Hungover. Seventeen. Infinite.

Chapter 54

Yuni is scared.

The teen knew that she was far too young to be able to wisely put a name on all the complex human emotions, but she was familiar with fear. Fear had become her friend. Eating and gnawing at her because that's what fear does. Fear was a little mice, gnawing on at the rope little by little until the rope breaks and hell breaks loose.

Her rope was thicker though.

Yuni had seen. It was sort of impossible not to, considering the nature of her abilities, but she had seen the future and she knew what she had to do.

She sees the albino man talking with the aged inventor, and Yuni wonders again about the feelings of other people. Everyone else seemed so strong, everyone else seemed to be sure of what they had to do, and she was here, eternally doubting why of all people it had to be her.

Her rope wasn't thick enough.

But.

She remembers. She looks at the blonde woman sitting across the room, beside a man who was eternally familiar, who constantly visited her in her dreams. She knows through the stories her mother had given years ago that he was a family friend; that he was Uncle Kawahira, and he was of their blood.

And she loathes him, because she knows that he is responsible for her curse. That he had let her grandmother die, that he had let her mother die, and that he was the source of all this, the reason that she would also have to die. The reason why she was losing what could have been a life.

Checkerface has become heartless in the long years he had spent watching arcobaleno after arcobaleno die with his judgement. He looks at Yuni with his dead eyes, and Yuni sees. Yuni sees even if she does not want to.

She sees him smiling, somewhat, a smile that resembled peace and the release of a heavy burden after years of carrying it all.

And she realizes the plan must have worked.

That Checkerface ceases to exist and the need for the Il Prescelti stops once and for all.

Yuni knows what she must do.

But gods. The fear.

And again she remembers. The blonde woman who had taken the life of her mother. And she forgives. Forgiveness was a heavy thing to give, but the lightness it brought was definitely worth the weight of it. She forgives, because Caia Cavallone was wearing thin. She wasn't Yuni, nor was she like everybody else.

She had a thin rope, a rope of silk, easily gnawed at.

Where everyone else was steady and sure, Caia was explosive and lost and just barely hanging. But the rope of silk, nonetheless stays whole. Yuni is amazed, Caia didn't have strong ropes. The need for strong ropes was none, when she never let the mice get to her in the first place. She refused to let fear gnaw at her, refusing to let it ever affect her.

But that made her fragile.

Sometimes, it is the things that makes us weak, that actually makes us stronger.

She was a paradox.

An imperfect character in a universe of eternally perfect ones.

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

Kyoko is confused.

She stands in the glass room, watching Tsunayoshi and his two closest friends riding on their motorbikes in what Shoichi had said was a simulation Byakuran created for the game of choice.

Kyoko is confused.

Sure, the boys had explained everything about the Mafia, and sure, she pretty much understood that they were doing all this to protect them, but something didn't quite fit.

Kyoko couldn't quite understand why they can't just walk away from all this.

She figured that maybe all these was because the boys were boys, and boys were quite fond of becoming heroes. Kyoko didn't believe that her friends were heroes. No. Tsunayoshi was extraordinary. He was brave, and he had the greatest heart, but he was fourteen and so were everyone else. They were teens. Why they ended up having to save the world was as cliché as a manga plot gone too damn wrong.

She looks at Haru, and at the same time, Haru glances back. Haru smiles, as their eyes meet and Kyoko begins to understand just a bit.

"Tsuna-kun and everyone else are doing their best, Kyoko-chan." Haru says. Kyoko's heart skips a beat and again, she feels the need to hug Haru.

Haru was a dreamer_ that much was sure. She had dreams that were too farfetched, dreams that were near impossible to reach. But she reaches for them anyway, all the while staying grounded. Kyoko couldn't find it in herself to be someone like Haru. Someone so wide-reaching, someone who had the strength to fly and yet be as steady as the earth itself.

And maybe, Tsuna was like that too. The sky.

And Kyoko understands.

And she teaches herself to accept, that sometimes, there simply are some things that must be fought for.

That sometimes, the battles we enter aren't for ourselves alone.

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

Hayato Gokudera wasn't stupid.

He knows that he had tendency to act blindly loyal, but that was only because Sawada Tsunayoshi was worth being blindly loyal for. He still had his head intact, thank you very much.

And his conclusion? This wasn't their future.

Hayato was sure that this wasn't even their world line. The discrepancies between this world and theirs was far too large. Hayato had seen it in his sister, or well, the Bianchi of this world. The Bianchi of this world cared for him the same way his sister back in theirs did, but this wasn't his sister. His sister knew things about him because Bianchi had always cared about her younger brother, even though she had weird ways of showing it – and those things she should've known weren't known to this Bianchi. This Bianchi hadn't cared for him as much as his Bianchi had.

When Hayato was four, his sister had just been starting to cook, and he had wanted to help. But leaving a four year old and a then barely seven year old in the kitchens was never a smart idea. Hayato had ended up burning his arm somehow, and Bianchi had ended up crying over her crying brother. That had been one of the Gokudera's earliest memories of one another – and even ten years later, Bianchi would still touch the part where Hayato's arm had burnt as a somewhat fond gesture every time they got close enough to each other and he wasn't suffering from old, familiar, stomach aches.

This Bianchi never acted like his Bianchi did.

For all that he avoided his sister the last few years or so, Hayato begins to think that family was family. His sister had her shortcomings, sure, but she had tried her best to be his sister and for once, Hayato begins to accept that no one could be perfect. He remembers now, how bright Bianchi had seemed to him before he had learned that she wasn't entirely family.

He begins to realize, that family wasn't limited to blood alone, that he shouldn't push his sister away just because they were half siblings – because damn, Bianchi loved him so much and Hayato loved his sister too.

Family.

He had spent years on the run thinking that he had no one but himself.

He was wrong.

Gods how wrong he was.

She had been behind him every step of the way, lingering in the shadows, making sure that nothing and no one ever harmed him to the point of no return.

This world line had screwed up to the point of no return, and they'd fix it. Hayato Gokudera swore that they'd fix the bullshit this world line landed themselves into.

They'd fix this, then they'd be home. And he swore that he'd be a better brother to the sister that had always been there for him.

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

Byakuran watches Sawada Tsunayoshi, clicking his tongue every five seconds or so.

Kikyo stands beside him, watching his albino boss with concealed interest.

Byakuran was bored. It was in the way he was no longer eating the marshmallows, it was in the way he was scanning the screen showing the battle with too much interest, as if waiting for something interesting to happen. Kikyo didn't know what his boss was waiting for.

Or someone.

His boss could've been waiting for someone.

They were the funeral wreaths, the so called chosen ones. They were privileged enough to know a large part of their boss's secrets. They were his strongest and most respected allies. Kikyo felt that in the way the other Millefiore used to bow down to them whenever they stood alongside their boss. Kikyo felt that, when Byakuran would disclose to them his plans, when Byakuran would invite them to his quarters where no one else could go.

Yet why did it feel like today their boss was waiting for someone more?

Kikyo looks at the albino with concealed interest.

Everyone, even the strongest men on earth – especially those men – were entitled to have their own secrets.

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

Fuuta looks at the two kids talking in the corner of the room, and sighs. Ten years – everything felt too far back. The two five year olds had never met Caia nee-chan, had never been trained by her – she didn't even exist in their world.

Fuuta wonders if they had been like this too, not too long ago. Lambo and Ipin were playing in the corner, oblivious to the dangers and the weight of the world around them.

Shoichi-san had told Fuuta that these teenagers weren't from their past, that they had come from another past entirely, so there would definitely be discrepancies between how they were, and how these Vongola are.

Fuuta couldn't help but envy the Vongola from the visiting world line.

Tsuna-nii's eyes had never been this bright, in all the years he had known him. Takeshi-nii didn't have the scars of watching his own mother die before him, even Kyoya-nii didn't seem so dark. Everyone had lived their childhoods somewhat completely, something that the Vongola as Fuuta had known had never had.

And yet, he was glad.

Because these Vongola were kids, and his Vongola were men.

They were bright, Fuuta had to give them that, and in their brightness, they were strong. But they were naïve, and if the war had taught the nineteen year old one thing, it was that naivety would only get you killed.

The Vongola of this world were not naïve. They weren't bright, but the years of scars and battle – far before they were even Mafia – long before Reborn had even come to Japan had made them strong. They were famiglia through and through, bonded together by the marks and pains left by the battles and losing, strengthened by the few that they won.

He hopes the Vongola of the other world would someday learn that. Would someday have that.

Because true famiglia suffers together. Mourns.

True famiglia would always rise from the ashes.

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

Reborn doesn't like this future.

He was a hitman, the world's greatest. He was an Arcobaleno, a member of the strongest seven – and he was the strongest among all seven. He was a legend, he was a hero, a name renowned in the Mafia world.

And all he could say was that he didn't like this future.

He respected it, however.

He could not deny, after all, the strength of the Vongola in this world. He had heard stories from Lal Mirch, stories that had sent chills down his spine. He had heard of war, and he had to admit that the Vongola had truly come far in just ten years, and all those had been the work of this world's Sawada Tsunayoshi.

He would've respected the Sawada Tsunayoshi of this world.

But he wasn't Tsuna.

Tsuna was the blue sky, vast and eternal and beautiful. The Tsunayoshi of this world was a sky too, but he was blood red, a vision of the sun leaving the earth, plunging everything into eternal darkness. He had killed and he had destroyed and he had accepted anger and wrath as a part of his world.

Reborn respected that, because it took courage to accept that. He understood that more than anyone; that it took a great deal of strength and courage to be able to accept the sins that comes with taking the lives of others.

And therefore, Sawada Tsunayoshi of this world he respects.

But there is a beauty too, an addicting one at that, in the power that his young student held. His refusal to accept the sins. His refusal to let anything darken the skies within his reach.

Because just as it took great power and great strength to accept blood – it took just as much to refuse to destroy and instead build. In fact, Reborn is intoxicated at the beauty of Tsuna's refusal to let anything destroy the innocence he has built upon. It is far much easier to destroy than it is to build. Reborn knows he should be teaching the young sky to accept the Vongola's sins, for it would be easier, for it would be safer for the young teen's sanity when shit comes to pass.

And yet, he could not.

Because there is beauty in the white, pure wings with which his Tsuna flies upon.

The Tsuna of his world was of hope, was of the image of a brighter future. His Tsuna reminded him of light and like moths, they were all drawn to this small bright flame, unable to refuse the temptation of coming near to touch it.

And that was why he could only respect the Sawada Tsunayoshi of this world.

Because the Tsuna here, and him, Reborn was far too alike. Far too dark to be saved.

But Tsuna there – was the brightest light.

And damn Reborn would do anything and everything to protect that.

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

Stuart follows his childhood friend through the woods of Namimori, watching her back as she moves through the trees swiftly as if she had been here a thousand times.

Maybe she had been here a thousand times.

"Do you still remember when we first met?" He asks, just for the sake of something to talk about. It was unusual for the blonde girl to be this silent – she had always liked the grand entrances and the festivities.

"It's been eighteen years, Stu. I don't think I can remember much even if I tried my hardest." She replies, and he smiles.

"I figured, considering how everything in your life seems so explosive." He comments.

She stops, then glances back at him.

"Is there something I should be remembering?" She asks, and he chuckles because Caia never quite got rid of the natural curiosity about her. Even when she was now a grown woman.

"Stopping means surrendering to death." He says, and there is a glint in her eyes. She remembers.

She held out her hand. "I promised you that I wouldn't ever let go, huh?"

Stuart chuckles. He'd been such a kid, but his childhood with her had changed his life. He wouldn't ever be able to repay the Crimson Princess for taking him in, even though she had always been two years younger than he was.

He gives her a high five, surprise making its way into the blonde's eyes.

"I should've told you a long time ago, Crim, but you could let go now."

She is staring at him weird, and he laughs.

"Heavens, Crim. I'm twenty eight. I've had my own life for a decade now and you've had yours too, even though you screwed up a bloody hell lot since then. You've been my best friend for the longest time, you're the one person I could actually run to for help when shit breaks loose, but I'm not ten anymore and I can take care of myself now."

She puts down her hand slowly.

He sees her thinking things over again, and he sighs.

"You overthink too much." He says.

That wakes her up.

"Excuse me?"

He laughs. "I said you think too much." He points at her. "That face you're making makes it bloody seem as if I've broken up with you and you're not even my girlfriend. I'm not saying goodbye, Crim."

She is confused, he can tell. "But you said that I could let go."

He laughs.

"And you bloody can. But I'm just asking you to let go, Crim. I'm not asking you to leave, I'm not asking you to go away either. I'm just telling you to let me go because I reckon I'm old enough to stand on my own two legs now."

She is still confused. He sighs.

"Look. You know what your problem is, Crimson? You think that you're some sort of being in charge of everyone else, you think that everyone depends on you and expects you to set all the things in the world straight. You are under the grand illusion that everyone is asking you to fix the entire world. Well, Crim, I hate to break it to you but the world doesn't expect any of that from you. But then, I begin to realize that we've held on to you too, that without us realizing, we've looked at you as if you're something miraculous. You're not something miraculous, Crim, and I mean that as a compliment. You're just you. And you can let us go. You don't have to worry about me, because I can stand on my own now. You don't have to worry about the Varia, you don't have to worry about the Vongola. You don't even have to worry about the world because everything would fix itself – and it's damn strong enough to do that. So for once in your life, Caia Cavallone, would you please take a step back and for just once, worry only about yourself and the things you love and want?"

She is silent, but he knows that she now understands.

They walk in the silence of the woods for a while.

And then she smiles to herself.

"I'm not a hero, am I, Stu?"

And he shakes his head. "If you were supposed to be, then I'd say we're all screwed."

She laughs, and then she hugs him.

"I can go by myself, from here on." She says.

Stuart is about to protest, but there is something in that new brightness in her eyes that stops him. Because the woman before him wasn't twenty six year old Caia Cavallone with all the stress of trying to set everything right laid before her.

It was as if she was eight all over again, and the world was huge and large and she had a home behind her and the world before her.

"Then, let's part ways?" He asks, offering his hand for her to shake.

But she hugs him instead and it was as if he was ten again, and he had her behind his back. Except this time, he wasn't defenseless, and he could save her too.

"I could write an entire book about you and all the shit you get into, you know." He says, and she smiles.

"If there was a book about me, I think it'd be a damn crappy one that readers would rather tear apart than read because the shit I get into makes definitely zero sense."

"You'd fit into children's books though."

"Why so?"

"You'd be that antagonist in the book, detailing out to children the consequences of refusing to grow up."

She punches him lightly, but she's smiling anyway.

"Shouldn't you be going and finding your way back?" She asks him, and Stuart smiles fondly. Because this was what it meant to be friends with Caia Cavallone. She takes you for a goddamn hell of a ride, only to drop you off halfway through, asking you to walk back to the safety of the yellow line.

Because no one crashed and burned more than she did.

"Shouldn't you be going off and creating new hells as you forge forward?"

"You're awesome, you know that, Stu?" She asks, and he couldn't stop the large smile that crept its way into his face.

"You said that eighteen years ago too, Crim. Find a new line, you're originality's dying as we speak."

She laughs again, and without warning, she runs away.

It's an odd sight. A grown woman running like a child in the woods.

But she is Caia Cavallone, the Crimson Princess.

No one had ever been an odder sight than her.

The woods are silent again, and Stuart walks back from whence they came.

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

Hope is a fragile thing.

Sawada Tsunayoshi, fourteen, and carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, acknowledges that.

He knew better than anyone what it felt like to lose all hope and live life simply going through the days like a breeze that had lost all purpose and direction. He knew despair, had lived in it before Reborn. He could remember how lonely it had been before his famiglia had come, and how much they had changed him to become the Tsuna he was today.

Heaven knows he complained way more than he should, but he loved and treasured his famiglia more than anything else.

They were his hope.

And hope is a fragile thing.

He tries to glare, against the albino threatening his famiglia, threatening his hope, promising him that everything would burn and everything would be nothing but dust after he was done with it.

And Tsuna feels the fear because he was powerless. He was Dame-Tsuna, he was a total wimp. What did he have against the world's greatest megalomaniac in earth's history?

And yet, he feels his friends standing beside him.

Hayato, Takeshi, Ryohei, Kyoya. Lambo, Ipin, Kyoko, Haru and Chrome. And Reborn. Heaven knows he would be long dead without his home tutor.

He feels their flames, he feels them asking him for strength. He feels his flames asking them for strength. And he breathes, and Tsunayoshi feels brave because his famiglia is here just as he is here for them. They are the Vongola, and for once, Tsunayoshi accepts that he is Decimo and that this is Who. He. Is. Meant. To. Be.

He knows his eyes must be glowing orange as he glares, and for once he feels as if he could fight Byakuran. And he is ready.

But Byakuran is strong. And even when he is alone, even when he doesn't have the power of his guardians the way that Tsuna does, Byakuran's flames and sharp amethyst eyes overwhelms Tsunayoshi and the fear returns as Byakuran walks.

The albino is confident. The albino is strong. And Tsuna knows that Byakuran can easily crush him and his famiglia as the albino gives a smile that spoke of hostility and the promise of torturous pain in the face of resistance.

And Tsuna freezes, because this is a battle he knows he cannot win.

It is like that between two skies.

The clashing of flames.

And right now, Tsunayoshi acknowledges that his power is nothing compared to the sheer strength of the albino before him.

Hope leaves the teen, and he feels as if everything is over once more.

Hope is such a fragile thing.

And then she jumps in.

No one knows where she came from. No one even seemed to know that she was here. Even Byakuran could not hide his surprise.

Reborn mouths a name. "Yuni."

And then Yuni speaks.

She is small, she looks like she could not be any older than Tsunayoshi and his friends, and yet she spoke with experience and she spoke with power as if she had done this a hundred times before.

And Tsuna sees what he has to become, to be able to claim the title of boss.

And he feels the weight of the world once more.

And yet, she speaks on. She accuses Byakuran. She accuses the world's largest antagonist in the face and damn, Tsuna nearly bows because whoever this Yuni is, she was damn badass. She claims that this Choice was void, and that she had the right to say it so because she was the third Boss of the Trinisette.

The Sky Arcobaleno, she says.

Reborn's boss.

And then she turns. Turns to Tsuna who is looking at her with such awe.

And she asks him to protect her.

And his world stops.

.

But he takes her hand.

Because damn this was a way out.

This was a new choice

A new chance to fix this shit.

"I'll protect you."

It is all a blur, what he says. Because his knees are shaking from the fear. But he holds her hand and he realizes that Yuni was just as scared as he was.

Because her hands were cold, and they were shaking as he held them.

And he felt sympathy. Because she was just as he was.

A child thrown into this war with no way out but forward.

And they ran.

They ran and Tsuna has never been gladder that he had his famiglia to protect him behind him. He hears Squalo and Kyoya fight, and even vaguely, Mukuro's too.

And he ran. He held Yuni's hands in his and the two skies ran.

Tsuna holds Yuni's hand tight, squeezing it in his, because she had given him hope,

And hope was a fragile little thing.

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

Yuni watches the young Vongola boss with curious eyes. He is small, smaller than a fourteen year old. He is a coward, Yuni could sense that much.

He looked hopeless, if she was going to be honest. She didn't look like some grand hero ready to save the world from its coming demise.

But there was something bright about the brunette they called Tsuna. Maybe it was in the way he resolutely said 'I'll protect you', as if it was the one thing he lived for, even if his legs were shaking and he was near in tears at the shit that was happening around them.

Maybe it was in the way that his famiglia was entirely behind him through and through. Maybe it was because they weren't behind Tsuna because he had power, because he was the world's last hope. They were there because Tsunayoshi was Tsunayoshi, and they loved him.

Yuni had missed seeing famiglia.

Maybe it was because for a short time, she could belong here.

She glances around, wondering where Caia Cavallone had gone. The blonde woman had simply pushed her, and she was in the middle of the Choice Battles.

But Caia was a paradox anyway.

She would enjoy the next few moments with the Vongola – her last few moments of peace.

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

Shoichi sighs again, as the Vongola disappears in a flash of white light to gain their last boost of power from the past.

"Voooii, Irie." The redhead looks at the silver haired swordsman with apprehension, because in the end, the man was Varia and they weren't known as an assassination squad for nothing.

"Do you know where the cloud brat is?"

Shoichi's brain halts, and for once, he begins to see the Varia as one little famiglia too. Squalo would never admit it, but he cared for the other members of the squad and it was obvious to anyone looking in the steely eyes of the vice commander.

"Caia's a cloud. No one knows where she drifts to."

The older man sighed. "I figured."

There was silence, but the silence never lasted long when it came to the Vongola.

The next minute, Squalo was shouting at the rest of the Varia on the phone.

"The Varia have arrived in Japan." The vice commander reports.

Behind Shoichi, the machine starts to beep.

.

.

.

.

.

.

War.