My brain picks inopportune times to come up with new ideas. In this case, on the road on the way to school while weaving through traffic. Don't know if this has been done before, but yeah. I swear that I will someday finish my fics no matter how long it takes me.
Summary: Tsuna, kind-hearted child that he is, is always giving others what they need without any thought for himself. One day, he gives a strangely familiar person a home, but for the first time, someone gives him something back.
Warnings: Alternate Universe, Dimension/Parallel World/Time Travel, Possible hints of MxM, FxM, and FxF, Violence, Language, Genderbend
Pairings: The most there will be are one-sided crushes. There aren't really any planned pairings but plenty of hints and moments especially with FemTsuna.
Chapter 1: Do Unto Others As You would Have Them Do To You
Sawada Tsunayoshi was a kind child. Unfortunately, life in general wasn't. He was stubborn though and firmly clung to the belief that his mother had instilled in him.
Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Sadly, very few people followed this belief especially when it came to him. But Tsuna still held doors open for little old ladies (that he had run into face first) and helped his mother put away groceries (he was only allowed to hold the less fragile things after the 'Eggs and Bacon' incident) and always remembered to say please and thank you ("Please don't hurt me!" and "Thank You for not taking my lunch after you took my crayons.").
While weaving past garbage bags and cardboard boxes in an alley in an attempt to lose some bullies, he tripped on his shoelaces which had become untied sometime on the way from school. Tsuna gasped, bracing himself for the inevitable impact, only to be caught by two slender arms wrapping around his waist and yanking him into the huge box they protruded from.
He opened his mouth to scream only to find that a warm hand was covering it.
"SHH!" hissed his unknown captor. "Do you want them to find you?"
He shook his head vigorously and they both huddled together in the dark as they listened to the sounds of the approaching boys.
"Did you see which way he went?
"He's not in sight. Probably hiding like a rat."
"When I get my hands on him, he's gonna wish he had just given me his bento…"
Tsuna shivered violently, but the mystery person just clutched him tighter and started stroking his head. A warm comforting feeling washed over the boy and he looked up trying to make out the features of his savior in what little light was seeping through the cracks of the box.
"Hey. Don't worry. I won't let them get you."
Tsuna bit his lip in an effort not to cry. This was the first time anyone had done something for him and it was a stranger to boot! Then he felt the stranger take off his shoe. The one that had come undone.
He started to struggle, but the stranger hushed him.
"Trust me." A strange feeling told him to do so and so he did.
The person opened the box and was standing up before he could get a good look. He could see faded jeans and long brown hair waving against a gray and blue hoodie. He still couldn't see her face, but in seven-year old Tsuna's mind, long hair equals girl. He had never seen a man with long hair before.
She reached back as if she was preparing to throw something and then Tsuna realized that she was still holding his shoe. The shoe achieved a speed that Tsuna was positive it would never have been able to had it still been on his foot. There was a loud clang followed by the sounds of something heavy and metal hitting the ground.
The girl dove back into the box and tightly shut the lids behind her. She maneuvered him around until they were hugging each other and they both waited in silence.
"What was that?"
"It came from over there!"
The sound of footsteps moved away.
"Ha! It's Useless-Tsuna's shoe!"
"He must have gone this way, but he was such a klutz that he knocked over this trash can."
"Let's go!"
A minute passed, then five, then ten.
Finally, the girl opened the box and cautiously poked her head out.
"Wait here." She instructed and closed the box as she walked away.
Tsuna flinched when the lids were moved again, but it was only the girl crouching down in front of him, holding out his shoe.
She looked familiar with brown spiky hair on top of her head and her warm brown eyes reminded him of Mama's. In fact, she kinda did look like Mama.
"Here. Watch carefully." She put his shoe on for him and proceeded to tie it for him
It made a perfect bow, not the knotted mess that formed whenever he tried. It looked even neater than when Mama did it.
The girl then untied his other shoe which was half undone anyways.
"Now you try."
Tsuna spent the next two hours learning how to tie his shoes and the girl patiently showed him over and over again with her perfect bow. By the time he was done, he was staring at his shoe. There was a bow on it. Not quite as good as hers, but better than anything he had ever managed to make before.
"There. The key is to practice these things every day. Now they can't call you useless, if you can at least do one thing right."
He looked up at her in awe.
"Umm…thank you onee-san."
The girl had a strange look on her face, but smiled kindly at him.
"You're welcome."
The girl walked him home and left him at the front gate late in the afternoon. Tsuna spent all night babbling to Nana about the kind onee-san who helped to teach him how to tie his shoes so that he wouldn't trip anymore. He left out the mention of the bullies and the fact that the girl gently, but forcefully dissuaded him from going home until he managed to make a bow to her satisfaction.
After dinner, he dragged his mother to the shoe cabinet and proceeded to demonstrate to her his new skill.
"…and then she said "Now they can't call you useless anymore!'"
Nana smiled at the happiness her son was showing her along with two, admittedly very nice, bows. She supposed that she could ignore the fact that Tsuna was late coming home for a couple of hours especially as this meant that she didn't have to tie his shoes for him anymore.
"So what's the nice onee-san's name?"
Tsuna opened his mouth and left it open as he realized that he had no idea what her name was.
"I-I don't know. She never said it. She just walked me home and then left."
Nana held back a sigh.
"Well what did she look like?"
"She looks like…" He remembered his first impression of her. "Like you Mama. She's got brown eyes and brown hair. Her hair is spiky on top like mine, but it's long in the back and reaches her butt."
A girl who looked like her and Tsuna?
Sawada Tsunaruhime sighed again as she curled up inside the same box that she had been resting in that afternoon. This must be some cruel joke. Here she was sleeping in a cardboard box in an alley in Namimori with no way home that she knew of.
In a different dimension, in a different time, Sawada Tsunaruhime was the twenty-four year old Vongola Decimo. Here, she was just a homeless fourteen-year-old who would probably be dragged into the station by cops as they tried to figure out where this 'runaway' had come from and where her family was.
Family…
She choked back a sob. Everyone…
Where were they now? Were they safe? What was going on back in her world?
Bereft of her rings and gloves and even her headphones and contacts, she had woken up in a park and had since then been scrounging around Namimori for the last month as she tried to get her bearings. Imagine her surprise when she had come across her younger self. Only…she was a he. Since then, she had taken to looking around and realized that there were many familiar people from her childhood. They were essentially the same, except for one teeny tiny little detail. Most of women she had known were now men and vice versa.
The sushi shop owned by the Yamamoto's was still there. But it was run by a single father with a son now instead of the single mother and daughter that she had known.
She had spied a brother and sister pair that made her heart ache at the sight. Except, the brother was the older one with white hair and the sister was the younger one.
She had even seen a small black haired boy an impressively familiar scowl.
Tsunaruhime sighed and rolled over. At least Reborn's training had been put to use and she had managed to survive all this time. Even if she felt a little guilty about stealing, but damn it all! It was a necessity. There was no way she was going to deal with her monthly problem without supplies.
Just thinking about it made her stomach cramp. Ah fuck. She had enough money for food for a week if she rationed it carefully, but it seems like she'll have to forage and hunt for something to eat in the woods tomorrow. It was better to have more of said supplies and be a little hungry than to be full and not have them at all.
One last thought passed through her mind as she drifted off into sleep.
I wonder if Reborn's going to be a man too…
It was a rainy day when Tsunayoshi met the mysterious girl again. She was sitting on a park bench, staring up into the sky through her clear umbrella. Her sneakers were placed under the bench and she sat with her knees pressed to her chest. There was a worn backpack covered with a clear poncho next to her.
"Onee-san!" He dashed towards her splashing his way through the puddles. The girl blinked and looked at him in surprise.
"Careful!" She called. "Don't run or you're going to-"
SPLASH!
"-fall." She finished. With a sigh, she pulled out her sneakers and put them on. Then fished through her bag for a handkerchief.
Tsuna was sniffling as he sat up and she saw that he was covered in mud. She gently wiped off his face.
"There, there. Are you alright?"
"Ye-yeah." He looked around and spotted his neon orange umbrella which had flown out of his hand when he had slipped. The spokes were bent out of shape and Tsuna looked like he was about to cry again. Tsunaruhime looked at it and then back to her own umbrella.
"Want me to walk you home?"
There was a pitifully grateful look on his face. Tsunaruhime remembered the times she had made that very same expression.
She made him exchange his shirt with one of her good, and more importantly dry, hoodies that reached his ankles and dropped the muddy t-shirt and shorts into a plastic bag.
"You have lots of things in there." Commented Tsuna.
"Someone once told me that I had to be prepared for anything." Granted Reborn was talking about Mafia bosses in general, but there was no need to mention that.
She looked at his wet muddy shoes and socks, sighed and dug out a pair of her own socks. They were covered in alternating bands of white and orange and she had gotten them at a bargain sale. Unfortunately they were her last dry pair and she didn't have enough change to go to a laundry mat yet. She pushed that thought aside as she slipped them onto Tsuna's feet. They went up to his knees.
Once everything was packed and shouldered, she wrapped the young boy in the poncho and picked him up.
"O-onee-san! What are you doing? I can walk!" he squeaked.
"Carrying you. And yes, I know you can, but your clothes are all wet and muddy. You'll catch a cold like this. Here. Hold the umbrella."
No amount of protesting he did would make her put him down before they reached his home so he took to talking about other things.
"Ne ne, guess what onee-san."
"Hmm?"
"Thanks for teaching me how to tie shoes. They don't call me Useless-Tsuna anymore."
"Really?" She gave him a warm gentle smile with a twinkle in her eye. "That's great!"
"Mm-hmm! They call me Shoelace-Tsuna now! Everyone comes to me to tie their shoes for them."
Tsunaruhime nearly tripped and dropped her precious cargo.
"Onee-san!" Tsuna squealed, clutching her neck in worry.
"Sorry Tsuna. There was a crack on the sidewalk." She lied smoothly.
"It's okay. I trip all the time, sometimes over nothing."
She shifted him so that he was a little more secure in her arms.
"Anyways, just take things one step at a time. Everyone learns things at different speeds and some people are just better at somethings than others. We all have our strength and weaknesses."
"But I'm not good at anything and slow at everything…"
"You learned how to tie shoelaces didn't you?"
"Yeah! I practiced everyday just like you told me to. But no one ever took the time to really teach me. Not the way you did. Even Mama gave up and just did it for me."
"Tsuna." There was the world in that one word and he looked into the girl's eyes which were bleeding orange. "You have something that most people can only dream of. You have a good heart and the will to follow through with it. In fact, many people have good hearts, but not everyone listens to them and does the right thing."
Tsuna couldn't bring himself to look away from those lovely glowing orange orbs.
"That's not all you have either. You can see the good in others. There are plenty of good people who do bad things and plenty of bad people who do good things. But the good people don't always get a chance because everyone just sees the bad things they do and say that they'll always be bad."
The child looked contemplative.
"That's…really sad."
"It is, isn't it? That why I said that you have something special. Don't ever lose that Sawada Tsunayoshi."
She trudged on in silence, letting the boy stew on her words before continuing.
"But don't overlook the bad in people either. That's a part of who they are too. Accept all of them, just like the limitless sky."
"The sky…?"
"The sky." Tsunaruhime affirmed as she approached what was once her home in another world. Tsuna never noticed that he had never told her his full name.
"Thank you so much for bringing my Tsu-kun home and in this pouring rain too."
"It was no problem at all Sawada-san. He's a good boy."
Upon opening her front door, Nana was surprised to find a teenage girl carrying her son. Even more so as she realized that this girl could pass for her own sister or even as her daughter. The girl even had a similar name as her son. But like with everything else in life, she just went with the flow. Drying and washing her son's muddy clothes along with the nice girl's who had brought him home.
"Where are you going?"
"I don't want to intrude…"
"Nonsense. It's raining cats and dogs out there. We have a guest room and you can make a phone call to your parents."
"That really won't be necessary. They…aren't around anymore."
"Oh." There was an awkward silence. "What about your guardians?" Tsunaruhime knew she was asking something completely different, but the G-word still made her breath hitch. As a light dawned, in her alternate mother's eyes, she realized that Nana was coming to a wrong conclusion, but what could she say to correct it?
'Hello. I'm your daughter from an alternate dimension and I'm stranded here with no way home.'
There was no way that could happen, so she let Nana make assumptions as the woman put together the overly stuffed backpack, her worn out second, even third hand clothing and the nervousness of her response as she gently asked.
"Do you have a place to stay?"
"I-I…yes." Damn it. She was falling apart in a way that she hadn't done in nearly six years. All her skills were useless in the face of her mother. No. This wasn't really her mother, but Tsunaruhime was so ridiculously homesick that it wasn't even funny.
"Where? I can call a cab and give you some money."
"No!" Nana looked taken aback.
"S-sorry. I mean it's a waste of money. There's no need to do that for me. I don't even live that far from here and I've got an umbrella." She rambled on.
"Onee-san's leaving now?" Double damn. Tsuna had finished his bath and was now standing at the top of the stairs staring down at them.
"I need to go back home." Not a lie. She had to be careful just in case his Hyper Intuition was awakening. She could feel his flames sealed away, but this was a different dimension. Who knows what else was different besides the apparent genderswap.
"But your box will be soggy now. I know 'cause one time I dropped the cereal box into the sink and it turned squishy and wet."
"How do you know that I live in a box Tsuna?"
"Because you had a blanket and pillow in there. Remember? You let me sit on it when you showed me how to tie my shoes."
Apparently her own Hyper Intuition was shit against her counterpart's innocent naivety.
Then her stomach growled as if to mock the fact that she hadn't eaten lunch because she didn't have enough money, that there was heavy rain ruining her temporary shelter, and just her overall situation in general.
There was a sudden yelp as Tsuna somehow managed to slip while standing still at the top of the stairs and was pitching forward headfirst.
"Tsuna!" Both women shouted in alarm, but the younger dashed past the older and took to the stairs three steps at a time, scooping up the young boy before he even touched the ground and skidded to a stop at the landing.
"Thank you onee-san!" he chirped happily once their hearts had stopped pounding.
There was the sound of footsteps coming up from behind and Tsunaruhime shuddered and sneezed. Great. She was either catching a cold or…
She slowly turned around to find Sawada Nana looking at her with a gleam that she knew all too well.
"Tsu-kun. Why don't you help Tsu-chan move her things in to the guest room? She'll be staying for a while."
"Really? That's great!" He looked so happy that Tsunaruhime was reluctant to correct him as she let him drag her down the hall. She gave a last bewildered look to the matriarch of the house.
"And Tsu-chan? Don't worry. I've always wanted a daughter."
The woman was smiling brightly in a way that reminded Tsuna of who exactly she had inherited her own stubbornness from.
Damn Hyper Intuition. Why couldn't you work when I was still outside?
That was how Sawada Tsunaruhime came to live in the Sawada household.
Before Tsuna became No Good-Tsuna, he was called Useless-Tsuna.
Yes. This is a FemTsuna from a mostly genderbent world living with canonTsuna. Finding different names are hard so some people may end up with the same ones. Pretty much all of FemTsuna's closest people are women, including her Guardians and Reborn. Only Tsunaruhime was supposed to be a girl, but there's a scene in the future that made me decide to change the story a little. It'll be quite a few chapters before I get to this scene though. I'll eventually show to how she ended up in canonKHR too.
Also, she was living in a giant cardboard box. I was going to have her build a cardboard fortress, but then I realized that she wouldn't have much reason to move in with Tsuna if she had that.