➡ [ fic: katekyo hitman reborn! ] 8027; Rain is falling, looks like Love
Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!; 8027
Rated: PG-13
Summary: But I know that we can make it all the way. (For covalent, happy birthday♥)
Disclaimer: Sawada Tsunayoshi, Yamamoto Takeshi © Akira Amano
Title: Rain is falling, looks like Love
They get back to the past with the knowledge that Tsuna will die one day, but his guardians stand behind a back drop of blue, a united silhouette that refuses to let the sky fall down again.
Tsuna stands between the edges of the sunrise, eyebrows furrowed & expression unsure.
"But we've got to try, right?" Yamamoto says, slinging an arm around Tsuna's shoulders. Tsuna thinks of parents, of fathers who are gone. Who will be gone. Lets Yamamoto discard his sorrows with a smile & nods.
This is their second chance.
So the end of high school comes & goes. Tsuna watches his classmates dressed in black & white stand in straight, neat rows, yellow blazers & red ties pressed against their bodies like hands clasped tight. His palms are sweaty when he goes up to get his diploma, looking out at the sea of students from where he is high up on stage.
He can only recognize a handful. There's Hoshi from 3-B, Sakuragi from 3-A, Ohno from 3-D. In one of their final essays, Abe spoke of how he was going to become a professional baseball player after high school, after he finally won his trophy of finely printed black on white paper that tells him he is a year older, not younger. Wiser, but not smarter. Everything he learned to challenge life head on, he wrote, came from his teammates. From what he loved.
Tsuna thinks of his guardians, of Vongola. Of the way dying stilled his heart & helped him to breathe. How he still can't remember the chemical equation for water & the way Yamamoto plays baseball the way he practices with his sword.
In the far off corner of the room, he recognizes the familiar faces of Gokudera, Yamamoto, & Kyoko. None of them are going to university or becoming professional sports athletes.
He cuts his fingers on his diploma, sharp like a knife to his throat.
"Hey, Tsuna! Reborn let me off early today, so I thought we could hang out together, like old times."
Like old times, Yamamoto says, as Tsuna looks up from the papers that need to be read, signed, & sent to places he only knows the name of.
"I can't," Tsuna replies for the tenth time, looks up with eyes still too big to fit the structure of growing up. But Yamamoto can already see lines on his face where there weren't any before, the way Tsuna grips his pen tight in hands covered by leather gloves that haven't come off since their graduation. His eyes are pleading for understanding, but Yamamoto only sees the single white hair growing out of a thatch of brown.
Tsuna winces when Yamamoto reaches over to pull it out, all smiles & sunshine even through the rain. "Don't stress out, okay?" His hand drops to Tsuna's shoulders, lingers for longer than it should.
"Some other time." Tsuna looks down at his hands, eyes glazed over as he tries to take in the words printed on a document about monthly finances. "I promise."
Months later, production on the Japanese Vongola base starts. Tsuna walks through the incomplete hallways, the skeleton of his new home, listening to the rattling of metallic flesh & wooden bones.
He finds Yamamoto observing the construction of his room, helping out the men who are piecing together bolts for joints & nails for teeth. His suit is covered in sawdust, high quality Armani with the buttons of his shirt open.
"Tsuna," he greets when he notices Tsuna by the unfinished doorway, smiles like the sun reflected off water. "Gonna help us do some building?"
Tsuna's memories fly back to the times they sold bananas covered in chocolate together, the times Yamamoto taught him how to make sushi, when they decorated rooms & houses for surprise parties. When he didn't have to say no.
"I can't," he whispers, even as he drops all of the files that he was carrying in a fit of clumsiness, kneeling down without looking at Yamamoto as he gets sawdust on his suit & runs after papers that fly like renegade criminals with nothing to lose. "I can't. I have -- I have a meeting --"
Yamamoto places his hand on top of Tsuna's when they reach for the same document together. His smile is still bright, but his eyes are glazed over. Monthly finances, the title of the paper reads. "I know."
"Thank you," Tsuna says, but he doesn't know for what.
He stands up to leave, leaving behind the corpse of metal fossils in the makings & the sound of a heart beating alone.
Yamamoto stays behind at the base while the other guardians go on assigned missions. His ring camouflages their location as he sits underneath a heavily foliaged tree listening to the rain splash against the ground.
It's a beautiful day.
But Tsuna hasn't come outside in ages, holed up underground the way dinosaurs are after their fates have been sealed. So he sends messages, photographs he takes casually when he has nothing else to do to remind Tsuna of the sky. He delivers them with messenger pigeons that coo too much & drop feathers like Uri sheds hair & switches to swallows because they create less of a mess. Because they're refreshing & new like spring water.
Because Tsuna deserves to be free.
But the threat of Millefiore is more real than they could ever imagine. Tsuna holds his breath as he hears of the death of another Arcobaleno, looks down at the rings adorned on his fingers & feels the chains around them, cool & lifeless against his skin. There are dark circles underneath his eyes & he is so very tired.
"They've got to go," he whispers in the silence as everyone waits for his decision. As protests spring up from all of his guardians.
"But that's what your older self did & --"
"We can't make the same mistake again --"
Tsuna holds up a hand to still the noise. To still his heart a second time even though he's never known the first. He wonders how it feels to sleep forever.
Yamamoto's the first one to speak. "If that's what Tsuna wants, then let's do it." He takes off his ring & throws it onto the table. "We'll make it through with or without them."
Thank you, Tsuna thinks, feeling parts of him tingle back to life, washed away with relief.
There are seven Vongola rings with him when he leaves, X-Gloves burning bright.
Tsuna tries to fall apart when no one is looking because no one would let him otherwise. But he breaks in Yamamoto's arms one day, feverish & lacking both sleep & food as he collapses to the ground.
"Tsuna -- hey, what's wrong? Tsuna, are you okay?"
No, he thinks, as he feels Yamamoto's hands guide him to the floor. As he creates a makeshift pillow out of his newly ironed suit to place underneath Tsuna's head. Yamamoto swims in & out of his vision & Tsuna almost has to laugh, picturing the clear image of rain pouring down onto his face the first time Yamamoto's swallow came into his office. He had to reprint all of his soaked documents.
"I'm dying inside," he says through a parched throat, eyes slipping closed in exhaustion. He can't remember the last time he was free.
"I know," Yamamoto whispers, runs a hand through Tsuna's hair as he feels for a temperature & calls the doctor. "I've always known."
Yes, the message returns when Yamamoto asks if Tsuna would like to go out. He spends two hours & nine minutes worrying about whether Vongola will be okay without him around before he pens in his reply, lets the bird go as he tries to find the casual clothes he used to wear before he became somebody.
& sets himself free for a little while.
He promised, after all.
& it's a good feeling. Better than good, more than great. He walks down lazy streets laughing with Yamamoto even as the clouds fill up the sky with white & grey. They exchange jokes, memories, things they were never able to say within the confines of the steel cage they locked themselves up in.
"Remember when we used to sword fight when we were little?" Yamamoto says, grins bright enough to replace the sun as their fingers touch. "& I swore I'd protect you when you cried every time I hit you. When we sparred & I tried to teach you the essentials for being strong in the only way eight year olds knew how to be."
But Tsuna's eyes widen to the shapes of saucers when he sees it all come crashing down like the colour of the blood red sun at the end of the day.
The hitman is armed with only a knife, sharp against his throat before Yamamoto rips him away, changes his sword into lightning quick silver that cuts through flesh like air. But the man attacks like a renegade criminal with nothing to lose. There's desperation in his face even when he's bleeding, screaming bloody murder & slashing for all that he's worth before Yamamoto cuts him down.
Yamamoto's bleeding too. A nick on his chin that trickles blood out & down his neck, onto his shirt where it stains dark & won't wash out for days later.
"Y-Yamamoto," Tsuna gasps, whispers as he fumbles for his sun box to heal the wound.
It's going to leave a mark. Tsuna knows this. Sees another piece of him crumble & die in this world that was never made for him. For Yamamoto. For two middle school kids who only wanted to play baseball or be somebody worth noticing. But not like this.
"I promised, didn't I," Yamamoto says as Tsuna presses cold fingers to Yamamoto's chin. "To protect you."
But Tsuna can only sink to the floor. Stand at the edges of a man-made sunset that is the drying blood of another mistake.
So maybe parts of Tsuna are dying, are dead & have died with each action he makes. Each death report that he receives a day.
Reborn is dead.
Reborn was the only Arcobaleno left besides Lal. & it's only a matter of time, Tsuna knows this, before Millefiore decides to bring everything else down. Tear his family apart in order to save himself.
He is so very tired.
"I don't know if I can make it," he tells Yamamoto, who holds him close & presses Tsuna's face against the curve of his neck. Tsuna knows this: in order to save everyone, he has to die. "There's no other way."
Yamamoto is quiet before he tightens his hold, determination shaking through his fingertips.
"But we've got to try."
Rated: PG-13
Summary: But I know that we can make it all the way. (For covalent, happy birthday♥)
Disclaimer: Sawada Tsunayoshi, Yamamoto Takeshi © Akira Amano
Title: Rain is falling, looks like Love
They get back to the past with the knowledge that Tsuna will die one day, but his guardians stand behind a back drop of blue, a united silhouette that refuses to let the sky fall down again.
Tsuna stands between the edges of the sunrise, eyebrows furrowed & expression unsure.
"But we've got to try, right?" Yamamoto says, slinging an arm around Tsuna's shoulders. Tsuna thinks of parents, of fathers who are gone. Who will be gone. Lets Yamamoto discard his sorrows with a smile & nods.
This is their second chance.
So the end of high school comes & goes. Tsuna watches his classmates dressed in black & white stand in straight, neat rows, yellow blazers & red ties pressed against their bodies like hands clasped tight. His palms are sweaty when he goes up to get his diploma, looking out at the sea of students from where he is high up on stage.
He can only recognize a handful. There's Hoshi from 3-B, Sakuragi from 3-A, Ohno from 3-D. In one of their final essays, Abe spoke of how he was going to become a professional baseball player after high school, after he finally won his trophy of finely printed black on white paper that tells him he is a year older, not younger. Wiser, but not smarter. Everything he learned to challenge life head on, he wrote, came from his teammates. From what he loved.
Tsuna thinks of his guardians, of Vongola. Of the way dying stilled his heart & helped him to breathe. How he still can't remember the chemical equation for water & the way Yamamoto plays baseball the way he practices with his sword.
In the far off corner of the room, he recognizes the familiar faces of Gokudera, Yamamoto, & Kyoko. None of them are going to university or becoming professional sports athletes.
He cuts his fingers on his diploma, sharp like a knife to his throat.
"Hey, Tsuna! Reborn let me off early today, so I thought we could hang out together, like old times."
Like old times, Yamamoto says, as Tsuna looks up from the papers that need to be read, signed, & sent to places he only knows the name of.
"I can't," Tsuna replies for the tenth time, looks up with eyes still too big to fit the structure of growing up. But Yamamoto can already see lines on his face where there weren't any before, the way Tsuna grips his pen tight in hands covered by leather gloves that haven't come off since their graduation. His eyes are pleading for understanding, but Yamamoto only sees the single white hair growing out of a thatch of brown.
Tsuna winces when Yamamoto reaches over to pull it out, all smiles & sunshine even through the rain. "Don't stress out, okay?" His hand drops to Tsuna's shoulders, lingers for longer than it should.
"Some other time." Tsuna looks down at his hands, eyes glazed over as he tries to take in the words printed on a document about monthly finances. "I promise."
Months later, production on the Japanese Vongola base starts. Tsuna walks through the incomplete hallways, the skeleton of his new home, listening to the rattling of metallic flesh & wooden bones.
He finds Yamamoto observing the construction of his room, helping out the men who are piecing together bolts for joints & nails for teeth. His suit is covered in sawdust, high quality Armani with the buttons of his shirt open.
"Tsuna," he greets when he notices Tsuna by the unfinished doorway, smiles like the sun reflected off water. "Gonna help us do some building?"
Tsuna's memories fly back to the times they sold bananas covered in chocolate together, the times Yamamoto taught him how to make sushi, when they decorated rooms & houses for surprise parties. When he didn't have to say no.
"I can't," he whispers, even as he drops all of the files that he was carrying in a fit of clumsiness, kneeling down without looking at Yamamoto as he gets sawdust on his suit & runs after papers that fly like renegade criminals with nothing to lose. "I can't. I have -- I have a meeting --"
Yamamoto places his hand on top of Tsuna's when they reach for the same document together. His smile is still bright, but his eyes are glazed over. Monthly finances, the title of the paper reads. "I know."
"Thank you," Tsuna says, but he doesn't know for what.
He stands up to leave, leaving behind the corpse of metal fossils in the makings & the sound of a heart beating alone.
Yamamoto stays behind at the base while the other guardians go on assigned missions. His ring camouflages their location as he sits underneath a heavily foliaged tree listening to the rain splash against the ground.
It's a beautiful day.
But Tsuna hasn't come outside in ages, holed up underground the way dinosaurs are after their fates have been sealed. So he sends messages, photographs he takes casually when he has nothing else to do to remind Tsuna of the sky. He delivers them with messenger pigeons that coo too much & drop feathers like Uri sheds hair & switches to swallows because they create less of a mess. Because they're refreshing & new like spring water.
Because Tsuna deserves to be free.
But the threat of Millefiore is more real than they could ever imagine. Tsuna holds his breath as he hears of the death of another Arcobaleno, looks down at the rings adorned on his fingers & feels the chains around them, cool & lifeless against his skin. There are dark circles underneath his eyes & he is so very tired.
"They've got to go," he whispers in the silence as everyone waits for his decision. As protests spring up from all of his guardians.
"But that's what your older self did & --"
"We can't make the same mistake again --"
Tsuna holds up a hand to still the noise. To still his heart a second time even though he's never known the first. He wonders how it feels to sleep forever.
Yamamoto's the first one to speak. "If that's what Tsuna wants, then let's do it." He takes off his ring & throws it onto the table. "We'll make it through with or without them."
Thank you, Tsuna thinks, feeling parts of him tingle back to life, washed away with relief.
There are seven Vongola rings with him when he leaves, X-Gloves burning bright.
Tsuna tries to fall apart when no one is looking because no one would let him otherwise. But he breaks in Yamamoto's arms one day, feverish & lacking both sleep & food as he collapses to the ground.
"Tsuna -- hey, what's wrong? Tsuna, are you okay?"
No, he thinks, as he feels Yamamoto's hands guide him to the floor. As he creates a makeshift pillow out of his newly ironed suit to place underneath Tsuna's head. Yamamoto swims in & out of his vision & Tsuna almost has to laugh, picturing the clear image of rain pouring down onto his face the first time Yamamoto's swallow came into his office. He had to reprint all of his soaked documents.
"I'm dying inside," he says through a parched throat, eyes slipping closed in exhaustion. He can't remember the last time he was free.
"I know," Yamamoto whispers, runs a hand through Tsuna's hair as he feels for a temperature & calls the doctor. "I've always known."
Yes, the message returns when Yamamoto asks if Tsuna would like to go out. He spends two hours & nine minutes worrying about whether Vongola will be okay without him around before he pens in his reply, lets the bird go as he tries to find the casual clothes he used to wear before he became somebody.
& sets himself free for a little while.
He promised, after all.
& it's a good feeling. Better than good, more than great. He walks down lazy streets laughing with Yamamoto even as the clouds fill up the sky with white & grey. They exchange jokes, memories, things they were never able to say within the confines of the steel cage they locked themselves up in.
"Remember when we used to sword fight when we were little?" Yamamoto says, grins bright enough to replace the sun as their fingers touch. "& I swore I'd protect you when you cried every time I hit you. When we sparred & I tried to teach you the essentials for being strong in the only way eight year olds knew how to be."
But Tsuna's eyes widen to the shapes of saucers when he sees it all come crashing down like the colour of the blood red sun at the end of the day.
The hitman is armed with only a knife, sharp against his throat before Yamamoto rips him away, changes his sword into lightning quick silver that cuts through flesh like air. But the man attacks like a renegade criminal with nothing to lose. There's desperation in his face even when he's bleeding, screaming bloody murder & slashing for all that he's worth before Yamamoto cuts him down.
Yamamoto's bleeding too. A nick on his chin that trickles blood out & down his neck, onto his shirt where it stains dark & won't wash out for days later.
"Y-Yamamoto," Tsuna gasps, whispers as he fumbles for his sun box to heal the wound.
It's going to leave a mark. Tsuna knows this. Sees another piece of him crumble & die in this world that was never made for him. For Yamamoto. For two middle school kids who only wanted to play baseball or be somebody worth noticing. But not like this.
"I promised, didn't I," Yamamoto says as Tsuna presses cold fingers to Yamamoto's chin. "To protect you."
But Tsuna can only sink to the floor. Stand at the edges of a man-made sunset that is the drying blood of another mistake.
So maybe parts of Tsuna are dying, are dead & have died with each action he makes. Each death report that he receives a day.
Reborn is dead.
Reborn was the only Arcobaleno left besides Lal. & it's only a matter of time, Tsuna knows this, before Millefiore decides to bring everything else down. Tear his family apart in order to save himself.
He is so very tired.
"I don't know if I can make it," he tells Yamamoto, who holds him close & presses Tsuna's face against the curve of his neck. Tsuna knows this: in order to save everyone, he has to die. "There's no other way."
Yamamoto is quiet before he tightens his hold, determination shaking through his fingertips.
"But we've got to try."