Usually, whenever Tsuna woke from a nightmare it was a regular, humdrum affair. He never remembered the details, and only knew in the morning that he had had one at all when Reborn, after kicking him awake, informed him with his usual creepy smile that he had been tossing in his sleep, muttering some nonsense about giant dango monsters on legs.

Such nightmares were inevitable. Schoolwork, mafia training, the perpetual panic that came from having psychotic and occasionally abusive friends/subordinates – these various daily stresses often carried over into his dreams. The dreams were not pleasant but they were not unusual, and more often than not they were quickly forgotten upon awakening.

This, however, was not usual.

Tsuna lay on his bed, ram-rod straight with muscles clenched immovably into place, sweat pouring from him. It soaked his pyjamas; made his mousy brown hair matt to his forehead. His eyes were stretched wide, but they were unseeing – a trembling hand clutched the material above his heart; it was pounding furiously.

His lips mouthed a silent sob between his staggered breaths.

What was that?

Tears blurred his vision.

Why am I still thinking of this? Isn't it all behind me now?

No, never behind; always in front, all around, everywhere; as inescapable as Fate.

After many long minutes locked into place, unable to move, almost even unable to breathe despite the wide gape his mouth was set in, Tsuna finally managed to gain control of his limbs long enough to raise a trembling hand to his mouth, and release a choked sob.

I thought it was all behind me now…

Future Tense

A.N. Ever since reading 'The Wall' by Jean-Paul Satre, I've been wanting to an angsty, introspective piece about the nature of death. This is the result of that urge.

Thanks to Zeriku for betaing.

No copyrights were harmed in the making of this fic.

It had been months now since he and his Guardians had returned from the future, and Tsuna still hadn't recovered. It was easy enough to smile during the day, to panic over Gokudera's destructive tendencies and sweat through Reborn's tutoring methods, but at night there was nothing to distract him and he was all alone in the darkness and the tightness in his chest, the phantom pains, would remind him of the fact that in the future he would die.

And his death would not be an easy slipping away, in a bed surrounded by friends. He would be shot dead. Gunned down in the street, the bite of metal in his blood shaking the world on its axis before it disappeared, forever. It was a truth that left him cold.

The others seemed to have recovered though. That was a different time, after all. They had defeated that other, unthinkable future; they were safe here.

Tsuna had smiled when they had said that, and had nodded.

He could not bring himself to speak. What could he say? How could he describe the impossibility of a thinking breathing human being suddenly snuffing into nothing? It's not natural to die. All those things that compose us, just breaking away like they were never whole… What makes a human?

He stared at his fingers; short, calloused, marred with scratches and small burns.

What are we made of? The cells of dead things; the remains of dead stars –a trillion years worth of potassium atoms and carbon, and other things he wished he couldn't remember from science class. And Time. Time was woven inextricably into the weave of muscle and marrow and slippery sinew. It was Time that aged us and made us incontinent and gave us sicknesses and cancers and marched us ceaselessly into Death.

Time is against us.

The weight of the past leans on the present and deadens the future. Time sees to it that we live helpless in the force of patterns, an endless goosestep, the same desire lines stretching ahead, all of them linear, all of them chronological.

Time is against us, and Tsuna's life had been paced out from the beginning.

The ache in his bones knew it all. He could see the shape of his future but couldn't get beyond it. Every time he thought he saw a way out, a method of dealing, escaping, living – his shoulders bowed with a little more pressure and he was left leaning on the limits of himself, exhausted and miserable.

Who was he to think that he could undo Fate?

Tsuna woke for school the next day in the usual way, with Reborn clobbering him over the head with Leon and threatening him with the fact that Hibari would 'bite him to death' if he was late. This prompted Tsuna to shoot out of bed and wrestle into his uniform with a resounding 'Hiiiiee!', the brunette's panic heightening with each failed attempt at sticking his limbs into the right hole.

"Dame-Tsuna."

The ominous click of Reborn cocking his gun prompted another quiet scream from the panicked boy, and then Tsuna was blindly fleeing the room with his head still trapped inside his shirt.

Reborn sat at the end of the bed, absently polishing the transformed Leon as he waited. Barely a minute had passed before a blushing Tsuna (uniform straightened courtesy of Nana) re-entered the room and accepted his forgotten socks from the carefully blank-faced Reborn. Face still burning Tsuna closed his bedroom door behind him… and promptly tripped down the stairs.

Time may have changed some things but he was still the same dame-Tsuna. All that had really changed since his introduction to the mafia was that he was now a slightly older dame-Tsuna, with a legion of subordinates who (well, most of them) were willing to cater to his every whim, and protect his life, even at the expense of their own.

Tsuna shuddered as he shouldered his school bag, but then he was sprinting out the door with Reborn shooting at his heels and there was no more time for thinking.

School passed as it usually did, and if Gokudera and Yamamoto kept shooting him concerned glances, and if Hibari uncharacteristically pre-emptively bit to death Tsuna's most persistent bullies and spent the day as he had most days recently, stalking Tsuna's shadow, an act that prompted only a flat, routine objection from Gokudera… Tsuna couldn't bring himself to pay it much mind.

"Dame-Tsuna."

Said boy blinked and stuttered, looking up guiltily from where he had been doodling little characters in the margins of his exercise book. It was dark inside the bedroom - Tsuna hadn't turned on the light. "R-Reborn! I-I-I…"

Said man (the events of the future had restored the former infant to his adult form) fwapped his student soundly across the back of the head. "You're even more distracted than usual, dame-Tsuna," he scolded, but Tsuna couldn't help but notice that there was less creepy menace and more concern in his observation than usual. "What's wrong this time?"

Tsuna flushed uncomfortably. "Nothing's wrong Reborn," he lied easily, though he had to direct his gaze back to his book and pretend to proof read. "English is just hard for me. I…I'll be done soon, so…"

Reborn frowned and whacked Tsuna again, but there was no force behind the blow. "Baka Tsuna."

And that was all. The Arcobaleno didn't need to elaborate on Tsuna's need to trust his family more and rely on them to protect both his body and his heart from dark things – it was already understood. And Tsuna felt more horrible than ever for worrying everyone, especially for worrying Reborn. The last thing he wanted to do was undermine the deep trust and affection that had grown and flourished between the two over the long months, but this wasn't something he felt he could discuss with anyone. It was a private thing too deeply insinuated to put into words – the cruel stench in his clothes, the pain like a flash of colour. If it were only baring his heart to Reborn there would be no issue but he had turned these thoughts over and over so many times that they had seeped into his brain, into his tongue; nameless and no longer distinguishable from himself.

He could bare his heart, but not the secrets in his marrow – the suckable bits he needed to live.

"Nothing's wrong," he whispered, before bending back over his homework.

Reborn said nothing for the rest of the night.