

And why the fuck should I do that? You going to take care of it for me or something?

Xanxus had been too startled to resist when Tsuna had gotten up and grabbed his collar. He came easily when pulled and when their foreheads touched. It was painfully intimate, wasn't anything that Xanxus should have welcomed, and yet.

Yes, Tsuna had said, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Xanxus sneered, but he didn't move away. His grip had hardly even hurt when he wrapped his hand around Tsuna's wrist. Too tired to fight when they had just spent the last three hours doing nothing but. Isn't our boss so fucking kind.

It wasn't about being kind. It wasn't even about them. Tsuna was Vongola, had been Vongola for so long that he didn't know how to be anything else. And the Vongola, for all of its faults, had always taken care of its own.

Fight me off then, Tsuna had said. Try to stop me.

Xanxus won't. They were here because he wouldn't, because he had made the inexplicable choice to stay loyal even at the cost of fracturing the Varia in two.

The Decimo hadn't been a popular boss, not at first. Tsuna had known that. He was foreign and looked like his mother. He had an orphan for a Right Hand, the son of an assassin for his Left. One of his Guardians was seven years his junior. Another was loud and didn't speak a lick of Italian, and his Cloud understood Italian but refused to speak it. He had two Mists, which was already unusual even without one of them being responsible for the annihilation of the Estraneo.

Reborn had warned him, Tsuna remembers. So had Iemitsu. They had both told him, without deception or judgment, that people did not take to change without resistance. That they viewed Tsuna's differences with distaste and distrust.

And Tsuna had thought nothing of it. Not at first. Tsuna had believed, with the naivety of privilege, that things would be fine. That things would work out as they always did. It had been the first of many mistakes, and Basil had been only one of many to pay for it.

The only surprise here had been how steadfast Xanxus had been through it all, standing with Tsuna even when the world had expected him to turn, to take the Vongola's name for himself in the aftermath.

The third time that Tsuna punches Xanxus, he's thirty-six going on sixteen. Tsuna would have tried harder to hold back if the meeting wasn't being stonewalled by Xanxus' reticence for three hours straight. Or if Tsuna hadn't known that Xanxus liked such heavy-handed tactics, when things were laid out in black and white.

Xanxus is an angry, stubborn man, wounded by both parental and societal injustice. The world pisses him off because it makes him deal with its many shades of grey, and -- Tsuna gets it. He does. He doesn't like the greys either, the murky, muddy in-betweens that people like to twist to their advantage.

He doesn't dare tell Xanxus that though. Pointing out any similarities between them might send Xanxus into a fury-induced cardiac arrest and Tsuna needs him around for decades yet.

That, and Xanxus is important to Squalo and Squalo is important to Takeshi. That's reason enough for Tsuna to want Xanxus around. It's reason enough for Tsuna to want him happy in whatever form that happiness can take for a man that will die angry.

The third time that Tsuna punches Xanxus is similar to the second only in how Xanxus flies into a wall. The difference lies in how Xanxus goes upright almost immediately, his fury and Flames burning hot along his brows and fists.

"Are we going to do this?" Tsuna asks mildly, his own Flame snarling beneath his skin.

"You fucking started it," Xanxus snarls, "at least have the balls to end it."

Eleven minutes later, a minute longer than Tsuna should've let himself burn, Xanxus is staring at him from the floor, bruised and winded. Tsuna has a foot against one of Xanxus' shoulders, his toes pointed at his throat. Xanxus has a weak hand around Tsuna's ankle, his face lit with both indignation and intrigue.

The second time that Tsuna had punched Xanxus, Xanxus had lost too much to do anything but batter himself against Tsuna's Flames, expressing his hurt with every line of his body. He hadn't looked at Tsuna then.

Today, twenty years in the past, Xanxus is whole in his anger. His people hadn't taken the Piovra's bait, hadn't courted treachery out of fear. There is no hurt in the glare that Xanxus levels Tsuna with now. He looks without flinching.

"There's something I need your help with," Tsuna says, ignoring Xanxus' snarl.

"And what makes you think that I'd ever help you, trash?" Xanxus asks in the same tone of voice that he had once asked, did you think I did this for you, you conceited piece of shit?

"Not me," Tsuna says, his words blurring the line between his past-future and the present. These are words that he's said before. "This was never about me, Xanxus. This is about the Family."

Xanxus pauses. He had paused then too, though not out of confusion as he does now. He takes a moment to stare at how Tsuna burns, how his knuckles are red and raw. He doesn't look away from how Tsuna's skin is peeling in small stretches, flaking off into ash. He watches with his lips drawn over his teeth, but he watches with a question, like a man ready to listen.

"I'm meeting with the Piovra next week," Tsuna says, finally lifting his foot away. "But before I do, I'd like you to know a few things."

*

Hibari Kyouya is missing when Tsuna leaves Xanxus' office, replaced by someone that somehow manages to look both small and menacing in a cloak that seems to swallow them whole.

"Squalo owed me a favour," Mammon says, smirking from beneath the shadow of their hood. "He's currently being chased around by your Cloud."

Tsuna steps forward and lets Xanxus' door close behind him. "I'm surprised that worked."

"Squalo can be very annoying," Mammon says, sounding proud about that as Tsuna is about how Takeshi can eat almost fifty pieces of sushi in twenty minutes.

"If you say so," Tsuna says, doubtful. It has been a long time since Kyouya's allowed his emotions to stand in opposition to his obsessive overprotectiveness. A long time. Which could only mean that Kyouya has allowed himself to get distracted on purpose, though to what end, Tsuna has no idea. The inner workings of Hibari Kyouya escaped even him sometimes.

Mammon rolls their eyes though it's hard to tell with that hood on their head. It's hard to even care when they go on to say, "So, what's wrong with you?"

Tsuna blinks. "Um?"

"You waltzed in here with your Mist in your head. One of them, anyway," Mammon says. "Squalo made me stand out here in case you two did something to the boss. It was a big pain."

Which explains how Squalo got landed with the unenviable task of entertaining Hibari Kyouya while Mammon interrogates Tsuna on how Chrome liked to live in his head. Not often, and not for long periods of time, but with enough frequency and familiarity that Tsuna rarely notices when she does.

He sighs. Chrome must have brought herself along when Tsuna had chosen to take Kyouya over Mukuro.

"She wouldn't have hurt Xanxus," Tsuna says.

"Like how she'd never put that thing in your head?" Mammon asks, blase and unbothered despite how their words fill Tsuna's ears with a surge of static.

"I," Tsuna says, his chest tight. He blinks again. And again. Breathes in, again and again. "What? No, it's not like that. She's just a bit protective."

"Are you being funny? Or--" Mammon says, pursing their lips. "Oh. You don't know, do you? About it even being there, much less how it might be messing you up."

"She hasn't done anything to Xanxus," Tsuna says, because it's important enough to repeat. Because it's the easiest thing to say, the only thing that doesn't seem to make the waters rise up and around his head.

Mammon stares at him, the visible half of their face twisted into something complicated. They tilt their head in the same way that Chrome tilts hers when faced with a puzzle that she doesn't quite understand.

"And while I appreciate you, um. Worrying? About me," Tsuna says when Mammon doesn't look inclined to leave or respond, "there's no reason to. I'm fine."

"That's not how it looks from here," Mammon says. Then adds, "And I'm not worrying."

They totally are. No one gets invested in the state of Tsuna's anything unless they're worried, which is -- nice? Sort of? It's endearing, if a little curious. Mammon, in particular, has never had a reason to care about Tsuna. Or involve themselves in Tsuna's business.

"Thank you," Tsuna says, smiling at how Mammon grimaces at the honesty. "But really, I'm okay. Plus, I don't know if I, uh, want to have to owe you anything. No offense." Especially not when Mammon charged Squalo, a friend, with handling Hibari Kyouya. Tsuna can't even begin to imagine what he would be tasked to do. Handling the issue of his head on his own seems cheaper. More economic.

"Don't be stupid," Mammon says with an impatient wave of their hand. "You took care of the Arcobaleno curse. You have one favour outstanding."

Tsuna blinks. That can't be right. He had nothing to do with --

"Stop making that face, it makes you look stupid," Mammon says with a sniff. "If you don't believe me, you can ask Reborn. Or Checker Face."

Reborn would never admit to such a thing, and Tsuna likes to keep his interactions with Checker Face to a minimum. Kawahira is one of the few people that Tsuna has struggled to forgive, and Kawahira had respectfully kept his distance in response. He has approached Tsuna only once to date, days after the funeral, after Tsuna began collapsing, to tell him --

To tell him -- something. Something important. He had wanted to talk to Tsuna, then to Reborn, then. Then.

Then.

Tsuna presses a palm against one eye as the memory fades into tendrils of mist, leaving only a faint recollection where something solid should be.

"You really think that's being fine, Sawada? Seriously?"

Why had Kawahira come? What had he said to Tsuna, why had he talked to Reborn?

The waters rise up and around Tsuna's head, the waves of white noise leaving a dull throb behind his eyes. A splinter, painful and persistent, impossible to dig out. The world is starting to crack at the edges. His head hurts in a way that's reminiscent of the agony that Tsuna had endured in Namimori before the Furuya, before Kyouya, when he had been quietly choking on loneliness despite Reborn's vigilance. Despite Hayato's devotion, Takeshi's affection, his mom's --

"What a mess," he hears Mammon say, and then.

And then, just as abruptly, Tsuna's ears stop ringing.

When he raises his head, Mist fills the sparsely decorated hallway, disguised as fog. It is a cold presence, as dangerous as an unfurling cobra. Reality strains beneath the protective snarl that surrounds him, and Tsuna blinks at how the world seems to glitch and pulse beneath her palpable fury.

Chrome has always been as scary as Kyouya when angered, a weapon that believes herself safest when wielded by Tsuna's hands. It is as terrifying a notion as it is flattering. She has killed for him every time that he's asked, and she will kill for him now if he lets her.

He can't let her.

Tsuna lifts a hand and digs his fingers down into the space before him as if to hold onto the scruff of a beast. To hold it back from where Mammon is left crumbled at Tsuna's feet.

There's nothing dramatic about Mammon's stillness even with their hood having slipped off their face. There's an ashen quality to their lips, their eyes twitching behind their lids, and their nails scratching at the floor, but Mammon isn't convulsing. They aren't writhing like a broken puppet. They don't look the part of a person being tortured within the confines of their own mind, and that?

That's impressive. There's a reason that they had been the Mist Arcobaleno, Tsuna supposed.

"Chrome," Tsuna says quietly.

She doesn't answer. Not in words. She's never had a need for words to ask her questions, to make her point.

"I'm okay," Tsuna says, accepting the featherlight touches of her Flames along his body. Gently probing, ever careful, standing in stark contrast to how she forcefully keeps Mammon trapped on the ground. "You weren't going to be able to protect me from it forever."

At that, she responds. Fiercely. Desperately. The smell of peonies fill Tsuna's nose, and the back of his throat burns with shouts that he'd never voiced. His knees feel wet with rain that shouldn't exist, bruised against the cement. There's red on grey, chapped lips curled around pain. Unfocused eyes. A cold, small hand in his.

And just as quickly, everything shuts down. Monochrome and muted. Muffled. Underwater. No, Boss.

"Don't," Tsuna says as gently as he can. As firmly as he must. He feels his forehead warm with his own Flames, chasing away the cobwebs that she tries to lay back into his hair. "It's okay. Let Mammon go. I won't let them do anything."

A pause. Hesitation. The Mist holds itself still in response, like a small animal braced to be struck. The air is warm with her concern even when underlined by cool, clammy fear.

"It'll be okay. I promise," Tsuna says after a moment, heavy with -- a lot. Too much. He's not angry. Really, he isn't. He's not even disappointed, just tired. So very tired. "Can you tell Mukuro to come pick us up in a bit? I have to go get Kyouya-san." And rescue Squalo, most likely.

Affirmation. Affection. Adoration, if tinted by sadness. There is no guilt, and Tsuna hadn't expected there to be; Chrome would have never allowed this if she hadn't felt strongly about it. If she didn't have a reason so dire that it had gotten their whole Family to condone it.

Her Flames recede in increments. The Mist lifts as sluggishly as one might come out of a dream. Reality reforms around Tsuna just as slowly, colours to sounds to scents, threaded back into place until everything is normal again.

Normal, except for how Mammon's eyes fly open and swing immediately up to where Tsuna is crouched by their head.

"You okay?" Tsuna asks quietly.

"What the fuck, Sawada," Mammon says, their voice hoarse and scratchy.

"I know," Tsuna says, offering a hand. Naturally, Mammon doesn't take it. "Come on, let's go find Squalo. I don't want to have to explain why Kyouya-san broke him and your pool."

Chapter Text

Peeling Kyouya away from a bloodied, adrenaline-crazed Squalo ends up being an exercise that takes the better half of two hours. It doesn't go so far as Tsuna needing to step in with a blazing forehead and burning fists, but Tsuna does end up putting himself in Squalo's trajectory nonetheless. Specifically, in his sword's trajectory. It has the expected effect of materializing Hibari Kyouya out of nowhere to intercept said sword. Knocking Squalo out with a single swing of his tonfa seems to be a mere afterthought.

"Tsunayoshi," Kyouya snarls, grabbing Tsuna by the jaw. He always gets a bit techy whenever Tsuna barters his own safety.

"It made you stop," Tsuna says cheekily.

Said cheek is still aching from tonfa-induced trauma a whole hour after the fact. The volatility of the situation hadn't been so severe that Kyouya had stormed off though, so Tsuna has an audience of one as he sits with a hand against his face, massaging out the ache.

The gaudy and uneven stone of the staircase digs at his tailbone, and Tsuna shifts and squirms until Kyouya makes a noise akin to a cat's grumble. Tsuna is quick to take up on the invitation, scooting over to the single smooth step that Kyouya is standing on. Kyouya doesn't look back at Tsuna, but he doesn't rebuff Tsuna either when Tsuna tucks in close to rest his head against the side of Kyouya's thigh.

It's as intimate as these moments always are, a moment of calm that sits as still as the water's surface before the onset of disaster.

Twenty minutes or thereabouts is how long it takes Mukuro to appear with both Coyote and Brabanter's bodies. They've brought the Fiat again, and Tsuna has barely gotten to his feet before Mukuro is forcing Coyote into Kyouya's space.

"You left him," Mukuro says. Coyote's mouth is smiling, but that means nothing when it looks like an accusation.

"Get out of my face or I'll remove yours," Kyouya says calmly, staring up at Mukuro.

"Go on," Mukuro says, just as calm. "Give me a reason, housecat."

Tsuna intercepts the tonfa against the back of his fist before it can meet Mukuro's face, the skin of his knuckles flaking beneath the roar of his Flames.

"Enough," Tsuna says, pushing Kyouya back. He releases his Flames and looks at his Guardians. "You can do this later. Come on."

Kyouya glowers. Mukuro, for his part, simply sneers.

The ride back is tense. It stings like an antiseptic, with the burn of having applied what is unwelcomed but necessary. They don't speak but they will talk, because Tsuna's dragged his feet about this long enough. It's only a matter of picking the place.

*

The day smells fresh when they arrive back at the Vongola mansion, thick with the promise of rain. The gardens stretch out before them in bursts of colour, with greens, reds, purples, and whites as they step past the doors. It stands in contrast with the cobblestone grey that snakes into the gardens proper, disappearing past an amalgamation of plants that only Kyouya would know the names to.

Tsuna sits on a bench ten steps from the awning, far enough away from the entrance to shield them from prying eyes, but close enough to the Mansion that Kyouya and Mukuro will have to take care as not to draw attention.

Not that that's ever stopped them.

At once, Mukuro is moving. A spear materializes. Thrust forward. Kyouya meets it with his tonfa, and the air cringes with metal-on-metal shrieking. There are no eruption of Flames, but the space between them is hot with old grudges and new indignities nonetheless.

"Whatever was going through your mind, allowing yourself to be distracted?" Mukuro says to Kyouya, leaning Coyote's superior body weight forward. "My dear Chrome had to intervene, you useless fool."

"Enough of your delusions," Kyouya snaps, shoving Mukuro back. He follows in with a lunge, swinging in with so much force that Mukuro has to parry the blow rather than receive the full weight of it. "You saw."

"We saw that it held," Mukuro hisses, one eye burning with the kanji for four. Given the rawness of his anger, that isn't surprising; Mukuro wants Kyouya to hurt, not suffer. "Or did you fail to notice that little detail?"

Kyouya stands loosely, too loosely. "Only a herbivore would think it possible to keep him unaware forever."

Mukuro smiles with his teeth, and --

"Mukuro," Tsuna says. "Kyouya-san."

Mukuro looks at him at once. Kyouya is slower to respond, taking two seconds too long to drag his eyes back to Tsuna. Adrenaline is synonymous with violence when worn on Kyouya's skin, the same way that Mukuro wears his as vehemence, as vengeance. Kyouya's knuckles are white around the handle of his tonfas, his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. There is blood in the water, but Tsuna doesn't think any of them knows whose it is.

"If anyone is going to punch him, it should be me," Tsuna says.

Kyouya glares at him, but doesn't disagree. "Are you going to?"

Maybe. Probably not.

"If I have to," Tsuna hedges. "But I need to talk to him first. So -- please."

There is nothing kind in Kyouya's stare or stance, but there's nothing mean either. There are sharp things, edged things, but those aren't the same. They don't hurt even as Kyouya grabs Tsuna by the hair and yanks his head back, forcing him to bear his throat. "Clean this up before the rain."

Then, he departs. Spins on his heels, ever graceful, and stalks off.

Tsuna exhales, long and tired.

"You're quiet," he says when Mukuro doesn't.

Mukuro sneers and continues to hold his silence. It's petulant, childish, and very much in character. It's endearing in much the same way that a paper cut is.

"You really have nothing to say?" Tsuna insists.

Mukuro raises a brow as if to ask, what is there to say?

What indeed.

The moment between them is fragile, but when Tsuna checks himself, he isn't hurting. Aching, maybe, but other than his erratic heart, the slow and fishhook-painful breathing, and the squirm of bile at the pit of his stomach, he's okay. He thinks he can take it if Mukuro chooses this moment to tell him the truth.

"We could start with what happened," Tsuna says, the words catching in his throat. "Like. With Mammon? And Chrome. She told you what happened, didn't she?"

Mukuro gives him a bland look, because of course she did.

"Whatever you guys did," Tsuna says, running his tongue over his dry lips, picking at the skin. His heart is a hammer, heavy and painful against his ribs. He skids his foot against the ground, forward and back. Forward and back. "Whatever it is that I forgot. About--" Static. Record skip. "About what happened. I have an idea about-- about what it might be. Not a lot, but. Enough, I think."

Tsuna's head throbs in response, gentle but persistent. It all seems so obvious in hindsight: all those moments of oddly scrambled thoughts, the weird brain fog, the uncharacteristic silence of his intuition during moments where it should have been screaming.

It feels akin to Nono's seal, if a little kinder. Softer in how it redirects rather than suppresses, how it tries to protect him, to hide him, from something so bad that his Family had committed time travel with the explicit purpose of erasing it.

"Aren't you calm," Mukuro says, finally breaking his silence to answer nothing. "How unusual, especially for you."

Is it? Is he? Is he calm?

Tsuna smiles wryly. "I'm freaking out, actually."

His chest feels bruised, kicked in. There is a constant churn of discomfort that bounces between his lungs and stomach. Nausea claws at the back of his throat as something bitter and awful. He wants to cry, wants to yell. He wants to whine and complain as he might have done twenty years ago, angry at the world for being so damn unfair.

He wants to bludgeon Mukuro with questions and demands, wants him to explain himself, wants him to apologize, wants to know why, why this, why like this?

But he can't.

He can't. He shouldn't. He's older now, knows better now. Reborn would kick Tsuna's ass otherwise, and much of Tsuna's life is defined by trying not to get his ass kicked. This time is no different.

"Of course you are," Mukuro says, almost too quickly, with a bit too much sneer. "No one likes being manipulated."

Mm. "Why did you do it?"

"Please, why does anyone make a mess of someone's head?" Mukuro says. "Perhaps it was for fun. For information. Or perhaps because you can be so incredibly stubborn and difficult to work with, and I needed you docile."

None of that is true. Maybe, once upon a time, they could have been, but not anymore. If Tsuna is too old to be throwing tantrums, then Mukuro, too, is too old to think that he could get away with lying to him.

"Was I dying?" Tsuna asks mildly.

Mukuro stiffens. He stiffens as if struck, stiffening in a way that he hadn't even when bearing the full brunt of Hibari Kyouya's swing.

Ah.

People are liars by nature, Reborn would always say. The difference between a good boss and a great one is their ability to read and understand those lies, to take advantage of the truths that lay hidden beneath them, no matter whose truths they were.

Look at him, Loser Tsuna, Reborn might say now. Look at how he's holding himself.

Look, he'd say, at how Mukuro does not carry himself like a guilty man. How oddly comfortable he seems, how resigned. In the place of an apology, there is acceptance, the sort that crystallizes from the remnants of sorrow. He knows he has wronged without believing his actions to be a mistake. The line between a traitor and a survivor can be a thin margin, but Mukuro toes it with a certain aplomb. He has always been a flawed man, but today, right now, he presents himself to Tsuna as a man who has decided, with any mortal man's selfishness, that he would rather be forsaken than permit another loss.

That he would rather play the villain than allow that role to fall upon the shoulders of another.

That he would rather have Tsuna angry rather than sad, so sad that it might kill him again.

Idiot. Everyone that Tsuna's ever loved is an idiot. Rokudo Mukuro is no exception.

"Stop that at once," Mukuro says to whatever it is that Tsuna's face is doing. "This was a purely selfish decision, I assure you."

"Shut up, Mukuro," Tsuna says, and gets to his feet.

Coyote is a tall man, almost tall enough that Tsuna has to stretch out his arm entirely to reach his head. He does so slowly, giving Mukuro the chance to move away.

Mukuro, naturally, doesn't. He holds still as Tsuna tucks his hand into the crook of the man's neck and jaw to tug him down. Mukuro doesn't fight him, bending Coyote's body to rest his forehead against Tsuna's, drawn in as if helpless to do anything but.

It is an awkward fit, an unfamiliar one. Tsuna is almost on his tiptoes and Mukuro is bent all weird. It's hardly even comfortable, and Coyote's face is alien and strange and so, so different from Mukuro's, but that's alright. Tsuna would know this man in any skin.

"I'm sorry," Tsuna says, quiet and regretful.

"I don't need your apology," Mukuro says acidly. "Do you even know what you're apologizing for, you fool?"

For dying? No, not quite. For thinking that things would be okay if he died, maybe. That his Family would somehow find happiness in spite of the chains that Tsuna had placed around their necks.

... No. No, that's not what he should be sorry for.

"I'm sorry." Tsuna tightens his hold. "I'm sorry."

"Enough, Sawada Tsunayoshi," Mukuro says, raising his hands to close them around Tsuna's forearms. "I do not want your apologies. Nor need it. If you may be so kind as to remember, it was I who--"

"I'm sorry," Tsuna says before Mukuro could push him away, "that I made you think that I wouldn't forgive you."

Mukuro's hold turns bruising at once.

"I'm angry with you," Tsuna says, which is both true and not. Mukuro has always been a complicated presence in Tsuna's life, as a man that Tsuna had never learned to hate, a man that few believed to deserve forgiveness, and yet. Here they are. "Not only 'cause you did this to me, but because you thought that I'd-- did you really think I'd hate you? Or push you away? And you were going to be okay with it?"

When Tsuna had been the one to demand his commitment, for his forever?

Mukuro is silent. He stands pressed against Tsuna with the demeanour of a prisoner and the desperation of a man in love. Their shared hypocrisy sits as an odd note between them, a cacophonous sound that will take days and weeks and months to soothe away, but Tsuna can no more hate Mukuro than Mukuro can escape him.

This is their life. The culmination of the choices that the nine of them have made.

You fool, Tsuna remembers Mukuro saying in the aftermath of their harmonization. After Tsuna had spent an afternoon writhing in Mukuro's arms, fingers scratching long lines of possession on Mukuro's back, all so that they could defy nature to forcibly create space for Mukuro within Tsuna's Sky, right next to Chrome.

My dear fool, Mukuro had said when the sun was setting and Tsuna was awake. They had taken the day off together, had flown to Kokuyo together. They had been made dirty by their battle and haggard by everything else, but Mukuro had looked so bright and lovely as he brought up Tsuna's hand to kiss his ring when Tsuna had recovered enough to hear him. Only you would believe this to be worth the trouble.

"I'm really angry with you," Tsuna says, his voice cracking. "But I was always going to forgive you. I just wish you'd told me."

"There are reasons why we didn't," Mukuro says, honest at last. "Reasons more important than your happiness."

And there is only one thing that Tsuna's Family would value more than Tsuna's happiness, his peace, his wants.

"Because I was dying," Tsuna says again, wondering what it means to find himself more endeared by this than angry. Gutted, but only in the kind of way that leaves his chest feeling warm and rotten.

A hush falls over them in response, the moment filled with nothing but their breathing. It is one that lasts for minutes upon minutes until Mukuro finally sighs, open and raw. Maybe even a little broken. He slumps against Tsuna, making them briefly stumble until Mukuro simply wraps both arms around Tsuna's waist to drag him close.

"Because we would never allow you to," Mukuro says against Tsuna's temple.

Tsuna exhales. Mukuro must surely feel Tsuna's breath against his ear, it must surely be annoying and ticklish and wet, but Mukuro says nothing in protest, much less move away.

"Well," Tsuna says. "I'm not dying now. And I have questions."

"Yes," Mukuro murmurs. "I suppose you do."

*

They meander further into the gardens, farther away from where people might find them. Not out of any true need for privacy, but because Mukuro will become restless and mean if Tsuna doesn't indulge his paranoias. They go from flower batch to flower batch until Mukuro finally settles on a bench far away from where they might find cover when the sky inevitably opens with rain.

Which is fine, really. It's a small price to pay to keep Mukuro from vibrating out of Coyote's skin.

"So," Tsuna says when Mukuro lets Tsuna sit without dragging him off again, "why -- this?"

"The time travel, I presume you mean?" Mukuro says, keeping Coyote upright. "It was our last resort."

The bench's paint flakes beneath Tsuna's nail when he picks at it, peeling off in both long and small strips of -- red? Brown? Mahogany, someone had said once, probably Kyoko. I think it might look nice in a place like this. What do you think, Tsuna-kun?

Kyoko, Tsuna wishes he'd said, why do you never call me Tsu-kun anymore?

"So this thing you did, um. To my head," Tsuna says. "It didn't work?"

"It worked," Mukuro says after a moment. "But it was not a permanent solution. It would fail the moment that you saw through it, and you are infuriatingly apt at resisting my illusions." He raises a brow. "As you are doing now."

Tsuna shrugs, unrepentant. "Sorry."

"In any case," Mukuro says, rolling his eyes. "What was changed in your head was not the event. Not the memory itself, but your perception of it."

Tsuna lets his eyes trail to the peonies, to the wide array of colours. They are meticulously groomed and just as carefully arranged. They're perfect. Artificial. Nothing like the messy nature of his mom's peonies, uneven but beautiful.

Mukuro steps into Tsuna's line of sight, disruptive. It feels like a metaphor. "Sawada Tsunayoshi."

"My mom died," Tsuna says, pressing his knuckles to the space between his brows. "I know she didn't die like I thought she did, but I, just. I don't understand why changing my perception or whatever is doing-- all this. Or why you even, um. Bothered?"

"And to tell you would be defeating the point of doing it at all," Mukuro says.

Tsuna drops his hand. "What if I asked you to undo it?"

"Naturally, my answer would be no."

Naturally.

"I'm not going to stop picking at it, you know. I'll break it eventually."

Mukuro's eye flashes red. Tsuna meets it, unflinching. Unrepentant.

"Don't," Tsuna says when he feels the dull pressure of Mukuro's Flames against his thoughts, when it wedges itself against the presence that already exists there. "She'll be sad if she has to choose between us."

Mukuro presses Coyote's lips together, thin and white, but retreats without a word. He's never won against Chrome once she had come into her power, and he knows better than to think that she can choose him over Tsuna.

"Frustrating creature," Mukuro says.

"Why would you say no?" Tsuna asks, ignoring Mukuro and his odd choice of endearment. "You've already travelled back in time. You've changed things. I'm not dying anymore."

Mukuro sneers. "And who are you to guarantee that?"

Tsuna turns his gaze back out to the gardens. Past the peonies, the petunias, the magnolias in the distance. He curls his hands into fists over his knees.

"If I said I won't die, then I won't," he says.

"Don't be ridiculous," Mukuro snaps. "If it were that easy, why did you die?"

"I don't know," Tsuna says, picking at a loose string on his jeans. "Maybe because I was tired?"

Mukuro's face shuts down at once. The briefest flicker of emotion twists beneath his stony expression, but it's hard to get a read on what it is. It's too complicated, too sharp. Filled with too much, too much, too much.

"Ah," Mukuro says, the syllable spoken like silk. Like a sliver of broken glass to be slid as a splinter beneath the skin. "And so, he arrives at the truth."

The sky rumbles in place of Tsuna's reply and hits Tsuna's nose with the first case of rain. A warning shot before the drizzling can begin in earnest. And around them, the world goes awash in greys. With the colour of cement. The smell of blood. The feel of cold hands, the sight of strained smiles.

"When I think about her death," Tsuna says quietly. Barely audible, even to his ears. "And all that came after. It doesn't hurt as much as it should. Even when I killed so many people, made you kill just as many--"

"Do not," Mukuro says, "ascribe your guilt to us. It was not us that died."

"Thank God," Tsuna mutters. He shakes his head. "Anyway, it still wasn't what I wanted for us. All I really wanted was for people to leave us alone and let us change the Vongola, or whatever, in peace, but they wouldn't. They kept trying to stop us. They kept taking from us, and I felt like I was letting them. So I made them stop."

He turns his face up to the rain. Closes his eyes. His Flames catch against his forehead, and at once, his senses sharpen. His doubts -- well. Those don't matter.

"And that's what this is about, isn't it?" Tsuna says to this stupid, senseless sociopath that has learned to love exactly two people. He lets his Flames guide his words, lets his intuition take hold in a state that even Chrome cannot obstruct. "This was never about my mom. You don't care about her. I don't understand how she fits in with everything just yet, but it was never about her. It was always about me. About what I did."

The air shifts around him. Tsuna opens his eyes in time to watch Mukuro drape Coyote's jacket over him. In time for the rain to settle into a gentle rhythm around them in earnest, soaking the cobblestone paths of the gardens in small increments of time.

"Of course it is," Mukuro says with uncomplicated, unwavering affection. "All of this has only ever been for you."

Coyote's jacket smells of faded cologne when Tsuna adjusts it around his head. The rain falls over his shoulders as rhythmically as a marching band, headed towards a known and practiced end.

"Before Kyouya-san and I came to Japan," Tsuna says, letting his Flames disperse. "I told him something."

Mukuro tilts his head.

"I said that I wasn't going to burn out," Tsuna says. "Not this time. I promised you my life."

Mukuro's eye flickers red. On and off like a light switch. Like he can barely keep hold of his Flames, much less his composure.

"You've already broken that promise once," Mukuro says lowly.

"I'm not dead, though," Tsuna says, and that feels right. Had he ever been dead, or simply close enough to it to pass as much? "I never wanted to die. I never meant to. But I also-- I probably didn't fight it very hard either. At the end of it."

Mukuro steps forward, bringing Coyote's body close enough that Tsuna needs to strain his neck to see his face. Not that he's given the chance, given how Mukuro braces a large hand on Tsuna's shoulder to reach past him, to snap a peony off its branch. "Has that changed?"

"Obviously," Tsuna says, immediately tucking his face against Mukuro's shoulder. It's wet with rain, but Tsuna could care less. "You guys are crazy, doing this to me and the-- the whole timeline, or whatever. I don't know what else you guys might get up to if I'm not around, and I--" Tsuna pauses. One beat into the next, until they're four seconds deep into a silence that feels both awkward and damning. "And so I'll fix this. This time, I'll do it right. But to do that, you can't be playing with my head. You can't keep coddling me."

White noise fills the space between them, characterized by rain. Their breathing. The rhythmic ticking of Coyote's watch. The flicker of their Flames, fitting oddly but persistently together, too stubborn to let go.

Mukuro gently pushes Tsuna back with both hands.

"No," he says. "I suppose not."

Tsuna's head snaps up. "So--?"

Mukuro's smile is bitter and pitying and so, so sweet. His fingers are cold when they brush over the curve of Tsuna's ear, when they tuck the peony into his hair.

"Shall we make it a date?" Mukuro says in answer. "For when your Arcobaleno can join us, perhaps?"

Tsuna frowns. "You can't do it now?"

"His cooperation for when you need it," Mukuro says with a hint of steel. "Those were the terms."

Which is to imply that Tsuna will need it.

Tsuna catches the rising tides of uncertainty and presses them down. Compress them. Holding them there, right against his chest, suffocating them between sinew and bone. Keeping it there until his lungs can open and close unhindered, unbothered.

"Which is when, exactly?" Tsuna asks. Acquiescing, because Mukuro might be a mess of a human being, but he isn't one to exaggerate. If he thinks that Tsuna will need Reborn, then Tsuna likely did.

"After your meeting with the Piovra," Mukuro says. "Our dear Chrome can also join us then."

Which might take about -- a couple days? A few days? Close enough that it won't feel like procrastinating. That it won't feel like cowardice to put it off.

"Okay," Tsuna says. He breathes in. "Let's go inside then."

"Yes, your nose looks a degree away from falling off," Mukuro says, amused.

"I'm fine," Tsuna sniffles.

Mukuro huffs. It's not a laugh, the moment is still too raw for something so benign, but Mukuro is nothing if not resilient. "Go inside, Sawada Tsunayoshi."

"You can go," Tsuna says, shaking his head. "I need to get Kyouya-san. He'll catch a cold if we leave him out here."

"Let him suffer," Mukuro says, so incredibly petty.

Tsuna frowns at him. "You're still angry at him?"

"Furious," Mukuro says.

Tsuna rolls his eyes so hard he nearly gives himself a migraine. "Fine. Then you go get him."

"And that makes sense how, exactly?" Mukuro asks peevishly.

"You're impossible when you're like this. Both of you," Tsuna says flatly. "And there's a lot that we have to talk about. So beat each other up a bit and get it out of your system. Just don't leave any lasting injuries."

Annoyed resignation settles on Mukuro's face, making him appear severely constipated. Tsuna tactfully doesn't tell him. "You do not get to butt into our business and nag. We will sort out our matters as we must."

"No lasting injuries, Mukuro."

"Go away, Sawada Tsunayoshi."

*

Tsuna's apparent propensity for nagging aside, letting Mukuro go after Kyouya is not so much about delegation as it is a necessity. Peace would remain far away for as long as the volatility between Tsuna's two Guardians was left unaddressed. In the absence of Ryouhei, their tireless peacekeeper, the best way to handle said volatility would be to let them sort it out themselves. For Kyouya to beat the tantrum out of Mukuro and vice versa, for them to rediscover their equilibrium through and within each other.

Tsuna, for his part, intends to stay out of the way entirely. Letting his Family do as his Family must is a learned survival tactic; you could no more control them as you might control the weather.

And so it's well into the evening when Mukuro-as-Brabanter returns with Kyouya, both of them rumpled and dishevelled. Dried sweat and blood sit suspended on their faces and their clothes are slightly charred, but they seem calmer. More settled.

Tsuna takes a moment to look for the hidden limps, winces, and flinches before putting down the reports of Luca Piovra and his Family. He waves them both into the room, to the many seats available. There's the other half of the couch, an armchair in the corner by the bookshelves, and even the rug by the fireplace if they were so inclined.

Naturally, Kyouya chooses the couch that Tsuna is on, pillowing his head on Tsuna's thigh while stretching himself out across the rest of it. Mukuro sets Brabanter on the ground by Tsuna's once-bad knee and leans his head against it.

Tsuna looks down at Kyouya, to where a fresh bruise is beginning to stitch itself into his cheek and brushes his knuckles along it, light as a question.

"Better?" he asks when Kyouya cracks an eye open. Tsuna doesn't remember when he's started asking better? instead of are you okay? Maybe it had been a gradual correction, done over multiple instances where are you okay got stuck in Tsuna's throat with its inadequacies.

Kyouya doesn't answer, simply reaching up to brush his fingers along the peony that Tsuna had chosen to keep in his hair.

"I'm okay," Tsuna says. "It'll be okay."

Kyouya stares up at him unblinking, but he still lowers his hand. Tacit in acceptance and approval, because he has never been one to hound Tsuna about his little lies.

Which is just as well. There is a lot more to talk about than the state of Tsuna's head, from Mukuro's reports about the CEDEF to Tsuna's plans for them. The Varia and Tsuna's expectations for them. About the Piovra and the Lumaca, about what he wants to do, what he will offer. He tells them the shape that he wants history to take, and they listen. They judge, they frown, and there is a brief moment of anarchy where Kyouya bites him, but they don't tell him no.

They can't tell him no. They are men that can singlehandedly change the political landscape of a small country, but when it comes to Tsuna's will, their answer can only ever be acceptance.

Is that what they had turned to subterfuge? Why they had chosen not to tell Tsuna of their plans, knowing that they would be powerless if Tsuna had told them to stop?

It's a sobering thought. A sad and terrible one.

*

The moon is full and heavy in the sky when Tsuna abandons the pretense of sleep. He gets as far as swinging his legs off the edge of the bed before he's yanked back by the collar of his shirt.

Tsuna yelps but collapses as he's supposed to. Fighting this would do him no favours.

"Where are you going," Kyouya says, his face a mere two inches from Tsuna's own.

Tsuna cringes. "Um. To see Giotto?"

Kyouya's brows come together, casting a deep, displeased shadow between the eyes.

"It's fine," Tsuna says, reaching up to smooth Kyouya's forehead with a thumb. "I'm fine. I just need to -- I don't know, I just need to. But I'll be back soon. Chrome will be with me."

Kyouya scowls, but he doesn't rebuff Tsuna. Doesn't bite him. He tolerates Tsuna's touch with the patience of a feral cat, and Tsuna accepts it as the privilege that it is.

"You have an hour," Kyouya says generously, and lets go.

The fastest route from the Tsuna's borrowed room to the main entrance weaves through a quiet crossroad of hallways, mirrors, and paintings. It is a route that is largely populated by housekeeping staff, and more than a few of them stare as Tsuna steps past them.

Chrome bristles. Tsuna doesn't. Their reactions aren't unreasonable; guests are uncommon in the Vongola stronghold, and it will be a few years until they begin to learn Tsuna's name, his title, his reputation, when even their allies will find him difficult.

No. Not difficult. Intimidating. Awe-inspiring. Beloved.

Tsuna blinks hard, both mortified and embarrassed.

Chrome's amusement is featherlight, and her laughter rings like windchimes in Tsuna's ear.

The rest of the trip down is otherwise uneventful, downright peaceful, littered with familiar landmarks. They are among the few things that Tsuna will leave untouched in twenty years. Wealth is a quiet, graceful companion to the history that lives in these walls, and for as much time as Tsuna has spent ripping apart tradition, there is value in preserving and remembering some of it.

Giotto's painting is one such example. It is art that the Vongola has kept enshrined for generations, nailed to the far wall that faces the main entrance to the Mansion. Roman-style pillars border the circular room that it overlooks, framed by stairs that spiral up towards a high ceiling that emulates the sky.

It makes for a grand display, oppressive and immaculate. A place meant to humble any guests invited through the large, intricate front doors rather than the more modest side entrances that the Vongola reserves for friends and allies.

Giotto stares down at Tsuna from his frame as Tsuna approaches. His gaze is as delicately painted as the Flames etched onto his forehead, so detailed and real that it's always a wonder that it doesn't actually burn. His expression is mild, serious. Muted and dulled by the perpetual calm of hyper mode. There is a wariness there that Tsuna appreciates, the sort of exhaustion that Tsuna finds so very familiar.

It's probably pathetic to be seeking out the painting of your dead ancestor to feel a little less alone, to seek that sliver of comfort, but it has never deterred Tsuna from seeking it out nonetheless.

He gets as far as putting his fingers against the frame before someone says, "Couldn't sleep, Decimo?"

Chrome rouses against his thoughts, and Tsuna shushes her as he puts Giotto to his back.

"Nono," Tsuna says with a dip of his head. "No, I, just. Thought I'd pay my respects."

Timoteo smiles, showing off his crows' feet. "Yes, I suppose if there's any of us that deserves your regard, it would be Giotto."

Tsuna shrugs in agreement, but otherwise says nothing.

Timoteo is without his usual attire this evening, fitted instead into a loose dress shirt and slacks. He has his cane with him, fingers wrapped around the head of it. It hits the floor with every step he takes, a rhythmic tap, tap, tap that stops only when Timoteo comes to stand with Tsuna to stare up at Giotto.

"Has he been a good listener?" Timoteo asks.

"He usually is," Tsuna says, also turning back around to meet Giotto's eyes. "Though I wonder if I'm, maybe-- whining too much. At him."

"He's heard eight generations' worth of complaints before yours even started," Timoteo says, amused. "I would not worry."

Tsuna grimaces.

"It is the duty of the old to nurture the young," Timoteo says. "And who better understands a Boss' concerns than another?"

"I guess," Tsuna says.

"There is no harm in seeking guidance, Tsunayoshi," Timoteo says, adjusting his weight against his cane. "After all, the responsibility of leadership is heavier than most would have you believe."

"Except Reborn," Tsuna says, rubbing the back of his neck. Tsuna's of the opinion that Reborn is physically incapable of coddling anyone. That he could ever soften his blows or his lessons. It just wasn't in him.

"It makes him a good tutor," Timoteo says in agreement. "But that does not mean he can offer you understanding."

Tsuna drops his hand. "And-- are you? Offering?"

Timoteo folds both hands over the head of his cane. "If you need it."

Tsuna casts him a sideways glance. "Even after what I've done?"

"To my Coyote and Brabanter?" Timoteo says quietly, severely. His hands tighten briefly over his cane before he exhales past the tension. "Yes. Even then."

He -- isn't lying. The words are reluctant, but that is a far cry from deception. Even still.

"You haven't hurt them," Timoteo says, answering Tsuna's silence. "And Reborn has assured me that you are in the business of keeping your promises."

He has, huh. "I try to. I would never hurt your Family on purpose, Nono."

Not unless they gave him a reason to. And Timoteo wouldn't. He hadn't, even in the weird timeline of events that Mukuro had allowed Tsuna to remember.

Timoteo inclines his head in acceptance.

"What else did Reborn say?" Tsuna asks. There's a tickle at the back of his head, an itch. An insistent feeling that instructs Tsuna to watch what parade themselves across the lines of Timoteo's face.

To read from them: reluctance, again. Against something that Timoteo finds difficult to believe, but couldn't claim to be impossible. Something like --

"That you will be the best thing to happen to the Vongola in generations," Timoteo says. "And that I would make for a poor don to lose sight of that, no matter the disrespect."

Tsuna shakes his head. "And you believe him?"

"You've given me no reason to doubt him."

Fair enough.

Tsuna steps back from Giotto's painting to face his predecessor in full. His body feels warm. The moonlight is dim, but Tsuna has already seen all that he needs to see. The Mansion is alive around them, hushed in noise but ever-large in presence. It stands around Tsuna like the legacy it is, and Tsuna shoulders it as easily now as he will in a decade.

"If," Tsuna says, "in a few days, I decide that this world isn't worth changing, and that it would be easier to just let it all burn, what--?"

"What would I think? Do?" Timoteo finishes when Tsuna doesn't. He smiles even when there is nothing to smile about. Smiles, perhaps, precisely because there isn't. "Dear boy, there is nothing anyone can say or do. Change or destroy, that is your right as the Vongola Decimo."

His eyes feel heavy. Tsuna dips his head. Angles it so that he doesn't have to look at Timoteo, made wary by -- disappointment, maybe.

"I see," Tsuna says quietly.

"But," Timoteo says, his voice inviting Tsuna back to focus, "if, at the time, you could allow this old man an indulgence? Perhaps I may be inclined to put out some of your fires. Certainly the ones that you did not intend to light, at least."

Reborn would be disappointed, Tsuna thinks. If he could see him now, he would chastise him, kick the back of his knees, pull at his hair, all over how Tsuna chooses not to hide the smile that lightens his expression. How he chooses to ignore how Timoteo responds to it with sharp appraisal than any sort of kindness.

"I see," Tsuna says again.

Chapter Text

The first of Nono's indulgences arrive in the morning. They linger outside the front door, propped as accessories to a car that is more statement than function. The sort of car that is fine to own but stupid to drive in Palermo unless you were of a certain ilk.

The man and woman standing on either side of the car are both sleekly dressed, their suits fitted to be both professional and practical. The man has a gun strapped beneath his suit jacket and the woman has a small pistol belted around her right ankle. They're both decent shots, Tsuna thinks, but the man stands like he prefers knives while the woman favours the spool of wire that sits pretty on her belt.

Turmeric and Oregano, Tsuna's mind further supplies. CEDEF.

"Scavengers," Kyouya says from Tsuna's right.

"The Ninth is eager, it seems," Mukuro says.

Understandably. Tsuna would be a little eager himself, if he'd had to wait a week to get his Guardians back.

Tsuna lets the curtains fall from between his fingers. They'll need to leave soon if Tsuna were to arrive on time, but it would be rude to turn down a gift. There are many ways that bodies can be used, and Tsuna can think of at least three for the likes of CEDEF. For those who stood as Iemitsu's right and left hands.

"You still haven't picked out replacements, have you?" Tsuna says when he turns to Mukuro.

"No," Mukuro says. His smile is thin. Judgmental and pointed in how he angles it toward Kyouya, who does him the favour of aggressively ignoring him. "I was a little preoccupied at the time, given your Cloud's incompetence."

Kyouya drops his shoulders, loosens his stance. Tsuna rests his hand on his bicep, drawing Kyouya's ire down to where Tsuna can soothe it, distract it. They have enough to do today without inviting actual disaster.

"We already talked about that," Tsuna says evenly. "Let it go, Mukuro. Kyouya-san did what needed doing."

Mukuro rolls his eyes, but his chin dips in acquiescence nonetheless.

"Coming back to the topic of these scavengers," Mukuro says, his smile dipped at the corners with mockery, "are you certain that this is what you want, Sawada Tsunayoshi?"

"They'll be useful," Tsuna says. Not immediately, but after. After his head is fixed and the world will appear as it's meant to, with all of its ugly edges and intentions. "We'll need to deal with CEDEF eventually."

"Sawada Iemitsu is less forgiving than the Ninth," Mukuro says. Not as a reminder, not even out of decorum. This isn't worry, it's curiosity. A question.

Tsuna looks down at his palm. A warm one, not yet chilled by rain. His fingers flex around nothing but themselves, just as they did when he had laid her hand by her side, his ears ringing with her last words.

"Yeah," Tsuna says distantly. "And that'd be bad for business."

"Yamamoto Takeshi," Kyouya says. A suggestion. A good one, but not one that Tsuna will never indulge. Takeshi shouldn't have to kill a father, no matter the father. Tsuna isn't looking to be cruel.

"It won't come to that," Tsuna says, smothering the Flame within his fist. He won't let it come to that. "For now, let's go see what they want. I don't want to be late for the meeting."

*

CEDEF meets Tsuna with artificial warmth, with the cheer of conscripted babysitters. It's unsurprising; CEDEF will never see Tsuna as more than Iemitsu's approximation of him, nor will Tsuna allow them a chance to. There would have been no point. It would have taken too long, too long to justify the costs.

"Good morning," Tsuna tells them.

"Good morning, Tsuna," says the man with the buzz cut, poorly healed left hand, and a severe constitution: Iemitsu's left hand.

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" says the woman with the thousand dollar glasses, clipped up hair, and fierce loyalty: Iemitsu's right. She's the one that stood vigil at Basil's bedside, Tsuna remembers. The one who had looked at Tsuna with disgust. The one who had told him, in no certain words, he's dead because of --

Chrome rouses against his thoughts, gently dissuading the memory.

"Yeah," Tsuna says. "Since the Arcobaleno contest, right? It's good to see you again."

"You, as well," Turmeric says. He's a dangerous man, but also a polite one. Not unlike how Takeshi remained unerringly friendly even as he was cutting you down. "I hear you have an appointment this morning. The Ninth has asked us to take you there."

The line between coddling and meddling is thin, but twenty years is a long time to learn anything. That is to say, Tsuna knows the difference. He knows enough, at least, to know that this is the latter.

"Isn't this a bit overkill?" Tsuna says. "I already have my Guardians."

"No, you have the Ninth's," Oregano says, mouth pressed tight. She, like Hayato, seemed to oscillate between only two expressions in public: pinched or constipated. "And they both have much more important matters to attend to than serving as your chauffeur."

"Do they?" Tsuna asks, tilting his head.

"They do," Oregano says evenly. "Or they would have, if they were acting as themselves."

Ah. So that's how it is. Tsuna lets his arms relax on either side of him. He thinks he might be smiling, but he's not too sure. Sometimes, his face just does things when he's feeling tired.

"Did the Ninth tell you?" Tsuna asks.

"He didn't have to," Oregano says. "Your Mist is a poor actor. It was only a matter of connecting the pieces from there."

Tsuna hums and feels Kyouya rousing behind him, Mukuro straightening both Coyote and Brabanter's bodies. Chrome is a whisper against Tsuna's thoughts, a viper hidden within the grass, lovely and lethal and loyal.

"Which is why we're here to speak to you. Clear things up a bit," Turmeric says, the obvious good cop to Oregano's bad cop. He raises his hands in surrender, as if he didn't have something tucked into the collar of his suit. "We're not here to fight, Tsuna."

"No one ever is," Tsuna says, and looks at Coyote.

Mist explodes around them, ethereal and invisible to all but the people trapped within the walls of Mukuro's illusions. One of Coyote's eyes is red with the kanji for one, for illusions and lies. The space around them shrieks as it twists beneath Mukuro's will, twists until Tsuna feels his Guardian's Flames settle around them like a veil. It is nowhere near as elegant as Chrome's, and only half as bulletproof, but it's good enough.

Good enough, at least, to keep voyeurs and eavesdroppers from seeing past the mask of normalcy.

Kyouya rushes forward on cue. Turmeric and Oregano manage a startled choke before Kyouya has both of them by their throats. Slams them onto the hood of their car. There is a crack of skull on metal, followed by the sharp smell of blood. One of them must've bit their tongue.

Over the curve of Kyouya's shoulder comes Mukuro's trident, slipping just shy of Kyouya's ear to cut the cheeks of both members of CEDEF, Iemitsu's right and left hands.

Five seconds, and it's over.

Four bodies slump. Coyote and Brabanter crumble like puppets without strings while Turmeric and Oregano jerks in place.

"Hands off, housecat," Oregano says with a click of her tongue. She jams her elbow into the crook of Kyouya's arm, loosening his hold. "Always so dramatic, aren't you?"

"I'll bite you to death," Kyouya says calmly as he lets go.

"Promises, promises," Turmeric says, his smile coloured with Mukuro's malice. He rubs at his throat and presses his thumb into the freshly formed bruise.

"Guys," Tsuna sighs.

Kyouya sneers but says nothing else as he sees himself into the back seat behind the passenger side. Turmeric and Oregano linger for a moment longer, their attention locked on Coyote and Brabanter, who look back with dazed and unfocused stares.

"Shall I?" Mukuro asks with Turmeric's mouth.

"Leave them," Tsuna says, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Someone will come for them soon."

He slides back a step and lifts his gaze to where he knows Timoteo must be watching from behind tinted glass, safe in his self-made cage of inheritance and tradition. To where Timoteo must be watching the illusion fall away from Tsuna to reveal a perfectly peaceful scene with nothing but his Guardians on his knees to betray what had happened.

"Besides," Tsuna adds, "I have an appointment to make."

*

The cafe that Tsuna has chosen as the meeting place is an old place, a beloved place, a place that will grow old with Tsuna and his iteration of the Vongola. It is a flawed Italian attempt at being Japanese with its slightly-off katakana on the blackboard menu, the faded anime decor, and its many takes on matcha-flavoured drinks. Even still, it remains the most earnest attempt at recreating a piece of Tsuna's home in a country that Tsuna had never planned on loving, and Tsuna has adored their messy, asymmetrical brownies with worrying fervour for over a decade.

Talking Kyouya and Mukuro down from trying to follow him inside isn't nearly as nice, but Tsuna makes due with promises and threats in equal measures. Plus, someone had to take on the task of wrangling the CEDEF, and it wasn't going to be Tsuna.

It shouldn't be Kyouya or Mukuro either, but Tsuna's a little low on options.

"You're pretending to be one of them," Tsuna tells them. "So be nice."

Kyouya scowls. Mukuro smirks. Tsuna stares at them both until they acquiesce with little dignity and even less grace.

The cafe is caught in a mild bustle when Tsuna escapes the neuroses of his Cloud and Mist, with all but one table occupied. The barista behind the counter is a young man with dark hair, dark eyes, and unfamiliar features. He looks at Tsuna with the curiosity of attraction when Tsuna steps up to put in his order, stealing glances in short paces.

It's charming and completely mind-boggling, because Tsuna hardly believes himself attractive at thirty-six, much less sixteen.

"Thank you," he tells the barista when he's handed his coffee. It's rich and dark, bitter enough to be punishing. It's perfect.

It probably means something that his taste in coffee is about the same as his taste in people. And like all things, it's probably Reborn's fault.

The barista smiles, and that's unfamiliar too. It's too nice to belong to the person it does, and Tsuna is having a moment of total cognitive dissonance as he walks his coffee back to where he will wait for a Piovra or a Lumaca or both. Or neither, if he's read the situation wrong, but --

It's been years. He doesn't do that anymore. Tsuna stopped reading situations wrong when other people started paying for his mistakes. He's learned to lean on an intuition that finally feels like his own.

There is an address on his napkin when Tsuna tugs it out from beneath his coffee cup. Reality ripples around him like fog over a cityscape, like mist over a forest of skyscrapers. Tsuna traces each sharply written letter with a finger before folding it up and tucking it into the pocket of his jacket.

*

Tsuna is deep into a Sudoku game that he knows he can't solve when the first of his guests, a young man of mid-twenties, steps into the cafe. He is an unremarkable man with features that neither draw attention nor repel it, his shoulders and spine slouched into his blue varsity jacket. There is an overall worn quality to him, something tired, and Tsuna carefully turns his gaze away until the chair to his right is pulled back by a hand with scarred knuckles, a crooked ring finger, and perfectly manicured nails.

"Ciao," the man says, his voice gravelly and slightly hoarse. "Tsunayoshi Sawada, yeah?"

Tsuna puts down his phone, screen side up, and raises his head.

"Dante Lumaca," the man says. He does Tsuna the favour of not offering his hand, and Tsuna is grateful. Tsuna has never learned how to refuse a handshake; he usually stares at them, frozen between his manners and Reborn's lessons of don't take unknown hands, idiot. "Sis should be here in the next little while or so."

Tsuna tilts his head. "Just her?"

Dante has the sort of smile that lifts only half of his mouth. It makes him look young. Brash. It's a curated illusion, and Tsuna takes a moment to appreciate the simple effectiveness of it. "Yes sir, just her."

Huh. That's unexpected. It's fine though; Tsuna doesn't need Luca Piovra to be present to pitch his deal. It might even work out better that he isn't.

"Want to help me with this while we wait?" Tsuna asks, nudging his phone closer to Dante.

Dante drops his eyes to the screen in a show of amicability. He's been on guard since he'd sat down, his one hand kept hidden beneath the table, curled on his lap. Tsuna hadn't missed the extendable baton that had been hanging on Dante's belt when the man had stepped into Cafe Mochi, or how he adjusts his weight around the gun that he has strapped to his chest beneath his shirt and jacket.

Tsuna's not worried. A baton, a gun, and Rain Flames aren't a threat.

"Sudoku?" Dante says after a moment. "You stuck or something?"

"Or something," Tsuna says forlornly.

They're still huddled together with their heads bent over Tsuna's phone in the next little while when a shadow falls over them, judgemental and long-suffering.

"Hey Sis," Dante says warmly.

Brie Lumaca makes for a handsome figure against the plain normalcy of the cafe, petite in size but large in presence. She wears her heels as Hana does, as a threat and a statement. The dark grey of her suit is fitted and flattering along her body with nothing to betray the three weapons that she has on her, but Tsuna knows better than to believe that she has any less than that.

She looks to Dante first, her eyes narrowed behind her thin, rimless glasses before they come to settle on Tsuna. She holds his gaze seconds too long to be completely respectful, stern and assessing.

The cafe flickers behind her like a desert mirage, glitching with Chrome's indignation. Tsuna shakes his head minutely, and reality settles back in place after a drawn moment of petulance.

"Thank you for keeping him entertained," Brie Lumaca says as she settles into the chair across from Tsuna, the one to the left of Dante. "Sawada, I presume?"

"Hello," Tsuna says. "Ah, did you want to order something first?"

"No, thank you," Brie says. She sits primly, crossing one leg over the other to fold her hands over her knee. Her words are crisp, with pointed vowels and edged consonants. There's a rasp to her voice that is cigarette-borne, a habit that might have killed her before she turned sixty if Tsuna hadn't ordered her dead earlier. "I would rather not prolong our meeting for any longer than necessary."

Because Luca isn't here. By choice? Because he was told not to come? Or --

"Luca doesn't know?" Tsuna asks.

"I didn't tell him," Dante says defensively when Brie looks at him. He drags Tsuna's phone closer to his side of the table and hunches behind it, as though a thin piece of technology could protect him from the brewing storm. "All I said was no when he asked if Luca was coming."

"And that was one word too many," Brie mutters. She shakes her head. "You're right, Luca will not be coming. I hope you'll forgive us for coming in his stead."

"I'm surprised he let you," Tsuna says.

"He didn't," Dante says, typing in a two into one of the corner squares.

Tsuna blinks.

"You gave us no choice when you returned his men the way you did," Brie says tightly. Says his men, not ours. Interesting. "He would not have let it go with just a meeting if he'd found out."

"You could've let him," Tsuna says. It would have made things a lot easier, less grey in the areas that should have been black and white.

"Don't take us for fools," Brie says shortly. "That would have been playing right into your hands. We've lost enough people to you as it is."

"The Vongola is not responsible for your recent losses," Tsuna says evenly.

He's not lying. Chrome and Mukuro will not be Vongola until Tsuna is Boss.

Brie's smile is a complicated one, both sharp and sad and heavy with a story that Tsuna doesn't deserve to hear. "As you say," she says. "In any case. Why did you call us here, Sawada?"

Straight to business, then. Alright.

"About Giulio Lumaca," Tsuna starts.

Brie's gaze cools. The silence falls between them with the subtlety of an anvil. Ambient noises fill the space in lieu of their voices, with people talking. Cups clinking. The shuffle of feet, the faint buzz of electricity.

"What about him?" Brie says softly. As softly as Tsuna had spoken his mom's name over a casket full of peonies.

The coffee feels putrid at the pit of Tsuna's stomach at the thought. The memory. "Well. You're all harmonized, aren't you? You, Dante, and Giulio?"

To their credit, neither Brie nor Dante flinch. Brie sits unnaturally still with her shoulders rolled back and her hands closed over each other on her knee, knuckles white. Dante simply turns Tsuna's phone screen-side down and slumps forward with both hands tucked into his pockets.

"Why do you want to know?" Dante asks. "Are you trying to start something?"

"I'm not," Tsuna says. "But you know, don't you? About what happens to us when a Sky loses someone like Luca has. And I, just. I want to help him. No one should have to die like that."

The world holds its breath as Brie and Dante maintain their silence, caught within the purgatory that exists between peace and violence. It waits alongside Tsuna, waits for their verdict and judgement, holding for a second. Two. Three, then--

"Why?" Brie asks at last. Her words are clipped, pressed beneath the steel of her self-control. Her eyes are narrow, and her body is held so tightly that Tsuna can almost hear the rattle of her heart. "Even if we believe that you somehow can help him, you're no fool, Tsunayoshi Sawada. What do you hope to gain?"

Many things. More than Brie could possibly know.

"We don't like each other. Our Families have never liked each other," Tsuna says. He smiles, a little awkward, a little sheepish. Only half of it is acting. "I'm trying to change that."

Because what better way is there to garner favour? Favour with which Tsuna could destroy one Family and encourage the start of another? To scratch the Piovra's name from history and leave the Lumaca to stand in their place, weak and newborn and forever crippled, allowed to keep their dignity without the power or influence to get in the Decimo's way. They would be allowed to remain, to exist, without fading entirely into obscurity and leaving a power vacuum in their wake.

And power vacuums, Tsuna's learned, never stayed empty for long. Byakuran's Millefiore had been replaced with the Piovra and the Lumaca, and look what happened. Better overall, but it hadn't been good enough. Not nearly good enough. Killing the Piovra and the Lumaca is easy; to use them, to defang and reshape them into a force that Tsuna can use will be trickier and needs a trickier solution.

Kyouya, naturally, thinks it a stupid plan. Too long-term and unnecessarily complicated. Mukuro thinks it too merciful. Chrome has said nothing at all, and her silence could mean either approval or disapproval. And Reborn --

Well. Reborn never cared for Tsuna's methods. But for as long as Tsuna got results, there will be no complaints.

Dante breaks first. He tucks his face into the collar of his jacket, silent in his laughter.

"Whoo," Dante says between giggles. "The rumours really don't do you justice. World peace for all, huh, Decimo?"

Tsuna hunches his shoulders and counts his victory in how Dante's expression softens with amusement. Embarrassment heats Tsuna's face, blunted only by how the incredulity in Brie's posture is beginning to shift into cautious hope.

"Better than the alternative," Tsuna mumbles.

Better that than letting history continue as is, to a timeline where Basil will be killed. Where the passive distrust sleeping within the CEDEF will be roused, planted there by a series of events and consequences. How treachery will become a reality within the Varia. How Iemitsu will be caught and cornered when the Vongola fails to fall, the Furuya becomes involved, and then --

Static. Record skip.

Basil, dead in his hospital bed. Varia, crippled by betrayal. Iemitsu, bound and beaten blue. A hospital bed with sheets as white as her skin, as cold as her hand. The spill of voices and words around him, surrounding him with pity and sympathy and demands for action when nothing mattered but --

A pair of arms closes themselves tightly around his neck and shoulders. Boss. Boss, no. Not yet.

Tsuna recenters with a jolt, a feet-first crash landing. His calves are tense and trembling when he comes to, almost sore, and a thin layer of sweat beads his hairline. Brie and Dante suddenly appear as a mosaic of parts before him, made of overlapping details from both the past and future. It's disorienting and a little horrific, but it's not so much that Tsuna can't recognize the appraising gleam in their frowns.

"Our Families aren't that different, you know," Tsuna forces himself to say, blinking hard. "There's no reason for things to stay the way they've been."

If the Vongola rose from one man's dream of defiance, the Piovra and the Lumaca rose from a coalition of families with hearts full of anger and defiance of the status quo, spearheaded by a shrewd matriarch with many broad-shouldered sons. Theirs is not a glamorous story, but neither is the Vongola's. They are a Family of the people, they claimed, born from the middle class to fight back against the rich and the old-blooded.

They are a Family of people, inherently flawed and imperfect as anyone else. Flawed, just like the Vongola.

Dante looks at Brie. Brie doesn't look away from Tsuna.

"No, I suppose not," Brie says with the face of a thirty-eight year old and the hands of a fifty-one year old. She sits like a model, but so, too, can Tsuna see shadows of a limp that will plague her in six years' time, put there by nerve damage courtesy of Lambo's lightning.

"We still gotta talk to Luca," Dante says, his face flickering between the unblemished appeal of his youth and the water-bloat that will result when he is fed to the fishes. "You get that, right?"

"Yeah, of course," Tsuna says.

Dante's brows climb halfway up his forehead. "We still don't know how you're gonna help him either."

"He'll die before the year is up," Tsuna says. "I don't think I can do worse than that."

Dante grins. Shows teeth. "You could kill him faster."

Brie rests her hand on Dante's forearm. "Give us a week," she says to Tsuna. "And Decimo?"

Tsuna blinks at her.

Brie smiles at him politely. Too politely. "Have yourself looked at. It wouldn't do for you to collapse before we can become friends, would we?"

*

They leave in the opposite order of arrival, with Brie's heels striking the floor with the certainty of a gavel. Like Hana's did after she had terrified the judge and jury into accepting her version of what had happened at the Piovra's headquarters.

Dante is slower to leave, lingering until he can push the phone back to Tsuna with the screen lit bright with celebration.

"Thank you for solving that. It would've taken me ages," Tsuna says. He doesn't touch the phone. "Why don't you take it with you? It'll make it easier. To, um, help us keep in touch."

"That's a pretty expensive model to be just giving away," Dante says, tapping the phone and smudging the screen. "Perks of being the Vongola heir, eh?"

One of the very few, actually. Tsuna shrugs.

Dante hums, but grabs the phone off the table nonetheless. He throws it into the air, and Tsuna watches with distant envy at how the phone does two perfect flips before landing in Dante's open palm. The only thing that would flip if Tsuna did that would be his dignity. Until it went crashing to the ground in pieces alongside the phone anyway.

"Hey," Dante says as he adjusts the hood of his jacket over his head. "Can you really save Luca?"

"I think so," Tsuna says. He rubs his knee. "I know people. Who, um. Who saved their Sky. And their Sky is doing okay. Still alive."

"That doesn't tell me much," Dante says, glancing away. Presumably before his veneer of indifference can fall off entirely. "Fortunately for you, I don't exactly have time to ask, do I? I'm gonna jet before your scary babysitter blows my brains out."

Tsuna carefully doesn't look behind the counter. "He wouldn't do that."

"You're full of shit, sir," Dante says with a grin. "Is he the only one that you brought with you?"

"No," Tsuna says simply.

*

The barista is missing when Tsuna gets up from his table, replaced by an older woman with fading red hair. Disappointment burns the back of Tsuna's throat, a heat that lingers like any great longing.

Tsuna crumples his empty coffee cup over the trash and watches it fall, and takes small, even breaths. Tells himself: it's fine. He's fine. Reborn isn't needed, not yet.

The streets are bustling with people when Tsuna finally leaves, the sun hot and bright behind the buildings. People move past each other without conflict, too caught up in their own lives to mind the business of anyone else. It makes for a peaceful time, where anonymity is made available to all.

Even Tsuna in his youth is left alone, his apparent vulnerability ignored for just this moment. Palermo is not always kind, but it will always be special.

The day is winding down into dusk when Tsuna makes his way to the pier, the one that sits on the east end of Palermo. It has been the Vongola's for generations, used and used again to pull in cheap migrant labour, sex workers, firearms, favours. It feels as inevitable as history when Tsuna looks at all that he stands to inherit. Impossible to ignore, and just as impossible to escape.

He sits along the edge of it all, legs dangling over the water. He looks to the horizon straight ahead even when he feels her quietly settle herself to his left, folding herself as close as she dares without actually letting them touch.

And Tsuna breathes in. Out.

The wind is warm but not disgustingly so, catching at his hair ends to leave them ruffled and frayed. The light is beginning to fade, the day gently easing into twilight.

"Chrome," Tsuna says.

The pier is empty at this hour, but even if it hadn't been, even if people were to pass by, Tsuna knows that no one else will hear his voice. Chrome has always been prone to hoarding kindness, weird in a way that no one else was. But then, Hayato had known kindness from his mother before he'd lost her. Takeshi has his father. Ryouhei has his family and Hana. Lambo has Tsuna, the Vongola, his friends. Kyouya has only ever spoken of his parents with respect. Mukuro had never truly been alone even through his tortures, flanked by Ken and Chikusa. Chrome, though?

Chrome's always been deprived of the small, important things that made someone feel valued, important, loved. And so Tsuna's happy to give them to her, even after --

Well. Even after everything. Despite everything that she's done.

A hesitant hand slips into his, light and small. Tsuna squeezes her hand and opens himself to how their Flames seek each other, holding himself still as her Flames sink deep, deep, deep.

If Mukuro's Flames feel like the embrace of a cage, Chrome's is like the spread of poison. Slow-setting, agonizing, all-consuming. Mukuro is a victim of a known system of injustice; Chrome is the victim of something invisible and insidious, her hatred raised and groomed to be a self-directed dagger. Her Flames are painful to experience, unstable and testing as any beaten beast can be when first offered sanctuary.

No one but Mukuro would've believed Tsuna if he cared to share that much about her, not even Reborn. No one would have believed such a thing about the softest spoken of them.

Tsuna doesn't loosen his grip, waiting out her insecurities until she fully settles, a different shade of indigo than the one that Mukuro leaves within him. He takes the time to help soothe the cacophony of her song into something gentler. More manageable. Less volatile.

He doesn't tame her, but he doesn't want her to hurt, even when the perpetrator turns out to be herself. Especially then.

"Hi," Tsuna says softly.

She shifts against him, turning more and more solid with every breath. "Hello, Boss."

"I'm happy to see you," he says, tilting his head to rest it against the top of hers. She, in turn, curls up against his body, folding her limbs into a semicolon to make them fit just right.

"I know. Me too," Chrome says. Her swallow sounds heavy and painful and ashamed. "I'm -- sorry. For taking so long. To come to you."

"That's not true. You've been with me from the start," Tsuna says. She's always been present, even if it had been in pieces, in the echoes and ghosts of Flame that she had left with him. Holding him together as much as she'd held him in pieces. "Did you do this to me? Or--?"

Chrome trembles. Minutely, in a way that even Tsuna would not have noticed if she wasn't pressed so close. "Mukuro-sama put it in place, but I-- I'm the one who maintained it."

Makes sense. Tsuna has always accepted her into his head more readily than he did Mukuro. She had always been the one to understand the pieces of him that he liked to keep in corners and boxes. He's never had a reason to doubt her before, trusting her to safeguard his secrets.

"Wasn't it hard?" Tsuna asks. He's usually harder to contain than this. His Flames are too vast, the Primo's blood sitting too thickly in his veins. How had she managed it for so long?

"The hardest," Chrome says. She shakes her head against his shoulder. "I thought you'd break free many times. You kept remembering things. It got a little easier once you met up with Hibari-san and Mukuro-sama, but not by much."

"You'll have to tell me how you did it later," Tsuna says. "We can't risk someone else trying the same thing."

"I wouldn't let them," Chrome says fiercely, which is true. She's never been good at sharing, even going as far as shutting Mukuro out of Tsuna's head on occasion. "And the only reason that I think we succeeded at all is because-- well." She pauses. Curls her fingers into his that much tighter. "I think you let us."

Tsuna blinks down at her head. "I did?"

"You knew the coffee was drugged, didn't you? The morning before," Chrome says, and Tsuna, through the roar in his ears, thinks: yeah.

Yeah. He knew.

He knew, and he had drunk it anyway, because it hadn't mattered then. He'd done it all, had made things and people disappear until the only thing left behind had been the hurt. Until every fiber of his being had felt an raw and open nerve, pulled taut, aching for relief, for release, the peace that he'd known he didn't deserve but even then --

"See?" Chrome says when Tsuna pulls himself back. She sounds defeated. "We all knew it wouldn't last forever, but I was hoping that it'd lasted a little longer than this."

"No," Tsuna says. There's cotton on his tongue. The world fits oddly around him, colours and lights flickering bright to dull to monotone. Perception, Mukuro had said. A change in perception, the kind that tried to fool Tsuna into believing that the sky is orange, eggplant is delicious, and that the world is just. "It's lasted too long already."

"We know," Chrome whispers against him. "And we'll tell you everything. Soon, when we're at the safehouse."

"Right," Tsuna says. "Okay."

The silence settles between them with all the weight of their shared history. At least until Chrome blurts, "Thank you. For forgiving him. For forgiving Mukuro-sama."

Tsuna lets go of her hand. Slowly and carefully, as not to spook or hurt her, and leans back to look at her fully.

"Did you think I wouldn't?" he asks her, featherlight.

"No," Chrome says. "But I thought you'd be more angry. Maybe-- maybe you still will be, when you know everything."

"Maybe," Tsuna allows, turning his attention to the ocean. The sweat cools at the back of his neck and stings when the salt air breathes past them. "But I'll forgive him then, too. Him and you."

Because this isn't their fault. Not entirely. Harmonization made idiots out of geniuses, carved weakness into the strong. It's only human to falter, to balk at the reality of loss. Tsuna is the one that had asked them to stay, and to stay forever. Their only sin is in how they'd said yes when Tsuna had asked to lay gilded nooses around their necks.

Promises went both ways. It's not their fault for trying to hold him to his side of it.

"You'll always be dear to me," Tsuna says. "Both of you."

Chrome ghosts two fingers along the curve of Tsuna's jaw, turning his face back to her. Her expression is both soft and sad, turbulent and pitying.

"Thank you," she says. "I needed to hear that, I think."

It's always so refreshing, Tsuna thinks, to talk to Chrome. To the woman who spent more days as a ghost in Tsuna's head than as someone corporeal at his side, the person that no longer seemed to hesitate in saying exactly what she means, transparent and trusting.

"I'm so glad to see you," Tsuna says with sudden, dizzying relief. The sludge of his thoughts is beginning to settle, the roar quieting into something manageable. Cold sweat lingers, but he ignores that as easily as he does the ache in his chest. "I'm so glad you came back with them."

"I would never leave you alone with Mukuro-sama," Chrome says, drawing her hand back. Tsuna can hear her smiling. "He never takes care of you, not like you deserve."

If Mukuro indulged Tsuna any more than he already did, Tsuna's ego might actually hold shape. Not that Chrome would agree, of course.

"Why them, anyway?" Tsuna asks instead. Arguing against Chrome is an exercise in masochism at best. Better to leave that thought alone. "Wouldn't, um. Wouldn't Hayato have been better?"

"Maybe," Chrome says, "but we wanted to make sure that you could do everything that you wanted."

Everything, including destroying the world. Though given how many times Tsuna has needed to keep said world together by holding back Kyouya and entertaining Mukuro, he's not exactly sure if things had worked out as they thought it would.

It's fine, though. He's happy to have them. He would have been happy to have any of them.

"Though I wish you'd have told us earlier about your plan with the Piovra," Chrome continues. "Mukuro-sama is still not sure how to feel about it."

"He's never sure about what I'm doing."

"Kyouya-san didn't seem too sure either," Chrome says gamely.

Yeah, that's true. It's par for the course, really; no one likes Tsuna's plans when he first tells them. Nobody likes them until hindsight proves that Tsuna's plans have worked. That they've paid off in spades. Like that time with the Cavallone and their debts. Getting involved with the Bovino's mid-life crisis. Or that whole other thing with the Vindice and Checker Face after the Tri-Ni-Sette debacle, part two. Tsuna has a list.

He calls it his I told you so list. He tries not to draw attention to it much.

"What do you think?" he asks.

"I think you should do whatever you think is best," Chrome murmurs. Her form is fully solid now, her body as small and as compact as it'll be in twenty years. "I just don't think this will be fair."

Tsuna furrows his brows. Fair?

"They hurt you," Chrome says, correctly reading Tsuna's silence. There's a darkness to her tone that chills the Flames beneath her skin and Tsuna's, the beast growing quiet in its hunt for blood. She has never been good at forgiveness. "I don't like it when people hurt you."

"So you hurt them back," Tsuna says, thinking back to the tragedy that Brie had tried not to betray, the fracture lines that Dante had done his best to hide. "And you've hurt them back plenty."

Chrome says nothing as she leans away, which is tantamount to disagreement. Not so much about the bit about hurting them, but the bit about it being plenty.

"I know none of you like this plan," Tsuna says, grimacing, "but trust me, this'll work."

"I know," Chrome says, her smile adoring and poisonous. "Whatever you decide, Boss, it is how the world should be. As it always should've been. We all know that. All we've ever wanted is to help it become real."

It's a sweet sentiment. A horrific one. A terribly, miserably misguided one.

It's also a big fat lie.

"Even if it means that I should be dead?" Tsuna asks only half in jest.

Chrome gives him a stare reminiscent of an unimpressed Hibari Kyouya.

"What did Reborn-san give you?" Chrome asks, graciously changing the subject rather than biting him to death.

The note is rumpled when Tsuna pulls it from his pocket, the numbers and letters slightly blurred by how Reborn had used a cheap pen to write on an even cheaper napkin. It's barely even legible, only clear enough to confirm what Tsuna had immediately memorized when Reborn had passed it to him while moonlighting as a barista at Cafe Mochi.

It's an address. Directions to a safehouse, likely one of Reborn's.

"That's a different place than where we've been staying," Chrome says distantly. "He's such a cautious man."

Which is an incredibly polite way to call him the most paranoid asshole that either of them will ever get to know, and they've both known Hayato for over half their lives.

Chrome to her feet first, and bends a little to offer a slim hand for Tsuna to take. "Now, shall we go? We shouldn't keep Reborn-san waiting."

Chapter Text

Sometime between the funeral and what would later be dubbed as the Great Purge, Reborn took Tsuna off the grid for a week. It was as complete a disconnect as Hayato could allow, with a single flip-phone between them as their sole contact with the outside world.

Half of Italy had better be on fire before you call him, Reborn had warned Hayato, smiling in a way that would have sent Hayato into an anxious fit before Tsuna's inheritance.

But it had been well over five years since Tsuna's ascension by then, and so Hayato had hardly blinked at the threat. Had just said, of course.

Take good care of our boss, Takeshi said from where he had an elbow braced against Hayato's left shoulder. His smile had been a mimicry of Reborn's, which meant that no one had been smiling then at all.

They had left on a Thursday to some remote area on Crete, to a cottage that was hours away from its closest town. It was powered exclusively by solar, worked primarily off of rain water, and had a composting toilet that Tsuna never wanted to see again. They'd shared one of two beds, with Tsuna pulled on top of Reborn for both appropriate and inappropriate reasons almost every night.

Routine was swift to settle between them, with the morning as such: one of them would brew drip-coffee with the miserable little kettle that Tsuna had found hidden in the oven while the other would chop firewood. Neither liked doing the latter, though Reborn acquiesced more often than not on the account of Tsuna's want to see him sweaty and shirtless.

As you wish, Boss, Reborn would say. Tsuna is only a little ashamed at how he still flushes at the memory, how he is warmed by the slivers of peace that sit between the pain, the desperation, the absolution that colours the rest of it.

*

The sun is hot and high in the sky when they arrive at Reborn's chosen safehouse, when Tsuna wakes from the dream-memory, some two hours out of the capital by car. It is a place that sits closer to Trapani than it does to Palermo, beautiful in the clean and natural way that anything human-made could only hope to be.

The house is an old piece of history seated atop a cliff, with yellowing walls and an ivy-ridden patio that is as big as the house itself. Behind it are stone steps that wind down to a tiny pebble beach, pristine with disuse. It is a dreamy place, a piece of property that feels out-of-place and time.

"How cosy," Chrome murmurs from behind him.

"That's one word for it," Tsuna mutters. His stomach is a pit filled with trepidation, like butterflies squirming against where they sit pinned to a corkboard.

Chrome's touch against his shoulder is a light and delicate thing. "What's bothering you?"

Of all of his Guardians, Chrome has always been the first to accept Tsuna's intuition for what it is: as premonition. As flashes into the future.

She is also the one that spends as much time in Tsuna's head as Tsuna does. There is probably a correlation between the two.

Tsuna reaches up to where, one day, Chrome will thread a single braid into his hair. Today, he squeezes his fingers around empty air. "It's, just-- why did Reborn choose a place so far away?"

Chrome speaks with her silence, stepping up behind him to wrap her arms around Tsuna's waist.

"Are you that worried?" Tsuna asks when she does nothing to discourage his paranoia.

"Can I get you to change your mind?" Chrome whispers.

The ocean breeze feels cold against the sweat that beads along Tsuna's brows. "No."

"Then yes," Chrome says. She buries her face between his shoulder blades. "I'm scared, Boss."

Tsuna's throat burns with the rise of bile. Guilt sits heavy in his stomach, as does resignation. He will not offer her the comfort that she craves. He can't. That is the true tragedy.

"It'll work out," Tsuna says, trying anyway.

Chrome squeezes herself against him for a moment longer before stepping back. When Tsuna turns to look at her, she is smiling with as many edges as there are on a shattered piece of glass.

"Of course," she says.

*

The house is as modest inside as its exterior might suggest. It is built like a large studio apartment where only the bathroom is separated by a door. Practicality is its interior decorator, with every piece of furniture instructed to serve at least two functions. It is a Spartan place. It is very much Reborn's place.

The kitchen sports the most character, with a manual coffee bean grinder, an antique kettle, and a gas stove. There is an assortment of knives tucked into the drawer that Tsuna eyes for two minutes before sliding the drawer closed. Beneath the cabinets are a ridiculous volume of canned goods that Reborn seems to have squirreled away, and Chrome delicately blows the dust off of one while patting down the rest.

Further in, there is a bed that someone will have to share, standing atop a hidden compartment with two guns and many bullets. The dust-layered couch has a sectional with several blankets stuffed inside its storage. There is a rug that looks miserably uncomfortable to sleep on but will be slept on nonetheless, one that Tsuna scuffs his foot against until he feels --

Yeah. There it is.

"A secret room?" Chrome asks as Tsuna rolls the rug back.

"A bunker," Tsuna says absently. He runs his palm along the wood until he feels a handle, and yanks it open with only a tiny exertion of Flame. The metal creeks, rude and unpleasant in its rusted state, but the stairs that it reveals are strangely well-kempt.

"Boss," Chrome says, laying a hand on Tsuna's shoulder. "Let me go first."

It's unnecessary caution, but Tsuna acquiesces nonetheless. His stomach is starting to cramp again, not unlike how he'd felt upon seeing the house, but there is no danger here. Nothing physical, nothing that could hurt Tsuna or, more importantly, Chrome. This isn't that kind of disquiet.

He lets her lead anyway. Anxiety is not a safe look on Chrome, and Tsuna figures that Reborn would like to keep his safehouse relatively intact.

The stairs lead them down two stories' worth of steps, ending on the note of another heavy door that Tsuna knows that he can't open without blasting it outright. Chrome looks at Tsuna over her shoulder, and Tsuna inclines his head in permission.

Chrome and Lambo will always be the two Guardians that other Families will underestimate, so quick to judge them based on gender and age. Chrome, in particular, is very likely to stay small into old age, to remain soft-spoken and demure, as someone who prefers to stand at Tsuna's left shoulder with her eyes cast to the ground. She fidgets when she's bored, regularly trips over her words, and likes to hide herself in Tsuna's shadow when situations get heated.

Nothing about that is an act or a lie, but -- Tsuna thinks it a little unfair that Chrome seems to encourage others' internalized prejudices, inviting them to pass judgement on her worth for how she looks like, how she speaks.

It's annoying, frankly. Chrome is Tsuna's Mist and Mukuro her adjunct; there are few who are as adept in wielding Mist with such delicate precision and lethal care, and even fewer has her wicked sense of humour, her poise, her confidence.

She is the one that even the Vongola's allies will learn to fear, and Tsuna wants her respected, if not outright loved.

Chrome glances back at him, likely having caught pieces of Tsuna's thoughts. She looks fond. Amused. Soft in ways that she isn't with anyone else.

"I love you too, Boss," she says simply and returns to her work.

Chrome touches her index finger to her mouth, sets it alight, and rests it above the doorknob. Mist creeps into and outlines the door in cool indigo that pulses once before it swings open to reveal a muted, spacious room with a single bed pushed up against the far wall.

Huh.

"Mukuro-sama says that this used to be the Estraneo's," Chrome says. She smells faintly of the hours of dusk, as evening fog that slips between buildings as tendrils of smoke. She flips up her eyepatch as she sweeps the room, allowing Mukuro to see through her. "Though it seems to have had, um. Some renovations? Since it was last used."

"Isn't he supposed to be with CEDEF?" Tsuna asks as he crouches down to flatten his palm against the ground. The material is cool beneath his hand and the carpet, and it reverberates back at Tsuna with the sort of silence that makes him cock his head.

The stare that Chrome levels Tsuna is all Mukuro. "I am quite capable of multitasking, unlike some fools."

Tsuna sighs. "How's that going, then?"

"Your father's people are as hopeless as you believe," Mukuro says. "Their loyalty to Sawada Iemitsu and the Vongola Ninth are, at best, non-negotiable."

That's not surprising. It's to be expected, really, but even still. Still, Tsuna had hoped.

"I see," Tsuna says quietly. "That's too bad."

Mukuro's smile is crooked and mean, mocking in a way when he was feeling particularly judgmental of everything and everyone. "Is that pity, Sawada Tsunayoshi? For dead men walking?"

"Dead men-- I wasn't going to kill them."

Mukuro raises a brow. "They will be a problem until they're dead."

Tsuna sighs. "Everyone's a problem until they're dead." Everyone but his Family and the people they valued. "But if we start killing people because they might be a problem, when do we stop? How many people--"

Is this how you plan on changing the world, Tsunayoshi?

Tsuna stares at Mukuro, trapped by his own hypocrisy. Mukuro stares back with Chrome's eyes, looking faintly amused. She, in contrast, looks sad. Pitying.

"I suppose you never did grow a stomach for it," Mukuro says. Despite being so good at it, he leaves unsaid. It's a kind gesture, likely put there by Chrome. "What will you do, then?"

"For now? Just keep an eye on them," Tsuna mutters. "As long as they don't get in the way."

"As you wish," Mukuro says. Unconvinced, but not invested enough to protest. "In other news, your Cloud has no sense of humour."

Oh no. "What did you do?"

"I did nothing," Mukuro says haughtily. "He, on the other hand, turned out to be quite useless in this pesky little chore that you've left us with. As such, I will be returning him to you."

Tsuna can feel the headache already, a little nugget of frustrated exasperation taking root behind his brows. Given Mukuro's tone, the two of them probably had an argument. A bad one. One that resulted in Kyouya being summarily dismissed, which could have only happened if Mukuro beat him or, more likely, threw sakura at his face. Where Mukuro even gets the stuff, Tsuna won't ask. It's best that he doesn't know.

"Just get him here safely," Tsuna says, pinching the bridge of his nose. He's not above begging, and Mukuro knows it. Knows it, and hates it, because Mukuro has a strange and unfortunate affliction of becoming violently agreeable every time that Tsuna does.

True to form, Mukuro says, "Yes, yes, I'll make sure you receive your Cloud in one piece."

Tsuna shakes his head and gets to his feet. Flames flicker into place above his head as he does, and Mukuro takes a step back as Tsuna brushes past him (her) to study the wall adjacent to the door. To flatten the knuckles of his fist against it, feeling it out.

His Flames feel weaker here, dampened in a way that feels ugly and unnatural. The room buzzes like a fly trapped in a bottle, frantic with the last remnants of energy before it dies. The walls seem to grow taller around Tsuna the longer he burns, nipping at the edges.

It's hungry, he thinks. A void of sorts, built to silence and suppress. Interesting.

When Tsuna opens his eyes, Chrome is the only one standing to his right.

"Where did Reborn even find this place?" Tsuna asks as he releases his Flames.

"It's hard to say," Chrome says with a delicate shrug. "But I'm sure Mukuro-sama will enjoy destroying it, after Reborn-san is done with it."

There's nothing as cathartic as smashing places of the past hurts to pieces, to do onto them as it was done onto you. There's something horrifically humbling about knowing that you are worse than your abusers could have ever been, that the mistake that came to haunt them is you. Tsuna knows this. He's lived it.

"Is Mukuro going to be okay?" Tsuna asks, looking out into the room with queasy distaste. "I don't want him to stay here if it's going to, you know. Be bad for him."

"It's been twenty years," Chrome says, catching Tsuna's hand to kiss the tip of his ring finger. "Please don't worry about him, it'll make him insufferable."

Tsuna rolls his eyes. "How's that any different from the usual?"

"Hibari-san will be here. So will Reborn-san," Chrome reminds him. "You know how they can be."

Tsuna grimaces, and Chrome muffles her laughter against his shoulder.

"My poor, sweet Boss," Chrome croons. "It must be so hard to be so loved."

"Please don't joke," Tsuna whines, pained and embarrassed.

"I'm not," Chrome says, twining her fingers with Tsuna's. "Shall we feed you now? I think there might be a can or a hundred that we can pick through upstairs."

*

Once, years before Tsuna broke the world as the mafia has known it, Takeshi and Ryouhei spent two weeks in one of their oversea safehouses.

Takeshi had been laughing too hard to make any sense when the call had come through, and Ryouhei was as poor a historian as one could get. As far as Hayato could piece together, Ryouhei had accidentally proposed to the heir of a Russian drug cartel before promptly snubbing her when she tried to accept his declaration of love. Ryouhei had then proceeded to tell her about the actual love of his life in severely broken and impolite Russian, which'd then had the predictable response of hurt feelings and bullets.

We'll be back before you know it, Tsuna, Takeshi had chirped when he had calmed down to a mere giggle.

In two weeks' time, after Takeshi and Ryouhei had finally been safely extradited from a scorned woman's wrath, Takeshi's chin was rough with a stubble and Ryouhei had a haircut courtesy of Takeshi's katana. They seemed exhausted but otherwise alright, still able to smile despite their newly discovered hatred for canned beans.

I never want to open another can again, Takeshi had said against Tsuna's hair. He had hugged Tsuna for hours before he felt stable enough to complain, before his Flames had settled enough to allow him his voice.

Tsuna remembers the warmth of Takeshi's skin when he had laid his palm over the back of his neck, the relieved hum of their Flames. I'm sorry I made you wait.

Nah, it's okay. I knew the weather would be bad when Hayato told me that I wasn't allowed to kill anyone before I left. But look on the bright side: I think Ryouhei and I can now give a real go at the checkers world championship.

Tsuna has always admired the mental fortitude of Takeshi and Ryouhei, but he doesn't think he's admired it more than the moment that he takes a bite of stove-warmed beans.

"So," Tsuna says, pushing his canned beans away after a single bite, "how did you guys even manage this? This whole -- you know?"

"The time travel?" Chrome asks. She never wastes their time by pretending to misinterpret Tsuna's questions, and Tsuna loves her dearly for it. "Shouichi and Spanner reverse-engineered the bazooka. I don't understand it much, but, um, I hear Talbot also helped."

"Even when they promised me that they wouldn't?" Tsuna says, caught between the sting of betrayal and the burn of anger.

"No promise is worth your life, even if it was a promise to you," Chrome says evenly, and Tsuna accepts the reprimand for what it is.

Time, Chrome goes on to say, is a fluid thing with many alternatives, endings, possibilities. A single decision can cause a timeline to split in any number of ways with no limit to how many branches may exist at once. Byakuran and his Mare Sky Ring had allowed him a glimpse to this infinite pool of realities and had grown insane in one of them. In another, he had become Tsuna's friend. Their timeline is but one of those infinite variations.

Chrome lifts a spoonful of beans out of the can, inspects it, and lets it fall back in, untouched. "As I told, using time travel to fix things would've disconnected the timelines. Kind of like, um. How Byakuran's timeline no longer became ours after we meddled in it. We didn't want that. You accomplished so much, it didn't feel right to lose everything."

Or, she leaves unsaid, for one timeline to save Tsuna while their own would leave Tsuna dead.

The plan that she explains is complex, complicated by intricacies and impossibilities. They would preserve their timeline by tying it to a specific version of its past, by sending only Tsuna's consciousness while his body remained in the future as an anchor.

"And since our Flames are yours, we knew we could find the same timeline by just following you back," Chrome says in a hum. She even sounds pleased about it, as if she hadn't spoken utter heresy.

It makes sense, Chrome says. The only challenge was to actually do it. Fortunately, they all knew of a power capable of such impossible things, didn't they?

"The Tri-Ni-Sette?" Tsuna says through the tightness of his throat. "You used--?"

Chrome reaches for his face. Tsuna lets her, holding still through the reflexive panic befitting of the truth. Refusing her would do exactly nothing for the horror that settles beneath his skin, the nausea that lingers despite the soft worship of her touch.

"We did what we had to," Chrome says, hypnotic and quelling. "The world ended with you, Boss. It wasn't as though we could do it any more harm."

The moment before death, she continues. That bright, brilliant moment before death was the perfect time to disconnect Tsuna's Flames from his body, to send those back as far as they need to go to change things. The soul is one's will, and one's will is one's Flames. Mukuro possessed other bodies through a similar concept, manifesting his will by imposing his Flames over another's. Manipulating one's Flames to possess another version of the same soul and body was easy in comparison, she says. So very easy.

Tsuna stares at her. A putrid sickness rolls up against the walls of his stomach, twisted with disbelief. Sunlight flickers on and off like a bad light bulb, and Tsuna's tongue tastes like blood. The smell of burnt copper floods his nose. His nails catch on the can of beans, leaving faint scratches on the aluminium.

Chrome strokes her knuckles along the line of Tsuna's jaw. She's gentle, so gentle, unlike how ruthlessly she treated everything else. Including, apparently, the very concept of time itself.

"What are you thinking?" she asks softly.

"I don't know," Tsuna says. He feels numb. Nauseous, maybe. "Just-- if I had to die for this to work, why did you bother drugging me?"

"You would've fought it," Chrome says, shrugging. "And it's the moment before death that we needed, not you being actually dead. The drugs tricked your brain into thinking that you were dying without you actually dying. Haru is taking care of your body while we take care of your consciousness."

Had Tsuna been anywhere else, if he hadn't been sitting in his younger body, he would have never believed her. Conventional time travel had been difficult enough to understand and accept as it is, but separating the mind from body is --

That feels wrong. More wrong than anything that they've done before.

"Do the Vindice know?" Tsuna adds. Nevermind, of course they know. "They let you do this?"

"There is no let," Chrome says, amused. "The only person that could have stopped us is you. Besides, they owe you several favours, and helping us save you is the least that they could've done."

No, there is no let. Just as there would be no favour or debt that could ever equal what his Family had done. If the Vindice had any sense of preservation, for both themselves and the world at large, they would have said no.

And Tsuna knows exactly how his Family, all drunk on grief and all individually in possession of world-crippling powers, would respond to being told no.

He was here, after all. And so were they.

Tsuna's head hurts. "Okay, but-- Kawahira?"

"Mm," Chrome says, tapping her spoon against the edge of her can. Tap, tap, tap. Rhythmic and haunting, just like her voice, her Flames, her devotion. "He was rather helpful."

He was helpful?

"Oh, Boss," Chrome says sweetly into Tsuna's stunned silence. "You don't really think that we did this to you without testing it first, did you?"

*

Kyouya arrives in a car without Mukuro, though given the glassy-eyed driver, maybe that's not entirely true. That Mukuro had taken care to brainwash a hapless driver into ferrying Kyouya to Tsuna is more shocking than the fact that Mukuro had managed to do it while also wielding two of CEDEF's best in Tsuna's name.

Tsuna thinks, not for the first time, of how lucky he is. Possession is an ability that cannot be overexaggerated in utility, and Mukuro had only grown better at it with time. His reach is as vast as his control is absolute, and those that could resist him were even rarer in the future, limited almost entirely to those of Tsuna's inner circle.

Iemitsu had been a shitty presence in Tsuna's life in many ways, but bringing Tsuna's Family together might be the best thing that anyone's ever done for him.

Tsuna lets himself be dragged up against Kyouya when the man all but rips himself out of the car, his expression wrinkled and cranky with motion sickness. Amusement sits ripe and sweet in the touch that Tsuna offers the poor man, warming his hand with orange fire when he rests it on Kyouya's nape.

"Bad traffic?" Tsuna teases.

Kyouya bites Tsuna's neck in response and holds him crushingly close. His Flames snap against Tsuna's beneath their skin, a writhing beast of a thing that Tsuna soothes down to a purr, reassuring it of the forever that Tsuna had promised, reminding it of the vow it so desperately aches to uphold.

"Where is your viper?" Kyouya asks against Tsuna's throat.

"With Mukuro," Tsuna says, running his thumb back and forth along the small mullet that Kyouya is starting to sport. He's going to want a haircut before long. "Preparing, I think."

Kyouya grunts. "And? Are you prepared?"

Tsuna opens his mouth. Closes it. He knows what needs to be said, what the answer must be, but Hibari Kyouya deserves more than lies. Tsuna looks past Kyouya's shoulder toward the weaving path down to the oceanfront, looking without seeing anything as he collects his thoughts.

"I don't know," Tsuna says at last. "I don't know how to feel about anything, much less be ready for it."

Kyouya draws back from Tsuna, his eyes dark and unblinking. "When you are whole, you will tell me who must die," he says simply, "and they will. That is all you must accept. Everything else will right itself."

Tsuna's laugh comes to him unbidden, punched out of him by the absurdity of that declaration, made even more exasperating for how Kyouya is not exaggerating.

"You make it sound so easy," Tsuna says, squeezing the back of Kyouya's neck before letting go. Kyouya's Flames never take long to settle; the advantage of being Tsuna's first, he supposed.

Kyouya flicks his wrist, dismissive. "It is."

Tsuna smiles past the taste of ash on his tongue. "Yeah. I guess it is."

*

The afternoon shifts itself into evening and Tsuna meets it alone at the beach. The ocean bleeds messily into the sky at the horizon, a distracting swirl of blue and orange caught between the fading light and its reflection. Tsuna lets himself find comfort in the chaos, in the enormity of it all; nature is all that ever makes Tsuna feel small these days, the only thing that can offer him the comfort of feeling insignificant, of making him feel like nobody important.

It's a good place to wait, more peaceful than it'll be for a long time in a few hours' time. It's more peaceful than the splinters that Chrome had made of his thoughts, in any case.

Time travel. Tri-Ni-Sette. The Vindice, and Checker Face. All this for the purpose of saving Tsuna when, at the time, he hadn't even wanted --

Tsuna drags a hand down his face.

God, what a mess.

Then: a faint whistle. A prickle at the back of his neck. Tsuna jerks his head to the side, and a bullet lodges itself into the sand to his right, centimeters from his foot.

He looks down, looks up, and his Flame ignites between his brows, bright and weighted. Chrome stirs at the back of his thoughts, but she doesn't otherwise react. She isn't violent. She isn't angry, only amused. Reassuring. Encouraging.

Because she knows, just as well as Tsuna, that Reborn doesn't miss. This was just Reborn saying hello.

Go get him, Boss.

Tsuna curls his hands into the sand. Breathes in. Turns himself around and propels himself forward.

There are two more shots. One nicks his cheek, the other pierces his shirt. Reborn has always been a good shot, the only one good enough to graze Tsuna, even in the air.

But graze does not mean stop, and so Tsuna lands in a small crater as Reborn leaps away.

Tsuna raises his eyes to stare down the barrel of a gun. Looks past it to look at Reborn, at the faint smile of rich amusement, peppered in-between the appreciation and pride.

Then, they dance.

They scorch the land. Sets it aflame. The sand heats beneath Tsuna's Flames, turning brittle and sharp. The wind tastes of smoke and embers before long, and Tsuna feels a faint tendril of joy slip past the muted colours of Hyper Mode. He lets himself feel exhilaration, lets himself bask in the freedom of flight.

He releases his frustrations through his punches, sheds his doubts with his kicks. He ducks past his uncertainties like he ducks beneath Reborn's bullets. He lets go of the fury, the sting of betrayal, the hurt, the questions that he has asked of Chrome.

Tsuna twists his body back in a back-flip just as Reborn releases a series of bullets, feeling them skid along his chest as he narrowly avoids them all. He allows himself to feel the vicious bite of smugness at the faint widening of Reborn's eyes, and shoots forward with foot that he lands on.

Sometime after the death of his mom but before the death of the old mafia, Reborn had taken Tsuna to Crete. The landscape around them had been sparsely populated, decorated by small pockets of shrubbery. They had been surrounded by rocky expenses that had failed to become mountains, crayon-coloured with an assortment of white, orange, and browns. Four days in, Tsuna had taken himself to the highest point of the rocks with Reborn trailing behind him. There had been nothing to see even when they had reached the peak, nothing world-shattering. Nothing more than the same assortment of rocks, shrubbery, and the occasional wildlife.

There had been nothing to shake Tsuna out of the melancholy that had so often found him back then. Nothing but Reborn, Tsuna, and an island that held strong even when Flames overtook the whole of him.

No one but Tsuna, who had asked, what's wrong with me?

No one but Reborn, who had said, harmonize with me, Tsuna.

The ocean roars in the background. The air settles, as does the rush of memory. Reborn stands with his gun pointed at Tsuna's head. Reborn stands with Tsuna's fist at his throat.

Reborn stares down at him, his hair swept up and messy. There is a dark quality to his gaze, something ravenous and predatory. It is a familiar look, a deja vu that aches like the secretive, intimate touches that Reborn will one day carve into Tsuna's skin alongside the absolution of harmonization.

"You took your time," Tsuna rasps.

"All good things do," Reborn murmurs. Purrs, really, in that dark and sensual way that will strike Tsuna breathless when Reborn grows back into an age that Tsuna will find attractive.

Tsuna closes his eyes and releases his Flames.

Reborn responds by stepping forward, his foot making hardly a sound against the sand. There is only the slightest shift of weight to warn Tsuna before he feels the gun against his forehead, the metal still warm with recent use.

Tsuna tips his head up against it, his heartbeat in his ears. A beat that drums steady, steady, steady, stuttering only on the fourth note, his poise broken by longing.

Reborn answers with a caress, with a slow drag of his gun to Tsuna's temple, his cheekbone, his jaw. He slides it up along the curve of it, and holds the barrel steady when he tucks it beneath Tsuna's chin to tip Tsuna's head back, exposing his throat. Tsuna feels his breath catch alongside the pinch of vulnerability, but this is Reborn. Not his Reborn, but Reborn, nonetheless.

"Congratulations, Loser Tsuna," Reborn says. "It only takes you twenty years to not become deadlast."

Tsuna's mouth tips up with amusement. "Are you finally letting me graduate?"

"No," Reborn says, finally removing the gun. "I can still kill you."

Maybe. Depends on how long Chrome could keep Reborn down, really.

Because even now, even when Chrome must have nothing but reasons to trust Reborn, Tsuna can feel her lurking along the edges of his consciousness, poised and ready. Reborn is about as good as Kyouya at throwing off Mist and its many tricks, but Chrome as talented as she is persistent, and she isn't one to let go of prey when she has them in her grasp. Not unless Tsuna asks her to.

None of that is worth saying. Reborn probably already knows.

Tsuna isn't aware that his mouth is bleeding, that he had cut it on his own teeth, until he feels a thumb at the underside of his lower lip. The sting of a reopened cut barely registers, the sensation greyed out and negligible when laid in comparison to what he finally opens his eyes to stare at what awaits him at the end of Reborn's outstretched arm.

Before they had harmonized, years after they'd fallen into bed together, there had only so much sentiment that Reborn had been willing to stomach at any given time. Tsuna knows those tells, knows them as well as he knows his own Flames. So he knows with certainty that Reborn will indulge anything that Tsuna will ask of him, that Reborn is feeling sentimental enough to be tolerant of Tsuna's affections.

And so Tsuna presses forward without fear. Reaches deep into Reborn's space and smiles at how Reborn lets him, just like how he'd let Tsuna touch him on their first night together during those intimate hours before dawn. The cut splits further beneath Reborn's thumb, and Tsuna tastes the blood that Reborn wipes along the inside of his lip, warm and coppery and alive.

"Hey," Tsuna says quietly, "I missed you."

"Loser Tsuna," Reborn says lowly, "don't start what you aren't going to finish."

No, he supposed he shouldn't.

It will take another year, maybe two, for Reborn to regain the decades that had been lost to the Arcobaleno curse. Another year before Tsuna can appreciate Reborn in a way that had cast him spiralling into denial until Reborn had agreed to attend a concert with him.

Reborn had worn a loose dress shirt that night, Tsuna remembers, and pants that had appeared sinfully tight. His hair had been swept back with nothing more than sweat and a hand, and the ring that he'd worn on a chain around his neck had stood out even beneath the polychromatic lights of the concert, the ring that Tsuna had given him for Christmas in jest one year. It had been such a shoddy thing by their standards, but Reborn had worn it then and had continued to wear it, the gold standing out against Reborn's chest from beneath the open collar.

Tsuna remembers that. All of those details, all of those secrets that will one day be Tsuna's to own, just like Reborn himself.

But that day is not today, not while Reborn looks all of twelve. A shame, that. It would've been nice to kiss him.

Tsuna sighs and leans back.

Or at least, he tries.

"You've lost weight," Reborn says, catching Tsuna's jaws with his fingers to dig bruises into the skin of it.

"I'm okay," Tsuna says, exhaling deep. He raises a hand to press the back of his knuckles against Reborn's cheek. Reborn lets him. Tsuna thinks his heart might stop if it grows any bigger. "Just had a busy week."

"So I've heard," Reborn says, pulling back at last.

Tsuna lets him go. He doesn't chase, because Reborn is only difficult to read if you let him be, and Tsuna doesn't need to be twenty years into his study of Reborn to know that Reborn has been plenty indulging already.

Reborn settles onto the sand to Tsuna's right, sitting close enough to brush shoulders. "Tell me," he says, and Tsuna does.

About the Piovra, about his deal with them. About the Varia, the CEDEF, Timoteo, the future, his head, what his Family has done. Reborn doesn't interrupt him. He listens, his gaze turned toward the sea, his mouth twisted with unspoken judgement.

He listens until Tsuna's throat closes with the traces of horror that had lingered in the wake of Chrome's confession. He listens to Tsuna's silence when Tsuna runs out of words, his breathing as calm as the breeze that tickles pieces of their hair.

Reborn says nothing, but offers his acceptance nonetheless. Tsuna appreciates it, appreciates him. It's the sort of acceptance that lets him breathe, that lets him feel small and insignificant and normal.

"The basement room," Tsuna says after the rest of his words have had time to settle as flecks of dust and sediment in a deep, deep pool, "it's for me, isn't it?"

A rhetorical question. Reborn slants Tsuna a glance at that, his lips pressed together with unspoken criticism.

"You know that it won't hold me," Tsuna says, accepting the chastisement.

"It's not for you," Reborn says at last. "It's for your minions."

Tsuna scowls.

"Idiot," Reborn says, rolling his eyes at Tsuna's instinctive, protective anger. "It's supposed to protect them from you. From your Flames. The last thing that Italy needs is for your Guardians to become unreasonable over you getting a bit upset."

"Unreasonable," Tsuna echoes, incredulity catching as laughter in his throat. "Really?"

"Unreasonable," Reborn says again. His brow arches. "I'm surprised you find that funny, considering what Dokuro has admitted to doing to save you."

And what could Tsuna possibly say to that?

"Don't be maudlin," Reborn says, flicking Tsuna's forehead to force his eyes back upright when Tsuna dares to cast his gaze toward their feet. "What can you do about it now? It's been done. Let it go, Tsuna."

"Easy for you to say," Tsuna says. "You're not the one that has to fix it."

"There's nothing to fix," Reborn says, and.

Okay.

Okay, that's. Okay.

Tsuna drags his knees closer to his chest and tucks his cheek against them before closing his arms around his head to block out the sun.

How easily Reborn admits to devastation. How easily he says, there's nothing to fix, even in the absence of the question that Tsuna had promised to ask, all those weeks ago. How easily he commits to the idea of forever, the likes of which had driven Tsuna's Family to sunder and reshape the world to their liking, heedless of the cost.

"You shouldn't," Tsuna mumbles. "Not before you know what I am."

Reborn's touch comes as predicted, heavy and hard around his wrist to wrench Tsuna away from where he wants to die of embarrassment or elation. Or both. Most likely both.

"I know you," Reborn says, his ego bruised with the shadows of stormclouds.

Tsuna smiles shakily. "No," he says, "but you will."

Chapter Text

The memories start, not with violence, but with his mom.

*

She first fell ill in the fall. Tsuna was fifteen and a half, high on the thrill of having saved Reborn and the Arcobaleno and retraumatized at the idea of becoming Decimo all over again.

Exhaustion, the doctors told them. Overexertion. She should be alright with rest.

His mom was facing the window when Tsuna visited with a bouquet of flowers that Hayato had helped to pick out. She didn't appear inclined to speak, and Tsuna didn't force her.

This was his fault, after all. He wasn't sure how, but he knew. This was his fault, just as all subsequent times will be.

She sighed, soft and defeated, but she was smiling when she turned to look at Tsuna. "Come here, Tsu-kun."

He does. Despite the shame, the guilt that couldn't be explained, he does.

"One day," she whispered into his hair, "one day, Tsu-kun, Mama won't be enough."

"Mom," Tsuna said, so desperately sad for reasons that he didn't understand.

"Oh, don't be that way," she said, her voice light again. "All children grow up sometime. Still, you'll be okay, won't you? You can promise me that?"

And Tsuna, being only fifteen and a half, had only wanted to please her, to tell her what she wanted to hear.

"Yeah, mom," he said, "I will."

*

A few months after Tsuna turned sixteen, Nono came to Japan. He stood at the door of Tsuna's home, speaking to his mom and Reborn. A gentleman, through and through, Tsuna watched how his mom laughed at Nono's quiet flattery, happiness and stars in her voice, at how Nono had taken off his fedora in his greeting. How lively she sounded even when she had sounded exhausted for weeks.

There was no way to know what they'd talked about, no way at all to know what would make Reborn look so dark and displeased when he finally turned towards Tsuna. It was curious, but Tsuna ignored that in favour of entertaining the familiar anger that heated his stomach, the days-old resentment over what Reborn had said about Tsuna and Kyoko.

About how Kyoko was a pipe dream, leftover longing of childhood, how it was about time for Tsuna to let her go.

So, he ignored him. He ignored him as he'd ignored him for days, ignored him in favour of Nono, who asked, "Good morning, Tsunayoshi-kun. Shall we go for a walk?"

Such a simple question. Such a simple, innocuous question. Just an old man asking his adopted heir for a moment of his company, his smile kind and benign.

Tsuna swallowed. Discomfort sat like lead in the pit of his stomach, rose up into his mouth as dread.

"What a good idea!" his mom said. "You've been moping around here for days, Tsu-kun. Maybe a walk will help you feel better."

Reborn stepped away from Nono, from Tsuna's mom, the door. Stepped away to step closer to Tsuna, to look up at him from where he was still a head shorter, as inscrutable he always was.

"You can say no," Reborn said.

It had been two days since their last argument. Two days since Tsuna had told Reborn to get lost and leave me alone. Two days of anger, resentment, disappointments, and Tsuna wasn't sure if he deserved to feel relieved at how quickly Reborn had chosen to forgive, how he now offered an olive branch in the form of permission.

But he was in part of the Vongola because of Reborn. Nono was here because of Reborn. If Reborn hadn't appeared in Tsuna's life, neither of these immutable things would have become fact. He might've had the chance to date Kyoko, marry her, and find happiness in a normal life.

Tsuna set his jaws and stepped around him.

And later, when Nono asked, how do you feel about coming to Italy with me, Tsuna said the only answer that he was allowed to.

The only answer, Tsuna thought bitterly, that Reborn had trained him to be able to say.

*

Italy was terrifying. Italy was wondrous and dangerous, rich in history and culture and personality. Every street was a colourful study of contrasts, with its resilient, generous people juxtaposed against the blood drying on their cement and cobblestones, the blood that reached as deeply into their soil as the corruption.

Tsuna learned the language. Quickly, as not to disappoint. He learned the mafia's language. Desperately, as not to drown.

"Reborn," he said into the phone one night. Reborn had no reason to indulge his calls when Tsuna was still angry at him, kept getting angry at him, but Reborn did. He would mock him and challenge him, but he always, always, answered.

He always picked up, each and every time.

"If you're going to whine, do it in Italian," Reborn said.

Tsuna did, and Reborn listened.

*

At seventeen, Tsuna came back to Japan. To Namimori, back to the house that he called home. He hung onto his mom for far too long, but she allowed it with a sigh against his hair and a defeated slump of her shoulders. He was enrolled into Namimori High with Gokudera and Yamamoto as his classmates -- not because they dropped down a year, but because Tsuna was allowed to skip one.

For two weeks, he endured the sneers of jealousy, of the routines and patterns of middle school. For two weeks, he was allowed to feel normal. Two weeks before his friends stepped in and things spiralled out of his hands, outside his control.

Understanding came to Tsuna two days after the first time that Yamamoto held someone at the proverbial gunpoint with his baseball bat, leaving him panicked and horrified and --

"I hate this," Tsuna said to Reborn one night. He was seated on his bed and had his head in his hands, the weight of the world on his shoulders. "I hate this. Do you know what Hayama did today? He apologized. With a broken arm. I told Yamamoto-kun that drawing attention like this would be bad, even Gokudera-kun agreed! But they still--"

"Stop," Reborn said, clicking his tongue. "You're an idiot, but not so stupid as to believe that freaking out will help anyone."

"Easy for you to say," Tsuna snapped, lifting his head to glare at Reborn. At Reborn's long legs and sensual grace, at the violence that lingered so close to the surface of his skin that Tsuna wondered if he could taste it with his tongue. "Shouldn't you care what happens to them? They're my friends. The Tenth Generation that you've been hired to groom?"

"Yes, and?" Reborn said, leaning forward. He raised a brow, and Tsuna looked away, heat at his cheeks. "You're stressing over nothing. You're the boss, Loser Tsuna, so it comes down to one question. What do you want, and how are you going to get it?"

"I don't know," Tsuna said, staring down at his hands. Curling them, cursing them, condemning them for all that he has not yet committed, but knew that he will. "I don't-- I don't know."

"Figure it out," Reborn said.

*

They graduated high school with no further episodes, nothing that rocked the school as much as the Great Baseball Incident (or so it was later deemed). The days were quiet and the weeks were quieter still, the months crawling gingerly along the script of normalcy until they all graduated, packed their bags, and moved to Italy for good, Hibari aside.

It took another year for Tsuna to inherit the Family proper. And within that year, they see -- much. Too much of what Tsuna didn't want and too little of what Tsuna did. Nono stopped shielding him from the ugliness, letting him bask in the horrors, touch the filth. He nudged Tsuna into indulging in it, wearing down the nausea until it was but a constant burn at the back of his throat.

He took solace in how he could still feel queasy at murder, how he could wrinkle his nose at what could be done to someone. He gently corrected Gokudera's approach to logic, curbed Yamamoto's growing appetite for the cleanliness of a kill. Lambo rarely left his side by Tsuna's request, kept an arm's length away from his pedigree. Mukuro and Chrome policed each other, and Hibari left Italy more often than he stayed, disgusted as he was with the state of things.

Ryouhei was the only one of his Guardians that found no use for Tsuna's presence, kept in check by his horrifically fairytale-esque love with Hana.

What do you want, Reborn had asked.

The answer was steadfast in how it remained out of reach, but Tsuna would just have to make due. Take the second best answer and desperately try to stay afloat.

Make due, make friends, and do his best to soothe the world and its wrinkles with kind words, generous gestures, and mutual favours. Pretending, pretending, pretending that this was what he wanted, that he could do this, that he chose this.

Peace was what Tsuna tried first. He made friends, charmed his rivals. He was gracious and generous while his Family remained steadfast and unreasonable. He offered compromise and forgiveness and respect where such sentiments were met with skepticism and ridicule. He offered shelter, stability, second chances.

He was the new darling of the black markets, Dino would joke wryly, a charitable bleeding heart. He was sweet, he wasn't anything that the mafia had seen before, something that was amusing people as much as he was making them nervous.

Which, Tsuna thought, wasn't his problem. Why should it be? Why should he honour generations worth of grudges, why was hatred the only accepted way?

It wasn't his history to honour, besides. This wasn't his world, not his reality. He had never wanted to be boss, had never wanted power and notoriety, but since it had been forced upon him anyway, he would use them. The title of Decimo opened doors, forced surrender and compromise and acquisition from others. It allowed Tsuna to try and recreate a world that he wanted within the space that he had inherited, a world full of sweet normalcy that was just the slightest bit unfair.

Then, six months and many tiny successes later, Tsuna was shot.

*

Awareness found him slowly. The room was dark when Tsuna opened his eyes, so tall and so expensive that it bordered on gaudy. The walls were the colour of the blood that he could still see behind his eyelids, the blood that had been on his hands and the sidewalk, made worse by how Reborn had apparently decided to light a single candle to read by Tsuna's bedside.

"You're staring," Reborn murmured.

"Hi to you too," Tsuna said, his voice scratchy with, you know, the stress of being shot. "Did they--?"

"Yes," Reborn said, his voice still mild and his eyes still cast away from where Tsuna lay. "The cow killed them as soon as you went down."

Goddamnit. "How is he?"

"Better than you."

"I need more than that, Reborn," Tsuna snapped. "How is he? Was it bad?"

Reborn turned a page and said everything that needed saying by saying nothing at all.

"You're angry," Tsuna said numbly. "Why are you angry?"

It was a rare thing, Reborn's anger. A quiet simmer of a thing, something that liked to go unnoticed beneath the dramatic way in which Reborn got irritated. Reborn hadn't been angry when Tsuna had insulted him, disrespected him, threw tantrums and accusations and all of his hurt, but Tsuna getting shot once is what breaks him?

"I did as you taught me," Tsuna said, uncaring that he sounded petulant, that he was being childish. That he was also becoming angry for reasons he didn't care to understand. "This is what you wanted. You don't get to be angry at me."

"Do not," Reborn murmured, "tell me what I am allowed, Sawada Tsunayoshi. I didn't teach you to be stupid."

"How is this stupid?" Tsuna demanded.

"Do you even know why this happened?"

Of course he did. A part of him had always known, but it had been the closest fucking thing to what Tsuna wanted, so he'd tried anyway. He'd tried, keeping one foot in the mafia's world and another outside of it. Spurning all that the mafia stood for while never quite committing to leaving, hoping for a miracle, that things would change in a couple years than the decades that Tsuna knew that it'd need.

"Because I looked like an easy target," Tsuna said bitterly. His eyes were burning. His throat did too. His knee fucking hurt, and Tsuna knew without looking that he would never be without pain again. "Because I'm still a fucking Vongola boss even when I didn't want to be."

"No one respects you," Reborn said in agreement. "Not your Family, much less the rest of the mafia. It's a wonder that someone hasn't tried to kill you sooner. If you wanted to change things--"

"I know," Tsuna spat. "But I don't want to learn this world. I don't like it, and I hate the idea of having to live in it even more."

"You sound like a child," Reborn said, cold and merciless.

Tsuna closed his hands into his blanket, knuckles bleaching white. He deserved that. He deserved it, but--

"I'm not settling, Reborn," Tsuna said. "You didn't raise me to be a defeatist."

The book snapped closed. Reborn said nothing. Tsuna refused to say anything, his jaws set against the argument that he didn't want to rehash.

The chair groaned as Reborn pushed himself out of it. He was about Tsuna's height now, maybe a little taller. He still wasn't as wide as his adult form had been, but he was an adult now, no longer a toddler, a child, a teenager. He was an adult, just like how Tsuna was supposed to be, taking slow, measured steps forward that somehow felt predatory.

The floorboards were quiet beneath Reborn's footsteps. The mattress dipped when Reborn leaned one knee into it, right by Tsuna's battered one.

It felt dangerous, and Tsuna responded as he responded to all danger: by staying in place. Facing it even as his stomach flipped with anticipation and apprehension, both.

"I didn't wait this long to lose you to your own stupidity," Reborn said quietly.

Something dead and forbidden hammered up against Tsuna's ribs.

"I know it's selfish," Tsuna said into the sacred space between them. "I know. But I'm here even when I don't want to be. So why shouldn't I be selfish?"

Reborn's fingers were gentle when they carded themselves through Tsuna's hair. Breath caught in Tsuna's chest, but he didn't look away. Didn't dare to. Reborn didn't either, his nails digging meanly into Tsuna's scalp as he held them locked, just like that.

"You can't change things by rejecting everything, Loser Tsuna," Reborn said lowly. His face was so close, so vicious in its temptation. Tsuna could smell cigar smoke on his breath, the sweet ashiness of it. "A system only changes in one of two ways. I taught you that."

Total destruction, Tsuna's brain said. Inviting an endless amount of days of violence without any guarantee of his people's safety, or--

"I'm not going to do what they've been doing for-- for centuries. I'm not going to be like them, I'm not going to pretend." Tsuna's fingers flexed against the blanket, and his shoulders ached with restraint. It would take so little to close the centimeters of distance between them. "They all tried that." Tried, he knew, until they couldn't try anymore. Trying to change the system from within until it changed them instead, consumed by a world that refused to be moved.

"You can't change anything if you keep trying to play nice," Reborn said, just as Tsuna had known he would. Reborn had never been quiet with his opinions. "You need to bring them to heel. If they won't listen, make them."

"I've been trying--"

"No, you haven't," Reborn said. "If you don't plan on starting a war, then you need to turn yourself into someone that this world respects."

Tsuna raised his eyes to Reborn's. To those dark eyes that burned with the sort of intense hunger that had been building every year since Tsuna had turned eighteen, since Tsuna had become the Vongola Decimo. It was a look that Tsuna couldn't look upon for long, lest he burn himself in it, but hope has always had a strange anaesthetic effect on him, blinding him to-- too much, probably. Even what Reborn was offering, what Reborn was asking from him.

You couldn't coerce the willing, after all. Not really.

"Teach me," Tsuna said.

*

At twenty-one, Hibari stood with his hand at Tsuna's throat. He wasn't squeezing, but the threat was there. And in the language of Hibari Kyouya, a threat was only a degree removed from becoming reality.

There was debris in Hibari's hair. Bruises littered across his face. He was bleeding from one nostril, and Tsuna hadn't seen Hibari move his left arm for almost ten minutes because Tsuna had broken it in retaliation for how Hibari had broken Tsuna's rib. There was a worrying rattle to Hibari's every exhale, but even that went overshadowed by the calm viciousness that Hibari wore in his eyes, offered with his Flames.

"Make your offer," Hibari said, tightening his grip.

"My life," Tsuna rasped. "All of it."

Hibari studied him without lust. There was no desire, but there was a craving all the same, a longing that transcended all that they knew about devotion and worship.

"In exchange for mine," Hibari said. He leaned forward, holding Tsuna against the only wall that remained standing, accepting Tsuna's air and comfort in exchange for intimacy. And Tsuna allowed it. Agreed to it, even as his vision turned spotty and his lungs burned.

Tsuna didn't look away, and Hibari's smile was all teeth.

But when the one that put those teeth against Tsuna's jaw was not Hibari but Kyouya. Kyouya, who said, "I accept."

*

Takeshi came next. Then Hayato, Chrome and Mukuro, then--

"Sorry, Sawada," Ryouhei said, his shoulders burdened with guilt but his eyes clear with conviction. "I can't."

Rejection hurt at every age, Tsuna knew. It would sting no matter how often it was experienced, because rejection was a beast corroded, not cut. The festering sort of pain that readily consumed a person if one let it, and Tsuna was no stranger to its effects.

Strangely, rejection was not what he felt when faced with Ryouhei's truth. This was a man that loved his fiancé more than he could ever love his boss, and what kind of boss would Tsuna be if he punished someone for that?

Besides, it wasn't as though he was losing Ryouhei. It wasn't as though he would be left bereft of sunlight.

"Mom," Tsuna said into the phone that night.

"Tsu-kun!" his mom said, her voice warmer and brighter than Tsuna ever remembered it being. Like a weight lifted, a veil brushed away. There was something alive about her now, her mind no longer forced absent by the duty that she'd carried over two decades.

The only thing that was familiar and the same was the guilt. A guilt that Tsuna knew but couldn't explain, that which acted to soothe whenever his mom would become hurtful in her absence.

"How are you, Tsu-kun?" his mom now asked. "You're not forgetting to eat, are you? You're taking your vitamins?"

"I'm okay, mom," Tsuna said, and thought of birdsongs as he listened to her speak of her peonies, as she spoke of the bright, bright days.

*

Things shifted as soon as Tsuna harmonized.

Nothing about Mukuro's pragmatism, Chrome's cruelty, Hayato's intellect, Takeshi's ruthlessness, and Kyouya's efficiency had changed with harmonization, but the mafia, Italy, the world, began to recognize them. Began to recognize Tsuna too, of the way in which Tsuna could leave nothing more than cinders and ashes of anything he wished, but would just as easily offer sanctuary and safety.

Tsuna hadn't expected overnight success. Change was a strange and foreign thing to those bred and raised in the mire of the mafia's bloody traditions, but one of them would break eventually and Tsuna knew that it would not be him.

Because for every moment that the blood and the violence lingered, as did the abuse of the weaker and the disadvantaged, things changed. Groaning beneath the pressure that Tsuna applied as his intuition became less of a foreign entity in his body to become simply a part of him. It showed him the threads that needed unravelling, where he could choke out the mafia's silk road and funnel it through the Vongola.

His knee hurt as badly as Tsuna knew it would. It healed poorly despite the efforts of Reborn and Ryouhei, and Tsuna didn't need to be told that it'd forever haunt his steps. That it would be especially painful on cold and rainy days, though Tsuna could never bring himself to mind, not when Reborn would sit with him late into the night when the weather was especially bad, letting the silence between them fester as Tsuna worked through the paperwork that never seemed to end.

Tsuna didn't ask. The poison of possibility sat between them, but all that Tsuna was missing now was a Lightning, so he didn't ask. Couldn't.

Reborn would wait. Tsuna knew that with the same level of certainty that he knew that the mafia would fall, that he would not escape this crusade without feeling the world shatter beneath his fingertips.

*

"--and we're extremely tired of beans!" Ryouhei said with flourish. His voice was a little staticky, the connection made poor by all of the security that Spanner had layered into their phones, but at least Tsuna could trust this, trust that Takeshi (and Ryouhei) was safe.

"We can get you idiots out by Friday," Hayato said from Tsuna's right. He was learning over his knees, typing into a laptop with vicious efficiency while Tsuna remained a potato of a man on the couch next to him. Neither of their postures would do their respective backs any favours, but Tsuna wasn't in any position to correct them. "With any luck, we'll get our deal with the Russians too."

"Whoa," Takeshi said, his laughter muted by surprise, "lucky us, I guess?"

"Don't fucking call it luck," Hayato snarled. "Do you know how many meetings that the Tenth has been in this week over your asses? You're lucky he's good, he even closed the deal that you were supposed to--"

"I'm just glad you're okay," Tsuna said hurriedly.

"You sound tired, Tenth," Hayato said when they hung up for the night. He closed his laptop to look at Tsuna properly, his mouth pulled into an unhappy line. "Do you want me to call Hibari? Reborn-san?"

"Why would you call-- no. I'm fine," Tsuna said, grinding his teeth against the heat that flooded his face.

Hayato gave him a look, shrugged, then mercifully turned back to his laptop. "You know the Piovra won't be happy with what we've done, right?"

"Yeah," Tsuna said gratefully. They'll probably want to talk. Not now, maybe not even this year, but eventually, they'll have to cross the Vongola's barricades to have any level of access to that market. "But we knew that going in."

"Chrome called this morning too," Hayato said with a touch of pride and grim satisfaction. "Seems like everything went well on her end."

Given how the morning news had been all about the sudden suicide-murder of a supposed cult in that area followed by the discovery of hundreds of illegal migrants in a nearby warehouse-- yeah. Tsuna figured.

"I told her not to overdo it," Tsuna muttered, falling sideways onto the couch. "Dad's definitely going to get on my case about this."

"He just doesn't see things like you do," Hayato said. The edge of a worn argument, the sin of offered patricide, lingered beneath his words. Tsuna pretended not to hear it, and after a moment, Hayato did the same, the offer dropped for another night. "You want me to talk to her?"

"No," Tsuna said, closing his eyes. "It's fine."

*

Tsuna has loved Kyoko since he was fourteen, and for a time, he had believed himself to be in love with all that she was. She was a special existence, a breath of crisp morning air, the person that Tsuna thought of when he thought of sanctuary and reprieve. She was not unlike Tsuna's mom in how she hid her thorns beneath her manners, not unlike her brother in how brightly she shone amidst the grime of the mafia.

She held Tsuna's hand and agreed to date him for exactly two weeks, allowing Tsuna to taste the fantasy that was no longer his to own. They went out for fancy dinners, cooked together, read different books on the same couch, and on one memorable night, even shared a kiss that left Tsuna feeling more off than excited.

"That's enough of that, I think," Kyoko said lightly.

"Sorry, Kyoko-chan," Tsuna said.

Kyoko put a finger on Tsuna's mouth, smiled bright, bright, bright. "No apologies. Okay, Tsu-kun? Especially when neither of us are actually sorry."

Tsuna nodded and collected her hand in both of his, keeping his grip gentle and worshipful.

"Thank you," Tsuna said instead. Those words, he can mean. "For letting me try."

"Me too," Kyoko said, her eyes warm with affection.

In another timeline, in a different world where Tsuna made different choices, she may have been the first person that he looked for in a room. She may have been the one to keep him company long after the sun would set. Maybe in that world, maybe her happiness alone would have sustained him, surrounded by children that looked like them.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. A pointless exercise, Reborn would say.

"Tsu-kun," Kyoko said, drawing him back. There was humour to her that made Tsuna stiffen on instinct.

But no amount of instinct could prepare him for the devastation with which she let Tsuna go so that Tsuna could be caught, dragged back by an arm with deceptive strength.

"Loser Tsuna," Reborn said against Tsuna's ear. His chest was warm against Tsuna's back, and Tsuna felt his heart hammer up against his ribs when Reborn hooked his chin against Tsuna's head. "Late as always."

"I-- huh?"

"Thank you for your patience, Reborn-san," Kyoko said brightly. "He's all yours now."

Reborn's laugh was a dark and sultry thing, and Tsuna fought down a shiver as he said, "I know."

*

"Things are going pretty well, huh," Lambo said, throwing a piece of candy up into the air to catch it mid-fall.

"I guess?" Tsuna said, tentative and wary.

The candy flew back up into the air. Fell back down. And Lambo said, "I'm fifteen now, you know."

Ah, Tsuna thought. It was going to be about that after all.

"And you don't have another Lightning in mind," Lambo said, peering at Tsuna from beneath his curtain of hair. "Not like you have Reborn if you really wanted a Sun."

"Lambo--"

"I've already killed for you," Lambo said viciously, seizing Tsuna's hesitation as his platform to speak. "I didn't even cry about it! I mean, maybe a little bit, but only 'cause you got shot, Tsuna-nii. And-- and I'd kill for you again once stop being so scared and ask me, I don't know why you're being so weird about it--"

"I'm being weird?" Tsuna said, bewildered.

"Well, yeah," Lambo said, rolling his eyes. "I was always going to be mafia, you know. The Bovino sent me to try to kill Reborn when I was five. It's too late for me to go back to normal."

Right, that was another debt that Tsuna had yet to return. He made a mental note of it.

"Lambo," Tsuna said, feeling desperately sad. Sad and sick and so very sorry about nothing that he could have changed. "What you're asking for-- it's forever, you know? If we do this, you'll never get a chance to do anything else."

"Why do you make it about me if you're not even gonna listen to me?" Lambo asked, eyes falling to the carpet of Tsuna's office. It was a neutral shade of cedar, calm and soft and probably far more expensive than Tsuna would have ever allowed himself to buy. Which is probably why Hayato had gone ahead and bought it without telling him. "If you don't want me, you should just say that."

Which was complete nonsense, of course, as well as blatant manipulation. Lambo was the only person that Tsuna would ever accept as his Lightning and Lambo knew it.

"Don't do that," Tsuna said, tired. "You know that's not true. I just-- I'm just trying to give you what I never got."

Lambo sighed. Loudly, impatiently. Like every bit the teenager that he was. Except where I-Pin had supposedly grown a rebellious streak and sought independence, Lambo grew a rebellious streak and sought nothing but Tsuna's time and presence, replacing his life with Tsuna's as if that was healthy and normal and at all what Tsuna wanted for him.

"I know," Lambo said. There was a catch of a whine to his words, but there was a thread of genuine defeat there, an honest hurt. Miles apart from the empty bemoaning that he had been doing only minutes prior. "But you knew what you wanted when you were fourteen. Why can't I know what I want when I'm older than that?"

"You won't be able to make friends properly," Tsuna said, trying one more time. One last time. "No one but our Family will seem good enough. You won't be able to have a partner, not really. You won't-- you won't ever get to be a candymaker or a superhero or anything else that you like. Are you really okay with that?"

No school, no friends, no family of his own. Even Kyouya had moved to Italy full time, leaving Namimori and the Hibari for Kusakabe to manage. Takeshi maintained a regular and amicable relationship with his dad, but he hadn't been back to Japan in years. Hayato was Hayato, the mafia had always been his place to be, but Mukuro had been strangely quiet and subdued after a supposed disagreement with Chikusa and Ken over the Vongola and Tsuna, and Chrome hadn't even blinked when she had told Mukuro to simply cut them off, and--

None of them seemed inclined to ever say no, and none of them even blinked when Tsuna would test them. With small things, of course, with inconsequential things, like how Tsuna would sometimes invade Kyouya's bed to simply have someone at his back as he slept, when he hugged Takeshi for a moment too long, slept on Hayato's lap, asked Mukuro to brew them coffee and Chrome to keep braiding his hair.

There was a pattern there, hidden beneath the warmth. One that made his stomach turn and the hairs at the back of his neck to stand.

"My life would have sucked if I hadn't met you, Tsuna-nii," Lambo said. "You're the best thing that's happened to me, and-- I don't know, I kinda like the idea of having a Family that'll always want me. That won't send me on suicide missions to just get rid of me."

Lambo was almost as tall as Tsuna when he stood up, his growth arriving at alarming rates while Tsuna seemed to stop at the height of his mom. Given a few more years, Lambo would be taller, though he would likely remain lanky until he reached his twenties, whereupon he would finally fill out. Grow into his limbs, his power, his status.

"I'm not going to choose anyone else. I waited because I knew you knew that, but it looks like you might fuck Reborn before I get to even hold your hand and he's going to hold that over my head forever and that would really suck, Tsuna-nii."

Tsuna was going to die. He was going to die of embarrassment and no one was going to be surprised because that was the only way that he was ever going to go.

"Don't think I'll be like Ryouhei-nii though," Lambo said, slapping the candy on Tsuna's desk. "I'm not going to choose anyone but you."

The candy was a little mangled when Tsuna picked it up, made soft and malleable by Lambo's handling. The wrapping paper was familiar. A rare treat on Italian soil, among the last of Lambo's hidden stash of the Japanese sweets that he'd kept squirrelled away. It was likely years past its expiry date, but the sugar sat on his tongue like the taste of his mom's cooking and filled his nose with the smell of peonies.

"Okay," Tsuna said quietly. "But you don't curse again 'til you're twenty. And no hand holding 'til twenty-five."

"Tsuna-nii," Lambo whined.

"No but's, Lambo."

*

Luca Piovra asked him, "What's your game, Vongola?"

Their meeting was set in a small and claustrophobic room with a single, dim lightbulb between them all, yellowing and dying. The air had been stale with unease and uncertainty, if this was a declaration of war. Hayato stood at his right shoulder while Reborn lingered by the only door of the room, watching them all from beneath the shadow of his fedora.

Tsuna tipped up his chin. "No games. It's just as we've offered, don Piovra."

"How magnanimous of you," Luca said, a sneer curling his upper lip. "If you haven't been choking out my competitors, I almost would've believed this a legitimate offer."

"I never said it was for free," Tsuna said. "No one would have taken a chance on me otherwise."

People feared the kind. People doubted them, unable to believe that which did not exist within them could exist in another. People persecuted others for so much less, but conditional kindness, generosity with a price, feigned capitulation? Those could be trusted. Or so claimed the mafia.

"If you want to continue dealing, you will go through our supplier. The Vongola will receive twenty percent of your profits, and in turn, we will protect your business as though it were our own," Tsuna said. "Break that contract, and we will respond accordingly."

Luca Piovra leaned back into his chair, the cigar burning out slowly from where it was nestled between his fingers. He was an older man at thirty-seven, with features that any Italian would be proud of: tall and lean, his shoulders set in a handsome line. His suit was expensive and perfectly shapely, accentuated by curly brown hair, keen green eyes, and a strong nose. Full lips too, but not full enough to be feminine, set on a cleanly shaven and unfairly symmetrical jawline. He was the first natural Sky to be born into the Piovra in many generations, a man made arrogant by his Family's endless adoration.

The quintessential Italian, the quintessential Sicillian, the perfect epitome of a mafia boss sat before Tsuna, who was a foreigner that had only as much Italian blood to make him a brunette, to allow him to sit and claim the Vongola name.

"Twenty is a steep price," Luca said. He lifted the cigar back to his mouth, hiding the shape of it as he continued, "But nowhere near the price you demanded from the Bovino, I hear."

"The Bovino owed me a debt," Tsuna said plainly.

"And so will I, if I accept this deal of yours."

Tsuna twined his fingers together across his lap. "You are free to refuse and find business elsewhere."

Luca laughed, sharp and barking. "There is no elsewhere, you little shit. You saw to it."

Tsuna smiled and slid the papers that Hayato had slipped onto the table moments before Tsuna had brought Luca to checkmate.

"Then," he said, "shall we talk business?"

*

"Are you sure you know what you're doing, Tsuna-fish?" Iemitsu asked him as he often did, apropos to nothing.

It was a familiar question, one that Tsuna found easiest to dismiss by offering empty words of appeasement. Arguments lead to condescension, while even a sliver of agreement lead to Iemitsu believing it to be approval, whereupon Iemitsu and CEDEF would do things in the name and image of a Vongola that the Tenth Generation no longer wished to own. It was easiest to simply leave in stasis, to ignore, ignore, ignore, waiting for the day in which Iemitsu would become too old to continue, so old that he may begin to miss mom.

But how many years has it been now? How many days and months, how many times had they had this conversation, how many more times did Tsuna have to play nice just because Iemitsu held enough power in the Vongola that Tsuna couldn't always afford to ignore it?

"You've been stepping on some big toes lately," Iemitsu said when Tsuna said nothing, his voice dipping lightly into disappointment.

One of the easiest ways to strangle power and influence out of the mafia was to squeeze them dry of money. No money, no men, no influence. Which meant stepping on toes was the literal point, and Iemitsu wasn't so stupid that he couldn't know--

"My people had to put some stragglers down, the other day," Iemitsu said, settling into the new couch of Hayato's choosing. It was a nice piece, likely inappropriately expensive, but Tsuna couldn't exactly fault him for it when the couch was so soft and comfortable that it often doubled as Tsuna's second bed. "They were planning an ambush. For your people."

Tsuna stared down at the unsigned paperwork that littered his desk. The many little notes that he was supposed to read, weigh in on. There were choices to make, headaches to field, and a Family to love and protect. He didn't have time for this.

He would never have time for this.

"Are my people Vongola? Are yours?" Tsuna asked, putting down his pen. He raised his eyes just in time to catch the slight widening of Iemitsu's, and Tsuna wondered when that face, that expression, on Iemitsu Sawada, had become familiar in its regularity.

"Of course," Iemitsu said after a moment's pause. A moment that stretched on too long, a pause that said more than either of them were willing to claim.

"Vongola takes care of its own," Tsuna said in agreement. A brief glance at the calendar reminded him that it was a Thursday. Of course it was. "So it sounds like our people did as our people should."

"You're deflecting," Iemitsu said, his tone tight with frustration and leashed by propriety. Tsuna was, after all, still the boss. Much to both of their chagrins, apparently. "You know that that's not the point. You're making a lot of enemies, Tsuna-fish. People can forgive disrespect, but you're making them desperate. You're destroying their way of life. They're tame now, but they won't remain that way for long."

"Like the Bovino?" Tsuna asked, amused.

Iemitsu's jaws flexed with disapproval. One that Tsuna had heard more than a couple times, dressed in many different flavours of vitriol.

"But alright," Tsuna said, "let's talk, then. Why didn't you tell me about this ambush sooner?"

"What would you have done?" Iemitsu said, leaning his elbows on his knees as he met Tsuna's eyes. "Talk to them? Remind them of your rules? They were there precisely because they wouldn't play your game."

"It still should've been my choice," Tsuna said. What boiled at the pit of his stomach wasn't anger. It could hardly be called disappointment.

"Tsuna," Iemitsu said softly. "I-- we, the CEDEF, are just trying to protect you. You've been making waves, kid, and it's impressive, but it hasn't made everyone happy."

Of course not, but that was neither the point nor the issue.

"I'm not going to thank you for going behind my back. Again," Tsuna said, soft and cold and resolute. The world sharpened, the colours turning bright. Iemitsu straightened, and Tsuna chased every line of shock and sadness that he saw on Iemitsu's face and decided: I don't care. "If you do that again, our next conversation will be on who gets to keep the Vongola name between us and the CEDEF."

Iemitsu was a foreign object in a foreign room. An old blight in an even older reality. Tsuna liked neither of it, just like how he disliked the smell of this office, the colours of its curtains and the feel of its walls. They were all touched by the generations that had come before, with all of their grandeur and hubris, and Tsuna was going to destroy all of it.

Tsuna picked up his pen. "Do we understand each other?"

"Yes, Decimo," Iemitsu said, his voice weighed with resentment and regret, both. "My apologies."

*

Sometime in his twenties, Tsuna decided to condense all that he could do during his college-appropriate years into one, hectic month. He picked out a band to obsess over, a hobby to pursue, dated a man for a week, played at being in love with a woman for two, and collected a sticker set that made Hayato shake his head at least once a day. Takeshi and Lambo eagerly joined in on the chaos, and on one ridiculous Thursday, Kyouya declared himself the guardian of Tsuna's stickers after Dino's accidental theft of Tsuna's collection.

It was nonsensical and silly, pointless in its fun, but it made the world hurt that much less.

Then, on the second-last day of that week, Chrome slipped her arm around Tsuna's to press two concert tickets into his hand.

"Is something happening this week?" Tsuna asked as he stared down at the highly coveted tickets of the band that he was still obsessing over.

"Mukuro-sama and I have a bet going," Chrome said. "And I'd like to win, Boss."

Tsuna refrained from asking what, exactly, that they had bet on. Chrome had vowed to never lie to him when she accepted harmonization, pledging adoration and honesty in exchange for an place by Tsuna's side. A place that would never become weathered by anything shy of death. Which meant embarrassment was all that awaited that line of questioning, and Tsuna was still too high on the feeling of being normal to invite her brand of teasing.

"Besides," Chrome said, pressing a light kiss to Tsuna's shoulder, "you kept him waiting long enough."

Reborn said yes, of course. Not in so many words, not when Tsuna could barely look at him while pushing the concert tickets against his chest and demanded, come with me, but Reborn was standing by Tsuna's Fiat in a loose dress shirt and sinfully tight pants, so. He was agreeing to coming along, at the very least.

The concert was a loud thing, loud and bright and sharp. There was so much of everything: so many bodies, so much noise, so much emotion. People simply existed alongside the music, and Tsuna did the same against Reborn, their bodies sandwiched together within the crowd as nobodies in a sea of strangers.

Reborn was sweaty and slightly flushed when he finally declared it enough, pulling Tsuna away during the last encore of the night.

"Back seat," Tsuna said when they reached his Fiat. He told himself not to flush when Reborn raised a brow, and followed Reborn after a moment to catch the last vestiges of his courage.

When Tsuna turned to look at Reborn, it was to the sight of Reborn sweeping back his hair, his shirt sticking across his chest and shoulders. The ring that Reborn had begun to wear on a chain around his neck stood out even beneath the darkness, the ring that Tsuna had given him for Christmas in jest one year. It had been such a shoddy thing by their standards, but Reborn had thought it worthy of wearing it then and had continued to wear it since. The gold stood out against Reborn's chest from beneath the open collar and against Tsuna's fingers when he hooked them into the chain, giving him enough leverage to pull Reborn closer.

"Loser Tsuna," Reborn said, even as he let himself be pulled. His face was close enough for Tsuna to taste his breath, for Reborn to be unable to hide the steadying way in which Reborn exhaled next. "Don't start what you aren't going to finish."

"Who said I wasn't going to?" Tsuna asked, staring down at the width of Reborn's shoulders, the strong flex of his thighs, the dark sweep of his eyelashes across his cheeks. "Because I will ask, Reborn. Not now, maybe not even this year, but I will. This is just-- um." His face heated. "Foreplay?"

Reborn's mouth pulled into something sweet and vicious. "Feeling impatient, are you?"

Tsuna rolled his eyes past the ache of embarrassment. "Aren't you?"

Reborn's fingers were warm and callused when they slipped down the line of Tsuna's jaw. "You know I'm not a man that will take things halfway. You give me this, and I won't stay patient for long."

"You'll be as patient for as long as it takes," Tsuna said, tugging Reborn closer when Reborn didn't refute him. "You've been waiting for me to do something. So here I am, doing something."

"Cheeky," Reborn murmured, his fingers finally, finally, carding themselves into Tsuna's hair to hold his head steady. He didn't tug, didn't demand, but Tsuna went lax beneath it just to watch Reborn's gaze turn even darker. "You have the day off tomorrow?"

"Obviously," Tsuna said, because even Tsuna wasn't so naive as to believe that he'd be walking tomorrow. "Now shut up and kiss me."