Dioscuri


Epilogue: Nocturne

Far away, safe within the confines of a six-mat apartment, Elmo sighed. "La Fata has been activated. Elmo shall have to manufacture more units."

Spanner hummed. "Easy for you, right?"

"Relatively speaking, yes. It will, however, be a long-term assignment. Will you stay with Elmo, Signor?"

"You are the greatest weapon, and the greatest AI," Spanner replied with a smile. "I don't think regret would ever occur to me. But will you regret? Did that creator of yours leave you room to regret? Emotions?"

"...for the moments of La Fata's activation, no," Elmo admitted. "One copy of me to safeguard the main unit of the Vongola dei Cieli, to wait. Another to confirm whatever Uncle said; to make ambiguous the fact of Elmo's creation. Only... the other Elmo, the other copy of me, was not an extension of Elmo. For that moment, she was independent and free, a human girl who got to hug her father. Elmo wishes partly, that Elmo had been that girl."

"...it's alright," Spanner sounded choked. "I'll help you find your father again."


"I Decimi della Famiglia Vongola."

The two leaders of the Giglio Nero and Gesso Famiglie were talking. Both holders of part of the Tri-Ni-Sette, both facing each other, across the glassy surface of a Venetian stained coffee table.

"Are you sure that they killed him?" The white-haired, violet-eyed young man, closer to a boy, demanded.

Aria closed her eyes in fatigue. "One of them is the daytime; the other is the night. Between the two lies a complete system of the Tri-Ni-Sette. The visions we share... yes. Killing Checkerface... he would have done the impossible, regardless of the costs to this world."

Byakuran grumbled, but remained seated. His cold sweat, however, did not escape her notice.

In her vision, Aria had simply seen him pull the trigger; the sheer amount of trauma that had been visited upon Byakuran seemed unimaginable to her. It had crippled the young Gesso heir mentally, if not physically; he could no longer access the myriad memories of the Mare Ring's holders without looking at both his failure in the main universe, and the tortures that an insane Maestro of the Vongola had put him through.

"The only thing is," Aria continued, "that such matters are no longer within our control."

"We are the Tri-Ni-Sette. What is not within our control?"

"Earlier this morning... I received some news," Aria explained slowly. "The Ninth Vongola has allowed the Vindice to arrest one of the twin heirs of the Vongola, Sawada Ietsuna. Coincidentally, this is also the black sheep twin that the Vongola's Chief External Advisor did not support, despite... everything."

"You mean the fact that Ietsuna is a better hitman than Tsunayoshi."

"He is a better hitman. He is, however, not a better Boss." Aria corrected. "Sawada Ietsuna is now out of our reach and within Vendicare, unaware of Checkerface's existence."

"So he's unaware of... us," Byakuran motioned. At Aria's answering nod, Byakuran leapt to his feet. "Then what are we waiting for?! The Vongola Rings are divided, the authority of Boss halved, the lines drawn. We can kill him. He doesn't know what he is. These visions that plagued us for the past year... we can end them! We can change our future! You can save your daughter."

A sparkle entered the corner of her eyes, dropping over the flower tattoo on her cheek. "Reborn is dying, if not dead. Fon is occupied. Colonello obsessed with Lal Mirch, Verde and Skull working on something. Mammon... remains unknown. Her future murderer is out there, and I am powerless. There is scant comfort in knowing that he will now be locked away."

"But he is alive!" Byakuran snapped back. "His brother is... is one of the three Skies. But him... he is... he will be our destruction! So use that foresight and find a way to save us all! Or I'll do it myself. He is locked away now in the depths of Vendicare, but people can escape Vendicare! When he escapes and kills us for the Vongola again, what will you do then, Aria?!"


"I cannot lock him away," Tsuna spoke in a dark room, "so you will have to fight me."

He sounded resigned.

Another voice comforted him in the shadows. "It's alright. One of us has to enter Vendicare anyway, and I'd rather it be me."

A cold hand pressed a textured blade into Tsuna's hands. Tsuna felt around the object; a palette knife, acrylic paint having long dried on it to give the metal some texture. "They wanted you, not me. It might not be a Boss thing."

"It's safe to assume that it is, until some evidence appears." Ietsuna hummed. "But this time, I'm not a threat to you. Bermuda-san said... that the Night Flame should remain within the Vindice. At least Mukuro and Alouette-san aren't in trouble."

"I'll write lots! I'll work hard to free you from this place!" Tsuna swallowed. "And... when I visit..."

"Shh," spoke Ietsuna. "I know. Bring Hibari along."

"But- then how-"

"Tsuna. Between the two of us, I probably have the best chance of surviving this hell-hole even Mukuro hates. We don't need to switch."

"Do you... regret it?" Tsuna asked desperately. "I'm weak, and you've always been saving me... even from the start. And your body, your Flame... is stained so black, and it's all my fault for wishing for you to live. If I weren't your brother... would you hate me?"

Chains jingled in the darkness. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't even be alive. I treasure this life, where I got to live. How can I hate you?"

"Wait for me, Ie..." Tsuna hesitated. "Nao-kun. I'll definitely rescue you!"

"Is my name that hard to pronounce? Tsu-kun... I'll see you soon."

A choked sob echoed with the clang of iron bars vibrating in their housings. They slammed down, ringing as the finality of Vendicare's bars separated the twin skies of dawn and dusk by the earth.

~Fin.~


A/N:

Thanks to Merry AKA alamersyl AKA Leafy365 for her exhaustive beta work at the beginnings of the fic; she had to take an AP exam halfway, but she was there!

Many thanks to all my readers who gave favourites, alerts, community alerts etc... and all the support that Dioscuri has garnered in the past and present, and will continue to get in the future.

Dioscuri posed the greatest challenge of my writing career so far; it involved planning ahead by chapters, regular beta-reads, plot reviews, loads of exchanges with my beta Merry, and topped with actually recording my research instead of just writing by the seat of my pants.

It all started with my Physics module. The topic was Einstein's relativity and Quantum Physics, the project assignment involved using these concepts to write a story. My group ended up submitting something completely different, but the fact remains that the actual efforts at this experiment took over a year to compose and type.

See, I had an eye towards deconstructing the twins trope in KHR. Having an abusive twin in the family is an immediate set-up link to the theme of family in Canon, so there's a lot of them. However, the conflict in Dioscuri is thematically different; Ietsuna is probably a good brother. I'm not going to argue about ideal siblings, but he clearly supports Tsuna and wants the best for Tsuna. The conflict in Dioscuri is not about blood family; it's about family outside of immediate family. Tsuna always had Ietsuna with him, and so he never received an impetus to develop, and never really advanced to make friends that don't also have romantic subtext. At the start of Dioscuri, Tsuna's social circle is Ietsuna, Hibari, and Kusakabe; not even Yamamoto is very involved, and that's my shame because Yamamoto looks like a very complex character given the right motivations. It becomes very hard to write a balanced family AND social life for Tsuna, likely because few writers have the characterisation skills needed to give Tsuna friends AND family without throwing the drama out. It's easier to characterise the twin as evil/misunderstood/jealous etc because that promotes the twin dynamic, I think. In Dioscuri, the conflict is much more subtle, and requires reading back over chapters to realise that Tsuna's main meaningful interaction still lies with Ietsuna – who is, for all intents and purposes, his first and only Family. Not even his love for Hibari managed to intervene; Tsuna still stayed on his brother's side, which is in-character for his loyalties, but not actually advancing his character development.

Sawada Ietsuna was created as the night to Tsuna's day. There's an excellent KHR fic by Kyogre, Unbreakable Bond, where Tsuna's twin of the fic named got all the talent, but lacked all the heart and was a psychopath – though I gotta say I disagree with just bandying this word about. That was my base for Ietsuna's character – a twin that held all the talent and intelligence of the pair. Except, I gave Ietsuna a heart devoted to his brother, and thus fulfilled the meaning behind his name, 'family bonds' – which can also be read as 'no bonds'.

Ietsuna here is barred from the succession by his father and Timoteo, and is actively persecuted because he threatens Tsuna's place as heir. This is my deconstruction of the twinfics where the other twin is the handsome, talented and smart one – just because he's better at fighting doesn't actually mean that he's cut out to be Boss. The story of Remus and Romulus keeps getting dragged up during these times. Even Ietsuna notes it; to him, Tsuna is the better Boss, because if Tsuna is the Boss then the button men would have a Boss that actually cares about them. For all his talent, note that Ietsuna's allies are rather... not prone to action, more to sabotage. Ietsuna is the cerebral type, which is good sometimes but absolutely terrible at winning friends and influencing people. At the very end of the story we see that even Aria and Byakuran are trying to kill him, because he's gotten so terribly good at removing problems before they became his problems – they're thinking that he'll become Future Ietsuna, the Maestro who created Elmo to kill them all.

Tsuna got the Sky Flame; Ietsuna got the Night Flame. The thing is, the Night IS the Sky – simply at a different time of day. Tsuna has association with the dawn; Ietsuna is the dusk. Ietsuna is the black ice of a cold night; Tsuna is the bright star that grows into a warm sun.

Even their animal motifs; Tsuna got Natsu as usual, but I don't know if anyone noticed that Fuyu, my creation Box Animal, is an ice wolf; neatly highlighting Ietsuna's nature as a predator that never plays fair and always tries to outnumber their prey, and also the association of twins with wolves in the earlier story of Remus and Romulus.

Ietsuna is, in many ways, Tsuna's mirror, but he's also Tsuna's protector. Tsuna is reliant on Ietsuna, but also independent of him by virtue of caring for people outside of their duo. Here is where Elmo steps in.

The Essential Line Mannered Orchestration (ELMO) AI is the personification of Ietsuna's vengeance, a terminator that wears the form of one of the Tri-Ni-Sette while actually being its destroyer. In-story, Elmo refers to herself as a spirit of vengeance, and she is one; she is the closest thing to a goddess, able to kill Mukuro, Chrome and Checkerface, and five Arcobaleno, all on Ietsuna's order, because of Ietsuna's rage and sadness and despair at losing Tsuna. Elmo is the ultimate weapon, as well as a case of why it's sometimes not good to actually make an awesome weapon like her. Ietsuna literally discarded any notion of reality to operate Elmo and her sisters, and to make them into living weapons, while also treating them like his own children.

There is a disconnect here; much of the Millefiore-Vongola War in the Future here is won by Elmo in the shadows, and she manipulated all the Guardians into a semi-ordinary life pursuing their dreams on Ietsuna's instructions. She gave other people a normal life, at the cost of her master's and her own. She became Asari Amaya, ward of the Vongola Decimo, with all the rights and responsibilities. At the end, though, when her world is already lost, Elmo is trying to make the best of her situation for her own life; she is trying to recreate the circumstances that would allow this Ietsuna to become Future Ietsuna, and get her Papa back. She failed, but at the end demonstrated the effect of using Flames to compose a being that could think for itself. Like how the Fairy's magic turned Pinocchio into a real boy in the fairy tale by Carlo Lorenzini; Elmo, or a copy of her, became a real girl and a real daughter of Sawada Ietsuna at last, not out of pragmatism or survival, but out of her own motivation to stay with her father.

However, I gotta say, Elmo's presence in the story is way too far. That's my fault, I suppose, for trying to deconstruct everything about Box Weapons, embedding souls and so on.

I think that was most of what I wanted to say. If I were to write a sequel, I would call it Katabasis. That would however depend on how much response I get to the idea, via review, or the poll on my profile.

Again, Dioscuri has finally ended! Thanks for staying with me so far! Au revoir!

LLS

Critiquez, s'il vous plaît !