Yamamoto Takeshi is not a hitman. So he says.
When asked, he pauses, cocks his head to one side, and regards you with nothing but the faintest of puzzlements in his eyes. His expression is clear, without a trace of shadow, which, for a reason you don't understand, makes you uneasy. His brows furrow ever-so slightly, as though he understands what you're asking, but doesn't get why you would say such a thing. As far as you know, you're the first person to ask him this—but maybe not. You can't tell from his countenance. You generally can't tell anything, with him. He's the most unreadable transparent person you've ever met. "Being a hitman and just killing someone are two completely different things," he says, with the air of someone who stating a fact that to them is obvious, but who doesn't want to offend his listener. It's a thoughtful gesture, above your pay grade. That said, it seems he has nothing else to say; he walks away, at as calm a pace as ever.
You don't know how to feel. You can't even tell if he was being rude or not. You decide to reserve judgment for today. Just like every other day.
Yamamoto doesn't understand why people are so hung up on this.
The concept of a hitman is pretty straightforward. Basically, it's a Squalo. It doesn't really matter how many people you kill; if it's not a job, if it's not something you grumble about over a cup of coffee on Monday mornings, then you're not a hitman. Being a ruthless mass murderer doesn't give you any points. It just makes you a Mukuro, which, if anything, is the opposite of a hitman.
He thinks maybe it's the kid—Reborn's fault for confusing everyone on the issue. Going on about how Yamamoto was a "natural born hitman"—he could see why people would get mixed up. But he's never acted hitman-y, as far as he knows. He doesn't go around screaming at the top of his lungs about how he's going to—well, he expects not all of them do that. He can't picture Bianchi or Shamal doing it, for one. Reborn—that's up in the air. The guy has a real flair for the dramatic.
Speaking of, though. Yamamoto doesn't understand why people look at him so funny, sometimes. They don't look at any of the others like that, even though Bianchi has just come back from a clean job in Catania, and Yamamoto's pretty sure Squalo has killed more people than he has individual inches of hair. Which is quite a lot. Yamamoto has been getting a little concerned, lately—Xanxus is never going to be boss, which means Squalo is never going to get the opportunity to cut his hair, if he sticks to that old promise. Yamamoto is all for promises, but seriously—that's so much hair. He can't even imagine how much effort it must take to maintain it. And it's white, to boot—does blood stain hair? His own locks are black, or about as close to black as people really get, so he's never had to think about that problem.
Anyway. One serious conversation with an adorably frowny Tsuna, he can take. It wasn't even really about that, anyway; they talked about Byakuran. Not Yamamoto's idea of fun, but expected, and manageable. Then Gokudera's doctor guy, for some reason—he'd found Yamamoto on a rooftop one day after a fight and said weird, oblique things. An ultimately pointless, confusing conversation. Reborn is the most straightforward. He walks up to Yamamoto in plain view, and asks questions like, "Do you regret killing that man?" which are easy to answer and easy to see the point of. Yamamoto has been getting better at both deciphering and producing roundabout talk—where you didn't say what you really wanted to say, and instead opted to say things that you knew would make the other person think of what you really wanted to say (an unfortunately necessary skill when your Christmas parties are attended by Byakuran, talk about awkward)—but he still likes it best when people are straight to the point. It's funny, because he's pretty sure the kid is actually the world's leading expert on roundabout. Maybe the two of them just have similar wavelengths. Haha.
But yeah. He's had The Talk. Sort of. Just like the birds and the bees version, he's not sure anyone actually ever receives the mafia version of the Talk in an official, sit-down capacity. It seems more like something people just learn by themselves, by growing up—by growing up. Yeah, that's it. You just sort of learn everything you really need to a few bits at a time, by listening and watching others, and just rolling with it. There's some induction involved, too, obviously. No one ever told him how to kill people. He'd just figured that if he swung his sword hard enough, in the way Dad taught him—well, some things are pretty intuitive.
The first person Tsuna ever killed is alive and well and occasionally drops in to give him industrial-sized bags of marshmallows.
It's a weird and rather unique situation, if he does say so himself. Technically, he killed Byakuran pretty fucking dead—vaporization is about as thorough a death as you can get. But that was in a future that no long exists. Or, well. That no long exists to them. It still hurts Tsuna's brain that there's a difference, but there's no arguing with the tangible proof of the ten year bazooka. Timelines shift all the time; he could be either averting or diving headfirst into an uncountable amount of crises just by sitting in his chair and sipping coffee. It's a panic-inducing thought, but such a metaphysical one that it's easy to forget about it, and focus on other, more concrete panic-inducing thoughts.
Anyway. Byakuran still lives. But Tsuna still killed him.
It hadn't been a decision as much as the only possible result to him putting his all into that final attack. That sort of thing, that sort of… ending, of someone's life, is the least bitter pill for Tsuna to swallow. As bad as that sounds. Not a cold, calculated choice, but what felt like the natural outcome of the flow of battle. He'd just been following that flow; breaking from it would have meant certain death, destruction, annihilation. It's an asinine concept—it's just another way of saying "he fought to the death"—but the calm and collected part of him, that dripping coolness he can sometimes tangibly feel curled up somewhere in his brain, approves of the poetry of it. Beautiful, clean, right, like everything in the universe is riding on these lines and Tsuna can see exactly where they're all going, where's it's all converging—precisely what battle does not and should not feel like. Tsuna wonders why his intuition has nothing poetic to say about being punched in the face and swallowing dirt. Probably one of those things it dismisses as irrelevant. His intuition is such a snob. Which is amazing considering it's an obscure, genetically inherited superpower. What is wrong with the Vongola family.
He and his Guardians are all unhealthily prepared to fight to the death at a moment's notice at any given moment and they are used to giving all that they have. Even Mukuro has that 'skate or die' feel to him nowadays, despite being—well, Mukuro.
And then there's Yamamoto.
Tsuna doesn't like giving orders to his Guardians. Has avoided it up until now, actually. It's amazing how far asking people nicely to do things for you can get you. Gokudera, he knows, would trip over himself trying to complete any mission Tsuna set before him. Everyone knows; it's kind of obvious. Gokudera's over-devotion is a public thing: he kneels, he grovels, he yells, he blows himself up. He has attempted to write lyrical poetry on more than one occasion.
Yamamoto isn't quite so flashy. But he and Gokudera are peas in a pod; Tsuna's pretty sure Yamamoto would fetch him the moon if he asked, and maybe even if he didn't, if he only looked sad enough. His other Guardians are devoted, but nothing quite compares to his—what do they call themselves? His right and left hands? Ridiculous. Tsuna already feels like he has way too many hands at his disposal, and all of them are rather trigger-happy. It makes a guy nervous—one day, there will be a dead body lying on the ground, and it'll have been put there in Sawada Tsunayoshi's name. Tsuna just prays that when he looks up to see who did it, it won't be someone he recognizes. It's a foolish prayer; Reborn would snort. Tsuna makes it anyway.
Unfortunately, the odds are heavily stacked against his prayer. Yamamoto's general attitude towards assassination seems to be distant amiability. Oh, that's nice, I guess, if you're into that sort of thing. He's open-minded in the strangest (read: What The Fuck Yamamoto) of ways. Tsuna sort of gets it by now; they've known each other a long time, and Yamamoto has been, well, Yamamoto, from the start. He's friends with Squalo, for heaven's sake. Tsuna has no idea what they even do together. Squalo does not look like he goes to the movies. Squalo does not look like he does anything except kill and terrorize people, and maybe take care of his hair. Tsuna still isn't fully convinced that his hair isn't white because all the colour pigments died of overexposure to his constant screaming. But Tsuna, hair is inanimate and therefore cannot perceive sound, you say. That's what you think. But Tsuna knows that science and common sense are dead. Tsuna is a mafia boss now: he will consider all possibilities, including the ones that don't make any sense. Besides, it would not be the strangest thing he has encountered in his life, by far. This is what he's been driven to, thanks to Reborn and his accomplices. Well, too bad. Tsuna will channel his excessive levels of frantic energy and paranoia into whatever he feels like, including theorizing on the nature of Squalo's hair. He's the Boss now. He's allowed to do what he wants. He doesn't care what you think.
Anyway. (Shut up. He can keep on track if he tries.)
How strong his enemies are doesn't factor into it. Strength and murderability seem to have no correlation in Yamamoto's consciousness. What does matter—well, the first time Yamamoto ever killed a man, that man had been previously pointing a gun at Tsuna's head, so. There's that.
Tsuna doesn't think Yamamoto felt bad for it. And that's the thing. The big thing, the one that gnaws at Tsuna all day long, when he remembers it, the thing that makes him afraid all over again of the feeling of responsibility on his shoulders. It had been, technically, unnecessary for that man to die. Subduing someone is as easy as breathing when you have Rain flames of Yamamoto's caliber. But Yamamoto had cut him down anyway, without hesitation. And Tsuna knows. He knows. He knows that if he ever pointed at a target and said "go", Yamamoto wouldn't hesitate.
Tsuna's the Boss, after all.