For Byakuran, the world was a book. A well-read one, but not a book you open again and again to discover new sides and angles, new perspectives and old secrets. Rather, the type you pick up because it's comforting, familiar, and there is nothing better anyway.
Lounging on a cushioned sofa as white as everything else in the room, Byakuran frowned at the marshmallow between his fingers. Kikyo would be annoyed with him if he went through all their stocks of marshmallows in a single day yet again. which was the perfect reason to cheerfully finish off the last packet.
"Bya-nii!" Bluebell's sweet voice signalled her presence before the girl burst through the doors, leaving wet footprints on the plush white carpet. She latched onto him and pouted into his stomach.
"You should come when you don't smell like sea-weed, dear." Byakuran patted the head of his 'little sister'. "Went out for a bath in the sea?"
"She dumped me."
"Well, I've been telling you it won't work out between the two of you. You're the sister of the man who murdered everyone she loved, after all."
Byakuran rubbed Bluebell's shoulder consolingly. Honestly, he didn't understand why Yuni had to be so difficult about some things.
Bluebell shook her wet hair and glowered.
"Not like this, dummy. She dumped me into the water, nyu. We quarrelled, and she pushed me. This hasn't ever happened before!" Bluebell intertwined her cold, slightly scaly fingers with Byakuran's warm ones and looked down. Mumbling, she added, "What if there is something wrong with her? Are you sure that tea you're feeding Yu-chan is... safe?"
Byakuran sighed.
Everything would have been so much easier if people had less morals. Even his closest and dearest ones fell prey to this fate.
Touching Bluebell's cheek gently, Byakuran said, "Safe or not, without that tea you wouldn't have Yuni-chan at all."
Bluebell bit her lip to stop it from trembling.
"But this way, I have to wonder whether it's really Yu-chan I'm with or someone I've made up myself."
Smiling, Byakuran told her a joke to keep her mind off such useless things, and then chattered a mile a minute, switching to more interesting topics. Scruples were so boring, and he was already bored by so many things he wondered how he functioned. Probably out of pure spite. People would be much happier with him gone.
Yuni was a disappointment.
After Byakuran's country of Gesso crushed the Vongola Empire and created the Millefiore Empire, his first action was to secure the family of the Giglio Nero prophets. The mother was too strong to be contained by his magic, which was the reason Byakuran killed her along with everyone who protected the prophetess. He drugged her daughter Yuni, keeping her at hand just in case, but she didn't See what he needed her to, so Byakuran easily discarded the girl.
She was lucky Bluebell took interest in her.
In a world where everything was a book, there was just one page torn out. A single page Byakuran didn't know the contents of.
That 'page' was an old story, almost a myth. It told about a group of mystical ancient dragons controlling the keystones of the world.
The Arcobaleno.
Byakuran desired that page more than he had ever desired life.
"And what are you doing here?" Byakuran purred into the ear of an unfamiliar figure in the royal library.
"HIEEE!"
The figure - it was a young man, almost a boy, no matter how high-pitched his scream - shuddered and stumbled away from the White Emperor. He managed to bump into two oak desks and almost bash his head into a bookshelf.
Quite a bemusing reaction. Usually people just bowed, threw their money at him, and fled the country.
The boy rubbed his head. He was a cute little thing, all scrawny knees and brown doe eyes and fluffy hair Byakuran longed to brush. The oversized robe hanging off his frame only emphasised his small stature. It had seen better days. Several necklaces of golden beads festooned his neck, so thin Byakuran could snap it with one hand, and they rattled every time the boy moved. Very bad for stealth.
He might have even been interested in romancing the boy, had Byakuran not known how those things unfold. Boring, like everything else.
"Scared of me?" he asked with his usual smile. The boy looked to the side before taking a deep breath and looking right into Byakuran's eyes, a feat unheard of even among Byakuran's most loyal servants.
His heart skipped a beat.
"I know the things you've done, Your Highness," the boy - who looked too young to be there - said in an endearingly direct way even though his shoulders trembled. "But I'm not scared."
"How delightfully suicidal."
Byakuran swept past the boy to drop into a chair, furrowing his eyebrows at the fact that it was gilded with gold. Why gold? He had told them he only welcomed silver.
"Now, who are you? I haven't seen you here before. And where is Mammon. It's not like them to eschew their duties."
Mammon was the Keeper of the Books and the one in charge of the special archive that contained precious information on such things as the world before Byakuran's reign as well as the legends of the old - The Seven Arcobaleno Dragons.
"I'm Tsuna," the boy told him. When he wasn't shrieking, he had a soft, soothing voice. Byakuran wouldn't mind listening to this boy lecturing him in Kikyo's stead. "Master Mammon took me in and told me to help clean everything up." Tsuna scratched his cheek. "They... aren't fond of that."
"Well, they weren't hired for their cleaning skills."
Byakuran took a nearby book in hand. Indeed, it wasn't dusty - a rare event in Mammon's library. They were lucky they were incredibly knowledgeable about languages as well as had a gift of repairing frail pages and charred tomes. Then again, Byakuran might still get rid of them in the future. To spice things up.
"Th-this is my first day," Tsuna spoke up nervously, unable to bear the silence. He fiddled with the beads on his chest. "Everything is fine, right? I haven't done anything wrong, right? Master Mammon is... very easily irritated." He added under his breath, "At least they don't shoot me with a musket."
Byakuran let Tsuna's ramblings wash over him.
He didn't remember hearing about Mammon taking anyone in - they were not the charitable kind - but to be fair he generally skipped reading reports because he could guess everything written in them, both complaints and praise. He left such mundane things to Kikyo and Zakuro.
This was a minor surprise, but even small surprises were the reason Byakuran made it that far.
He returned the next day.
He returned yet again, with Mammon nowhere to be found all the while.
Byakuran would have liked to torture them a bit for lazing about in their work hours, but when Tsuna greeted him with a shy grin and a wave of his feather duster before falling off a step-ladder, he laughed and found himself actually grateful.
"Ouch." Tsuna jumped to his feet, wincing when his movement pushed the step-ladder to the ground with a loud clatter. He ignored it and braved on, "P-please don't punish Master Mammon for not being here. I tried to rope them into helping. They escaped."
"Probably drinking fairy-dust essence with that meditation master from the Oriental District."
"Actually, no. Really, no. Master Mammon hates Fon-san. I think they teamed up with Skull to go bother Master Magician Verde."
"Skull? Ah, the messenger from Carcassa."
Tsuna hummed, leaning down to right the step-ladder. Byakuran appreciated the view of the round behind. Such a shame the boy insisted on those horrid clothes. Honestly, even if you have no money, just go and steal it!
He should send some underlings out for a present. Even Byakuran hardly ever managed to shove Torikabuto out of his tower, but Daisy would appreciate a work-out. He should send him somewhere remote though - Daisy had interesting hobbies like carrying around a bunch of torture tools and trying them out on citizens to see if he met anyone as immortal as him, and people were oddly judgemental of that pastime.
"Your neck is very lovely," Byakuran whispered in Tsuna's ear, enjoying the poor boy's blush. He trailed his finger down the his Adam's apple before wrapping his hands around it.
"Thank you, but, um." Tsuna pushed Byakuran's hand down firmly. He righted his jiggling necklaces, this time with charms on them - a present from Byakuran. "I'd like to keep it."
"Tsu-chan, don't be a meanie. Of course I'll let you keep your neck, I don't want to snap it or cut it off. Just... strangle it a little."
"Hiee!" Blushing to the roots, Tsuna coughed into his fist. "That's... No. Not my fetish. But..." His voice lowered. Byakuran leaned in even deeper to hear it, inhaling the scent of dust, honey, and musket powder. "But I may not be opposed to trying out something else."
With that he used a burst of magic to blast Byakuran out of the library.
Rubbing the back of his head, the Emperor laughed. He hadn't expected little sweet Tsuna to have magic.
Byakuran found out that Tsuna was bullied by some of the other servants in the castle.
He was pleased.
After all, how else would he find an opportunity to show his Tsu-chan just how much he treasured him?
He gathered the bullies and their families and executed them in the most brutal ways possible, aided by the imagination of the torture masters Lal Mirch and Colonello. By the end of it, even Bluebell trembled, clutching Yuni's hand and shielding Yuni's eyes from the gruesome sight - sparing her lover in the only ways she could afford to.
Tsu-chan watched the proceedings solemnly. Unlike Byakuran or Daisy, he didn't laugh a single time. His eyes glowed strangely orange, and Byakuran didn't hold himself back from kissing his sweetheart on the eyelids once the show was regrettably over.
"You didn't find it cruel? Their death?"
Byakuran caressed Tsuna's lower lip with a curious thumb. It was soft, like a petal of a toxic flower.
His Tsuna grasped Byakuran's hand, the one adorned with the rings both his own and those of fallen enemies'. The boy's fingers lingered on the Vongola ring.
"Perhaps I did. But it was also necessary."
In Tsu-chan's eyes Byakuran read mourning but not regret.
It was then that Byakuran decided that he loved him.
"So, you didn't change your mind, kora?" Colonello asked him. His eyes showed he would respect any decision Tsuna made, but the spherical Dragon Amulet on his chest shone bright blue, anticipating blood-bath.
Tsuna glanced down at his hands. Noticing their trembling, he curled them into fists - even though Reborn pretended to just sun himself on the stones, he was watching, and his teacher would release a stream of scorching fire any second to 'help Tsuna deal with stress'.
"No, I didn't. Why would you think so?"
"That's pretty obvious, Tsu," Skull chimed in. Unlike half of them, who took on their dragon forms since their secret meeting place allowed them to let loose, he remained a human. He was the biggest dragon, after all. Besides, he would get an opportunity to fly freely soon. "You've been getting quite chummy with that albino bastard."
Viper, a beautiful indigo dragon happy to shed their Master Mammon disguise, huffed out fumes of black mist. Their equivalent of pursing lips.
"Mou, I didn't lose so much money by playing translator just for it to end up useless."
"There are things more important than money," Fon preached, still sounding calm and peaceful even as a long red dragon twining around trees. "Self-discovery, for one."
"Thank you, Fon, but I think I've discovered enough about myself to want to bring down the man who has made my people suffer for so long," Tsuna said.
On his neck, his amulet glowed, the orange gold of his eyes not concealed by the magic of the beaded necklaces he wore in the human form. The power inside the little sphere was ancient and beautiful, reminding Tsuna of times long past, when he founded the Vongola Empire with Giotto. Giotto then became the First Emperor, while Tsuna kept his identity concealed - he was the leader of the immortal Arcobaleno dragons and what would he do if he broadcasted who he was to everyone he met?
Lal Mirch wrapped the end of her navy blue spiked tail around Tsuna, while Verde abandoned his heap of research papers to make the tea he awkwardly presented to his boss.
Tsuna smiled at all of them.
A pity that the human whose company brought him so much enjoyment had been twisted before they even met, but Tsuna would never be alone.
Tomorrow they would be sieging the castle, freeing Yuni (who told him she wanted to bring a tagalong, and Tsuna didn't mind - he always listened to his friends' requests), and Tsuna would see Byakuran one last time. He wondered what expression the man would make.
Tsuna's heart ached briefly, but he had seen a lot of death, some caused by Byakuran himself.
Some things were cruel but so necessary.
- It was supposed to be 500-word fluff T_T
- I'll leave it to you to decide whether Byakuran manages to convince Tsuna to let him live and stay together when they meet next.
- This was for the Sky Day: Dragon AU / Royalty AU.
- Also, no, I haven't abandoned my Harry Potter fics. I wanted to update The Librarian today, in fact, but it will probably be postponed until after the Rare Pair Week.
- Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!