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For Whom the Bell Tolls
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Hopeless Desires
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Summary: And even though she's twenty four and past it all, she can't help but hear it still. Tsuna, church bells, and death. (But they don't know so it's okay.)
Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn! belongs to Akira Amano. The plot and this new Tsuna personality is mine. Dialouge and character interaction, along with any ideas are mine. The quotes with –(name here) belong to the (name here). If they have no name, they're mine (Tsuna's thoughts/dialogue).
General Warnings: Alternate Universe: gender bender, different personalities, a different take on certain events, dark themes, Smart! Tsuna. Mature! Tsuna. Pyromaniac! Tsuna. Character Death (it's a reincarnation fic. No, scratch that, this is a Hopeless Desires fic. Beware.) Tsuna's childhood is Warped!. And finally, Female! Tsuna, Cross Dresser! Tsuna. Cursing.
Rating: Mature Children.
Notes: TSUNA! After watching Tsuna fight like a bad I got jealous. And besides, I wanted to see how I'd take writing more than 150 chapters filled with useless episodes.
Pairings: Harem, because this is Tsuna. But, Tsuna's the seme/seke (Seme plus uke) so: 2718, 2769, 1827, 6927, 2726, 2700, R27, 27R, slight X 27 and D27. Really just fluff G27. Actually, whatever you vote on my future poll.
. . .
And the fever began to spread
From my heart down to my legs
But the room was so quiet oh
And although I wasn't losing my mind
It was a chorus so sublime
But the room is too quiet (Oh, the fever)
I was looking for a breath of life
A little touch of heavenly light
But all the choirs in my head sang "no"
To get a dream of life again
A little of vision of the start and the end
But all the choirs in my head sang "no".
Florence.
…
Chapter One
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The funny thing about Noah is that's she's dying, that she's been dying for a while now and nobody's really said anything about it.
She isn't dying like everybody does. Or maybe not like the people in the movies, because she has a feeling she isn't the only one in the asylum who's dying.
Her death isn't monumental. There aren't any slow drifting piano keys drifting through her death, and there aren't any crying, screaming family members. There are no tears at all.
She's dying a death that has never been acknowledged. This kind of death is a slow disease, it takes over your mind and your life becomes a consistent routine, your mind never thinks anymore because what is there to think? It's always white walls, white clothes, the patient's eyes, food, silence, the nurse's needles, the doctors with their pity.
When you're an insane criminal, your life is a word inscribed on paper.
And they just don't understand that she isn't a criminal. She isn't insane, she just likes fire.
And really, all this white and this cage she's stuck in, it just makes her more determined. She just wants to see the flames that burned down her house and her father.
(Alcoholism is a bad habit when you have a pyromaniac daughter who hates your guts.)
Just please, please let it be anything but white.
White is hated around here. Black is loved when it finally comes, seeping into their visions so that never again shall white be their life.
(White. Isn't white supposed to be pretty, clean, and pure?)
What's the month? Is what she thinks when the nurse places her hand on the door, ready to open it and wake her up, which isn't needed, as her internal clock will just not. Let. Her. Sleep.
Sleep, at first, was enjoyable; digging up memories to help her survive the white. But it's been years and these memories are almost entirely faded and she doesn't know real from crafted and it just makes her more sad when she wakes up, the outside world will always be behind a window for her, so why dream?
There's another thing about her dying. Time holds no meaning. It's not day month year birthday Halloween it's fast forward fast forward fast fucking forward. It's always going to be whitewhitewhitewhite, crazed children, threatens from murderers she's known for years, food, silence, the nurse's needles, the doctor's fucking opinions, the patient's not so much fading as already faded eyes.
Her eyes.
(She likes cursing. Not so pure. Not pure at all.)
When you're dying like Noah is, time doesn't mean words; time means time in its essence. It means more of the gnawing pain in her insides, the feeling that her organs are bursting, her mind is breaking (tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tcik tcok tick toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-).
Noah's feeling it, now. She's feeling the dying and it's all she feels. Right now, in her white bed under the white wall, inside the white room with nothing she can use as a weapon, and certainly no flames (which have led her here, and she's starting to hate fire) she has the crawling suspicion that it isn't her organs failing, her body isn't dying, it's her mind that's fading, her hope that's dying.
She has to do this. Luring truths and trust from the nurses, doctors and other patients (who're so much harder to manipulate) just so she can break these bastards. Because that's the only time she truly understands what it is like to be human and understand the emotions, besides the part of breaking and post it. It's the only time she has something to do.
When her nurse (Amelia, her mind supplies helpfully, when she stares too long at her thinking of the name she will attach to the ending of the greeting that is the beginning) smiles at her, all caution gone (stupid nurse, can you not see what she is attempting) after Noah has tied strings of words around her and 'befriended' her, Amelia leans forward for a hug and all the while, Noah's eyes are stuck on her slender neck.
She has the sudden thought of killing her.
Strangle her, steal her breath. Maybe then she would get the death penalty. Maybe then she will finally feel like she has a part in this bad-guy good-guy world, instead of blending effortlessly with the borders of monotony and grey, disappearing in a world where no one cares for those like her.
(She will be the bad-cop, because you don't get away with burning your dad and house down and strangling a young woman. Unless you're 'insane'.
So she will forever stay in the borders of monotony, it seems.)
And so she smiles at Amelia, like she means it, and wakes up.
And it's fast forward fast forward fast forward.
It's not until later, when she's in the bathroom because her smile is a bit hard to keep real any more, that she takes a good look at herself, at the shadows under her eyes and the blank resignation in her blue eyes, and she smiles at herself like she wants to (because not even her reflection shall be spared) like she means to, and she flicks her finger across the cigarette lighter, pretends flames come out and dance through the air in passion and liveliness she wishes she was, pretends that the imaginary jeans she is readjusting are real, and combs through her hair like she isn't going to come out to wary eyes and people she has twisted beyond their wills, people who will never realize how much she lied.
She's a liar.
It's not so bad, she mouths, and she must have breathed too hard because out comes a breathy whisper "it's not too bad" and she sounds desperate.
It's not so bad.
. . .
Snow.
Noah doesn't like to describe things; she doesn't like to see either, just takes it all in stride and fast forward.
But…
It's snowing.
She's peering out the doors of the asylum. No one's realized that Noah isn't in the library (probably because they'd long grown accustomed to her spending hours in there alone. They don't know that she's already finished anything worthy of reading in there and thus spent most of her time exercising and thinking about thinking.)
She doesn't dare pass through the doors. Snow is white. The entire world was white, minus the sky, and so she keeps her eyes on the sky and doesn't look down.
(It feels cold. It feels good to feel.)
Slowly, heart thundering, she moves her gaze to the snowy landscape. It's a bit bearable.
She lets go of the door.
(She lets go of whatever holds her down. It's time to become one with the white, and soon the beautiful black.)
She doesn't want to do this, she thinks as she walks forward. But she has to get away. Life was much better when her father abused her. At least she felt and understood what it was like to be human.
She wants to be human.
She stops when she's far from view and stares down, down her white gown, at the infinite sterile white ground that isn't that different than the asylum's walls, really, other than the feeling of free will.
She blends in with the pure white snow around her, with her white gown and pasty skin. She wonders if anyone can see her in the after math of the blizzard, a little girl who is not so much as dying as already dead (except literally.)
She doesn't like that.
She's going to show them she has a will of her own, that they can't control her, and soon, after she finishes watching to blizzard, she will go in with a genuine smile on her face.
(If she doesn't survive the end of the blizzard, she will die. And the thought doesn't really bother her.)
She scurries under a tree no one really tends to and wraps her arms around her knees and hopes they won't find her until its too late.
(She doesn't want to do this.)
She breathes softly, her hands are already numb.
Soon.
She almost cries.
Time passes – fast forward fast forward I don't want this.
Noah sinks into the cold and her heat has disappeared, her frozen ears keep her rooted in place, and that's when she starts crying.
"I-it's okay. It's okay to let go now," she trembles and her cheeks are freezing, the tears feel like fire ripping through her cheeks, and she reassures herself blindly. "It's okay. Let it go. Let go. L-let—"she can't move her mouth.
Noah's freezing.
But she wants to say it – "I never killed my father. He was in t-the yakuza and he had d-deals at the h-h-ouse," she shudders to whoever's hearing because she's not a criminal and he deserves it, "a-and (snot, sniffle) I d-didn't want him to ruin more lives. N-no more."
But she never knew he was in there. Honest.
Her head is pounding, her eyes are tearing up and the tears hurt and she just wants it to end, she hears the snow crunching when her hand falls slowly to the ground, and far away she thinks maybe it's best to put her hands under her arm pits. So she does.
An hour passes. At one point, a stray thought says she should start being scared, but fear is a concept that floats somewhere beyond her immediate reach, like that numb hand lying naked in the snow. She wants to look in longing at the door to the asylum but her body doesn't agree with her.
It…
It's warm.
She feels alcohol breath on her cheeks, warming her, her father's voice is near, yelling something she still doesn't understand, years after, and subconsciously she grits her teeth for the blow.
Nothing; no pain.
She squints at the flames dancing near her in a stove and she sighs.
It feels good.
Her mother's voice inches its way to her, and she hears her sigh too, like she's feeling what she's feeling. She wraps her arms around Noah's neck and it feels threatening, somehow, but also comforting.
The fire drifts away from its home and comes to her, and she's smiling at it. It envelops her in a sudden searing heat and she's on fire.
(Somewhere in the back of her head, she knows what will happen next.)
She claws off her white gown and flings it away.
But then, in a final moment of clarity, she realizes that there is no stove, no abusive father, and no mother. She's lying alone in the bitter cold, in her under wear, freezing to death. Right now she's simply a fragile organism whose range is restricted to a narrow sunlit band that girds the earth at the equator.
She's dying because she ventured from her hell.
Her vision is turning black at the edges, and it's funny but she feels sort of safe. Sort of relieved.
Sort of sad and fake.
She could always control fire, but the snow was big and it was, she supposed, a flame, and she couldn't control it.
Noah dies literally watching the world freeze along with her, but she's died long ago and it doesn't matter anymore.
Sacred to
Noah King
Given to us on the day of June ten, 2001
Fell asleep on June ten 2014.
An unfortunate lovely child
Happy in the embrace of God
She's been here for a long time. In some kind of warm, nice, cozy, boring hole.
Was this heaven?
(Or maybe hell?)
Being here for so long has offered her a lot of opportunities to think, and she'd really like a second chance. She'd ride a roller coaster, become a super hero (like one of these anime characters they put on in the media room at the asylum. She likes the Tsuna-dude one) and become inhumanely strong. She'd be awesome and travel all around the world and see the aurora and go cloud watching and sky dive and scuba dive and go to space—
She'd leave nothing.
It would be so fun.
Until came the day when the hole tightened around her and out she went—
Only to get her butt slapped.
And she couldn't breathe, for a few seconds, and the fear of dying once again (because obviously she was just reborn and God was nice, actually. Really nice.) overcame her and she started crying and the stupid jerks were relieved.
Of course, the rest of the day was traumatizing and now let's go to the present.
. . .
"Tsuna," the woman above her cooed for the maybe sixty-something time, "tou-san will be home soon. He's a bit busy, because he's an important man, you know, but he'll be home soon. I'm sure. I…"she drifted off in a sad whisper and gazed at the door. Heartbreaking.
Noah tried to nod sagely back at her.
The woman smiled once again and started cooing.
The woman, AKA her mother, had shiny long brown hair with long bangs framing her childish face and pretty wide honey brown eyes.
Noah had the strange urge to put the brown strands in her mouth.
Honestly, she had no idea what was going, other than Tsuna was probably either 'agoo' in another language or her name. And despite being formerly a kid somewhere between eleven and thirteen, being reincarnated as a baby still affected her.
But the most awesome thing were the flames that surrounded her, drifting through space either gracefully, like the rare purple one did, or erratically, like the bright yellow one (that hurt her eyes) did, or the green ones that bounced around, hitting everything.
Her mom had awesome indigo flames that wrapped around her protectively, only highlighting her, like almost all the rest except for a few men and women in black.
Noah felt the uncontrollable urge to sleep in her mother's arms. It felt strange and warm, and Noah was happy.
Her mom trained her hopeful eyes on the door.
Notes: Um. Yeah. I'm trying to brush up on my realistic/angst/tragedy writing. Later on it will be humor, promise.
Well, not really.
It's a kind of concept I wanted to try. A pyromaniac reincarnated as Tsuna? In KHR? I guarantee you she'll find a way to unlock her dying will flame by the time she's eleven or something.
Ugh, the ending is rushed because I'm so. Tired. Dattebayo. It's midnight here and I WILL DEFINETLY EDIT THIS. AND IT'S SO SHORT.
FAQ:
- Is Tsuna a girl?
Yeah. Don't worry, for those who hate the typical Weak Female!Tsuna fics. This fem!tsuna is going to cross dress for reasons I cannot fathom and no one will realize she's a girl until, like, the end of the fanfic. So welcome, yaoi fans!
- How old is Noah when she dies?
The sad thing is that she doesn't know. But I know. She dies exactly on her birthday, the day she turns thirteen.
- Will this be an alternate universe?
Female! Tsuna. Smart! Tsuna. So yes, it is an AU. Or a parallel world.
- How exactly did Noah die?
Well, hypothermia. At first it was kind of like liberation, show she has free will-thing-dare-whatchamacallit, but she realized she might die and she kind of wanted to so indirect suicide, too?
- Why is there that stove scene thing where Noah strips naked?
When you get hypothermia, at some point you shed your clothes because your body generates (Way too late) body heat that's incredibly hot. Doctor's theorized that the victims hallucinated that they were on fire.
- Hacker Tsuna?
That's way overused! Nah, my Tsuna will be way different :) /Kakashi smile
- Evil Iemitsu?
Not really, but in Tsuna's point of view? I suppose so.
- HIBATSU? Will Tsuna befriend Hibari?
No spoilers, even if its just saying that you're wrong or right.
Question Time!
Have any of you felt the dying Noah felt? If so, do you still feel it?