Note :
- Single dot as line-breakers because ffnet is a butt sometimes and the lines won't show.
Title : Everything Is Going To Be Alright
Chapter 1 : First to care.
Five year old Tsuna sat under a blooming sakura tree with his hands folded on his lap. If one were to pass by, they would think that the child was a doll of porcelain, silently waiting for someone, something.
It is said that cats leave their home to die somewhere else.
Tsuna didn't know how. He just knew. Deep inside, he knew he was dying. His heart was failing him and nobody cared to notice. Doctors dismissed his weak tendencies as laziness.
His own father didn't see any wrong in his son, laughing at how silly and adorable his son was when the kid struggled to open a jar of jam, dismissed his son's panting and wheezing when going up the stairs. Naive Iemitsu found casual humor in Tsuna's struggles, even at that one time Tsuna cried and said he could no longer run.
Most of the time, Tsuna's heart burned in intense pain while Iemitsu and Nana laughed it off.
Of course, Tsuna never blamed his parents for being a pair of loving airheads. He tried to love them and love them he did.
Ever since that weird old man Iemitsu brought home did something to him, he grew weaker than he already was. Tsuna felt the loss of an important part of himself. The odd flame that kept him going seemed unreachable. Maybe if he cried like the time he fell off that tree, the fire would come back to him.
No matter how hard he cried, it never came back.
One day, he stopped crying.
Why bother?
Tsuna smiled to himself as he reflected the events of his short life. Short, but he was fully content with it.
He was ready to let go.
Sawada Tsunayoshi closed his eyes and waited for his final breath. Breaths passing through his lips grew slower and thinner.
"Excuse me, young man. Do you mind if I sit down beside you?" asked a voice he never heard before.
A stranger.
The boy looked up and saw a white-haired man with round-framed glasses. The man carried a cool air of mystery, yet Tsuna couldn't help but to be drawn into the stranger's chilling aura.
"I don't mind." out came the boy's gentle reply. The usually shy Tsuna found no point in shunning people away when he was going to die in the end. The inevitable end wouldn't change no matter what he do, so he might as well be kind.
"So kind."
The stranger sat centimeters apart from the dying boy. Both were enjoying the mild rain of pink petals in comfortable silence. It stayed that way for minutes, maybe hours, nobody counted, until the stranger broke the silence.
"What are you doing here all alone?" The stranger said while giving Tsuna a kind of smile he never saw before. The boy stared at the smile, completely mesmerized. He tried to figure out why he liked it so much.
He wished he could smile like that.
For a moment, Tsuna forgot to answer the nice stranger. A soft pink dusted his cheeks as he stuttered out his reply. "F-Finding somewhere to sleep."
"That's nice. But don't you think it's a shame to sleep when such a beautiful sight is there for you to see, to touch, to feel?"
"It's okay. Tsu-kun can see them again if Tsu-kun wakes up. If Tsu-kun can't, that's okay too."
"…"
That look on the stranger's face… He understood.
"Well, that's a shame… Is it alright to tell me why you might not wake up?"
Tsuna cupped his hands to his chest, feeling the failing organ beating weakly in a gradually slowing rhythm. It wouldn't hurt to tell a stranger of his conditions, right? Maybe for once, someone would believe him.
"Heart will stop beating soon… Tsu-kun not sure how, but Tsu-kun knows. A tiny voice says so."
The stranger gave him a look of pity. He had his own dilemma to deal with, but seeing the child sitting alone under a sakura tree drew him in like nobody else did before. He approached the kid without any ill intention, wanting only company.
Unsure of his sudden attachment to a child, the man reach out to pat the other's head in an attempt to take away a bit of death's weight.
"I wish I can do something to help you, child."
Tsuna shook his head. A weak smile graced his lips as he leaned closer to the touch. "Mmm mmm. Onii-san's smile is enough!"
Then they felt it snapped together.
A fully synchronized connection.
The stranger couldn't believe it. He found what he had longed for in a child he met barely minutes ago. The child's warmth felt so foreign against his hand, yet so perfect. An invisible force pulled the two strangers together, souls linked into one.
'An all accepting sky.'
He always hated humans, but he'd be damned if he let this young child, his sky die.
The man held on to Tsuna's hand and kissed it as a silent vow to their new bond. That day, he made a promise to protect his new sky, no matter how ridiculous the situation would be.
An ancient earthling together with a dying human child didn't sound too bad.
So the stranger finally allowed a proper introduction.
"Let me to introduce myself, young one. My name is Kawahira."
.
A year passed since Kawahira and Tsuna first met.
Kawahira tried not to hide any secret from his sky. Ever since the connection was made, the ancient earthling told him the truth about his true identity, the arcobaleno, Tri-Ni-Set, everything.
Being a child, Tsuna believed all that Kawahira had told him, though confused by a few new words. It took a while for him to fully learn their meaning and finally understood the weight of Kawahira's burden.
It wasn't that hard to understand the new words Kawahira taught him. After all, he understood death.
Tsuna wished he could help, but he didn't have any special powers, nor was he a species capable of shaping the world's axis.
Tsuna understood the significance of elements. He was the sky to Kawahira, and the man was his mist. The bond had already been secured on the day they met.
Despite his uselessness, he would never allow himself to let Kawahira carry the heavy fate alone. As a sky, Tsuna made the earthling swear to never do anything beyond his limits, though he didn't know the earthling broke that oath many times before.
Regardless of how hard the human child tried to cheer up his dear mist, Kawahira continued breaking.
"Kawa-nii…"
"Yes, Tsunayoshi-kun?"
"I can feel you fading away… Are you going to die…?"
Kawahira's smile cracked for a fraction of a second at the question.
True, he was dying. 'Fading away' as Tsuna described it. Without a proper sky to hold one-third of the Tri-Ni-Set together, Kawahira's mist created a fake harmony flame to keep the turning point of time and space from breaking apart. As time passed, the Tri-Ni-Set rejected his flames, deteriorating his mist within.
For all the toll placed on his life, he continued draining his own life to bind the pacifiers to time and space.
He had to, lest life disappears.
He-
"Kawa-nii? Is it because there's no sky arcobaleno? Kawa-nii said there has to be 7 pacifier guardians, but there's only 6 now?" Tsuna tugged at Kawahira's sleeve, brown eyes staring straight through the man's clear glasses.
Would Kawahira lie to his sky? He lied many times before, so another one wouldn't hurt.
As if sensing the man's intention, Tsuna held the other's hand the tightest his weak hands allowed.
"Are you going to lie to me again? Please tell me the truth this time…" Tsuna pleaded. "I can't lose you, Kawa-nii…"
"Tsuna…"
Kawahira kneeled down and wrapped his arms around the small child. He felt Tsuna's heart beating faintly against his chest. If Kawahira dies, Tsuna would too. That was the price for creating an illusionary heart.
And if Tsuna dies, Kawahira would release his hold on the pacifier and let the world collapse in a permanent standstill. His life would be of no worth to live without his Tsunayoshi.
The world could burn and he would not look back.
Tsuna sobbed into Kawahira's chest. He didn't want the other to die. He didn't want the only person to show genuine love for him to disappear, not after everything the earthling had to endure for a world full of hate.
Sawada Tsunayoshi was only a child, powerless to change the world. No matter how much he willed to fix everything, he couldn't do anything but just that - willed for a future where everything would be alright.
Will.
His will.
His dying will.
His tears stopped as he felt the familiar flame once again burned in his core.
He couldn't believe it. The seal placed upon him broke just like that.
And all it took was to realize his own absolute resolution, one so strong, nothing would be able to hold him back.
With the seal finally broken, everything seemed clearer, more 'alright' compared to the screaming wrongness in the past.
"Tsuna…?" Kawahira asked when Tsuna suddenly stopped crying. "Tsuna, are you alright…?"
Tsuna shook his head, refusing to let go of the man he claimed as his own.
No. He was not alright, not until everything else is alright too.
"Ne, Kawa-nii…"
Kawahira felt a sudden dread in his stomach.
No.
Please no…
No no no no no no no-
"Please make me the sky arcobaleno."
.
Tsuna almost died twelve times before his flames latched to the core of the pacifier. It took Kawahira five tearful hours to figure out why the pacifier hurt Tsuna.
'Tsuna's illusionary heart.'
The pacifier rejected the mist flames inside of Tsuna's body, yet it held on to the sky flames within. It was ripping his insides apart.
Kawahira tried to take back the pacifier, tried severing the incomplete channel between the cursed object and Tsuna. But it was too late. He curse had begun and Tsuna didn't stop screaming until the earthling ceased his flames from creating the illusionary heart.
For a moment, Tsuna wasn't breathing, eyes closed, pulse gone with the absence of a heart.
Then the pacifier glowed, unmistakably fusing into the child's chest until it was no longer visible.
"Tsuna!" Kawahira kneeled beside Tsuna, the new sky arcobaleno and held him close. He breathed out a sigh of relief when he heard slow breaths from the child's parted lips.
Tsuna slowly opened his eyes, feeling extremely drained and heavy. The rhythm in his chest felt off and unstable. It wasn't the same as before, but he didn't care. He survived and became an arcobaleno. Nothing else mattered.
Mustering all his remaining strength, he wrapped his arms around Kawahira's neck and smiled.
"Everything is going to be alright now, Kawa-nii."
To Be Continued
A/N : Supposed to be a one-shot, but I know if I don't chop and post it in smaller chapters, I will never get my ass to finish this thing.
After this fic is completed, I'll post it as a one-shot in ao3.
Now working on the second chapter of my other fic, "Vampirism Tends To Keep asdnalfnaskdadllfasd".
Note to self : Stop it with all these long-ass titles.
Edit : Now that I've read it as a chapter, it felt very different. Oh well. It was supposed to be a one-shot, so the structure is different from my usual writings.
Cheers.