This wouldn't be the first time, Tsuna knows.

The first time he'd come, it was barely a few months after the inheritance and a terrifyingly big part of himself had wanted to know, wanted to see for himself if he would survive if he made the jump. It wasn't impossible, he had reasoned with himself a little stupidly as if this was just another matter not worth the serious contemplation; he'd survived far - far - worse that it would seem almost comically absurd for him to die from a little height.

(He tries not to think about how likely it was to happen, tries not to think about the part of him that instinctively knows he wouldn't.)

He survived the battle against Mukuro and Varia, far from a willing participant, much less anybody capable of defending themselves against actual assassins and mass murderers, but he did, he had to, or else, Dame-Tsuna. Or else.

And wasn't that generally how his life went?

Uttered threats, thinly-veiled truth, cloaked under thousands of layers of white lies, of sins and history, of rings drowning in deep, deep red. It had always been a matter of living up to the future's expectation of him and the footsteps of a man centuries before him.

But Tsuna wasn't that much of an idiot, and even if he could fool others, he couldn't fool himself.

He knew what he came to the bridge for, had known that had Reborn not come that day, he would've chosen to drown not because he couldn't swim but because he chose not to. It was what set the bridge apart from all the other battles he had fought or had to survive without a choice, he thinks, knows with a certainty that belied the faint voice at the back of his mind. He had wanted to win against Mukuro, Xanxus, and Byakuran, but he hadn't done that all to fight for himself, hadn't done that to prove his worth and strength even if Reborn made it seem like it was. He hadn't done it because he wanted to, but because he needed to and if it was him or them-

Tsuna thinks it's not much of a decision. Not much of a sacrifice.

It had been a losing battle from the very moment he'd met Reborn a decade ago on his doorstep, before the words 'mafia boss' left his lips, before he came to know Vongola, before he understood what Vongola meant.

Just that this time, he wasn't here to stop him.

Nobody was.

(The phantom weight of the Vongola Ring, choking and suffocating. In his core, he felt their eyes pierce past his battered soul, and they weep.

What has Vongola become, Tsunayoshi?

When you promised its destruction, this wasn't what I had wanted, Decimo.

You have become something worse than all of the sins that encompasses our history and blood.

You betrayed your family.)

He inhales deeply, vacant eyes taking in the sky and dim streetlights. The wisps of smoke and scattered debris mocked him, prodded at tender scars hidden beneath the cloak. He'd fought against it long enough, and he had resolved himself to let go.

There was nobody left.

Nothing but flames, nothing but charring flesh and ashes, nothing but their corpses and unspoken regrets.

I couldn't have asked for a better student, Tsunayoshi.

He slowly closes his eyes and breathes.

I'm proud of you.

He takes one step forward, his arms spread-

"Sawada!"

Dame-Tsuna-

"Don't do it-!"

Thank you-

"Please."

A beat, the fragmented memory of charcoal eyes and bloodied lips, the dimming of yellow glass beneath his fingertips.

Tsuna opens his eyes. Breathes. Turns.

Dark blue hair, sharp brown eyes, and that distinct scar on her right cheek which she despised yet didn't hide. A familiar face in the midst of static and muted screams. An anchor that desperately sought to ground him yet inevitably didn't quite succeed. She was the last of them, of the Arcobalenos, of what remained of his family.

"Lal Mirch," he greets pleasantly, arms spread out wide and tendrils of brown hair whipping against chilly wind, "You came back earlier than I expected."

She stops, her breathing labored from running and from- something, he thinks, something else that has nothing to do with the buckling of her knees and everything to do with the wild, temperamental fluctuation of her flames between them and around him. Her eyes are ruthless yet brittle when she looks at him.

"I knew this would happen," she says, more to herself than him, and her jaw clenches from the strength exerted behind gritted teeth, "I knew this would happen but I didn't think that you would- idiot, you damn idiot, how could you-"

"Did you?" he asks mildly as he turns his back on her.

"I trusted you, Sawada."

"I'm a lost cause," he responds lightly, "you know that."

"And I still trusted you. Doesn't that mean anything at all to you?" she spits.

The brunet lets his gaze fall back to the rushing water, dark, nearly midnight black from the sky, and he thinks of the hundreds of coffins they buried, the blood that he couldn't wash off his burned and scarred hands, the screams of terror that he hears in the quiet, and the smell of smoke and gunpowder that follows him to his dreams.

Lal, do you know what it feels like to kill your family and bury their corpses with your own hands?

Because I do. I dream about it every night, I think of it every single day and it's all I can do. It's the only thing I can do.

"It's useless," he says instead and he knows that Lal hates this part of him, hates his gentle tone, hates the way it's just a breath away from being a whisper, hates the way his words sink, biting and razor-sharp and meant to hurt like it had every intention of digging into skin and peeling it back until he's empty, until he's raw, until he's scraped dry and thin.

(It's just like you to be so kind and unforgiving at the same time, she'd told him once, and he never forgets.)

"So that's it." She barks a laugh, scornful but not resigned. Tsuna wonders what it will take to make her give up. "You'll leave me- us. Just like them."

A flash of blond locks, piercing blue eyes, sharp grin, and the whisper of her name on his lips-

The words 'just like him' aren't spoken but it was just as heard, just as loud.

He says nothing even if he hears the pitiful, desperate whisper of an apology at the back of his mind from the person he used to be. There were too many mistakes, too much he'd lost, too many missed opportunities for him to be able to say I'm sorry like it could fix everything he'd broken and killed. Like it could make everything alright.

Like it could bring them back.

She breathes, her flames lashing, twisting, pleading. "You're a coward, Sawada."

Despite himself, Tsuna laughs.

Even as a man at the age of 24 who had gone through hell and back, one who's made misery his company and betrayal his home, he could never change what he'd always been, could never pretend like it didn't hurt him to acknowledge as much as it does to realize that absolutely nothing has changed since he'd met them.

He would always be a coward, through and through. Not even the hundred bullets he took to his head and the number of wars he survived and won would change that.

"I know," he replies.

"You'll make Haru and Kyoko cry."

"I know," he repeats, lies. They won't. He knows they won't. He hasn't seen either of them since Hayato and Ryohei died.

(Since he killed them.)

"You're the only one they have left," her voice lowers and it's heartbreaking to hear Lal say it like that but there was no going back. Tsuna had made up his mind ten years ago, hadn't he? "Are you leaving them, too?"

"They have you."

"It isn't me that they want."

He dares to look her in the eyes, an edge to his voice. "And it isn't me that they need, either, Lal. They deserve better. They always have."

"You can't go on believing that you killed them, Sawada," she interrupts in a tone that hinted at the topic being a repeating issue of the past, her eyes wet and voice firm despite the shaking of her body. She was fighting a losing battle, Tsuna thinks to himself, and they both know that. Why was she doing this to herself? "How long will you keep blaming yourself for what happened? Kyoko and Haru would never blame you-"

Tsuna knows they won't and that's probably why it hurts more than it should. "I couldn't protect them," he retorts in a deceptively even tone, "I took Kyoko's only family away from her and I left Hayato to die. I've never seen Bianchi ever since. Haru is worried about you and that's the only reason she stays. I've taken her home away from her and this," he gestures to what remains of the town with a sweep of his hand, smoking piles of rubble and ash the only visible thing for miles on end, "This is all that's left of it. Kyoya died trying to protect Namimori, and even Mukuro and Chrome were-" his voice breaks and his throat locks up, eyes stinging.

But you are our home, the expression on her face seemed to say.

He hadn't been anything worth coming back to for a long time.

"...I can't continue like this," he says at last, "The last of Millefiore is gone. Vongola has lost all its battles but we won the war. There's nothing I can do to atone or repent for what I was unable to do."

"And how is this any better? How is killing yourself any better?" Lal asks incredulously, her tone growing hysterical at the certainty she was finally beginning to see in Tsuna's eyes and he thinks he should be happy that she's starting to understand but all he's left feeling is the bitter taste of ashes on his tongue. "Taking your own life and running away with your tail between your legs… You're not 14 anymore, Sawada. Is this the best that you could come up with after everything that Reborn has taught you?"

His smile falls a little and she recoils because it had never bidden well for anyone when Tsuna loses his composure, loses the calm that Reborn had drilled into him with silver bullets and sharp words made of steel. He may have been her student once, but Lal has learned more from Tsuna that she could ever hope to teach him.

"What else is there for me to do?"

She grits her teeth, visibly suppressing the big part of her that wanted to lose this fight. "Has living for them ever crossed your mind? They died for you, to make sure you'd stay alive, to make sure you'd survive even at the cost of their own lives because they loved you and you... you're just making fucking excuses to run away-"

There's a subtle shift in the air, sharp and chilling. Tsuna hasn't moved, his expression blank, but something in him changes.

This time, Lal Mirch does take a step back.

"To run away?" he echoes, animosity lacing his voice. "They died because I was too weak. They died because I couldn't be there, because I wasn't strong enough even though I promised I'd protect them. I dragged them into this whole mess in the first place, Lal Mirch. They died in vain." And there was something entirely different in the way his eyes glow under the dim street lights, wild and manic, fingers twitching in the way they usually would when he had his gloves on his hands. "They're gone, Lal. They're dead. I'm not making excuses. I'm not running away. I'm not that selfish. What good would continuing to live bring aside from making people - the people left from the war - suffer, knowing that the person who deserves to survive the least is well and alive? There's nothing I can do but-"

"It's never easy!" she retorts just as sharply but her voice is shaking and she's deathly pale. This wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't supposed to be the one who gave in first. He wasn't supposed to be the one who told her there was nothing left. He wasn't supposed to be the one who told her that this was all his fault.

He wasn't supposed to look her in the eyes and tell her that this was the only thing he can do.

"I know it isn't easy! Don't you ever, for a second, think that I don't understand what it feels like. I lost them once, Sawada. I lost Colonello twice and I led him to his death in both lives. You can't give me that bullshit that you have fucking nothing to live for because if you think that... if you really think that-"

For once, there is fear in her dark eyes.

"Then I don't deserve to be alive."

But Tsuna doesn't so much as twitch or move. He has made up his mind.

She was ten years too late.

"What about Kyoko?" Lal asks. "Haru? Bianchi? Fuuta? What about them? What about me?"

"Lal Mirch," he whispers, his voice soft. "I'm not him. I haven't been him for years."

She's trying, he knows she is. But there is no point in trying to find something that was never there in the first place.

The Sawada Tsunayoshi she knew was already gone. Dead to the world, remembered only by those who he had forsaken, most of what made him already buried 6 feet under the ground, beneath his feet, beneath the pile of corpses that were once his family. He was no Mafia Boss nor a friend, nor a son. As he is right now, he's nothing but a disappointment, a failure who exists for reasons he's long since outlived.

She closes her eyes. "That's-" That isn't true.

Tsuna's eyes soften but they do not warm. "Is it?"

Lal stills, hoping for something else than what Tsuna deems as truth, hoping to be able to tell him that there was still hope, that they could fix it, but they can't. They can't, Tsuna has tried, and he has had enough.

"I have nothing left."

He looks her in the eyes and he sees the exact moment that the realization dawns on her and it shouldn't hurt but it does.

(The bare flicker of a flame that was extinguished just as quickly as it was ignited.

The voluntary rejection of his own blood, of his own heritage, of his identity-

The destruction of Vongola runs bone-deep, and wasn't he Vongola, too?)

"...It's gone," she whispers so, so softly that he almost doesn't hear it. Her eyes are wide and the shudder that wracks her body looks a little like tremors are violently raging under her skin, her hands rising in an aborted movement to approach. There is nothing but despair in her voice.

"Sawada, please tell me it isn't..."

Tsuna smiles hollowly.

"I never intended to run away," he tells her.

He isn't that much of a fool - of a coward - to think that he will be able to escape without getting what he deserved. Death is a luxury far past his reach, be it in a sense of comprehension or literality.

Death is a luxury for men who haven't bargained their conscience. Who haven't made too many sacrifces, who haven't taken too many wrong turns.

"I will be the last of Vongola." His smile is sincere, broken. "So please, Lal Mirch."

Let me be the one who puts an end to this.

She breathes in sharply, her chest heaving and shoulders shaking. There is hatred and disbelief in her eyes when her fingers leave her cheeks wet, when they leave trembling like she couldn't control herself, like she couldn't-

"I will never," her voice breaks and he knows it hurts, knows that there is nothing he can do but watch her break, "never be able to forgive you."

(And that's the problem, isn't it? That it was ever an option to forgive him, that those words in itself sounded a little too much like acceptance, like an apology of her own for not trying hard enough.)

"I expected nothing else," he says and he watches with dread as Lal wraps her hand around the gun in her holster. He opens his mouth to tell her that she doesn't have to, that he has submerged enough hands in crimson, stained enough lives with charcoal from smoke of burned corpses, that she doesn't have to be the one who falls deeper, but she smiles at him and it is the first that he has seen after Colonello's second death.

It's the first, and he wishes that it wasn't for this.

"Nobody regretted it, Sawada," she says, honest and true, the promise of family in her eyes.

Nobody regretted dying for you, she doesn't say, knowing better than to dig her fingers into opened wounds, because you saved them and gave them a place to call home. You gave us, the castaways, the monstrosities not worth saving and those who didn't belong, a family, and a purpose. You gave everyone everything and more.

I'm sorry that it had to come to this.

I'm sorry that this is the only way.

I'm sorry, Sawada.

Another flicker of a flame quickly extinguished, another reminder of the absolute if not the perpetual disappearance of his inheritance in his veins, and she despairs because she knows that Tsuna doesn't believe a single word she has said.

"Thank you, Lal Mirch."

She smiles tearfully at him, something other than her voice breaking-

"No. Thank you, Sawada."

-and then she pulls the trigger.

"Goodbye."

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Tsuna wakes up to the sight of his old room's ceiling and it takes a while for the ringing in his ears to fade, for his vision to clear, for everything to snap into place, and for him to realize that something was very, very wrong.

But then he does realize and it's a little like falling off a cliff, falling into another unknown point in time, his vision twisting and distorted, everything indistinguishable from memory and wishful thinking. The feeling drains out through the tips of his fingers, leaving him numb, and god, this can't be real, couldn't be happening, he couldn't live through this again, not for the third time-

He sits upright, practically clawing the sheets off of his body to scan the room he was in, greatly panicked by the sheer out-of-place familiarity of this place. He drinks in the hastily set-aside mess on the floor, his old school bag, and his disorganized desk. His eyes are wide with panic and wet with unshed tears, his heart seizing painfully in his chest.

No, he tells himself, unscarred fingers digging into unmarred palms, he couldn't, this wasn't- isn't supposed to happen. This isn't happening. It can't be. No, no, no-

He shouldn't be here, shouldn't be awake and alive, standing in his room which he remembers burning to the ground during the second war against Millefiore without the weight of the mantle around his shoulders-

Not like this, he begs, not again-

"u-kun? Are you awake?"

The voice, just like the rest of the room, is familiar.

He feels the tears falling before he could stop himself and he's seen so much, had experienced firsthand what it was like to suffer from Mukuro's and Viper's illusions, but nothing came as close to scaring him as much as this reality does. He doesn't know what to feel, doesn't know how to feel after- after everything. He can't do this, god, he can't hold himself together, not with what was left, not with the broken pieces that he couldn't even find.

"Tsu-kun?" the voice calls again, concerned, and he doesn't breathe. Couldn't.

He was… afraid.

Tsuna was scared.

He doesn't want to see, doesn't want to believe because if he did, it would just be taken away from him all over again and he was so tired. He's watched enough people die in front of his very eyes, both enemy and ally, the splatter of their blood on his skin, the last heave of their chest and pulses on their necks, and he doesn't think he'd be able to go through this without losing what remains of him, because that was her voice and he wants so desperately to believe that this was real even if it isn't, even if it's just on borrowed time because he couldn't even say goodbye, couldn't say I'm sorry for never telling her what he has become-

The door opens and she walks in. Warm, worried. Alive.

His mother is alive.

(It doesn't seem like it's been that long since Kyoya entered his office saying, 'Millefiore got to them first.'

And at that time, Tsuna hadn't really known what got to him more; the fact that he knew just who Kyoya was pertaining to without having to ask, without daring to question, or the fact that he didn't so much as bat an eyelash at the revelation, that he had nothing to ask more than, 'Their bodies?' in a tone that was so weary and tired, having been just so generally done with Millefiore, the Mafia, and the goddamned world.

'I retrieved them from the site,' Kyoya had replied coolly, the expression on his face not betraying what he truly felt.

Tsuna had nodded. Not that there was much he could do but accept it and take it, to cushion its fall with his own bare hands.

He had given up, and Kyoya knew that. They all did.

They, who remained.

'You've become quite pathetic, little animal,' Kyoya had said to him, a small smile - not that of pleasure or acknowledgment, but that of compliance - which Tsuna didn't hesitate returning, no matter how thin and broken at the edges.

'You and I, both.'

His guardian had merely closed his eyes, his smile blooming into a full-blown smirk. 'I suppose.')

"...You just collapsed on your way home, according to the people who saw you. You seemed alright but I still called a doctor just in case something was wrong. They said that you will be alright after getting a little bit of rest." A hesitant pause. "Are… are you alright? Does anything hurt? You've been unconscious for two days and they said that you just needed to rest but…"

Tsuna hesitates, mind reeling.

Right, of course, right. He's in the past, if not an alternate universe of the past, a little over a decade back with - he takes a sweeping glance at the room - Reborn nowhere in sight. He was in his room, his mother was alright, and he was- had been unconscious for two days after falling unconscious on his way home from school, no doubt the influence of time traveling that shouldn't have happened in the first place but now that he was here- now that he's here-

"...I'm okay," he weakly says, or at least, tries to say because the next thing he knows is he's bent over the edge of his bed, hacking and scraping his throat dry, the unpleasant taste of acid resting on the back of his tongue. He can just about make out his mother hurrying to reach for the glass of water placed on top of his desk from the corner of his eye as she carefully rubbed soothing circles - and his body desperately fights down the bone-deep shudder at the warmth of her hand - on his back. She looks far too tense with her fingers shaking around its grip on the glass, her eyes filled with mirrored hurt.

If Tsuna had just been a decade and a few years younger, he wouldn't have seen this. He would've taken this for granted.

(He honestly wished he hadn't learned the lesson a little too late.)

"Thank you," he whispers against the rim of the glass, expecting his voice to come out raspy on a rough exhale but then his throat constricts and twists-

He covers his mouth with his fingers as he coughs, this one harsher than the last, and he stares with wide eyes as his hand comes away dripping with red.

"Do you need anything?" Nana asks, reaching for the bottle of water behind her, and Tsuna snatches his bloody hand under the covers, wipes it and hopes that she doesn't notice. "I'll go get some more water downstairs. Are you hungry?"

He manages a nod and fakes a close-lipped smile, hopes and prays to whatever cruel deity that his lips are clean of the blood he just coughed out. His hands shake under the blanket that pooled around his hips but he holds his body with a brutally forced calm that Reborn drilled into him for years, his vice-like grip on his control not giving for even an inch.

She couldn't see, couldn't let her see-

For what seemed like an eternity, she stays to stare, uncertain, and in those few minutes she does, Tsuna fights down the urge to wipe his chin just to see. "Just… call me if you need anything, alright?" she tells him as she stands to head for the door, the concern in her eyes not leaving as she threw one last glance over her shoulder before she left.

Tsuna watches the door close, fists shaking, breathing uncontrolled. He- he didn't want to think, the last thing he wanted to do was to think about what was happening but he knew exactly what good that would bring him. It wasn't that too long ago - not even an hour, and how fucked up is that? - when he wished for nothing but Vongola to end by his very hands yet now he's here in a time that he so desperately wished wasn't the past but a parallel universe, alive when he shouldn't be, when he had no right to be.

He pushes himself off the bed and walks to his mirror on unsteady and unbalanced feet, calendar hanging lopsidedly by its reflective surface, and he stares. With his head a mess, the storm in his thudding heart imminent, he reaches out to touch his reflection like he believes his hand would go through and reach far past what its surface would allow.

And with some trepidation and grim acceptance that he has long since grown accustomed to carrying, he opens his mouth and speaks.

Something sharp digs into his throat and he heaves, fights down the bile rising in his throat when all that pours out of his mouth is red.

There was no sound.

He tries and tries and tries until he is screaming, forehead pressed against the cold unrelenting surface of the mirror, hoping that this is all a lie, a cruel illusion, tears dropping, swirling with red on his balled fists which he bashed against the mirror with as much strength as he could muster in his weakened state, hating and hating and hating-

He falls to his knees and, for what seems like the first time in years, allows himself to fall apart.

Nothing has changed. His shoulders shake violently as he closes his eyes and claws at the cracked mirror, blind to the red that trickled down his injured knuckles and the peeling skin. Nothing at all.

Just like always, I never had a choice.

When Nana returns to his room minutes later, she drops the tray of food she brought with her, eyes wide and complexion draining into a sickly white, the urge to scream a scorching need on her tongue as she rushes to his side, whispering reassurances that she couldn't tell apart from the lies, telling him to calm down and that everything's going to be alright despite all the questions she must have had hen she came into her son's room to see him breaking down in front of a mirror after being unconscious for days.

Something in her eyes tells him that she knows that he was different, that he just wasn't the same.

That he wasn't him.

(And yet again, he takes another thing away from the people he loves.)

Tsuna wishes he had the voice to tell her, "I'm sorry."