Chapter Text
One second, Tsuna is dying, and watching everyone he loves meet a similar fate–
and the next, he is alive again.
There was no grace in his ending. No peace in knowing that his family would live on. No honor in knowing they had at least won their final battle. Just a flash, a tearing sensation through flesh and bone, and the taste of copper flooding his mouth alongside the grief.
Then silence.
The inferno of the Vongola Tenth heir snuffed out like it was little more than a candle.
And then sounds. Too loud, too shallow, too fast. His lungs convulsed, and he startled awake to the chirping of cicadas. His chest rose and fell against something small and frail. His skin tingled and his limbs felt shrunken.
At first he did not realize what was wrong. His sight skewed, as he squinted at the trembling hands before his face. Short, stubby fingers that were far too soft to belong to his own calloused palm greeted him.
What the hell was going on?
Then it happened again, that overbearing all consuming cosmic pull demanding that he conforms to its WILL.
It was so violently disorienting that his mind fractured at the seams. He felt the push of both existences at once. He was suddenly both seventeen and four, memories colliding like broken glass. His voice was caught between registers, too high-pitched and too deep as he tried to scream.
It was agony.
The days that followed were a pain of the strangest kind. Pain of flesh and self. He moved like a puppet strung together with the wrong wires. His bones felt too light, as though his body might float away, while his mind was far too heavy, crushing against a skull too small to contain it.
Sometimes he swore he could feel his seventeen-year-old body still there beneath the skin of his four year old ones. Long fingers overlapping with short ones, as his adult body tried desperately to expand into a frame too fragile to hold it.
Once, when he glanced at his reflection in the polished floor of the kindergarten classroom, he thought he saw both faces at once. His childlike round cheeks stretched thin by the memory of sharper lines. Eyes wide and innocent but rimmed by the shadows of an experience that should not yet exist.
The lighting shifted, and it didn’t matter which face he saw in his reflection because both of them were suddenly splattered in Gokudero’s blood.
He turned away before nausea overtook him.
Tsuna almost wished that he had killed his younger self in those first few days. Or that his seventeen year old self had just been allowed to just stay dead. It would have been so much easier than living in this patchwork monstrosity of a body. Unmade and remade, an amalgam stitched together across time.
Each step felt like trespassing in his own life, as though he were a ghost haunting his own existence. Neither his seventeen or four year old self were able to assert dominance.
He couldn’t tell if it was the body rejecting them, or them rejecting the body.
When he tried to speak, his voice choked in his throat. His laughter died as it reached his lips. When the other children tried to talk to him, to play, to tug his sleeve and invite him into their games, his gaze just drifted past them. His teachers whispered that something was wrong, that Tsu-kun had suddenly become quiet and strange.
And through it all, Tsuna existed in a fog. He went through the motions of eating, walking, and sleeping, but he was never truly present.
His eyes stared through walls, through faces, through days.
He did not talk unless addressed–did not move unless asked to. And even then it was sluggish,and delayed, as his mind lagged behind reality.
Everyone worried, but none of them could possibly understand.
He shouldn’t exist.
He was dead but still alive.
A horror stitched together by nothing but the sheer force of his dying will
~
It all came to a head one day, a few weeks after his melding, as he had taken to calling the marker of his new existence as not one, but two.
He woke that morning to Nana’s sunny voice calling him from the kitchen. She sang his name through the halls as though nothing in the world could ever go wrong. Tsuna felt a strange feeling of relief from that. She was the one constant the universe had gifted to him. It did not matter if he was four or seventeen, if he was normal or an abomination. She always remained the same oblivious, and unchanged person. The one fixed point in all the chaos.
Hours later a long black limousine rolled up in front of their house. He watched it through the window without blinking. The air felt heavier around him, but he could not force himself to care.
A tall man stepped out of the Limo first. His suit pressed so sharply it caught the light. His smile stretched wide, his laughter spilling out before he even spoke. His voice boomed through the yard, full of false warmth. The tall man swept Tsuna into his arms with theatrical flair, lifting him up, and tossing him high into the air as though he were a toy.
In the past he might have squealed from the action, but today Tsuna's face remained blank. His arms hung loose in the air. His gaze sliding past the man’s too-bright grin.
The tall man faltered, his laugh thinning at the edges. His eyes flicked toward the car, and the shadow of the figure still waiting within. The smile returned quickly, but thinner now. He tossed Tsuna one last time and set him gently on the ground.
Then an old man stepped out.
He smiled as well, the same easy stretch of lips, but there was nothing warm about it. His eyes were cold, so cold that Tsuna felt them pierce straight through his skin like ice. The old man’s movements were slower, each step carrying the deliberate weight of quiet authority. When his hand settled on Tsuna’s head it was deceptively light, like the touch of a grandfather. Yet something in the gesture made Tsuna’s stomach twist, as if he were a small insect pinned beneath a magnifying glass.
The old man and the tall man exchanged a glance. A flicker of shared understanding passed between them, too quick for anyone else to notice. But Tsuna did. He saw the question in the tall man’s eyes, the faint narrowing of lids in the old man’s gaze.
Tsuna offered them nothing. His eyes remained unfocused. His body slack and heavy.
The day dragged on. Tsuna endured the tall man’s endless chatter, and the old man’s quiet scrutiny. Nana, bless her heart, hummed as she served tea, oblivious to the undercurrent of unease in the room.
It was not until after dinner, when the sun had long set and the air had grown heavy with silence, that the two men made their move.
They pulled Tsuna gently but firmly away from Nana’s side, murmuring soft assurances to her as they led him into another room. Cut off from her comforting presence, he was left entirely at their mercy.
The tall man closed the door behind them with a theatrical sweep, while the old man took a deliberate step toward Tsuna.
He smiled again, but his eyes were so cold this time they seemed to almost frost over. His rose his left hand, with one finger extended out towards him.
He raised his left hand, one finger extended. A flame flickered to life at its tip. The flame looked hot, but the sensation he felt when it touched his skin was colder than ice. A sharp, cutting thing that gnawed rather than burned. The flames tried to push inside Tsuna’s skin, and for the first time in months something inside him jolted awake.
Clarity.
The fog shattered.
Two minds, one four years old and one seventeen, slammed together and merged and acted with perfect unity. They looked at each other across the gap of time, and for the first time since the melding they felt the same thing.
No.
No. No no no. Nonononono.
NO.
Tsuna’s chest convulsed as a scream built not inside his throat but in his very soul. Both selves rebelled, child and heir united in absolute rejection. They would not be mutilated again.
A spark of defiance caught, and then blazed to life. Flames erupted inside of him. The fire tearing through him, burning away the chains that had begun to wrap around his soul, and shattering them into nothing. It then spread further, past his skin, exploding outward, in an untamed and furious cry of survival.
Tsuna burned.
Both the tall and old man were thrown back. The outward blast of flames caught them by surprise, lifting them off their feet and hurling them across the room. Their bodies struck the wall with bone-jarring force and crumpled to the floor.
He looked at their prone forms, and for a moment all he saw was his guardian's bodies in their place. The emotions all came flooding back at once, and he trembled with the inability to process them all. Rage mixed with grief. Grief mixed with fear. Fear mixed with the burning desire to scream–
WHY!?
Why them? Why had it all been left to them? They were only kids. Why had all the adults in their lives chosen to burden them? Chosen to be selfish time and time again, and then left Tsuna and his family to be the ones to pay for their sins? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair!
His chest rose and fell with big ragged gasps that turned into sobs. Both his seventeen and four year old self looked around and all they saw was phantom remnants of their loved one’s destroyed and mutilated corpses.
The room smelled of smoke, though nothing burned. His mind was scrambling, flickering constantly between the small frightened boy and the battered child warrior inside. He did not know which one he truly was.
But for the first time since the melding, he did not care.
He felt alive. Alive and unchained.
His eyes flicked to the two bodies slumped unconscious against the wall.
He felt neither guilt nor satisfaction taking in their defeated state. Instead his body was overtaken by a sudden fierce surge of determination. Determination to escape from the horrifying future that awaited him. To finally be free. To run.
So he did.
~
Tsuna ran.
He ran until his legs burned, until his lungs heaved, and he didn’t look back. The only rhythm that mattered was the pounding of his heart in his ears and the voice inside that urged him forward. Faster.
Further.
Away.
Somewhere along the way, the world began to blur. Airports. Cities. Streets. Each one passed in a haze of colors and voices. Adults stopped him constantly, concerned eyes narrowing on a child wandering alone with no guardian in sight. They tried to ask him questions, to lead him somewhere ‘safe’.
However, the moment their eyes met his, their words trailed off. A strange softness entered their faces. Their hands trembled as they bent down to his level, smiles fixed and brittle. They fell over themselves to offer him anything—tickets, food, seats on the next flight. One woman cried as she carried him through a boarding gate without ever asking his name.
Tsuna didn’t think about it. He couldn’t. Thinking meant acknowledging what he was doing, everything he had lost, and he wasn’t ready for that. Instead, he let the current pull him forward, his Sky charisma smoothing the path like invisible hands clearing the road.
The only thing he trusted anymore was his intuition. That tiny little thread in his chest that had guided him through the suffocating box of his first life. It had never failed him yet. Maybe it could keep him from having to be stuffed in that box in the first place this time.
So he blindly followed the thread.
Until at last, he reached it.
At first he didn’t understand why his legs stopped moving. Why his breath hitched in his throat. But then he finally saw it. A house rising from the reclusive hills of Sicily. A Large and elegant cottage isolated from all traces of civilization. Weathered by time yet still standing proud, as if daring the centuries to take it down.
But it wasn’t the house itself that froze him in place.
It was the flames.
They dripped from every corner, invisible to the normal world but blazing like a bonfire in his eyes.
Warmth radiated from every wall of the building, seeping directly into his skin, and sinking furthur into his bones like liquid sunlight. Each step closer felt like shedding a weight he hadn’t known he carried.
Safe.
The word whispered through him with such force he nearly collapsed. Safe. The sensation filled the hollow cage of his chest, a sensation he had almost forgotten was possible. His legs buckled, and he pressed a trembling hand against the gate to steady himself.
Tears fell before he realized he was crying. They streaked down his cheeks unchecked, soaking the fabric of his shirt. The last time he had felt safe was… he couldn’t remember.
Not after the Sky had died.
Not after those endless nights of watching his family be torn from him. Their flames snuffed out one by one.
The Sky was gone. And when it went, it had taken all his safety with it. Leaving him adrift to the endless currents of space.
For a moment he thought of the years in darkness—of being sealed away, shoved into a corner of himself because no one knew what else to do with him. The suffocating weight of that box. The despair of believing he would never see beyond it.
And then, the sudden brilliance of release. The Sun who had dragged him into the light. Harsh and unyielding yes, but also merciful.
The only one willing to throw a lifeline to a boy who had spent over a decade drowning.
Because through that Sun, Tsuna had found the Sky.
His Sky. His family. His Home.
And standing here now, staring up at this strange, flame-drenched house in nowhere Sicily, Tsuna felt it again. That same pulse of belonging. That same whisper of safety.
In a trace, he reached for the doorknob, and was unsurprised to find it open.
He finally sank to his knees inside the threshold. Shoulders trembling as sobs tore free from his chest. Not the sharp, broken sobs of grief, but the raw, more fragile sobs of relief.
For the first time since his rebirth, Tsuna realized he was not lost anymore.
~
The warmth of the house was intoxicating.
Every corner hummed with the quiet pulse of belonging. Tsuna felt it wrap around him like a mother’s embrace, seeping through his skin, filling all the hollow places inside him that had been empty for so long. He staggered only a few steps past the entryway before the pull became too much.
A leather couch stood there, and he collapsed onto it without thought. The cushions caught him, but it was not their softness that pulled him under. It was the flames. The invisible threads of warmth curling against his skin, whispering that he was safe. That no one would hurt him here. That he did not need to run anymore.
His eyes slid shut. For the first time in months, maybe years, he surrendered. He let himself be drunk on comfort, on happiness, on the impossible feeling of home. His breaths slowed, and before long, sleep claimed him.
He did not know how much time had passed before he stirred again.
A shift in the air alerted him a presence was nearby. Tsuna blinked blearily, his lashes wet with the remnants of dreams, and sat up on the couch. His gaze locked onto the figure standing in the doorway.
A tall Italian man in a perfectly pressed black suit. His posture was immaculate, but his face bore tell-tale signs of tiredness.
Just the sight of him broke something in Tsuna.
Tears welled in his eyes again before he could stop them. He didn’t even try. He no longer had the strength to be ashamed of his ‘crybaby’ tendencies. He pushed himself off the couch on shaky legs, stumbling forward with both of his too-small and too-big hands reaching out desperately. His flames surged out along with him.
They were clumsy and raw. Offering not the usual orange calm warmth of protection, but instead the fragile trembling purple sparks of someone who only ever wanted to be free.
A Cloud reached for the Sky.
Reached for comfort.
For home.
Words tangled in his throat. His seventeen-year-old self surged to the surface, relief shuddering through him, and he tried to say the name of the only man who had ever saved him before. The only adult to ever reach his hand out to him.
He tried to say ‘Reborn-sensei.’
The four-year-old in him was simpler and much more confused. He thought of memories he did not understand, tried to piece together all the complicated feelings he now had in his heart, and the only conclusion he could come to was ‘father’. Inwardly he had always ached for one. Is that who this familiar stranger was? Is that why he felt so safe?
His voice cracked as he tried to say ‘Otou-san.’
What came out was neither, a broken fusion that slipped from his lips in a stammered half-plea, half-whine.
“Reborn-otou.”
He collided with the man’s legs before either of them could react. Tsuna buried his face in the pressed black fabric, clutching desperately with his tiny hands. He felt the man jerk in surprise, stiff, shocked—so shocked that he did not move to stop him. Instead, his balance broke, and they tumbled backward together. Reborn’s body cushioned the fall, his arms half-raised in reflex, as if he had not yet decided what to do.
Tsuna lifted his head, just enough to look up. He saw naked bewilderment in those sharp black eyes.
Reborn was the type of man to closely guard his expressions. Tsuna thought about how strange this reaction was. Then he realized that Reborn might not even know yet that he had Sky flames.
Tsuna knew, though. He could feel them as clearly as his own. The light of harmony burned quietly within this man, steady and familiar like the beating of his own heart. It was because Tsuna had lived so long in the dark that he could recognize the Sky so easily now.
Both in himself and in others.
He shifted closer, his small body pressing tight against Reborn’s chest, his cloud flames curling outward to mingle desperately with the warm Sky that steadied him. His sobs finally started to subside.
Tsuna burrowed closer still, his tear stains dampening the pristine black suit underneath him. His heart syncing to the steady thrum of his Sky at his side.
He was finally Home.