Title: Still Fighting It
Author/Artist: bandanability
Rating: PG-ish
Warnings: Death~
Prompt: For KHRFest, prompt 1 − 53. Tsuna and his guardians-60 years later; "I'm going to take your temperature now, sir."
Summary: Growing old is difficult, especially when it involves watching those you love die.
Word count: 1107
Growing old is difficult, but for Tsunayoshi Sawada, it was so much worse than expected. He'd expected a somewhat happy future. He'd expected children and a loving wife and a strong family. He'd never really thought about death when he first became the Vongola boss, so when it first met him, it was like driving a car into a wall.
At the time, they were thirty-two (looking back, he was grateful that he managed to keep all of his guardians alive that long), and it was supposed to be a low-risk job, but public enough that he'd have to put in an appearance. He'd been very relaxed, and all had been well until someone pulled a gun on him. It was only a matter of luck (good or bad, he didn't know) that when Gokudera had attacked the man with the weapon, the bullet that went flying hit Ryohei, to the extreme. They buried him at sunrise the next day, and life went on.
(one down, five to go)
Of course, there were other deaths. Anonymous subordinates, members of other families. Tsuna had grown accustomed to reading those reports, looking at them coldly, distancing himself from the destruction they told of. But there was always a very pronounced difference between those deaths and the deaths of those he'd known since middle school.
The next nine years weren't terrible. Kyoko gave Tsuna an heir, a healthy boy he named after her brother, and Lambo and I-Pin were married. The Vongola prospered like never before, and all was well. Even Hayato and Takeshi had settled down together, and were going through the process of adopting a baby girl. It was looking like, aside from Ryohei's death, they were going to have a future of babies-ever-after and it would be perfect.
He was forty-nine when that image was drastically altered. It wasn't a death (or rather, might not have been), but one morning, both Hibari and Mukuro were gone. All of their things were still in their rooms, their beds both still unmade, and there was no sign of a struggle. No communication ever followed, though both Vongola rings were found in the mail not a month after. For the sake of keeping himself sane, Tsuna told everyone they'd chosen to leave, but he never really knew. And life went on.
(three down, three to go)
The next two also went together (fifty-two years old), but far less peacefully, and in two different ways. Near midnight after a rainy day, not long after his right-hand man had left, Tsuna received a call from Hayato, saying he'd found both Takeshi and their daughter dead, and that he was leaving, going back to Japan for good, and he was staying out of Vongola business for the rest of his life. The one time Tsuna stopped by to see him, he got the impression that Hayato's mind wasn't all there, and it was too painful for him to see that; he never went back and life went on.
(five down, one to go)
Lambo, Tsuna decided, was going to outlive him. After all, he was ten years younger, and he'd always been a bit apart from the rest. True, he'd grown up with their little family, with the mafia, but that also meant he was the one best equipped to survive.
Tsunayoshi Sawada's died of natural causes at age seventy-six, and passed on his title to his son, Ryohei.
And life went on.
fin.
Thoughts?