Like Water to a Drowning Man
A/n at the bottom
Warning: suicide, major character death, gore, mafia, death, boys wearing skirts,
No one looked twice at the girl walking down the street. She had brown eyes and brown hair; there was nothing eye catching about that. Therefore she passed through the crowd without notice. Or she should have.
"So...this is where you've been hiding, Sawada Tsunayoshi." in the shadows, a man with a fedora tracked the girl with his eyes.
Sawada Tsunayoshi was eight when his life changed for the worse. He use to be a relatively normal boy; he had very low grades, was bullied occasionally, and was extremely clumsy, but other than that he was completely ordinary. He had a mother, an older brother and a father, somewhere. His father supposedly worked as a construction worker all over the world. Tsuna - as Tsunayoshi liked to be called- and his brother, Hidetada or rather Hide weren't inclined to believe that.
But, back to eight year old Tsuna. It was the first of October, he'd had a bad feeling about going to school. So he played sick, but his mother had insisted that he go to school which was an oddity all it's own. Usually she would at least take his temperature before ushering him off. He couldn't tell her no; so he went to school. Around lunchtime Tsuna's worry spiked. He wanted to run home, but didn't want to get caught. In the end his worry won out and he snuck back home.
Tsuna crept into his mother's room. What he saw was burned into his mind forever. It was his mother, lying on the floor, gun in her hand with her brain leaking out the back of her head. The carpet was becoming more and more stained with blood. Tsuna collapsed to the ground legs shaking. He stared not being able to comprehend what happened. The room smelled of blood. Everything Tsuna had swallowed down that day came up.
"I… I have to call the police…" Tsuna reached for the phone that was on his mother's dresser.
He typed in "1-1-9" his hands shaking as he jabbed the number harder than necessary.
"119 what's your emergency?" a woman's voice came from over the phone.
"Ah… my my mother is… she's" Tsuna took a shaky breath, "She's lying on the floor. She isn't moving there's a lot of blood on the ground. She has… She has a gun in her hand. There's grey stuff around her head."
"We'll have someone there as soon as we can. Please stand by." the woman responded.
Tsuna let the phone fall along with his tears. He might have only been eight, but he knew that his mother was badly hurt; that it was extremely dangerous to have a head injury. He waited fifteen minutes until he heard the sound of an ambulance. There was a knock on the door and Tsuna stood up to answer it, but immediately feel back down, his legs numb. He tried again and stood on shaking legs. He slowly and wobbly made his way to the door. There we two paramedics.
"Um… She's upstairs in… in the master bedroom." Tsuna told them tears still falling.
The two men allowed Tsuna to show them where his mother was. The two men took notice of the vomit and asked about it.
"That… That was me." Tsuna answered.
The two men equipped with the proper equipment hauled his mother onto a stretcher. They offered to let him ride in the back. Tsuna quickly agreed after all it wasn't like he was going back to school. When they got to the hospital his mother was pronounced DOA.
The brunette turned into a thrift shop with a very traditional took that made it stand out from the rest of the street. Strangely enough no one else even looked in the direction of the shop.
She turned to greet the shop owner; a man with white hair and glasses. They nodded to each other and the girl slipped between the large messy shelves towards the back.
"Have fun," the shop owner called to the girl, "little sky."
The funeral was small and Iemitsu didn't show up. Although they did get to meet some of their extended family. Hide was only three years older than Tsuna so they need someone to look after them. There was no phone number for their father so he couldn't come and take them with him, not that the boys wanted him to. In the end their cousin, Minoru ended up taking them in. He lived in Tokyo and Tsuna and Hide had to change schools. They ended up not celebrating Tsuna's birthday with everything that happened. They sold the house in Namimori and most of the thing that they didn't need.
Tokyo was different; both Sawada brothers could agree on that. Although Namimori was big and had a large turn out in every graduating class it didn't compare to Tokyo. The people there were normal. There weren't any people that were obviously retired yakuza members, no kids that could do things that they shouldn't be able to (like take on adults in a fight and win), nor were they any people they could really bond with. In Tokyo there wasn't anyone that could help the Sawada brothers with their grief.
That went double for Tsuna although his brother had also lost his mother, he hadn't seen the body; they had cremated their mother. Hide knew better than anyone that he couldn't help his brother. They shared a room in Minoru's three bedroom house that he shared with his wife, Aya and their daughter, Naomi. Sometime Hide heard his brother crying out at night. Some nights Tsuna would bolt up out of bed and run to the bathroom where Hide could hear him vomit up whatever he had eaten.
The two brothers grew closer they had no one else. It soon became obvious that Minoru had only taken then in to look better and his wife was no different. Naomi was as spoiled as the family of three could afford. So having to feed two extra mouths had cut down drastically on the things they could buy. The ten year old wasn't too happy with the boys. Which wasn't helping Tsuna. He would wait until everyone else had gotten their food and then serve himself. So Hide had taken to serving Tsuna for him. At first he protested, but soon stopped. That was their life for two years either dislike or neutrality from the people they lived with.
A month from their mother's death anniversary was when their lives truly went down the drain.
The man with a fedora pushed the call button on his phone.
" Idiot Hidetada, I've found your brother. Along with the underground fighting ring that you've been looking into. It seems our old friend Kawahira has been holding out on us.
As you might have guessed Italics are the "present" normal writing is the "past." Fedora man is Adult!Reborn The "Girl" is Tsuna. Kawahira is the shop owner
This thing is just the prologue and originally it was going to be sooooo much more angsty like you have no idea. At first Tsuna wasn't going to have a brother and be all alone and end up on the streets then I'm like "but what if he did and his brother blamed him for their mother's death" and then I thought nah too cliche. So then I thought "what if they got separated" I thought "getting better, but they you'd have to write like triple for what you're planning." And here's what I finally finished with.
What is with me and Tsuna wearing skirts I don't know, but like he would look great in them. Also this will have a happy ending most likely, I hope. Okay so I don't have everything worked out. Also I'm trying to be funny not in this chapter, but like I hope that I can stick in some humor and heart warming moments.
Also someone get these boys a father figure!