Tsuna is six and he dreams of death.
He's a funny little six-year-old, both wise beyond his years and frighteningly immature. Spiky brown hair and perpetually widened eyes make him cute. It will not last.
He has a mother and a father, who is gone most of the time, but none of that matters at present. From the moment Tsuna went trustingly with his classmates to see the toilet bowl in closer detail than he ever wanted, he had been destined to be useless.
Tsuna dreams of setting fire to the kitchen and burning to death. He sees himself tripping right at the moment that a large bus comes down the street. He knows that if lightning strikes, it will, despite statistical analysis, have a far better chance of hitting him than any other six-year-old.
Somehow, Tsuna survives. He is not happy, nor is he particularly alive. Still, he survives and for someone at the bottom of the playground food chain, this is a monumental achievement.
Tsuna is twelve and he dreams of tonfas, always sharp in intensity as they come for him.
Tonfas are blunt objects, yet they somehow come alive when paired with Hibari-san's deadly elegance.
Tsuna has never talked to Hibari-san – besides terrified denials of fault aimed somewhat in the head prefect's direction – nor has he ever looked him straight in the eye.
However, even someone useless can recognize who is the predator and who is the prey.
There are parents who beat children who beat other children who bully other children who tease other children. And all of them seem to make Tsuna their favorite target.
Hibari-san has never been bullied, and this is also a constant in Tsuna's life – a belief that Namimori's power will never be beaten.
It is odd that this constant will be disproved at roughly the same time that Tsuna's other steadfast belief wavers – that he was, is, will always, always be useless.
Nevertheless, Tsuna knows, somewhere inside his herbivore nature, that Hibari-san is strong and there is nothing to stop Hibari-san from killing anyone, especially him. Just one wrong move, and those deadly beautiful tonfas will destroy him.
The strong will always defeat the weak – just another constant.
Tsuna is thirteen and he dreams of snakes.
Sometimes the snakes have heterochromatic eyes and other times, there's an eye patch over them.
Sometimes the snakes aren't snakes at all.
Tsuna is not foolish enough not to have heard of the dog that bites its master's hand.
Unfortunately, Tsuna still cannot keep himself from stretching out his hands – sometimes in supplication, sometimes in sympathy because he can feel the cold whenever he gets too close to Mukuro.
Mukuro hates the mafia and everyone connected to it. Tsuna is no exception, only alive because he might be useful and Mukuro is too lazy to waste time in training Tsuna's body when Tsuna could do so himself.
Tsuna can still feel Chrome's kiss upon his cheek and thinks of the urban legend of the mafia's kiss of death. Chrome belongs to Mukuro, body and soul, even though the other girls in Tsuna's family try their best to make her fit in.
It is nothing tangible, but even Bianchi feels wary when facing Chrome.
Like a snake charmer, he has the difficult job of holding the snakes and keeping them from biting him at the same time. He can't help feel but that one day, his luck will run out and the snakes will turn on him.
Perhaps they already have.
Tsuna is fifteen and he dreams of dynamite, making graceful swipes through the air before blowing up in someone's face.
He has declared Gokudera – never Hayato despite how long they've known each other – his official right-hand man.
It is ironic that Gokudera's best work is normally done when as far away from Tsuna as possible.
Gokudera truly does deserve this position, Tsuna thinks. The thought is not entirely flattering, and being the right-hand man is not always an honor. Squalo has been known to spend hours getting the glass out of his hair.
Still, Gokudera is honored, humbled, and ecstatic – he has finally been given a place to belong.
Tsuna wonders why Gokudera's father has not yet seen his son's genius or his penchant for hard work. Gokudera is truly exceptional.
If one day, his father acknowledged him and accepted him into his own mafia family, then Tsuna fears that he will come second.
If Gokudera is ever forced to choose between his true, blood-related family and Tsuna's makeshift family…Tsuna fears the day that Gokudera's loyalty is turned against him.
Tsuna is eighteen and he dreams of swords.
Yamamoto Takeshi sees life as a game. As expected, seeing how his life revolves around baseball.
At least, it did before he met Tsuna. Tsuna is sometimes guiltily grateful that despite Yamamoto's love of the game, he would never have been an exceptional baseball player without Reborn's training.
The mafia is also a game, at least to Yamamoto; when he's around, the danger of the mafia almost seems fun to Tsuna, as well.
Tsuna likes Yamamoto better than any other member of his inner circle, but he has always felt uncomfortable seeing Yamamoto's laughing eyes after another one of Reborn's "games."
Games where he is told to cut down startlingly realistic dummies or defeat real gang members, yet Yamamoto always maintains his smile.
It might be because he has so much in life, including his other friends, his father, and baseball. Of course, this simply means that Yamamoto has so much more to lose, compared to the rest of them.
Sometimes, Tsuna believes that Yamamoto really is this naïve. If so, Tsuna knows that he will use his sword in anger, for once, when he truly sees that the mafia game is not a game at all and understands what Tsuna has done to his life.
Other times, Tsuna feels that Yamamoto might be playing mind games with everyone around him.
Then Yamamoto smiles and makes another idiotically innocent comment. Tsuna smiles back, nervously.
Tsuna is nineteen and he dreams of fists, the kind that can shatter bones and destroy organs with one punch.
Sasagawa Ryohei has never been very important, less an inner member of Tsuna's family than everyone else there.
Sasagawa Kyoko is a different story.
Tsuna has liked Kyoko-chan for so long that he has forgotten the reason why. Kyoko has been indifferent to eternally bullied Tsuna for so long that she will never see the man Tsuna has become. They are satisfied, for now, with this arrangement.
Once, Kyoko-chan was kidnapped by a rival mafia group. It had been a small group, hardly even worth noticing and with no special features beyond that of the streetwise intelligence to strike at a target's emotional weaknesses.
Ryohei hardly seemed aware that Tsuna was to blame for Kyoko-chan's kidnapping – rescue to the EXTREME – but he also values his little sister above all others.
None of Kyoko-chan's captors ever walked again. A good quarter of them never moved again. If it hadn't been for Tsuna, they would not have taken Kyoko; without Kyoko, they might have still been fine.
Ryohei, the older brother Tsuna never had, did that to them.
To be helpless when there are people who need him - that is Tsuna's greatest fear.
Ryohei did not kill, ever. His was a far more cruel defeat than, say, Hibari, who at least ended his victim's misery with commendable alacrity.
Ryohei adored his baby sister, so he would destroy anyone responsible for her pain.
No matter who it was.
Tsuna is twenty-two and he dreams of lightning, heated to unimaginable temperatures and headed for him.
Lambo has grown, somewhat, in those last few years. It has not been by much.
Lambo still tries to show off in front of Reborn, forever unable to let go of this one obsession.
He had started out as a baby assassin, yet Tsuna sometimes forgets that Lambo has seen people killed in front of him since he was two.
Lambo is one of Tsuna's weaknesses, never able to deny him anything. To Tsuna, he will always be the adorable baby who should have continued using diapers until the age of ten.
It is difficult to see him as anything but Vongola's spoiled brat, sheltered from the actual mafia.
Spoiled children love attention, though.
In the moments when Tsuna isn't really thinking, he is aware that if he were to be gone, then Reborn's attention just might turn from one heir to another.
Tsuna is twenty-three and he dreams of guns.
He wakes up and he dies.
He has no regrets, except he would like to tell his family – all of them, including the ones whose loyalties are in question – one thing.
I want to be with you forever.