The Vongola mansion was an extravagantly decorated building, full of golden detailing and rich reds. Crimson curtains framed the windows to match the carpets in the halls, red velvet cushions that had probably never been used sat placidly upon equally unsused decorative chairs. It was all terribly gaudy to Tsuna's finer sensibilities.
But the night had a way of robbing the world of color until he could barely distinguish where one shade stopped and another began, even more so on nights liket this, when clouds blanketed the sky and plunged the world in shadows as it drowned.
He could hear the wind whistling hauntingly by the outer walls, howling and crying and begging. Rain pattered softly against crystal windows, twisting and distorting the darkened view of the gardens. A distant rumble of thunder made false promises of light. There would be no lightning over the mansion tonight.
Ignoring the sounds outside, Tsuna's attention turned to the shadowed, lonely halls he stood in. Silence greeted him, mourning and grieving and breathy. A last, soundless breath. His own heartbeat was loud in his ears, with nothing else to drown it out. His breathing was shallow, irregular, matching the rain that now pounded on the window panes, begging to be let in.
Briefly, miraculously, the sky opened up just a sliver, letting a streak of moolight through the glass. Suddenly he could see some color again. An almost violet sort of red from the curtains and the carpets ad the cushions.
And the flowers.
The flowers were everywhere, on every surface. Begonias and lillies and cypress blossoms. They clung to the drapes and the floor, the same shade and therefore almost indistinguishable from them. Their sweet, cloying scent was almost overpowering now that he'd taken notice of them. It was impossible to move without stepping on them, without hearing camellias squish under his shoe and poppy petals drip drip drip from the banisters, somehow louder than the punishing rain outside.
Attuned to the silent mansion as they were, his ears suddenly caught the faint notes of a barely audible tune from further down the hall. He ignored the flowers, taking no notice where he stepped as he slowly chased a mourning melody that tugged and clawed at the fringes of his momory until he finally arrived at a room.
The music had not become any louder as he went after it, remaining a barely audible string of memories. But with the piano right in front of him he could now make out the faint clicking of nails on keys even clearer than the fading memories of a once cheerful tune, now turned melancholic. The piano was also surrounded by blossoms, covered in them. On the seat and the keys and inside around the strings. Tsuna walked up to it and pressed a key. He got a wretched, dying sound in response.
Faintly, he heard someone giggle at his expense. A spark of green, a burst of red, playfully keeping out of sight. The echoing laughter moved away and Tsuna moved after it without having to think about it. The more he chased it the more in echoed around him, in halls and rooms and stairways, until he could hear it all around him. Until he couldn't hear it at all.
He ran. He had to find them again. He ran and ran and almost slipped on puddles of petals. And then-
And then-
He saw them all, grouped together as they should be. Silver hair glinted against phantasmal moonlight. The rain had gone silent. A sword in calloused hands beside him, a trident in two hands to his left, a spark of green, a burst of white. They were all there, surrounded by flowers, covered in them. And each had a single rose tucked to their chest.
Tsuna looked at them with a smile and grasped the last remaining rose from an open, child-like hand. He caressed the cold petals, snapping off a broken thorn with a click. Carefully, he tucked the rose into his hair, at his temple, keeping a finger on a sharpened thorn.
One more time, Tsuna took in he dark, nearly colorless room. The gaudy red and the cloying fragrance of flowers. He smiled once more, eyes shimmering in a shard of moonlight.
His finger pressed into the thorn.
The world bloomed.