AN: Okay, this story has been circling in my head and refusing to leave me alone, so I thought I might as well write it down. And I'm quite sure it will be finished.
It will have three arcs. First arc is already written when I write this, and the chapters are relatively short. Second arc is where things really start happening and it is largely planned. It will have much longer chapters and much more plot. I have an idea of where the third arc will go, but no details. This will be hopefully be updated quite rapidly (maybe weekly?) until the end of second arc (barring external circumstances) after which I may have to stop and think before launching into third arc.
There will be no pairings as far as I can see. They do not have time for such things. Feel free to imagine any pairings you want.
Some characters may have very different experiences and relationships than in canon, which means they will react differently.
There will be no flames, but there will be supernatural elements in the story.
I was originally going to make Lambo the lightning guardian same as canon, but changed my mind after finishing rest of arc 1. He is too young to be in any way useful to the plot and I like Shoichi better anyway. Sorry, Lambo fans!
Without further ado, here it is.
Prologue: Amongst the dreams
Mukuro Rokudo was always a quiet child. He seemed distant even to his parents, detached from everything around him. On those rare moments his gaze wasn't empty, there was a sharp, almost unearthly sense of sadness in it.
Although it isn't a justification for what they did, perhaps it was not surprising that even his own parents didn't bond with him.
But long before their betrayal, before they gave him up thinking they were helping their house, Mukuro had strange dreams. There was a calm, beautiful meadow in them. Sometimes he felt other presences there. They were strangely familiar, like he was supposed to know them but just couldn't remember. Occasionally he might see a silhouette, hear a whisper, catch a flash of a face or a strong feeling.
He knew instinctively there were six other presences. He was sure they were real people somewhere, not just his imagination. Sometimes just the thought they existed filled him with peace. Other times he was irritated beyond measure. He could enter the meadow - the others had better get their act together and figure it out soon. He wanted, no, needed to meet them.
Oh well. He could patient when he had to.
Kyoya Hibari was a difficult child. He was easily irritated and most of the time grumpy. Even when he was a baby, his parents could rarely get him to calm or behave. They may have wanted a child, but they had no idea how to handle him. They both escaped back to their work and left Kyoya to be taken care of by an endless string of ever-changing babysitters, who became more and more expensive as his reputation grew.
But even as a small child, Kyoya loved sleep. He slept a lot, any chance he could do it undisturbed. Even though other children stopped taking naps, Kyoya continued.
When he slept, he felt much calmer. More content. Happier. When he was five years old, he had started meeting people in his dreams. The same six people, although not everyone was present every time. Rain, Storm, Mist, Sun, Lightning and Sky.
They felt like family. The first five felt like brothers to him. He could read their feelings flawlessly and follow their thoughts. He was accepted by them.
And Sky - he was in a class of his own.
Hayato Gokudera often wished he could get some concrete proof his dreams were true. During them, it never came to his mind to question - he was filled with such confidence it was overwhelming.
In the dreams there was no need to ask names or other labels the others went by. They were Sky, Rain, Sun, Cloud and Mist. That was what they were. There was no need for anything more.
It never came to his mind in dreams to ask the locations of the others. They didn't matter, since they were, at that moment, together.
But during the day, that faded. He wanted a name and a location to research. He wanted to know how their connection worked and if it was just his imagination. He researched extra-sensory perception, out-of-body experiences, telepathy, astral travel - anything that might offer a hint. Nothing did.
He wondered often what the names they called themselves by meant. They were the names of Vongola Guardians. Was there a connection in that?
With time he tried to think of the dreams less and less. It was useless to torture himself with them. He was resigned to them being false or at least never finding proof of their truth.
But the dreams never stopped.
Takeshi Yamamoto had always felt separate from others. He had first realized this in first grade. They were on a trip to the library when one of his classmates ran ahead and was struck by a truck.
The truck scooped him up and squished him like a grape. There was blood everywhere, people screamed and cried and threw up.
Takeshi just watched. What was their problem? It's not like most of them even knew him.
During the years he started to realize how abnormal his thinking was. He had playmates and he cared for his father. Having people around was nice, but in the same way watching a pretty bird was nice. It wasn't like he was going to cry every time a bird hit their windshield.
He didn't understand people. It was like he was from another world or another race entirely. It made him lonely, but he couldn't do anything about it.
His dreams were the only thing that gave him hope. He felt they were true - somewhere there were people he belonged with. He refused to doubt them and always stopped his thoughts in their tracks immediately if they veered in that direction.
In the dreams he felt a part of something greater. Loved and needed, essential for the others.
Perhaps they were shards of the same soul, he thought sometimes. Parts of a whole, forced apart. Maybe they would unite one day and he wouldn't need to stay lonely anymore.
Shoichi Irie grew up mostly alone, but didn't mind it. He was a shy boy and had trouble interacting with people. Escaping into the world of computers and coding and machinery and math and logic was a relief.
He got all necessary social interaction with the six people in his dreams. And wasn't that illogical - he had for the longest time worried for his mental stability because of those dreams, until he had filed them under some weird form of lucid dreaming and childhood imaginary friends who refused to leave.
Shoichi went to a school for gifted children, where people appreciated his intelligence and didn't mind a little social awkwardness. It was there he first met prince Byakuran.
He didn't know what special Byakuran saw in him, but he befriended Shoichi. Shoichi was apprehensive. Byakuran was older, powerful, impulsive and unpredictable and sometimes Shoichi felt that the slightest misstep could make Byakuran order his execution.
But something in Byakuran reminded him of Sky. It wasn't his temperament, that couldn't have been more different. They both sometimes watched the world with a quiet intensity, like they were trying to decide what to do with it, but it wasn't that either.
Maybe it was how they both could read him and always knew exactly what to say to him. Maybe it was how they both smiled at him all the time and told him they appreciated him and enjoyed his presence. Maybe it was how they could both make everyone around them feel at ease.
He learned to appreciate Byakurans humor and intelligence. Byakuran didn't treat him as a child, he treated him as a trusted subordinate and friend. And it was an honor to be working with him and for him. Byakuran always had the most interesting projects.
And sometimes Shoichi liked to pretend they were friends. Just two people, not a prince and his pawn.
But that pretense always shattered when their eyes met. Byakurans gaze was always sharp and amused, as if he saw through Shoichi and found something amusing inside him. Like there was a private joke Shoichi was not privy to.
He tried to tell himself it was nothing, but when Byakuran assigned Shoichi ten extra bodyguards, there was a sharp pang of panic inside him.
Ryohei Sasagawa loved his family and they loved him. It was a strong, unconditional love on both sides. Especially between the siblings - Kyoko was the loveliest, sweetest little sister Ryohei could have asked.
Her presence was soothing for him. But even with her, he never felt like he belonged.
People talked behind his back. He was too energetic and loud, too full of life. he didn't understand that. How could one be too full of life? If you weren't full of life, you were dead!
Ryohei felt he belonged in his dreams. That was why he knew he didn't belong otherwise - the contrast was stark. But his dreams were hazy. He remembered the others, but he didn't remember their faces or their voices. Throughout the day, what he had retained from the dream would fade, until he fell asleep again and remembered again.
He didn't understand it, but he had never been one to brood on anything. It would solve itself with time.
Tsunayoshi Sawada was quiet and friendless. He slipped through peoples notice - teachers rarely bothered him, schoolmates barely knew him and sometimes he felt even his own mother looked over him.
He was far from smartest in the class, although he wasn't really stupid. Schoolwork never interested him, so he didn't invest effort in it. He was far from athletic as well. His father had signed him up to self-defence classes and dance classes, which he was forced to suffer through for years and years. But he was still clumsy, tripped all the time and was always the laughingstock of the class during PE.
But in his dreams things were different.
He had a family. People who looked up to him.
Sometimes he despaired during the day and feared the dreams were just dreams - wish fulfillment. But always something deep inside him argued they were real.
And weren't there times when they had stretched onto the waking world? When his Mist had been panicking, hovering on the border between life and death, and reached to him for strength? He had given his all, of course, and promptly fainted in the middle of a math class. But his Mist had survived, which was all that mattered.
And that time when he suddenly felt Storm being in pain and crashed his bike? He thought he could occasionally feel a the others, for a blink, even outside the meadow. Even if the feeling vanished fast.
He often worried for the others. The Cloud was irritated, even if he calmed in their presence. The Storm was often angry and sad. Rain was lonely outside the meadow. He could feel it. The Mist was often in pain but just shook his head when Tsuna asked if he could help.
It was to be expected - what could he do? Steal money from his parents and try to go look for them, with the whole world to check and no idea where to start? With barely a vague impression of what they looked like?
But he still wished there was something.