From a story to my outlet of personal woes.

Loving hurts.

Chapter 53

Tsuna looks at the sudden expanse of grey around him, a great contrast from the last image he'd seen before the bazooka's pink smoke.

It hasn't even been seconds, and he already misses his timeline.

"Welcome back, Vongola Decimo."

Tsuna tries to smile, he really does, if only to return the kind smiles that Shoichi-san and Spanner were giving him. But there wasn't anything to smile about. Not really. Not here, where everyone he'd ever known growing up were dead or missing.

Tsuna takes a step forward, even though his legs are heavy, even though he wants nothing more than to complain. Reborn is silent and motionless on Tsuna's head. Tsuna was sure the hitman knew exactly what he was thinking. Reborn knew him well enough to be capable of that.

The brunette is glad that Reborn doesn't speak though. In some moments, words simply aren't needed.

Tsuna feels an arm slung around his shoulder, and he glances up to meet Takeshi, smiling. "It's all going to be fine, Tsuna. You heard Shoichi-san didn't you? You and Kyoya planned all this. I'm sure we could all trust your future selves, right?"

Takeshi laughed, as if he had said a joke.

The laugh was contagious.

And sometimes, some words just are.

##################################

Lal Mirch sits silently in the corner of the dining room, drinking from her hot cup of coffee. Surrounding her were the girls, busy washing the dishes, and surprisingly, Gokudera Hayato, taking over the duty of watching over the two youngest children in the base.

Lal Mirch hadn't been around the Vongola Decimo to know how they actually were, or who they were personally, to be honest. She had always been around for business, for a trade treaty, for a report, or for some form of complaint. She had only ever seen Tsunayoshi in work-mode, ready to assess the problem, ready to solve, standing straight, his guardians in the same stiff, tense position around him.

But she had known bits of who they were outside the meeting room, from the few exchanges between the guardians. The silent, inside jokes exchanged between meetings, the fond look that Tsunayoshi's eyes oft held, when he looked at his young lightning, or the trusting, pleading look he'd secretly give his cloud and rain.

It was the lightning, that Lal Mirch remembers most. She had read his information after all. She had been most curious, to find a child – he couldn't have been any older than twelve the first time she'd seen him, and had given effort to find out his origins.

She had learned that Lambo had been formerly a member of the Bovino famiglia, the son of a low ranked member, who had been sent to Japan on an impossible mission after the death of the boy's parents.

She had wondered if Lambo remembers any of that, but she doubts it. The boy had been four or five, when he first met the Decimo teens.

But still, what had piqued her interest most upon seeing the then twelve year old boy was the fact that he had walked like an old Mafioso. He had the movements of a veteran who had seen enough – he wasn't one of the wise, but he was knowledgeable, and for a kid, that was more than what normally counted for Lal.

She had seen him, only once in a perilous situation. There had been a sudden siege, then, in the middle of one of Vongola's meetings. She had watched as Tsunayoshi gave the teen a hard look, telling the boy to hide, and she had also watched, as the lightning simply smiled and said that he was ready.

Lal had never seen a child before, walk calmly into the middle of battle, with the full awareness of what a real battle was.

She had seen him fight that day. She had watched the boy control his lightning flames masterfully, defending and serving the Vongola. A knight. He wasn't a soldier. He wasn't trained, he wasn't commanded, and he knew no trained drill. But he could fight, and yet he fought to serve. To defend.

She looks at the five year old coloring on the table, beside the bored storm.

She thinks of the Vongola teens. They were fourteen, fifteen, she notes. And yet, none of them could ever compare to the fifteen year old that Lambo had somehow become.

But of course, maybe in the end, it wasn't any of the Vongola teens' fault. After all, Lambo did grow up in the middle of a war.

##############################

"You've seen the looks they give us, haven't you, Tsuna?" Takeshi asks, swinging his sword lazily in the air. A few distance away, Tsuna was sitting on the floor, petting Natsu's head.

"Mhmm." Tsuna replies.

"They think we're all horribly weak don't they? Like we don't match up to whatever standards they've got."

Tsuna nods, but also shrugs. "There is a war, Takeshi. They're desperate enough to bring us here. Of course they'd hope we were… you know, better."

"I know. But it's twisted. That out here, not too long from where we're from, they expect that children like us are able to fight for ourselves. It kind of makes me think about all the other Mafia famiglias out there, if they expect just as much from their kids. I know we have it easy, Tsuna. I've heard the stories. We're lucky compared to everyone out there. But no kid should ever be expected to fight a war." Takeshi says.

"I don't think anyone's got a choice. I mean, you haven't seen Lambo and Ipin, have you? The Lambo and Ipin from here?"

Takeshi shakes his head. "I came here the same time they did."

"Well, I've seen them. And I know that I won't ever let Lambo and Ipin grow up to be soldiers. But that's what they were, Takeshi. They were guarding Kyoko and Haru as if they had done escort missions like that so many times before. They were all guarded, and they had the same trained aura that the Varia had given off when we fought them. I think, that even if people here in this era wanted their kids to grow up without knowing the horrors, they know that they can't leave them in ignorance as well. It's better, I guess. That they know and they're ready and they live, rather than shield them from everything and leave them to die cause of their own incompetence."

Takeshi swings his sword, the boy obviously deep in thought.

"Yeah. I guess it makes sense if you look at it that way."

The two boys are silent for a long while, until Tsuna asks.

"Do you regret it, Takeshi? Joining the Mafia game?"

Contrary to what Tsuna had expected, Takeshi instead laughs, laughs so heartily that Tsuna wonders if the other teen had misheard him somehow and mistook his question for a joke.

"Tsuna, I know that the Mafia isn't a game." Takeshi says softly. "But no. I don't regret a second of it. I would rather die knowing that I've fought and laughed alongside you and everyone else, than live and fake it all for people that don't even matter and don't even care about me as I am."

Tsuna feels his Rain's resolve and smiles.

"Yea, I don't regret a second of it too."

##################################

Chrome silently watches Kyoko and Haru from the corner of her eyes. They've been kind to her, more than Chrome would ever be comfortable with, actually, but they were kind and Chrome knew that she should be thankful for that.

Chrome was also aware that the two other girls were trying to coax her shyness out of her, trying to make her open up to them more. Chrome knew that normal girls were like that, that they whispered their secrets and talked about boys – or sometimes girls – they talked about looks, about clothes, about food, because they were normal girls.

Chrome was very thankful that Kyoko and Haru were being kind, but she would very much rather like it if the two girls would stop forcing her to be as normal as them. Chrome was never normal and the chances of her ever being so was closer to 0 than it'd ever be to 1. It wasn't that she was refusing a normal life, it was that a normal life had refused her from the start.

Of course, Haru and Kyoko wouldn't understand that.

They'd grown up surrounded by people that loved them, and things that they actually loved. Chrome didn't want to undermine the lives of ordinary people. She knew that they had their own troubles, their own crap handed to them, but she also knew that her life experiences could never be compared to that of the two normal girls.

They hadn't had to survive, yet. They hadn't had to fight, to suffer near deaths, to prove over again that they were still worthy of the oxygen they took in.

Being required to survive changed people. Chrome knew. She'd seen kids like her, kids that had had the crappiest of lives. They'd always been the strongest people Chrome knew. They have always been the ones who knew so much, the ones who could talk about everything, and the ones who could do everything they could possibly desire.

Chrome had seen enough media to know that the films made out that children raised in shitty families were the ones that caused trouble, the ones that did drugs and alcohol and screwed around with people's properties.

Chrome had seen that the world wasn't as black and white as that. Sometimes, it was the normal people that were more drawn to becoming crap, and it were those who'd been through crap that grew up somehow and became something.

She was just rambling now.

But either way, Kyoko and Haru wouldn't understand her. They probably never will, unless…. No. Chrome would protect her two female friends from ever having to see what she had.

Ipin understood though.

Sometimes, the five year old would purposefully seek Chrome out, and the child would just sit beside her, never speaking, just smiling at Chrome.

And Chrome would nod, because she understands. She understands that some moments, Ipin is overwhelmed by it too, fed up from the noise and constant squealing and pretending that everything is fine.

Just like she is. Fed up from the talks of cake, the talks of Takeshi being cuter than Hayato, but no Tsuna is the absolute angel or that turquoise looks so good with some darker shade of whatever color it was that no one probably even knew existed.

She sees it in the child, the way Ipin would tense, as if remembering a distant battle, as if remembering some sort of rule that she ought to never let her guard down.

Chrome understands and they just both sit there, together. They don't move. They don't talk. Complete moments just doing nothing in the silence, to restore their sanity, to regain their strength and just feel safe.

Knowing that they would never ever truly be normal.

And being okay with it either way.

#############################

Kyoya swings his tonfa at the blonde who dodges it with ease once more. Kyoya was beginning to feel the strain his muscles had been in the past twenty four hours, from having been fighting the blonde since then.

Ten years had indeed made the Cavallone boss stronger.

"Stubborn kid. You need to rest. Or you'll be useless when the real battle comes." Dino says, and Kyoya glares, but he is forced to acknowledge that there is truth in that statement.

Kyoya puts down his tonfas. The Italian sighs in relief. "Good. At least you're already at that point where you've learned how to listen."

Kyoya glares, and Dino smiles at his young student. He watches exasperatedly though, as the boy sits down, only to begin practicing propagating the small stones lying on the ground.

"I said rest, Kyoya."

He receives a grunt, but the raven continues to experiment with his flames anyway.

"Gods, why do you Clouds have to be so stubborn? You're just like my sister, you know. Always doing whatever she wants without concern for the rest of the bloody worl- no. She's too concerned for the rest of the bloody world and goes and meddles with it resulting in a gigantic mixed up – something."

Dino notes that while Kyoya had tuned out his rant, the boy was looking at him with a renewed interest.

"Your sister is Caia Cavallone. Byakuran's previous Cloud Mare Ring holder, and a member of the group that had plotted bringing Vongola Decimo to fight for this future." Dino smiles fondly as Kyoya listed off his sister's somewhat accomplishments one by one.

"You forgot to mention that she was also Varia Cloud."

Kyoya grunted, but his eyes shone. Dino knew that the teen was contemplating how much a fight with Caia was worth.

"Where is she?" Kyoya asks, and Dino tries to shrug, but he knows that his worry and his tiredness was clearly showing.

"I don't know. I told you, she likes it best when she runs wild and free and alone." Dino then adds, just for good measure. "Even if I did know, she'd hand you your ass within seconds, Kyoya, if you can barely even beat me."

The boy's eyebrow twitched and with renewed speed attacked Dino who countered it with a sigh.

Guess he shouldn't have provoked the skylark if he had wanted some rest.

########################

It was as I remembered it.

An old shop styled in traditional Japanese, but nothing too standoffish that it would stand out from the rest of Namimori. The lone thing that would've made passersby look twice was the scent of something off, a feeling of dread that accompanied the lonely antique shop that looked like it tethered close to falling apart.

The shop where I met Kawahira.

"You've known this would happen all along, didn't you?" I asked the white haired man, who was eating his usual cup of ramen from across me.

"I know things because my power allows me to, Miss Cavallone. I believe you would understand, because you and I are essentially the same." He said, and I shrugged.

"Except you're one lucky bastard to have had a thousand years to grow wise. I've only ever had my twenty six ones to learn."

He looks at me, assessing me. "You knew everything that was going to happen, and yet the decisions you made, Caia Cavallone, it amuses me how you have come to convince yourself that some of your worst decisions were the best."

I laugh, because I've known the answer to that question for far longer than he could ever imagine. All people have known it, because everyone had made the worst of decisions too, and everyone had learned what it meant to suffer from choices gone wrong.

"I'm living in a badly written plotline, Kawahira. You see, the thing about this story is that it's never given me any problems I've been ready to face. All my wrong choices, I have come to make, because at the time, I prioritized something smaller, something that at that point was everything to me that I became blind to the larger scheme of things. I hated the Cavallone's closed world, and so I sought for the world outside, but the world outside wasn't necessarily better than the Cavallone's. I lost my brother because I valued my pride at the time, the belief that I was better than everyone else and I could handle myself – and where did that lead me? To the Estraneo. And the Varia, I don't regret meeting the Varia and I'm sure that I never will regret meeting them, but I've done and given them more than they'd ever ask of me, things that they would have been more mad than glad that I've done. I sold my best friend because I believed that the rest of the world amounted to less than my family, but my family was part of the world and I forgot that. I chose to give Byakuran the Mare ring because the rest of everything was less than the Varia that had given me a home. And when I realized I loved Byakuran, I chose to forget famiglia, in the quest to return the great affection I never knew was possible for me.

See, the thing here, Kawahira, is that each and every time up that list, I was immature, and my view was set on only what's in front of me. But that's always the way things go, because that's how it's meant to be. For every problem I wasn't ever ready to face, I was stretched beyond my limits until my understanding of the world grew larger and larger."

He looks at me. "Those words sound large and grand, Caia Cavallone."

I grin. "I know. My words always sound grand and large, but they usually end up as something I stumble from. But, you said that we're the same, two being of power, yours experience gained in a thousand years, mine knowledge of the future set from a place I can no longer remember. I disagree, Kawahira-san. I'm not that grand. I'm just twenty six, and I'm still growing up."

He puts down the cup of ramen, but the blank look does not change. "I wonder, what it is like to be as young as you."

"Oh it isn't as amusing as you think. It's part crashing, actually, the other part burning in the flames of hell."

##########################

Squalo stands beside his old best friend, and the swordsman chuckles slightly at the thought that calling Dino his old friend was an understatement. They were somewhat 'ancient' friends; the friendship had fallen apart in fourth grade, for heaven's sake, and they were both thirty two now. He couldn't even remember what they looked like back then.

Caia would have, though. The brat had always been weird, even from then on long ago. He could remember that much.

But she wasn't what the conversation was about. They'd had many conversations about her, many good and many bad.

"The kids aren't ready, Squalo." Dino said. The blonde was smoking. Squalo wasn't sure when Dino had started smoking because he hadn't done that for as long as he had met the blonde. Granted, times were difficult and tobacco had its way of easing things.

"It doesn't matter whether they are ready or not, Haneuma." Squalo nearly growled. He wonders to himself when had the world gone irreversibly wrong that he was now defending the abilities of the Vongola Decimo.

"It does, if the state of the world relies on them." Dino says.

Squalo rolls his eyes. The blonde had always been too soft. He remembers it now. Ahh. That was why they had fought all those years ago, because Dino had a softness to him that any sane Mafiosi should not have.

"It doesn't, because the Millefiore aren't fucking stupid trash. They're not going to give us a time out just because we raise ourselves a white flag saying 'hey wait, we aren't ready'."

Dino sighs. "We can buy Tsunayoshi and the others more time."

Squalo felt his head twitching. "VOOOOI! What more time do you want?! We've lost men, we've lost all of our resources to this bloody goddamn war! And you're saying we delay it for further just because of your petty insecure doubts that the Decimo are incompetent?"

Dino is silent, until the blonde just stands and throws the burnt stick a far ways off. "Do we even know what we're doing?"

Squalo laughs. "Of course we fucking don't. We've left the world in the hands of pubescent teens who don't even know a single shit about what it means to be Vongola. Of course, it's greatly obvious that we know what we're fucking going doing."

##########################

Stuart and Yuni are asleep in the corner of the room, just a few steps away from where I stood beside the old man that had done me more favors than I could ever thank him for.

"Talbot, there's no ever repaying all that you've done for me." I told the old man.

Eyes scanned me. "What you have done, you've done in the hopes of aiding the Vongola and I have supported the will you present. But this, child, are you sure of this?"

I pause, because the question begged me to think.

"I'm sure. My mistakes are my own. The consequences are mine too. I can't let others suffer for something I've done knowing full well what I've done."

"You love him."

Talbot says, and I laugh, because people always seemed to read me as easy as plain text.

"Yeah, I do. It's weird hearing you say it, though. Old people seem to use more words to say things."

Talbot smiles at me fondly. "I could tell you that he holds your heart, but there would be no other word for it than love, and we have created words for them to be used."

"The word love is strange, Talbot." I told the old man.

"How so?" He asks, and I pause for a while to contemplate.

"It's all so fragile, and yet, it's not glass, nor is it something thin that could crack at the slightest pressure. You just know that it's fragile, and yet it feels like wind, flowing and eternally there, wrapping around you, present in the very air you breathe. Yet at the same time, it's solid, like it holds you up and you're moving a hundred floors upward. And there's the fear, that maybe, the ground would disappear and you'd fall all the way down. And all this, we fit into a word that takes less than a second to say. Takes just four letters to spell."

"To be young is a tempest." He says, but there is a twinkle in his eyes.

"It is, Talbot. More than you could ever imagine."

He looks at the machine before us. "I can imagine how much, by the very fact you are willing to do this."

"You think I'm doing this for love?"

"Are you not?"

We are silent for a while. "This is an apology Talbot. An apology that everyone's deserved for a long time now. Maybe him more than most, but this is me owning up to my sins."

"Love comes in different forms, child."

I think. "Yeah, then maybe I'm doing this for love."

"Love is a dangerous thing. You never come out of it unscathed, you never leave unchanged." He says.

I laugh. "True, but you never get to choose when it catches you either."

#######################

Byakuran looks at the chessboard.

His fingers moved to touch each white piece on his side of the board.

One piece was touched more than any other.

The queen.

Where was she?

###########################

Lussuria sighs, entering into the room of the youngest Varia left in the house. The man thinks slightly to himself that things had a way of going back to the beginning. Though, not completely. Fran and Caia would always be part of the Varia, regardless of their other duties and regardless of their new paths. But Bel, Bel had always been for the Varia and the Varia alone, and no matter how old the blonde grew, he would always be Lussuria's little boy, would always remind him of the scrawny six year old they first met so long ago.

"You've got to clean your room more, Belphegor." He says, and a slight twitch sounds from the darkly lit area where Bel's bed stood.

As if on cue, Lussuria ducks the knife thrown straight at him.

"Tch, why is the peasant in the prince's quarters, shishishishi?" Bel asks, and Lussuria finds himself smiling at the familiar narcissism in Bel's voice.

"This place is more a cave than a prince's quarters, Bel." Lussuria admonishes the blonde. "Anyway, Boss said that you ought to get ready soon, because we are backing up the Vongola in Japan for when things go downhill after that Choice Battle."

"We're going back to Japan?" Bel asks, and the man was silent for a while. "Do you think she's going to be there?"

Lussuria didn't exactly think before asking "Who?"

"The princess."

Lussuria sighs. Unlike the rest of the Varia, he kept in touch with his emotional side, and knew that Belphegor, contrary to what he had told the rest of them still held on to the idea of a Caia that was his. Lussuria heard the silent 'my', every time he spoke of 'the princess'.

"She's not yours, you know that Belphegor." Lussuria tries to say.

"Of course she isn't mine, shishishi."

Lussuria tries to make his voice stern. "There's a difference between knowing that and accepting it, Bel. The sooner you get your mind wrapped around the latter, the better off you'll be."

A knife flies toward Lussuria. The man catches it with ease.

"I don't own her, because you can't own people, shishishi. You can only ever love people to the point of no return, make people the point at which your entire world orbits for a moment of infinity. But a person can never become 'yours', because people aren't objects to hold on to."

"Yet you hold on to something that you say you can't claim." Lussuria says.

"I never said that people don't try, shishishi."

#############################

Fran looks at the man lying on the white bed, and he feels something hurt, a form of anger that someone who once towered over him so strongly was reduced to the lying mass of dead weight before him.

He glares, and as if glares had voices, the man awoke.

"Oya, oya, you're years too early to be wishing me dead."

Fran flinches at the sudden stab of pain that accompanied the immense relief that washed over him, seeing Mukuro Rokudo, conscious and in flesh after his vacation in Vendicare Prison.

"Okaeri, shishou." The teen says, and for once, he knows that he meant it.

"Kufufufufu."

############################

Shoichi knew that something was up the moment he saw Sawada Tsunayoshi's baffled look.

"Caia Cavallone, Dino Cavallone's biological younger sister, who should be around sixteen in your timeline? She was a member of the Varia Assassination Squad and therefore should've been there during the Ring Battles. She wasthere." Shoichi nearly spits out all the info he could muster about the blonde girl that had helped plan the world's demise and its saving.

"Dino-san never said he had a sister…" The brunette trailed, looking at his infant home tutor for help.

"I have browsed all the possible files in the Cavallone base and none of them have ever suggested of the existence of a second Cavallone heir."

"But Caia-" Shoichi began.

Spanner chose the same moment to speak. "What if Caia-san doesn't exist in that parallel world?"

Shoichi pauses, then after a full minute chose to speak. "It would make sense!"

The redhead receives several stares from the people in the meeting room.

"It's one of the paradoxes I had never gone around to explaining. Why we are the lone standing future. Every other parallel world has fallen so why hadn't this timeline. However, with the presence of a different variable, or a lone variable that does not exists in any of the other world lines, we are able to formulate a world whose sets of events are not as easily predictable as other identical worlds. And that's why Byakuran hasn't destroyed as yet."

Shoichi notices the blank stares from the teens around him.

"You don't know her, do you? Caia." Shoichi laughs to himself. "Well, I'm telling you now. She's one hell of a long story."

###########################

And choice begins.