. . .Heroes Die. . .
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a Self Insert. It isn't exactly a reincarnation fic, but you won't get it till the next chapter.
Noa was reincarnated into Tsuna because of an accident in which he died. Noa died at the same time, she had the same flame, the most similar personality (at least with his TYL version) and the same charm. The only difference are some defining traits and their ways of interacting. Their core is practically the same.
Does that make sense? Summarized: OC and Tsuna are similar, Tsuna wouldn't have been able to move the story to the point of AU I wanted, neither would TYL!Tsuna have caused what Noa would.
Thank you.
Edit: ch01 has been edited.
editedit: ch01 has been edited once again. The scene below was deleted and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T MENTION IT UNLESS IT'S THROUGH PM because it's a spoiler, capice?
Author: Hopeless Desires
Summary: "Dear god, you really are doing a funny on me!" Not only does she have to deal with completely different genitals, using the bathroom with close eyes, and deaths that weren't canon: the sudden appearance of two supposed villains, oh, nearly half a decade before the canon timeline was ripping her a new one. Ahead are uncharted territories. Or: In which being a good guy ultimately means a bad end.
Rating: Mature children and mature adults.
Possible Pairings: Depends on the votes. Until then, gen. And hints to 27All.
Warnings: time travel, parallel worlds, alternate universes, psychology, NOT A SELF INSERT, sort of reincarnation fic, angst, mature themes, cursing, a realistic take on Katekyo Hitman Reborn, character death, sort of villain!Main character, twisted thoughts, a warped take on the childhood of some canon characters, character death, and generally just trigger happy. Plus COMPLETELY AU. Well, not completely but it might as well be so. I waxed poetics in this angsty chapter, as it was a try on a new style of writing. Two words. Epic fail.
Notes: I wanted to write a story through the eyes of a hero terrified of human attachements, and who tries to be a hero but sort of fails...in a way you wouldnt be capable of guessing. After that, s/he'll have to reap the consquences of his failure. Bear with the first chapter, please, it's unbetaed and angsty because it's death.This, readers, is the tale of Tsunayoshi Sawada, but it's not Tsunayoshi Sawada.
Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.
-H. Jackson Brown JR.
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arc one : reincarnation
chapter one : stop holding me down and let me go
Concept, noun: An idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct.
Concept, verb: Informal. To develop a concept of; conceive
What is the concept of life?
Happiness and beauty.
Is it really—
What is the concept of death?
The end.
Is it really—
Morality?
Good and bad.
Is it really a—
Mortality?
Death.
-any wonder—
Can she really answer these questions? She has an edge on the rest of people (she has lived, she has died, she has learned morality, has seen her mortality) but can she really?
Really?
Life is survival. It is not joy. It is beautiful. It is short and a liar.
Death is what you believe it is. You never know, till you see, till you finally believe.
Is it really any wonder—
It can be a blank with wall. It can be game over (the end the end the end). It can be a door to another life.
Do you want another life?
More lies.
Morality is taught to us. Morality is brainwashed in us from a young age, in other words it is indoctrination. It's a way for society to secure the ability for us to be hesitating before death, greatly reducing murders; it works amazingly well on young minds that have yet to form their own individual opinions.
(If they indoctrinate morals, what else do they brainwash us into?)
Morality is what those who teach us to believe, Are morals really important? After all, they are only things we made up. Things we believe in.
There is a lie in believe.
Morals are only a setback. There is no use for morality other than a decrease in mortality.
Is it—
Mortality is the realization that you are human, that you are nothing but a body surviving on food and other needs. How weak you are, how easily killed you are, how similar you are to other animals.
Snuff out the flame.
Memento Mori.
-don't forget-
Is life really equivalent to a flame?
What is preciousness? If you think about it, everything (happiness, joy, you must not kill, death, morals, society, beauty, love, life, lies) are all thought up by humans. They all have no values. But thinking makes it all thought up.
Thinking makes it humane.
(What is humane?)
Do I really know?
Do I understand?
Is it really any wonder—
Only survival has been here since the beginning. Survival and instincts. And when the time comes, only survival will be what you think.
Survive.
Ba-thump
Ba-thump
Ba-thump
All we think has destroyed us somehow (girls committing suicides
beauty
beauty
old people realizing they aren't really old
seventy?
how old
they've already lived life
lies
lies
nobody wants to die)
Ba-thump
Ba-thump
Society is merely a set pattern of mutually accepted rules. Not laws, merely, but the dictates of manners for all functions public and private. Of course, the rules are accepted because it is ingrained into us from a young age, and then there is no other way for us but what society does.
Is it really any wonder I—
.
.
.
She's only a scrawny genius and lately nobody seems to care she's first in all the subjects, or that the teachers are starting a gifted children program just for her and her brother, which is a shame because it's her only way to garner her mother's attention.
(Screaming at children over their grades, especially to the point of the child's tears, is child abuse, pure and simple. It's not funny and it's not good parenting. It is a crushing, scarring, disastrous experience for the child. It isn't the least bit funny. Ben Stein.
Hn.
She likes the quote's honesty. She'd like to say it one day, but for now she lets it roll over her tongue.)
She's home alone (like usual) and there's only her brother for company. Her brother is great company, his intellect matches hers (almost) but he is always solving puzzles and creating beautiful cities with blocks and puppets, sometimes sock puppet, sometimes chibi dolls. He handles them with excellent care, handling them carefully, building them perfectly, gently smiling at them (he never smiles much at anyone, except sometimes at her, but it's fading and fading and one day it won't be there) and everyone stops when he smiles, stare with fascination at his skillful hands, shivers at his smile, and think he'd be a great father, a talented engineer, a prodigy, a not so bad person to have in a broken society.
But she doesn't think that, and she thinks of them as fools and it almost leaves her mouth: the truth, but it rolls over her mouth (so painful and alluring and just let her say it already) and she ends up staying silent.
(They never see how these beautiful detailed cities he builds get torn every single night, because of aliens and robots and a small Ken doll, don't see how all the inhabitants die, all of them, even the mother doll.
She doesn't care that the father doll, with his sneaky eyes and cold smile, is always torn apart, body part by body part. He will always be there the next day, for both of their sick fascination.
The two broken Barbie dolls do survive though, and she doesn't know if she should be happy or not.)
Sometimes, sometimes, she wonders if she might be sick.
Usually, she has to sit down at those moments.
Her brother, she discovers, is a liar. He watches anime, sometimes, at night, instead of watching the news. She goes away when he watches them, maybe because of his face.
(And maybe it's because of the images and emotions in animes. They have always, always, given her hope.
Hope is bad
Hope makes you believe
And in the end you're crushed
Hope is delusional
She has always envied these main characters, some of which are Tsunayoshi Sawada and Mikan Sakura and so many more.
She is not delusional.)
Still, she'd like to talk to her mother. Her brother doesn't care anymore, he just immerses himself in his toys, and it has been long, but she remembers the days spent (mother, children, together) at the beach when Nate and her asked (so many questions) their mother (no answers) questions best unanswered.
But that was long ago. Maybe when she was six (five? Four? It all seems the same to her) shortly after her father (biologically) left and before her mother was promoted to Police Chief.
She finishes her homework, and her eyes skim over the textbooks on the table.
What's the point of reading these textbooks (again and again and again) when she knows (so alone, she's read all her novels, nobody is there to take her to the library) what they say?
(She can go by herself, certainly, but she likes to clutch stubbornly on the sentimentality of going to library again with her mother. Perhaps it would signify a new beginning? Hope?
Hope?
She has never believed in sentimentality, but hopes are what keep her going.
Or perhaps its survival?)
But hope is bad, right?
Soon, she just stops thinking. She goes to the library again and doesn't think, doesn't wonder; because that's the wise thing. Thinking is too painful nowadays.
(Her life has fallen into a routine, a routine her brother is used to because he's learned from long ago to give up hope.
(but he's a liar he watches anime and she's a liar she reads fictional books)
It hurts too much when it is finally crushed.
It's always crushed.
I.
It's been a year.
Her mother hasn't sat with them for more than one hour a day.
She's given up hope, so it's completely unsurprising when her mother comes in and claims she has a holiday and they should all sit down and talk.
Talk.
Really? She thinks she can come in and enter their lives, patched up by yours truly and held together by fragile strings, lives she damaged, like she's done nothing and belongs there?
Like she is actually their mother?
One year has passed, she has grown up, she knows she has to let go a bit, let it go a little, because how can she expect to grow when she wants to break? She wants to let go, but she—
This mother of hers—
She hates lies; she has seen what they do, and her mother is the epitome of the definition of lie. She wants to tell her mother exactly what she is, wants to tell her the truth, even if her mother obviously doesn't want to know. Her mother has put up this perfected tough-shit image, and her mother obviously realizes, however unconsciously, what she has done, but she continues to lie to herself, to all of them, continues to pop up once in a few years in a home that isn't hers and pretends nothing, absolutely nothing is wrong.
Oh, how she wants to shatter her illusionary reality, how she wants to break her mind and beat her—
Pause.
She glares at her mother's smiling face with stinging unbelieving eyes and a parched throat, her nails are digging in her palms, and she makes these hysterical noises that sound quite similar to crying.
Who does she think she is?
Let me go, she thinks, stop holding me under you – let me go.
Because even now she still remembers what hope feels like, and even now her mother is the greatest actress.
Her mother smiles her wicked abusive smile, and it slips her lips -
"You bitch, you worthless, no-good fallacy of a mom."
It hurts. This lying. Because if her mother is the living breathing epitome of a lie, she is a living breathing lie, born from a mentally abusive mother and a criminal father. All she says is a lie, her life is a lie based on hopes and illusion. She's a lie too, and she deserves to be broken too.
It's only fair.
"I hate you."
I.
Everything is going by so fast.
She was sitting in her class, her teacher asked her to get something (what is it? Why can't she remember?) from the supplies closet at the back of the room.
She peered up at the darned thing which towered over her and stepped on the floor of the closet. Thankfully, she could successfully perch the tips of her feet the and reach the thing. Whichever it was.
And then classroom door opened, and there were screams and crying and shots and suddenly she's the only one alive.
Bang.
She stood there in confusion and shock and hear the heavy labored breathing of the –the – whatchamacallit and it's so close.
She's hysterical.
Thankfully, she isn't the only one breathing heavily, judging by the faint pained gasps near her feet (Natasha, her mind informs her, the girls who always talked to her no matter what) and obviously the thing thought her hysterical breathing was the dying girl's because he shot her.
Again.
Took away what remained of her life span.
This –this disgusting thing—
It's going to come for me, her brain helpfully supplied, and I'll die too.
Oh god.
But it went away.
Her form was hidden by the closet door, and her feet didn't show either, so he didn't see her. So she didn't die.
Thank god for small mercies.
She swallows heavily, she's fine, she's fine, she doesn't feel anything except some confusion.
Probably because she was in shock.
A school shooting, she realizes. Then she blinks. Her twin is also in her grade.
In the class right next to hers.
For some reason, she loses the ability to focus on what's happening around her.
Oh god oh god oh god oh god—
Her brother—
She starts running, slipping on blood and falling on bodies, and she digs her feet into on child's face and flies out the door, destroying his face and wide eyes, but she doesn't care, not now, not when she needs to save her brother.
She skidded right into her brother's class, smack dab into a tall person's back, and her one not smothered eye caught her brother's panicked face.
Good. He was alive.
She stepped back from the person, and then because her common sense came back to her, she realized that she could have only bumped into the teacher, or the—
Click.
Oh, for the love of –
She stares cross eyed at the gun that's shoved into her mouth and stops.
Breathes.
She reaches her bloodied hands up to the gun and wraps her fingers around it, and her eyes travel in desperation to the ski mask towering over her.
Not now. She wants to leave something behind other than a body. Not now.
Snot is falling down and tears are rising up (London's bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down) and she is choking on a gun.
Breath.
She screams.
Bang.
I.
Nate is playing with his toys. A little boy doll is sitting on the floor of his city, and Kelly is climbing out the window of their home, while Barbie is watching with her permanent smile plastered on her perfect face.
Nate wants his sister back.
His eyes are filing up and he doesn't try to clear them; because by now his hands already know how to destroy his carefully made city.
Today, for the first time, his city experiences rain as they die.
She never comes back.
I.
\... But the room was so quiet
And although I wasn't losing my mind
. . .
I was looking for a breath of life
. . .
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" .../
I.
Noaashbeansdsygfroalondgtimenowadhahahahahahahahfireliescoldandsoscaredwhtiewhitewhitethepatientsaresohardtobreakthey'rebrokentheyknowtheyknowtheyknowdoctorsdoctorsfuckingdoctors -
...
What are you talking about?
Please stop.
Ahhit'ssocoldsomewheresheknowswhatishappeningfirefirewarmthshe'snakedit'ssocoldshe'stravelledfarfromherplacethisisnotyourplaceleavemebe-
Shut up.
SHE'SDYINGSHE\SDYINGSHEHASNEVERDIEDFROMTHATSHE\SDYIGNSDNKHF-
SHUT UP, OH MY GOD JUST SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.
...why?YOU'RELIVINGALIEDOYOUNOTUNDERSTANDIT'SSOCOLDPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE
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DON'TDENY
.
IT
.
please
I.
Pain.
Everything is pushing at her, all around her, and she feels her memories inspected.
Pain.
There's a bullet in her throat, she's gulping it down, down, it slides, and she's dead. Or maybe she's dying because of the white strangling her, and the cold choking her?
(She's dying, but someone else is dying. three other people are dying.)
She's fading. She doesn't want to. She's fading and her only company are memories.
(Blood. Pain. Haze.
Confusion.
Machine.
Gun.
Pain. Pain,pain,pain,death,killmustsurvivetalalcsots.)
Brown eyes.
"You…"
She breathes, and her mind is hurting, her intuition is screaming.
"No, please. Don't."
But do they have a choice? In this world were your only options are playing along for your role or being discarded, what can you do but try to survive?
"Please, don't hold me down under your role. Just let me go, I wanna be free. I wanna let go and grow and be stronger, I don't want your burden."
She doesn't want this pseudo life, this role in the dark, she doesn't want what will happen to her, even if she doesn't understand her desperation or what she's saying. There's this sense of Deja Vu, like she knows exactly what will happen, and it's going to be bad and horrible, she's going to do something horrible, she knows it.
She just wants her brother who she selfishly ignored when she thought about her happy moments in childhood, ignoring him in favor of angsting about her damned mother. It's all just flowing out now.
And with those sad memories, there are many happy ones. She feels her idealism rear her head, and she's longing for the brief warmth she's felt from those speeding images.
"My pride are my friends and family."
I'll put a bullet in my head and I'm gone, gone, gone, gone...
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Authors Note: Good? Hopefully. But it's really angsty and I got miffed and bored at the end because I had this whole pile of homework on my back and stuff and my mom wants me off the computer.
Immediately.
Anyways, I wanted to add the reincarnation scene here and some scenes in here but no time, so expect rewrites in the future and chapter 02 anytime from two weeks later to summer.
And wow, that's my first time writing the f word or acknowledging it, but I guess I have to sacrifice a bit for my writing hood.
Review equals inspiration, AKA writing fuel.
Love,
Desirable.
Edit: Heroes Die is still WIP, it's not discontinued. Chapter 02 is HERE. Click the next chappie button.