Okay, I will be completing this fanfiction. I SWEAR.

Anyway, Chapter 8's up!

ENJOY! :D


Tsuna entered Renato's room through the window. Normally, Renato would have pondered a bit over how gracefully Tsuna could scale walls despite having to carry a human, but the tensed silence discouraged his mind from wandering. He slid down the other's back quietly, relieved—just for a moment—to not touch the brunette anymore. The relief was replaced by a twinge of guilt.

He turned back to Tsuna, opening his mouth. He shut it, blinking at Tsuna's abrupt disappearance. He rushed towards the window, hoping to see Tsuna's figure either on the ground or the sky, but he was nowhere.

Ten minutes later, Tsuna returned through the window. Renato had himself seated on the bed, pondering over the little flashbacks regarding Tsuna his mind was replaying over and over again.

"Renato," Tsuna's voice was gentle, but there was an edge of steel to it. Renato's heart sped up instantly, and he had to remind himself that Tsuna would not harm him. Renato had known Tsuna long enough to trust him at least that much.

'Then again,' a little voice inside his head interrupted, 'you hadn't expected him to be so cruel, had you?'

Renato squashed down the insistent voice mercilessly. He'd think about it later.

"Yeah?" Renato responded.

"Those people," Tsuna said, "who were they?"

Renato was almost on the verge of snapping back with a reprehensible 'none of your business', before realizing that this wasn't really such a time to say so. Maybe it was the way Tsuna was looking at him—blankly, with no humor in his eyes—that stopped him, but whatever it was, Renato was glad it did.

"Some people," Renato mumbled, "They don't like me, I don't like them. Simple as that."

Tsuna raised a disbelieving eyebrow, easily seeing through Renato's somewhat blatant attempt to hide the truth.

"They are adults, Renato. You're twelve—what would three adults want to do with someone who has not even reached their teenage years?"

Renato shrugged, "Ask them, not me."

"Renato."

"What? I'm saying the truth! It's not that I go, myself, and ask them to hit me! They're bored, and, hey, if there's a kid in the neighborhood, why not beat the said kid up? That's what they think, alright! I can't do anything!"

Tsuna gave him a look Renato was incapable of describing, but it did little to stop a sudden burst of frustration and anger from slamming into his body, making him grit his teeth, fists clenching. He kept quiet, though, reminding himself that his mother was fond of Tsuna, and that raising his voice when he was pretty sure that his mother was right outside was really not the best thing to do.

"So the first time we met…" Tsuna ventured, easily taking Renato's outburst—unsurprisingly— lightly.

"Yeah," Renato nodded bitterly, shifting his gaze to the wall, "They were drunk and I happened to pass by. The fire was a 'mistake', apparently."

Tsuna nodded and said terribly abruptly, "Does it have anything to do with your father?"

Renato's eyes widened at the sudden mention of someone he was trying his best to ignore the existence of, caught off-guard. His eyes narrowed in betrayal and anger, snarling, "No."

That was a lie. Tsuna knew that, too, if the look he sent Renato was anything to go by. Silence ensconced itself in between the two, and neither moved. Renato fixed his gaze at a spot on the floor, surprised that he hadn't jumped down the bed defiantly at having been riled up. He let out a breath, running a hand over his face.

"Um, so," Renato started a bit hesitantly, "how much do you know? About him."

"Your father?"

Renato nodded. He hated the word 'father', but refrained from mentioning the little fact.

"Not much," Tsuna admitted," he was involved with some racquet, some underworld stuff. Involved with the wrong people, or so I've heard. There are so many rumors, so I can't really say much."

"He killed someone," Renato clarified.

Tsuna hardly seemed surprised. Perhaps it was because he had already heard this detail before, but Renato wasn't sure.

"Or so goes the rumors. Mom won't tell me exactly what happened, but I think she's not sure, either. You must have noticed: people are not really fond of us," Renato continued, "Hell, they don't know much, either, but whatever happened was a pretty big deal and even though mum and I have done nothing, we're still hated. God fucking knows why."

Renato was glad that Tsuna did not bother reprimanding him about cursing. If Tsuna would have, Renato wasn't sure what he would have ended up doing—screamed, probably, since there was no other way he could show his anger. Renato was in no mood to be prudish, and Tsuna must have caught onto that.

Tsuna looked interested on questioning Renato further, but eventually decided against it. Renato was glad: he wasn't in the mood to talk, especially about the father who was anything but one.

The rest of the morning was spent in silence.


Reborn's training was going well.

This made Tsuna proud at his younger tutor for reasons obvious, and he could not help but feel smug. Reborn was improving physically at a very fast rate, despite his short height. Given the fact that the Reborn of his time towered easily over him, Tsuna concluded that Reborn was a late bloomer. Then again, he was only twelve and had not hit puberty yet, so Tsuna could not be certain. Not that it really mattered.

His speed was increasing and so were his stealth and stamina. Tsuna was looking forward to train him to use a gun, but the lack of bullets acted as a hindrance Tsuna was eager to get rid of. Reborn's inability to use Flames didn't help matters any. Tsuna knew a few places that dealt with illegal arms, but he wasn't interested in dappling with the mafia, or the Vongola, just yet. Tsuna wasn't the adult Reborn, either, so it was, admittedly, difficult to whip out bullets or AK-47s out of thin air.

Besides, Reborn was only twelve. Still, the earlier the better.

Reborn feared him. Tsuna knew that, but he wasn't sure what to do. Whenever Tsuna got too close, Reborn would tense up and look vaguely uncomfortable. Tsuna, unlike his Guardians (even Takeshi, Ryohei-nii and Chrome, surprisingly) and Reborn, did not like being feared, but he did not know what to do. Somehow, he doubted saying something like "I won't hurt you," would make much of a difference seeing that Reborn was already aware of this fact.

Reborn's fear of Tsuna simply made the other more cautious of Tsuna so, if Tsuna were to ignore the hurt for now, it was good enough. Besides, Reborn was trying to feign nonchalance about the whole business and Tsuna was okay with pretending to be ignorant, if only for Reborn's sake. If Tsuna had to fake smiles, he would happily do so.

He was currently at Reborn's apartment, telling Fulvia about his time's Reborn (Tsuna referred to him as Arc). It was good to talk to someone, Tsuna couldn't help but feel, especially when he had been used to chaos and company constantly. Turning around to tell his family something only to realize that his family wasn't there was really getting to him. Tsuna was helping Fulvia with lunch, after which he'd go to pick Reborn up from school.

"I've told you about Arc, right? My tutor?" Tsuna asked her idly. When she nodded, he continued, "He left me in a forest once. That's nothing out of the ordinary, but it was more of an island. Water everywhere. Practically devoid of trees. You have those cartoons, right? The ones with a very small little dump of land, a tree and water as far as the eyes can see? The island looked a bit like that. Of course Arc was there with me, and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing," he shuddered, "I almost died twice. He laughed at me, and, I swear, I had really wanted to hit him. Hard. On the face. He sent me stumbling into the ocean, too. Thrice. In the middle of the night," Tsuna smiled a little now, "Ah, but, of course it was fun."

He dissolved into silence, focusing, almost perfunctorily, on the tomato he was slicing. It took him a moment to realize that neither he nor Fulvia were speaking. He looked at the other and raised an eyebrow. Fulvia was staring at him thoughtfully.

"Is there something wrong?" he asked.

Fulvia shook her head, "You miss him a lot, don't you?"

"Arc? Yeah, I do," Tsuna said, smiling again, a little sadly this time, "He changed my entire life, you know? I may have despised him—hated him, even— at one point of time, but looking back… I think he was pretty much the best thing that happened to me." Tsuna shrugged, "I don't know what sort of a life I would have lived if I hadn't met him."

Fulvia was still looking at him contemplatively. Tsuna gave her a questioning look.

"Do you…do you love him?" she asked him abruptly.

The question took Tsuna by such an inordinate amount of surprise that the knife slipped from his hand and almost embedded itself in his right foot. It was only due to having spent years training that he could quickly shift his foot in the last second. The knife clattered on the floor. He also noticed that he was choking on his spit, and the tips of his ears had become red; the latter of which Tsuna decided to shove into one corner of his mind so that he could ponder over it at a later date.

"Excuse me?" Tsuna choked out.

"That being said," Fulvia said hurriedly as she sliced the onions, "I have nothing against it, you can love whoever you want to, so it's alright—"

"You think I love Reb—Arc in a romantic sense?" Tsuna laughed out, realizing belatedly that he was being perhaps a bit rude, never mind how funny the thought of it was. He stopped laughing, but couldn't quite contain a few chuckles.

"Yes," Fulvia said, frowning lightly, "Well, are you?"

"In a romantic sense, no," Tsuna replied, picking up the knife from the floor. He went up to the sink to wash it, feeling Fulvia's gaze on him. He couldn't help but ask, "But what made you think that?"

"The way you were talk—ow!"

Fulvia's hiss made Tsuna turn on the spot. She was clutching her hand, lips turned down in pain. Her index was bleeding a bit, courtesy of a small cut.

"You alright?" Tsuna asked, hurriedly walking to her side.

"Yeah," she said, sucking her injured finger, "Yeah, I'm fine, just a little cut—"

Tsuna took her injured hand almost involuntarily, covering the wound with his palm. He brought up Sun Flames, allowing them lick her wound. The action was done so terribly unconsciously, given the sheer number of times he had healed his family, that it wasn't after he had removed his hand to reveal a healed finger that he realized that Flames weren't exactly something normal people were aware of.

Panicked, he started, "Um, that was—"

His words came to an abrupt halt at Fulvia's expression. Her face was pale, lips quivering and eyes wide. Tsuna was not foolish or naïve enough to mistake her expression to be that of disbelief—he had spent an inordinate amount of time killing people, after all. She looked like a cornered rat terrified for life. Tsuna was very much acquainted with the look. It had been directed towards him far too many times, after all.

Tsuna faltered, surprised and bewildered—surprised because he knew that the Flames had scared her far too much than it would have scared anybody else and bewildered because it was pretty easy to guess that she was familiar with Flames.

He took a step back, giving her space. Her eyes were still deep set with fear so he did not want to crowd around her.

Calmly, he asked, "You know what Dying Will Flames are, don't you?"

Tsuna's voice must have snapped her a little out of the haze of fear but Fulvia did not reply.

Instead, she looked at him and stammered out, "L-leave."

Tsuna did not move.

Fulvia looked at him with forced rage and genuine aloofness, "Leave. Leave right now."

Tsuna stared at her for a few seconds and then left.


When Renato's mother came to pick him up, Renato was surprised and maybe a little disappointed. He felt a little guilty at feeling disappointed because it wasn't often that his mother came to pick him up, given that she had to work. Evidently, she had gone out of her way just to pick him up; the realization would have made him happy under normal circumstances, but the sadness in her eyes wasn't 'normal'. It wasn't normal because things had changed after Tsuna had forced himself into their lives.

"What's wrong?" was the first thing Renato asked after they were a conspicuous distance away from his school.

"Nothing," Fulvia replied.

Renato wasn't dense enough to believe that.

"Where's Tsuna?"

She did not reply.

Renato said nothing and thought, 'I knew things would turn out to be like this. They always do.'

Fact was, he had been hoping things would be different this time around. He should have known better. Hope was a cruel thing, after all.


The moment the guy with the brown hair, gray eyes and a nose (wrapped with a bandage) Tsuna had had the satisfaction of breaking, slid onto the stool of Rotto Mare, Tsuna recognized him. If the man's expression was anything to go by, he recognized Tsuna, too. His face was enough to send a jolt of fury running through Tsuna's spine, but he kept himself still, aloof. Like how a Decimo should be—phlegmatic, seemingly unconcerned with one's surroundings in order to not give away any weakness.

Tsuna pretended to not know him, smiling at him genially, benignly.

"What drink would you want, sir?" Tsuna asked, still smiling.

The man—Albert, Renato had told him after Tsuna had subtly pried—gawked at him, eyes widening in equal amounts of rage and fear.

Tsuna rather hoped that the other would pretend to not know him because that would be great and Tsuna was not particularly fond of the idea of creating a fuss regarding—

"It's you, you fucking bastard!"

Tsuna did not allow that aspersion to rile him up in any manner. Frankly, he had heard worse expletives from people, both from Hayato (whose swear words were never directed towards Tsuna, of course) and other individuals who fancied Tsuna's head on a spike. Since it was a Wednesday afternoon, the customers were less and so was, consequently, the noise. Albert's outburst made the heads of whatever little number of customers present whip towards them in surprise.

Albert had jumped up from his seat. He was standing now, fists clenched, gnashing his teeth.

"Pardon?" Tsuna asked, feigning confusion even though all he wanted to do was to get rid of the irrevocable urge to hit Albert in the face, preferably by doing just that. He tilted his head to one side in order to look contemplative, "Do I know you?"

"What the fuck do you mean by 'do I know you', you broke my nose motherfucker—"

Tsuna wondered why he had even bothered with healing Albert. He was genuinely regretting it now.

"Please refrain from using expletives, sir," Tsuna said sternly, but still with the tone of someone confused with the other's identity, "It'd be best of you did not—"

"It'd be best if I did not—well, fuck that! You have no right to order me around in my property! My father owns this place!"

Tsuna was genuinely surprised. He was just about to open his mouth to refute because his Reborn had taught him to do just that when Matthew, Rotto Mare's bartender, came in between the two. Tsuna wondered what he had been up to. Couldn't he have come earlier?

"I apologize for his rudeness, Albert," Matthew said honestly.

"You don't need to—" Tsuna's sentence was interrupted by Matthew's glare.

'Shut up,' he mouthed, 'do you want to lose your job?'

Well, that was the last thing Tsuna wanted.

"I apologize for my rudeness," Tsuna said, bowing. He corrected himself instantly because apologizing while bowing was not an Italian thing to do. Instead, he kept his head low, not meeting the other's eyes.

A gesture of submission. He was never telling this to his Reborn.

"Like I fucking care about your apology!" Albert spat out. He whipped out a knife from his pocket, waving it at Tsuna in what Tsuna supposed was meant to be dangerous. The way he held it clearly showed that he wasn't exactly an amateur, but he had never killed anyone with a pocket knife, either.

Tsuna had, though. More than once which was why when Alberto said—

"You and I are gonna fight and I am going to fucking kill you for humiliating me!"

—Tsuna could not help but think, 'Well, that escalated quickly.'

Tsuna did not want to lose his job so he tried looking as panicky as possible at the prospect of having a fight.

"Um, I've never fought before in my life—I apologize for—"

Albert lunged at him over the counter. Murmurs and screams spiraled uncontrollably around the pub and Matthew's eyes widened in surprise and panic as Albert's knife nearly gouged Tsuna's eyes out. Tsuna managed to evade the attack, but did not bother doing the same for Albert's punch to his cheek. Tsuna made a great show of grunting and falling limply on the ground.

Albert's smug face from above the counter pissed Tsuna off. The brunette did not react, but stayed there, blinking, pretending to be disoriented.

"And that," Albert cackled, "is what you get for protecting the son of a fucking whore."

Tsuna lunged forward and broke Albert's nose again.


"You're fired."

Tsuna had been expecting that. He wasn't even surprised by the news. Just ten minutes ago he had been busy punching the daylights of the son of the owner of Rotte Mare, after all. It had taken six people to stop Tsuna from reshaping every bone Albert's face, but only because Tsuna had finally come to the realization that he wasn't being himself. But still, Tsuna was very satisfied and was not exactly regretting his actions but he did need a job, especially since Fulvia was not there to feed him.

They were behind the bar, where trashcans were overflowing and a very stereotypical white cat stared up at the two humans interacting.

"Please," Tsuna tried, "I sincerely apologize—"

"No can do, Tsunayoshi," Matthew told him, sounding genuinely regretful, "That was the owner's son; what you did wasn't exactly a smart move."

Tsuna knew that. Of course he did.

"But—"

"You're fired," Matthew said contritely. He held himself firmly, however.

If Tsuna were the sort of person to glare or be angry, he would have. Instead, Tsuna gave a sigh and smiled at the man.

"It was fun, Matthew. Thank you for having me," Tsuna said, offering his hand.

Matthew looked genuinely surprised, but took the offered hand anyway. He laughed as they shook.

"I swear," Matthew said, "this is the saddest firing I have ever done. And just a few minutes ago I was busy stopping you from killing a guy. I'll be missing your company, by the way."

Tsuna opened his mouth to say that he would, too, only to freeze when Natsu entered his mind, calling out to him. Natsu was anxious, apprehensive, riled up and he was calling out; Tsuna could feel him.

"I need to go," Tsuna said hurriedly, slipping his hand from Matthew's. He left in haste, not really worrying over how rude his departure probably was.

After the one-sided goodbye to the Sinclair's, Tsuna hadn't really felt safe with leaving the two unprotected, especially not when he was somewhat aware of their past. Three weeks ago, immediately after his departure, he had requested Natsu to stay by their side—in hiding, of course. Natsu hadn't been too keen on obliging, especially not when he had to stay away from Tsuna, but Tsuna had been firm.

"That's Reborn," Tsuna had told him, "You know how important he is to me and to you. I can't just leave him be. I'm not small enough to hide and I have to work."

It had taken a lot of time, but Natsu had finally relented. Tsuna had warned him not to take any actions unless Tsuna gave the Lion a green light.

Tsuna slipped on his gloves and took off after making sure that no one was around to spot him.

It didn't take him long to reach Reborn's apartment. He landed directly in front of the door, not bothering with subtleties or caring about any civilian noticing his landing. Natsu materialized and landed on his shoulder, pawing it nervously. Noticing that the door was ajar, Tsuna barged in without preamble, alarms ringing violently in his mind. He could smell the scent of blood.

Someone shoved him aside roughly. Tsuna grunted and grappled at the stranger's arm. He managed to hold it in his grasp, spinning the man—messily bearded and dark eyed— around. He looked familiar, but Tsuna's mind could not put a ring to behind the reason for the unexpected familiarity—did not want to put a ring to it, especially not when the scent of blood was still prevalent, disgusting yet something Tsuna was terribly intimate with.

He thought, 'Reborn and Fulvia.'

It didn't exactly take him too much time to let go of the man.

Later, Tsuna would realize that that was probably one of the worst mistakes he had made.

Tsuna sprinted towards the room from where the scent of blood was the strongest, kicking the door to Reborn's room open. What he saw was something that would forever be etched in his memory—a wounded Reborn crying out to Fulvia softly, cradling the bleeding and wounded woman in his arms.


And done! Reviews are my food! :D

And the little hint of R27 because it's sweet. Don't worry, though, there won't be any R27. I mean, unless that's what you readers want. ;D(And by R27 I mean, between Tsuna and adult Reborn, not the twelve year old Reborn because that's too weird, even for me.)