"Mama was pretty." Takeshi, no older than five, whispers next to Tsuyoshi as the smoke from the incense curls around his wife's picture. Tsuyoshi chokes back a small sob.
"She was indeed." He rubs the picture absentmindedly before turning back to his son, who isn't looking at the picture at all, rather Takeshi's eyes are glued to the forget me nots on the table.
"Was her soul really so pretty?" Takeshi scoots forward a little more, admiring the delicate light blue flowers, fingers pressed against the airtight container containing them.
"Even more so." Tsuyoshi gently replies. "She was so full of love, she loved you more than anyone else. When she held you… the look on her face said it all." That had been moments before she had passed away. Only having enough strength left in her to hold their child in her arms once. Forget me nots... Like he had always been destined to lose her. To remember her only in the past tense.
"Oh! Wolf, wolf!" Takeshi frantically waved his arm as a few times as the purple wolfsbane flowers bloomed.
"Wolfsbane has been having quite some trouble recently, haven't they?" Tsuyoshi stood and picked up Takeshi, taking him to the greenhouse room. They walked past the lines of plants, flourishing in their pots, until they got to Takeshi's small shelf. After it became clear that Takeshi had many, many, rambunctious soulmates Tsuyoshi had built him the shelf along with going to a secondhand store and picking up as many vases as he could carry (Takeshi, who had gone with him, carried one vase, but to be fair it was a very big vase).
Tsuyoshi placed his son back onto the ground, letting Takeshi pick the flowers off his arm while Tsuyoshi grabbed one of the vases, turning on the faucet and filling it up with water.
"Thank you papa!" Takeshi beamed as he placed the flowers into the vase with the kind of soft carefulness that reminded Tsuyoshi so much of his wife. "Scootch over a little bit Goldenrod, Wolfsbane needs some more space." Takeshi talked to the flowers as he rearranged the shelf, making room for the new vase.
Tsuyoshi did his best to be supportive of Takeshi and his many soulmates, but as he looked at the line of flowers ghosts of his past seemed to whisper in his ear. Three kinds of purple flowers, a yellow, an orange, and a red. All that was missing was a green and a blue. He wouldn't be surprised if Takeshi was some kind of blue flower, and with how young Takeshi was it was entirely possible that whoever the green was simple hadn't been born yet, otherwise they were much more careful than the others. The three purples was somewhat of an anomaly, but there was no denying the colors of the rainbow that were lined up in front of him.
Tsuyoshi just hugged his son tighter, closer, as if he could shield his young, kind, soft boy from what the future held.
oOo
Yamamoto is ten when it finally happens. He feels the familiar prickling, this particular time it's from a spot on his forehead - they probably had accidentally baged their head against something. He reaches up to pluck the flowers, expecting them to be from Chrysanthemum or Goldenrod, maybe even Lavender, but instead his hand pulls down small blooms of light green poinsettia, and a new kind of thrill runs through him.
He immediately abandons his homework, dashing into the kitchen, where his dad is standing over a large tuna. As soon as Yamamoto enters his father carefully places down the knife.
"Did you finish your work?" His dad immediately asks and Yamamoto shook his head before revealing the flowers he had been hiding behind his back.
"Look! Another!" And Yamamoto is young, but observant, and he doesn't understand the shadow that briefly falls over his dad's face before it's covering with a huge smile and they head into the greenhouse room to make a spot for the new soulmate.
oOo
The wind is different on the roof. It's louder. It pounds in his ears. But it's also calming, like it's whispering words of comfort into Yamamoto's ears. Yamamoto consider the single step he has to take in order to embrace it. Sawada Tsunayoshi bursts out from the crowd behind Yamamoto. The only one to come close to him.
Yamamoto turns around to face Tsuna, the boy deserves that much. His face is wide and open. He finds himself hoping that Tsuna doesn't blame himself for what is about to happen.
"I'm sure you can understand. The baseball god threw me away. There's just… nothing left for me." Yamamoto offers a wry smile, but he can feel that it comes off wrong.
"You're wrong, we're nothing alike." Tsuna shakes his head, and he's shaking slightly. "You work so hard and I never have. I gave you bad advice yesterday. I'm just the kind of person who doesn't know what it's like to work like you do, and I… I spoke out of ignorance." Tsuna's eye's looked around, like he was trying to figure out anything else to say. "I guess, I just wanted to tell you that I can't understand how you feel. Later!" Tsuna turned to dash back into the crowd.
"Wait!" Yamamoto reached out, his hand grabbing the back of Tsuna's shirt, yanking him back towards him. Something deep in him wanted Tsuna to stay by him.
Tsuna collided with the fence on the top of the roof, the rust and iron gave a half hearted squelch, and the two of them careened over the side of the building.
It wasn't supposed to go like this. Now Tsuna was in danger too. How could he have done this? Yamamoto tried to roll in the air, keep Tsuna above him. He may not live through this but this was his bad decision, Tsuna deserved to live.
"Protect Yamamoto with my Dying Will!" Tsuna shouted, and his grip of Yamamoto increased.
"Tsu-Tsuna!" Yamamoto yelled as Tsuna angled his body to try and cushion Yamamoto's fall. They hit the ground before Yamamoto could reverse their positions. It was jarring, and at first all Yamamoto could do was roll off of Tsuna, groaning as ache echoed through his body.
"Yama...moto." Tsuna gasped and… and he sat up. Just like that. Tsuna sucked in air quickly through his teeth. "Ah, my back." Somehow Tsuna had lost almost all of his clothes during the fall so Yamamoto could see the scratches and bruising forming on Tsuna's back. Yamamoto go himself into a sitting position, even though his muscles ached. There was a small prickling sensation spidering across his back.
"Tsuna, you saved me." He said, his voice full of awe, and Tsuna blushed.
"You would have done the same for me." The feeling on Yamamoto's back continued. His eyes wandering to Tsuna's wounded back again.
"Wait.." He quickly yanked off his school tie, unbuttoning his shirt.
"Yamamoto are you okay? Did you get hurt?" Yamamoto slipped off his shirt, revealing the small garden of Chrysanthemum's that had sprouted there.
"Tsuna, we're soulmates!"