Author's Notes and Miscellany: This isn't a drabble so much a story. And it's not so much a story as much as a stream-of-consciousness. I tried to break out of my writing habits, expand my borders. And stuff. TT I hate finals week. Please let hell be over soon.

Something Forgotten

When Gokudera stopped playing piano, something died in him. Well, not something so much as someone, a small, fragile, tender little boy, too young to understand the half-way glances the servants give him, too young to understand the tight white line that Mother's (but not Mother, not now, and certainly not Mama) mouth makes when Papa says you have a special visitor, and too young to understand your sister isn't always the best intentioned.

That little boy died, a hundred thousand times before, too, froth gurgling from his mouth with a pathetic squealing gasp, too much blood dripping from too many wounds, bones crunching underfoot with a scream. But was finally laid to rest one last time when Gokudera (eight years old, and not old enough to understand the concept of symbolism, but understood that closing the key cover meant The End) ran away from home.

And he stopped playing piano. Because only weak little sissy-boys played piano (and his crotch was given a curt, all-business squeeze), not men. So, because he was a man, Gokudera stopped playing piano. He was man enough at six to eat those death-gamble cookies (and when you spent too many nights up, head and torso over the bed while you threw up the cookies Bianchi made for you and you felt bad for that, even while Nurse smoothed your hair back from your face and soothed you). He was man enough to run away from home at eight (and sleep in hallows of trees until he nearly died numb-lipped and shivering). He was man enough to kill another person at ten (though he tried not to cry afterwards, and couldn't help himself, and the tears came down hot and hard, like the other liquid spattering him, rapidly cooling).

But men didn't play piano, so because Hayato was a man, he killed the damaged little boy with one, efficient blow to the heart. It was like going to sleep, really.

And Gokudera was surprised to learn that piano had really been the only thing that held him together as a person, that Chopin's Etude in E had been more his heart beating rather than a melody of his life. He was surprised to find that Tristesse would play in his head before he went to sleep some nights, and was surprised to find his fingers could still follow the notes on the bedcovers, and was surprised when Mama played it as he slept.

And Gokudera became less a man and more a snarling beast by the time he remembered life was supposed to have meaning, that people weren't supposed to treat you worse than they treated their dogs, that you were supposed to have simple joys in your life, and not just glaring at the tough across the table at you and wondering when you were going to move to kill.

And, most surprisingly of all, Gokudera had found he had forgot. He had forgotten, in his attempts to be a man, that he had, indeed, forgotten what it was like to be what he really was, which was a boy. So, having long since gotten rid of such simple pleasures as piano, he had also gotten rid of smiling when he saw the sun shining after the rain, or laughing loud and unrestrainedly and guilelessly, and the knowledge that there was always going to be sun after rain.

But when he remembered all these things, he wasn't surprised at all. Because when he remembered, it was already too late, and there was no way to remember these things again, even when he saw them everyday. Instead, he learned to hate these things, because they represented a time in Hayato's life when everything was okay, that he couldn't ever have back again.

So, when the air around him was black with hanging smoke, and his back was against a wall, like it always was, like he had lived since he had killed that little boy, alive but barely, he was unsurprised at the epiphany that he was really, severely all fucked up when someone like that little boy laughed and said,

"Whew, that was a close one! We made it okay!" And Gokudera laughed, one short bark, blood hemorrhaging from his mouth and onto his shirt, and wondered why, exactly, was he still living.

He started playing the piano again shortly after he met Tsuna. It almost felt like an apology when he sat at the bench in front of the school piano, awkward in realizing that there was no apology for murder. He had thought that maybe he had been trying to say something to someone (maybe that little boy, maybe her, with her smile like sun after rain and laugh like the piano), and his fingers on the keys and feet on the pedal felt like a quiet, desperate conversation. A last word on a death bed.

Tristesse was oddly appropriate, playing in his head like an old phonograph, making his chest tight and his eyes sting, because he knew, now, that he really was too late, and the little boy really was dead. And all that was left was the adult, brash teenager who carried the past like a heavy mantle, who scuffed his feet when he walked, glowered when he watched and shoved his hands into his pockets to get them away from everything else, who had seen too many fights now to really give a shit, and was all fucked up from it all.

But it helped a little. Because, the door had slid open quietly, and the Tenth's stealthy entrance was ruined by his ordinary clumsiness, and though it had startled Gokudera, no one was more startled than Tsuna. Who didn't know Gokudera still played the piano, and was awkward at having barged in like that. Could… he hear the rest?

And Gokudera was astonished, really, that he had utterly and completely forgotten after all these years that he hadn't learned Chopin alone. It came easier after that, realizing that those idiots had been wrong after all, Tristesse playing out in a steady andante, with the Tenth watching on amazed. Men really did play piano.