- Title: The Month of Dreams
-- Fandom: KHR
-- Characters/Pairing: 5927/gokutsuna
-- Notes: Alternate universe
-- Rating: T
The Month of Dreams
1..
On the first day of September, Tsuna opens his eyes and sees something other than darkness after what feels like years of a dreamless sleep. It takes a while before his mind registers that he is alive and that he lays on the uncomfortable hardness of a boat fastened to a tree that threatens to collapse at any moment. He should probably be worried about it, but he isn't. He's faced worse things before; at least the tree is not out for his blood.
He shields his eyes with a hand still alien to his senses after days of disuse, even if there is no sign of sunlight to greet him. Half of the sky is grey, like before a storm. He feels as if it would fall on him.
This is how he first knows that he is not home.
2.
He takes to wandering on the shoreline, the hemline of his pants wet and the soles of his shoes crusted with sand. It takes him at least twenty tries before he gives up from cleaning his apparel and tosses his shoes into the ocean, where it is swallowed and buried in the womb of the area that separates him from his entire world. He still isn't sure of where he is and how he has gotten there, but he tries to take each puzzle piece into consideration and fit it all back together.
An assassination attempt. (this, he thinks, as he wades in the ocean until his fingers are bloated and his body begins to shiver)
A mission. (this, when he attempts to build sandcastles with his hands; he barely makes it past one inch of the wall, and that is only the length of it)
A test. (no man's land, the wind seems to taunt, and he flinches even after it stops howling in his mind)
A dream. (this he decides against when he soaks his feet in the water after they have been blistered from walking on the rocks)
His clumsiness. (his fault, he whispers to himself, the shame and guilt and the irrepressible joy of being free still fresh and not tempered by time)
His mind spins with imagined circumstances and half-baked theories, but none of it makes sense, nor does it strike a cord in his heart. He lets his body fall back on the sand, his mouth making a surprised 'o' when a fragmented seashell jabs his side; it throbs like a distant heart, detached from himself, but it is his only grip on reality, this thing called sensation, or pain.
3.
Hours later, he is woken up by calloused hands so roughly that he feels he will have bruises from the stranger's touch. He thinks, is it you, although he does not know who he addresses, or why he did not think of his family first.
"Hey," it is a boy (man)'s voice, and it comes out more like a bark than a greeting, "wake up, dumbass. This isn't a public park."
Tsuna drifts between the world of sleep and reality, but, even in his lethargy, he can make out the face. The man has green eyes and hair so pale it looks unnatural, and his face is all sharp, angular lines. His mouth is a half-strained, half-distressed slant on his white face; Tsuna has never seen anyone quite like him.
"Where am I?" He asks, and when the man looks at him, a little angry and exasperated, as if he is impatient with questions that need no distinct answers for people who will eventually have no use for it.
"You're safe," with me, his mind supplies, but he shrugs off the thought as easily as it comes.
4.
The man's name is Gokudera Hayato, and he is, apparently, a hater of the mafia despite being the son of one. He knows that Tsuna is the next Vongola, but the disbelief, though suppressed, cannot be masked so easily. Tsuna laughs awkwardly when he explains his predicament, and he is sure that he has gone from being labeled as 'the enemy' to 'the idiot'. Gokudera vehemently makes it clear through his none too forgiving insults and crass remarks. If Tsuna weren't Tsuna, he would have hit him hours earlier. But Gokudera, for all his gruffness, is kind, and offers him a place to stay, and food to eat.
"My sister," says Gokudera, "specializes in cooking, but I know a little of it myself."
The first spoonful Tsuna takes tastes, like everything else in this place, as if it does not exist with Tsuna. Almost, as if – "a dream," he says, and sees Gokudera laugh before he falls to the floor, unconscious and plagued with nightmares.
5.
Tsuna dreams of a coffin filled with flowers and a man that offers more everyday. There are forget-me-nots, cyclamens, carnations, all withered like dry husks of their former shells.
There is a hand that hangs out of the coffin, and, in his hazy state of mind, he realizes that it is almost as thin as his.
6.
There are other dreams, of course. Different dreams, in different worlds, and Gokudera appears in all of them. Tsuna cannot, does not, understand any of it.
"Tell me this isn't real," says Tsuna, in one of his more lucid dreams, and Gokudera does.
7.
It takes a while before he wakes up again.
By then he has grown to love Gokudera, all parts of him, in different dreams, in different ages, although the one that exists at this juncture has yet to touch his heart. It is as if Gokudera is trying to tell him something, or make him feel anything with the short time that they have, but Tsuna could not find it in himself to feel whole again.
"What can I do to make you stay?" Dream #793 asks, brokenly. But Tsuna knows, and Tsuna sees, that there is never anything that Gokudera can ever do, in the end. It should not matter, but it does, it does, and his heart aches and aches with the realization of it.
8.
"You'll forget me," the real Gokudera hisses, almost angry, but not at Tsuna, never at Tsuna.
"I won't –"
"You will."
Tsuna falls silent, because the expression on Gokudera's face is so resigned that it hurts. He wants to touch his face, hold his hand, kiss him to make the pain go away, but it is the absence of the gestures that seems to give a more finite ending. Mafia men were never meant to be free men with choices and without obligations, after all.
"Someday," he begins, quietly and more seriously than he has ever felt before, "someday, I'll get lost at sea and come back to you."
Gokudera smiles at him, and Tsuna bows his head when he cannot smile back.
9.
He leaves the next day, and the coastline vanishes behind him, like a dream. He leaves behind him a memory, and it is enough to make him incomplete for the rest of his days.