A/N: So basically I'm binge-watching KHR at the moment and I love TYL!Lambo (lets not forget twenty years later Lambo, dang) and I ended up with a bunch of random story ideas BUT I'm trying not to get bogged down with more multi-chapter fics at the moment so this is just a random one-shot instead because I was really bored and had nothing to read.
I might write something about the TYL Arc when I'm finished watching it, which would include more backstory about how things get from a to b, but I also might not.
Unexpected Consequences of Travel:
The Dursley family didn't often go on holidays, not even in England and certainly not overseas, but they'd come into some extra money, Dudley had done well (in their eyes) in school that year, and it seemed like a good way to reward him. They had let Dudley choose their destination – Japan, because he'd recently learned that was where Pokemon was created and he thought, perhaps, in his child mind, that he might see one in the flesh; and Namimori, through a process of Dudley pointing at random locations on a series of maps.
(Petunia and Vernon were very proud of their son's decision making skills.)
The only dark spot in this plan was the existence of their much-loathed nephew.
Unfortunately, after darkening their doorstep almost six years ago with a vaguely threatening letter, they had been unable to do anything about the boy, and everyone in their neighbourhood knew about the second boy who lived in the Dursley household. There was no one they could leave him with – it would ruin them for months if any of their neighbours caught sight of the boy while they were overseas, and the likelihood of grievous bodily injury or even death at the hands of Vernon's sister Marge (accidentally, of course, she was just a rough sort with little patience) was too high to risk the wrath of the man who had left that very letter – and so their only choice was to take him along.
Dudley hadn't been happy about that decision, but they placated him with sweets and all was forgotten, at least momentarily.
Harry Potter, the unfortunate nephew in question, wasn't sure how to feel about the whole ordeal.
The six year old (who would be seven soon enough, not that his family seemed to care) had mixed memories from the last time he'd been dragged along on a family vacation. He hadn't been allowed the share the second double bed in their motel room with Dudley, instead having to make his own little nest on the floor in the corner of the room, but they did ostensibly treat him better than they usually did when they were under the public eye, which meant cheap food when usually there would be none, thrift store clothes that while definitely not new fit better than Dudley's cast-offs, and threatening looks instead of raised voices or fists.
A child with a normal upbringing wouldn't consider those to be particularly noteworthy or positive improvements, but to Harry, those tiny moments of faux-care muddied the waters in his mind when he tried to decide how he felt about his family.
He didn't want to be treated like Dudley was – the only reason he remained unharmed more often than not was because Dudley was unfit and slow on his feet, so Harry would never so easily give up his one advantage – but he also knew deep down that the disparity between them was unusual. There was no word he could put to the feeling – child neglect was a foreign term to him at this stage in his life – but he didn't need to name it to know it, and he held the feeling close, allowing it to make him cautious and obedient and observant.
Going overseas was suspicious, to Harry, who occasionally still had dreams – which he couldn't decide whether or not to call nightmares – about being abandoned in faraway places where he would never burden his aunt and uncle again. Except something deep inside him, the same thing that told him something was wrong with this lifestyle, assured him that, for whatever reason, they would absolutely bring him back home again (regardless of whether or not that was deemed to be the best outcome).
After all, if they were just going to leave him behind, why not ditch him in York, or any of the other places they'd stopped at the one time they thought taking Dudley on a road-trip would be a good idea?
oOoOo
If the way they had taken to mostly wandering the streets – despite Dudley's protestations against excessive movement – was any indication, perhaps letting Dudley pick their destination with no frame of reference hadn't been a great idea.
Harry hadn't had any pre-set idea of what Japan was supposed to be like, but he thought Dudley might've been expecting lots of theme parks and flashing lights. There was an amusement park in Namimori, but it obviously hadn't lived up to Dudley's expectations, and even Harry hadn't been overly upset about not being allowed near any of the rides.
It was also only after their arrival that Harry discovered that his relatives – particularly his uncle – seemed to take issue with the general lack of English speakers in the town. If two people who could only speak English were annoyed that people in another country only spoke their own language, shouldn't they have just gone to America?
Somehow, being in a new place, away from the familiarity of Little Winging, Harry was suddenly extremely self-conscious about the way the Dursleys acted. After all, the people back home already knew their family, but the people in Namimori were all strangers! Shouldn't they be trying to make a better impression? It made him glad for the way that, away from tightly-packed crowds – which were few and far between here – his aunt and uncle preferred it if he trailed along a handful of metres behind them.
In the same way that they pretended Harry didn't exist, Harry could pretend that he hadn't come with this trio and their loud voices and pointed remarks which, thankfully, barely anyone in town could understand well enough to take insult from.
Today they were wandering about a residential district.
Dudley was complaining about video games and how Japan wasn't as cool as it had sounded, while Harry was entertaining himself by looking at the nameplates in front of each house and wondering what they might say.
(This trip would inspire an interest in languages that would keep him sequestered away in the public library for long hours of merciful freedom from the oppressive atmosphere of Number Four Privet Drive.)
Loud voices and an explosive bang – surely not an actual explosion, who would be blowing things up? – drew Harry's attention away from the nameplates and up the street where the rest of his family were walking two houses ahead of him.
They were the only people in the street, until suddenly a child – a bit younger than Harry but not really a toddler either – dashed out into the street in a blur of cow-print and dark hair only to collide at speed with his uncle's leg.
It was like watching a train-wreck.
The kid, who had been shouting, bounced off of Harry's uncle's leg and fell to the ground, momentarily silenced. His uncle snarled down at the kid, fists clenched at his sides and his face starting to turn that particularly nasty colour it went whenever he was about to yell at Harry for something that he probably didn't even do. For one wild, heart-stopping moment, Harry thought his uncle might actually take a swing at the poor kid, but thankfully his aunt intervened, putting a hand on his shoulder and muttering something Harry couldn't hear as he warily inched closer, a collection of other children of varying ages spilling from the gate of the same house.
Harry didn't often have cause to be truly grateful for anything his aunt did, but pulling his uncle back from the edge – almost physically pulling him away, too, with surprising strength for so bony a body – and averting an incident without much drama save for a vitriolic jab about bad parenting and brats who didn't deserve to be let out of the house, that was something he would always be thankful for.
(Other people's wellbeing had always been more important than Harry's, even at that age.)
His aunt and uncle stormed off, hustling Dudley down the street, but Harry lingered, his steps slow and hesitant.
The kid who had collided with his uncle was on the verge of tears, and a silver-haired teenager had the sort of furious look on his face that implied he was one of the few people in town with a working knowledge of English.
That realisation meant that Harry could, and should, attempt to apologise for his uncle's behaviour. With that thought in mind, Harry's steps became purposeful, and he approached the small group with all the dignity a child of almost seven could muster.
The boy with the silver hair glanced over at him when he got close, scowling heavily, but Harry didn't let it deter him.
He came to a stop a step or two away from the boy in the cow-print, who was murmuring tearfully to himself, and felt the eyes of three teenagers and a suit-wearing toddler fall upon him.
Harry twisted the hem of his shirt between his fingers, nervous at the attention, before steeling himself and taking a deep breath.
"I'm sorry," he said, ducking his head, not sure how to explain or encompass everything about the entire situation that he wanted to apologise for. "It was my fault," he continued somewhat reflexively, because everything was always his fault, so why should this be any different?
Peeking up from the ground, Harry saw the toddler's face shadowed by his down-turned fedora, a conflicted expression upon the silver-haired teen's face, and a look of slowly-dawning terror on the brunet before suddenly his vision was encompassed in pink.
oOoOo
When Harry opened his eyes – when had he closed them? – he found himself in an unfamiliar kitchen with the boy in the cow-print. He was crying, but Harry wasn't sure how to comfort anyone, since no one ever comforted him. They were somewhere strange and different though, so maybe there was someone around who could help where Harry couldn't?
Harry was edging towards the doorway at the other end of the room when he happened to glance up and catch sight of a cooling rack full of freshly baked biscuits.
If this was home, and Harry so much as thought about taking one of them, he'd be in a world of trouble; baking was never for him. But this wasn't his house. They also weren't his biscuits, and normally he wouldn't chance it, but he was somewhere strange and the only piece of familiarity he had, however miniscule, was currently upset. Biscuits made people happy, right?
So Harry stood on his tiptoes and snatched one from the edge of the cooling rack.
Shuffling back over to his tearful companion, he held the biscuit out in silent offering, unsure of what to say or even if the boy understood English in the first place.
Maybe the smell of warm sugar and chocolate caught his attention. The boy immediately stopped crying when he laid eyes on the biscuit, and Harry knew, even if this might be stealing, that he had done the right thing.
Stretching his arm out further in offering, Harry watched as the boy slowly took the biscuit from him, holding it almost reverently, before stuffing half of it in his mouth.
Harry laughed at his enthusiasm and sat beside him on the floor. Part of him had wanted to explore this strange place – hadn't they been outside? – but this was nice too. He'd made an apology of sorts to the boy tormented by his uncle, and he'd managed to snatch a couple of minutes for himself as well.
His uncle would be furious if he disappeared for too long, but he could worry about that later. For right now, he would try and relax.
oOoOo
In the streets of Namimori, Sawada Tsunayoshi could only stare in horror as an innocent civilian child – a foreigner at that – was caught in the crossfire of Lambo's Ten-Year Bazooka.
Not for the first time, he wondered what on earth the Bovino Famiglia were thinking when they gave something like that to a five year old.
Before his mind had too much time to panic, the pink smoke cleared to reveal two teenagers in place of the two children.
The older Lambo looked the same as he always did whenever they had a bazooka incident: cow-print shirt, black blazer, one green eye closed in the sort of lazy nonchalance Tsuna could only ever dream of possessing. He had a biscuit hanging from his mouth, but even still Tsuna could imagine his deep voice rumbling his usual greeting of 'Young Vongola' – something that he ignored every time because one day he would convince these people that he wasn't going to join their famiglia.
What surprised Tsuna was the second figure, the future version of that poor child who had really only been passing by at the most unfortunate moment. He was dressed casually in jeans and a tee, with glasses settled across the bridge of his nose and an odd, polished stick poking out of his waistband. But more than any of that, it was the plate in the dark-haired teen's hands that drew Tsuna's attention.
The stranger was carrying a plate of biscuits. The same sort of biscuit that Lambo was eating.
A strangled sound of confusion left Tsuna's mouth, which normally would have earned him some sort of physical reprimand from Reborn, but the toddler seemed unusually interested in this turn of events and hadn't bothered.
"Oh." The stranger blinked dark green eyes behind his glasses at the sound and glanced around him. Then, looking straight at Tsuna, he said in stilted but fluent Japanese, "Woah. Am I older than Tsuna right now?"
Beside him, Lambo let out a low chuckle. The stranger slapped him on the shoulder.
"See Lambo, I told you it was about this time of year! Otherwise I'd have been at school and I wouldn't even have been in Japan in the first place."
"So?" Lambo asked, "How's it stack up?"
Tsuna had no idea what they were talking about. His brain was stuck on the part where somehow Lambo and the stranger were well-acquainted in the future.
Was this his fault? Had he dragged some kid into the mafia simply by existing?
"Super weird," the stranger decided. "Not that the time turner wasn't weird too. Being in the same time and place as your three-hours-ago self was spooky on an existential level, but being older than everyone else is really throwing me off-balance. I'm glad it's only for five minutes."
While this nonsensical conversation was taking place, Lambo's hand snuck forward to snatch another biscuit off the plate the stranger was holding. Attention drawn to his hands, the stranger seemed to remember that he was, indeed, carrying food.
Glancing around again he smiled when he spotted I-Pin. Crouching down said something in Chinese and offered the plate to her. I-Pin took one with a shy smile. Then the stranger stood back up and offered the plate to all of them.
It was surreal.
Yamamoto took one with a wide smile. Gokudera glared suspiciously at them. Reborn took two.
Some indignant part of Tsuna wanted to protest that, but the stranger just laughed.
"What famiglia are you from?" Reborn asked bluntly, not even bothering to ask for a name first.
The stranger glanced at Lambo, who rolled his eye. An inside joke?
"Vongola-adjacent?" the stranger replied, voice – was that a British accent? – lilting upwards in question. "Bovino-ish? I'm not technically 'affiliated'." He made exaggerated air quotes with his free hand. "Does dating a Mafioso make you a part of their famiglia?"
Tsuna choked on an inhale. Dating? Dating who? What?
"Congratulations on finding someone who'll put up with your cry-baby self," Reborn said, part mocking and part genuine.
Tsuna felt the world grind to a halt.
Lambo?
Lambo and the stranger were dating?
The stranger had willingly involved himself with the mafia?
What kind of person even did that?
There were so many things Tsuna wanted to ask, but time was ever marching forwards, and before he could voice any of them there was a burst of pink smoke, and they both returned to their own time.
The five year old Lambo had biscuit crumbs on his face and a wide smile that spoke of sugar and predicted chaos – not that he wasn't chaotic enough on a day to day basis. He let out a joyful shriek and raced into the house, likely to go bother Tsuna's mother for food.
The other child was staring contemplatively at his hands, possibly unaware that he'd even moved from wherever they'd gone to in the future.
Tsuna thought about saying something – or rather, getting Gokudera or Reborn to say something since Tsuna could barely string two words together in English – when he caught sight of the overweight man who had started this whole fiasco storming back down the street towards them.
Tsuna's flight-or-fight response leaned definitively towards flight at all times, and this was no different, but morbid curiosity, and Reborn's weight on his shoulder and the calculating look in his dark eyes, kept him rooted to the spot.
Since the moment the bazooka went off five minutes ago, part of Tsuna had been lamenting the fate of this child who had been touched by the mafia through no fault of his own. But when the child flinched away violently, finally taking notice of the purple-faced man's approach and his noticeable anger, something else flickered to life inside Tsuna.
It didn't matter what happened over the next ten years to get from Point A to Point B. If that child could survive ten years with that behemoth of a man and still find it in his heart to love and laugh and smile, then that was all that mattered.
Maybe this was one mafia induction he didn't need to worry about.