Warnings: frostbite-related things. otherwise, nothing really!

A/N: this sure took a while to write...

my inspiration for not using the current decimo's actual name comes from every khr fic out there that has the entire mafia addressing to timoteo as nono and tsuna as decimo. the precedent has been set. it ain't changing just because tsuna's not decimo 8U

Summary:

"If Renato did kill Iemitsu," Reborn murmurs once the others have gone, "then you can deal with him the same way you dealt with Timoteo."

"But," Tsunayoshi says, voice quavering, "I killed him. We. We had him killed."

"I know."

/ / / / / / / / /

Chapter 11: day 49, ?

mix in blood meal for bone growth

/ / / / / / / / /

"What happened to Xanxus? I never asked before."

"We don't know," Tsunayoshi says softly. The Flame in his gloved palms flickers eerily across his face. "Squalo says Xanxus and Iemitsu were called in one day, to talk to Timoteo and the Vongola Decimo... but they never came back."

He wants to ask who the Decimo is. No one calls him by name. Though, whether that's out of respect, reverence, fear, or distaste...

Reborn isn't even ashamed to find he's ready to believe that any of Timoteo's kids could fit those molds. He might even believe Tsunayoshi capable of such things.

"Squalo was upset, of course. Decimo wouldn't tell him what happened to Xanxus. Or Iemitsu." Tsunayoshi lets the Flames dance, swirling over his fingertips and leaping up like drops of water. "Said it was a family matter and Squalo had no right to that knowledge."

"You're family, though," Reborn notes. Nearby, Squalo twitches in his seat against the wall.

"But I'm not mafia. Vongola Decimo considers that a problem, especially with the hostilities between them and the Gesso getting.. bad. Problems with loyalty. Xanxus.. wasn't one. A problem, that is. But I was."

"Ah," Reborn says. "I see."

He does. The winner serves the loser. Reborn had said so himself, when Tsunayoshi won against Xanxus the first time around.

One of the brothers must have gone toe-to-toe with Xanxus and won, where Tsunayoshi would have done the same in another world. He can't see any other reason for the Varia's ex-officers to actually defect like this. At least Neo Primo had made some efforts to get on the Varia's good side, instead of assuming they would fall in line with Xanxus.

I see.

"You killed Iemitsu," Tsunayoshi says, quietly. "..Renato killed him. That's what Squalo says. That's what Vongola says."

"I don't think I did," Reborn replies. Murmurs. "I don't think he did. I mean, he went out of his way to get rid of Egidio."

"Maybe he didn't want Egidio to talk about your plans."

"Maybe he didn't want Egidio to talk shit about you."

"Someone killed my father, Reborn. Someone had him killed, I'm- I'm not a good enough person to let that slide. I can't let that go."

"No one's saying you have to. Christ knows I don't. I still haven't forgiven Xanxus for the last time he shot a hole in my hat— not this one, the other one. A past one."

"But what if.. what if he did kill Iemitsu?"

"You took care of Timoteo, didn't you?"

"We took care of Timoteo," Squalo snaps. He seems to be getting tetchier with every passing day that they aren't working on the Xanxus problem. It's worse when they're actually in the same room as Xanxus' Zero-Point ice block. Like right now. "Should've just brought him back in the Mosca. He would've known how to get Boss out sooner. Or we'd have a hostage at the very least."

"I'm almost appalled at how far Vongola must have fallen for their own assassination squad to go against them."

"What?" Squalo pulls a face. "No, Varia loves the fucking Decimo. Decimo's fine. Just—"

"Squalo and them love Xanxus more."

"Stop fucking saying it like that!"

"Why? It's true. I like Xanxus too. I love Xanxus! If that Vongola Decimo wants Xanxus back, he'll have to, um..." Tsunayoshi takes a moment to consider his options. "..Fight Hibari!"

Reborn raises an eyebrow. "Hibari? Not you?"

"Fight me?" The Flame goes out as Tsunayoshi presses both hands to his chest, gasping dramatically. "But I'm blind. Vongola Decimo would never fight a blind man. I wouldn't even be able to hit him."

"You broke my nose," Reborn points out, resisting the urge to twitch his nose just to prove a point. Because Tsunayoshi wouldn't be able to see it.

Squalo lets out a bark of laughter.

"You weren't fighting back, that doesn't count."

"Does too. Also, the Flame went out."

"I've been holding it for a few hours now," Tsunayoshi grumbles, but he cups his hands together and lights the Flame again in his palms, the way one would hold the final morsel of water in the middle of a desert. "Can't we move on?"

"You're going to have to increase the output next." Reborn scoots a little closer. Squalo does the same, though probably for different reasons. "What does it feel like?"

"Like.. salt. Salty. Sour." Tsunayoshi swallows. The Flame wavers in his grasp. "Like breathing after I've cried for too long. It feels like a hollow ache in my chest that I want to get rid of, but it just keeps getting worse."

"What are you thinking about?"

"..Getting Xanxus out of there."

"That's a bit difficult to intensify. You'll just end up feeling guilty if you can't manage to do it. Try something else."

"Like what?"

"Why," Squalo interjects before Reborn can. "Why do you want to save him?"

Tsunayoshi's face scrunches up. "What's it matter why? You already know why anyway, Squalo."

"Do I?" He leans in even closer. "Do you? This is serious, Sawada. They're called Dying Will Flames for a reason, you can't be wishy washy about it."

"I'm not—"

"It won't work if your Resolve is half-assed, Tsunayoshi."

"I'm going to smack one of you."

"Hit Reborn, he gets off on pain."

"I do not—" Tsunayoshi does, actually, cuff him across the temple. Not in any intentionally harmful way, but the point is that he did. "..Ow? No. I don't get off on pain. Don't do that again."

"You didn't sound too sure of that up until just then."

"I've died a few times, in case you've forgotten. And I have no idea what Renato gets up to. So to speak."

"I'm going to smack you if you keep up that line of thought," Squalo mutters, shuddering.

Tsunayoshi squints at him, eyes gilded with orange and copper. Reborn has to remind himself that he can see more than 'just Flames'. Or so Tsunayoshi claims.

"Shhh," he says anyway, just to be safe. And also because Tsunayoshi is reaching for the cane on the ground at his side. "Not in public."

Squalo lets out a frustrated shout and throws his hands up in the air. Then he gets up, stalks over to Xanxus' ice block, and sits down next to it, scowling at them from afar.

Now rid of the nuisance, Reborn reaches out for Tsunayoshi's hands, cupping them together again.

"So. Sour and salty."

"Like bile coming up."

"Let's make it something sweet, then." Tsunayoshi's face pinches again. "I'm going to suggest something. I don't want you to think I'm saying this just because of all the other yous that I've known. I don't want you to think that just because it was true for them that it has to be true for you.. and I don't want you to think that it's a bad thing if it is true, or even if it isn't."

"This is not making me nervous at all. In any way."

"You want to protect him." Reborn says it smoothly, knowingly. Tiredly. But fondly also, because this is the part of Tsunayoshi that will never change. No matter how many other people out there feel the same way, desire to do the same thing for their own people, there is only one person who does it the way Tsunayoshi does. With the same vigor, the same relentlessness. The same Resolve. "You want to protect all of them. Because they're your family."

"I'm not going the way of Giotto, Reborn," Tsunayoshi grumbles. "This isn't a mafia group we're starting up."

"I didn't say famiglia." The heat is already beginning to gather between Tsunayoshi's palms, warming them like a campfire coming to life. "Family. Yours. Something sweet."

"If the next words out of your mouth are sweet, sweet love, I'm going to punch you again."

"You've gotten so cheeky without me dogging your every step from the tender age of 13."

"Creep."

"Home tutor. There's a big difference." Tsunayoshi doesn't look like he believes it. Reborn shrugs and claps their hands together. "So. Something sweet? If I recall, you have a great fondness for desserts."

"..I do." The man draws his legs up and brings their hands up with it, holding onto Reborn's like a child would.

Carefully. Delicately.

"I wouldn't say I want to protect Xanxus," he says, quiet. "Not really. Xanxus wouldn't appreciate it and I wouldn't disrespect him in such a way."

"But you do want to save him."

"Wanting to save him and wanting to keep him safe are two different things." Tsunayoshi tips his head. Reborn does the same, on a whim. "I have no rights to claim over him. I am not his keeper, not a parent, not a superior... I'm just Tsuna. Just a friend, just a lover."

Reborn files away the last part for later.

"He's all alone in there and I.. I just want to get him out. It must be terribly lonely in there. Cold and lonely. Don't you think?"

Flame bursts into life between Tsunayoshi's palms. A flicker becomes a roar, becomes the likeness of a campfire, beckoning. When Reborn looks up again, Squalo is back on this side of the room and the door is creaking open wider.

Fran sneaks in and squeezes into the space between Tsunayoshi and Squalo.

He is quite young, actually, now that Reborn thinks about it. Fran. Tsunayoshi was groomed to be Neo Primo (Decimo), but Fran..

Fran is an assassin. Squalo is, too. Levi, Belphegor, Mammon. They all are. Trained, contracted killers. They're not meant to be coddled.

But Fran leans against Tsunayoshi and even props his chin up on the other's shoulder, even going so far as to dispel his unwieldy hat to do so. He is young, and for all that he is legally an adult, he is almost still a child.

Reborn leans against Tsunayoshi's other side.

"Yeah," he says in a hum. "We better get his ass out of there and warm it up together."

"That's exactly my point!"

Ah, well.

/ / / / / / / / /

"Xanxus, why do you have to kill people?"

"I'm an assassin, kid. It's what I do."

"Well, yeah, I know that, but why? Why'd you want to be an assassin?"

"Don't roll your eyes at me." Xanxus cuffs him over the head. Tsuna barely feels it but he whines anyway, on principle. "It's a grown-up thing, baby trash."

"I'm a grown-up!"

"You're 17. Still a baby trash."

Tsuna throws a balled up sock at him. Too bad it's clean and Xanxus just swats it away like a particularly annoying fly.

"You ever met my old man?"

"Old trash, right?" Tsuna ducks his head when Xanxus lets out a cackle. "You talk about him a lot and dad's always going on about how good a man he is, but.. I haven't met him yet."

"Good."

"Oh, come on! You say he's awful, dad says he's great, Mammon and them won't even talk about him!"

"He's decent," Xanxus grunts. "And he ain't someone you gotta see the face of."

"I have no idea what you just said."

"I taught you Italian for a reason, baby trash."

"That wasn't Italian! That was- that was rubbish! Gibberish rubbish!"

"Your ears are rubbish." Tsuna lunges at him, but being still in his teenage years and woefully lacking everyone else's growth spurt, he's easily held at bay by a single hand on his head. "He's a decent man. If you meet him, you listen to him. Which is why you are never going to meet him."

"Why?" Tsuna's face scrunches up, trying to shove Xanxus's arm aside. "If he's decent then there's no problem if I ever meet him, right?"

"Don't ask me, that's just what Mammon says." Xanxus lets out a snort. "Something about your damn bleeding heart being a bad match for the family business."

"You can say mafia, I already know about it."

"The point is that you aren't supposed to know about it, so stop fucking talking about it."

"You told me yourself that you kill people for a living!"

"I do not make a living of it, kid. It's mafia. You don't make a living from mafia, you live it."

"...I don't really get it."

"Like I said. Grown-up mafia thing." Xanxus' hand comes down on his head again, ruffling his hair and jostling him around. "Baby trash."

Tsuna huffs and puffs. Like a pufferfish.

/ / / / / / / / /

"If Renato did kill Iemitsu," Reborn murmurs once the others have gone, "then you can deal with him the same way you dealt with Timoteo."

"But," Tsunayoshi says, voice quavering, "I killed him. We. We had him killed."

"I know."

"..There's no way to- to kill him without killing you."

"I know."

"Reborn—"

"I mean it." Reborn tucks Tsunayoshi's head under his chin, hair tickling his nose. "If it comes down to you or me, always pick yourself."

"How can you say that so easily?"

"If I die, then I leave and go to the next Cycle. If you die, I also leave and go to the next Cycle. And now that I know about it, I suppose Renato will come back, once I'm gone. There's no point in dying for that asshat's sake, so don't even think about it. I look better than him anyway."

"...You're in the same body. And did you just called yourself an asshat?"

"I look better in that body. This body."

Tsunayoshi sputters out a laugh. Reborn relaxes, just a little, and wraps his arm around Tsunayoshi's shoulder a little tighter.

"Can't you.. I don't know, stop him from showing up again?"

"That depends."

Tsunayoshi's head shifts until his nose brushes over Reborn's neck. It's cold. "On what?"

"On how much he wants to show up. Versus, well, how much I want to be here."

"But you do want to be here.. don't you?"

Reborn doesn't answer that. Because, yes, of course. Of course he does. Of course he'd like to be here.

And yet, at the same time.. it feels like there's somewhere else he'd also like to be. Somewhere else he should be. Another world. Another Cycle. Another place where he... belongs, because he knows he doesn't quite belong here.

So, he doesn't answer.

And Tsunayoshi doesn't ask again.

/ / / / / / / / /

When they talk about frostbite, they talk about limbs going solid and falling off. Toes being lost, fingers shattering. Flesh turning to as good as stone, blood freezing in your veins.

They don't talk about the feeling of nothing creeping trough. Of burning even though there's no ice, no fire.

When they talk about treating it, by some miracle, they talk about how stone may turn back to flesh. Ice melting back into blood, oxygen-starved and stagnant. Nerves burning, pins and needles where it isn't numb.

They don't talk about damage.

They don't talk about the brain. How activity stops. Stops breathing, stops thinking, stops anything and everything. Stops decaying. Just...

...Stops.

They don't talk about how everything starts up again. How it feels like catching up on reruns, listening to a relative talk about the last 10 years you never heard about before, about a cousin you never knew existed.

It's not like waking up.

It's coming out of a daze, red and bloody and raging and knowing exactly why he's livid and not knowing why no one else is. Not knowing why someone is stopping him, why no one is retaliating.

Not knowing why his adopted brother's lapdog is the one stopping him from lunging at the figure huddled on the ground.

They don't talk about how it isn't ice. It isn't like ice at all. He doesn't feel cold. Hypothermic.

He just feels angry.

"I'm going to make a bet," Decimo's lapdog says, pressing the barrel of a gun against the soft underside of his chin. Those eyes are thin and sharp. Old. Older than he remembers them being. "I'm going to take a chance. I'm going to believe that you've regained your senses now."

He snarls. Snarls like a beast, caged and trapped and weakened, pulling and yanking at a leash around his neck, daring it to be loosened even the slightest bit.

"Xanxus?"

He

stops.

That's a voice he knows.

"Xanxus, are you- ow—" the one on the ground hisses and stumbles. The anger in him has been simmering for years. Bound in stasis and left to hang, seeping into his very being. He feels marinated in it. "I guess you're, uh, perfectly healthy?"

A trickle of blood runs down the side of Tsuna's face. Xanxus feels his heart leap into his throat.

Everything hurts. Everything hurts—

—but nothing hurts more than seeing the young Sawada huddled on the ground, wearing his eyepatch over the wrong side of his face. Bleeding from the side of his head.

The anger is fire in his veins, not ice. It sears through him as he shoves past an unresisting hitman, barrels through his own hesitant subordinates, and grabs Tsuna by the biceps to drag him to his feet. The crumpled hat he'd been holding falls to the ground.

Tsuna doesn't look at him. He looks, but.. not at him. He's tracing Xanxus' jaw with his thumb in a way that Xanxus has never seen him do before. The leather gloves they'd gotten for him years ago feels almost clammy now. Clammy and slippery.

Maybe that's just the blood rushing out of his head.

"Where's—" Xanxus croaks and ducks off to the side, coughing, sucking in a breath too quick, too shallow. He lifts his head and blinks through the blurry haze. Looks around. He's never seen all the Arcobaleno gathered together like this before. Almost all of them. "—Where's Luss? The CEDEF trash, where's—"

"He's hyperventilating," Tsuna says, crisp and sharp. He tries to take a step back but Xanxus hasn't let go, gripping him by the arms almost bruisingly while Xanxus' vision swims and dips with every too-fast heave of his chest and his ears feel like they've been cottoned up. "Xanxus, calm down. Calm down before you—"

Everything goes spotted with white, and then utterly black.

so there's a Hypothetical Problem that arises when you've lived through enough lives and read the same stories over and over enough times... you start assuming the answers to everything and kind of just gloss over really big plot holes.

basically reborn is treating his lives the way you'd treat the first book in a series full of cliffhangers and loose ends. chronic 'I'm Sure It Will Sort Itself Out Eventually'. which, y'know, is probably great for his mental health? and makes it easier for me to write without having to immediately resolve said plot holes, but what about the poor readers? does no one think about them?