A/N: I have mentally cast Tom Hiddleston as Reborn…

I was just lying in bed juggling plot-points in my head when I got to thinking about trying to put a clearer face to the character, and it didn't take long before Tom Hiddleston wormed his way into the forefront of my consciousness and the next thing I knew, I was giggling quietly at how perfectly the fit was.

Anyway, in case I was misunderstood, this fic will have COLLECTIVELY 41 chapters, meaning I am counting the now 24 chapters I have already posted. Also, I think I noted that I was going to post every week I am NOT working on the sequel, so… that is something of a confession on my account. Not to worry, I have begun working on it, I actually started working on it during my many hiatuses during the course of this fic, so I have some of the things planned out and many ideas on what I want to do with it, I just need to create a coherent narrative for it to follow. I have the beginning down flat, the first chapter (a short prologue) is finished and the second chapter has been planned out in full but anything more than that is a jumbled mess of plotpoints, dialogue and random ideas for storylineslines that will then lead into the third part in this series and so on, I feel a bit like I'm trying to juggle everything in my head right now so I have decided to go on a bit of a break, focus on something that is not my brainchild of five years (Not kidding, I have literally been working on this version of the story for five years and that feels weird) and just allow myself to breathe.

I have those, now sixteen, unreleased chapters waiting for a reason after all.

Anyway, I will not keep those of you who actually take the time to read this for much longer.

Please,

Enjoy.


Scene 25:

Broken Bones

When lunch break rolled in, Tsuna had to clench her hands around her chopsticks as Gokudera slipped in front of her desk with whatever convenience-store bought lunch he had gotten in order for her to get her thoughts in order.

This was probably as good a time as any for her to ask…

Closing her eyes, she willed just a tiny bit of flame to seep into her bloodstream, successfully forcing her over-active nerves to calm down enough for her to actually think without her anxiety bombarding her with unrealistic worst-case-scenarios.

Her fingers eased from their death grip around the chopsticks.

It was when Gokudera was ripping the plastic wrapping off of his sandwich that she finally allowed herself to open her mouth.

"Gokudera-kun."

At the sound of her voice, her friend almost dropped his lunch before he had even gotten the chance to take one bite, but he quickly composed himself and when he looked up at her, his expression showed no of the surprise he had obviously felt.

She had to stop herself from laughing at that reaction.

Later.

She could tease him about that later.

Shaking her head, she continued.

"Can I ask you for a favor?"

Immediately, Gokudera's face lit up in what could only be explained as somewhat-contained excitement, the corners of his mouth curling upwards in an equally somewhat-hidden smile that radiated his elation at her question. Though why he would want to hide his smile, she would never understand.

Putting down his sandwich, Gokudera appeared to be bracing himself against his desk.

Preparing himself no doubt.

She had to stop herself from chuckling at his reaction.

Was it strange that she found it a bit endearing?

"Anything," he answered, obviously reigning in his own excitement.

She could have sworn that she saw his eyes sparkling a little.

Brushing her hair behind her ear, Tsuna took a deep breath before she "dropped the bomb" so to speak.

"Model for me?" her fingers once again clutched at her chopsticks at her own words, her eyes closing tightly as though she was expecting the guy to suddenly punch her.

Ridiculous really, but she couldn't stop herself.

If she squeezed the chopsticks any tighter, they would snap.

The two sat in complete silence for what felt like forever before Tsuna managed to scrape up the courage to open her eyes and actually look at her friend.

Where she hadn't been able to open her eyes, it looked as though Gokudera had trouble closing them. He was openly staring at her as though she was some kind of alien that had been beamed down from his space-ship right in front of him.

Finally, he too managed to force himself back into motion.

"What?" he asked, his voice unusually quiet when compared to the "explosive" personality she had come to associate him with.

"For an art project." she quickly elaborated, barely noticing that she was losing conscious control of her hands as they flew up at the corner of her vision. "We're supposed to paint a portrait of our closest friend." her hands flailed rather widely at her sides, her fingers still closed around her chopsticks in her one hand.

Thankfully, she didn't actually hit anyone with her movements.

"Closest friend?" Gokudera blinked slowly, his one hand rising to point at himself. "Me?"

Sighing, Tsuna's hands fell down into her lap, her fingers fiddling with the chopsticks as she kept her eyes focused on their movements.

She didn't want to look at him for this.

"I don't really have that many friends to begin with." her eyes flashed up to him. She couldn't help the slightly teasing tone that filled her voice as she hit the point home with playfully nonchalant movements to her shoulders. "But I do believe you fit into the requirements."

Her eyes returned to her fiddling fingers, waiting for his reaction.

He chuckled.

The tense atmosphere between them dissipated.

Looking up at the delinquent, Tsuna found Gokudera leaning back in his seat, his head tilted to the side with a playful yet fond look on his face as he looked at her.

He shook his head as he leaned forward, carefully pushing his sandwich forwards a little to allow him to lean his elbows on her desk.

"I would be honored to have you paint me, Juudaime," he said, his voice filled to the brink with a level of sincerity that would have made Tsuna uncomfortable had she not also noticed the deliberate teasing undertone to his words.

This bastard knew that he was doing.

Copying his position, she leaned in closer to his face.

"Stop saying things like that," she whispered into the air between them, her voice only loud enough for Gokudera to hear as she silently started a staring contest between the two of them.

Gokudera just kept smiling that same smile, ignoring the absolutely shocked expressions plastered on their surrounding classmates faces.

No matter what the two of them did, it would always somehow be shocking to these people.

Tsuna won the contest.

Hah!

"So," Gokudera spoke up, leaning back again as he plucked his sandwich back up, ignoring the fact that practically everyone in their class was not doing very little to hide the fact that they were now listening in on their conversation. "Where do you want it down." he theatrically tore a chunk off the sandwich with more violence than necessary and proceeded to chew it in the most obnoxious manner.

His childhood tutors must be sobbing at his current behavior.

Tsuna's lip twitched at the thought.

Well, it did serve to get some people to turn away from them, disgusted at his actions.

Tsuna found herself chuckling at him, shaking her head in mock exasperation, throwing a theatrical glance up at the ceiling before she shoved a mouthful of plum flavored rise into her mouth. She did not feel like mirroring his actions and chew with her mouth open, however.

"Can we stay behind after school?" she asked, mindlessly picking at the contents of her lunchbox as Gokudera tore another bite off of his sandwich.

Smiling around the way-too-big bite, Gokudera shrugged nonchalantly.

"I have nothing better to do."

Tsuna ignored the half-chewed bits of sandwich that fell out of his mouth. None of it came anywhere close to her own food, and it served to get even more people to turn their attention away from the two of them.

She shook her head with a light laugh.

"Thank you." she stuffed a pickle in her mouth, chewing slower.

Nodding, Gokudera glanced around them for a moment before his back straightened, his shoulders relaxing before he calmly took yet another bite of his own lunch, this one much smaller and cleaner than the other ones.

Truly elegant.

Tsuna shook her head again.

Her best friend was a human oxymoron.


Sitting at his desk, Takeshi was mindlessly picking at his sushi-based lunch with his own chopsticks.

A lunch that had been handed to him by his father's employees as he passed through the shop that morning. Takeshi couldn't even be sure if his old man was actually the one that made it for him, even though he did cling onto that thought almost desperately despite everything.

He really couldn't understand what was wrong with him…

No matter how much he trained, no matter how much he gave it his all, his muscles only hurt more.

He had been thinking about getting a massage for a while now because of the strange knots he could feel when he poked at his arm, kind of like how Sawada had done some time ago.

It was beyond painful.

Also… he had never felt so tired before…

Maybe he should take a nap instead of eating this time…?

Yeah… that sounded like a good idea…


The end of the day had come faster than Tsuna had honestly expected it to.

Now, the final class had wrapped up and the student were sluggishly peeling themselves out of their seats to make their way home for the day.

Kyoko gave Tsuna a quick hug, much to her surprise, before she too slipped out of the building, leaving Tsuna to continue her usual tradition of staying behind until there were less people in the building.

This time, however, Yamamoto also remained behind for a few minutes.

This was her chance!

Quickly, ignoring Gokudera's attempts at catching her attention at her side, Tsuna rushed towards the athlete, hoping that she would be able to finish what he hadn't allowed her to the last time she brought the subjects up.

She should have known her efforts would be futile.

"Yamamoto-san!" she called out, successfully capturing the other teen's attention, stopping him from disappearing out the classroom door.

He turned towards her with a painful smile, though it was probably the most genuine she had seen on his face for a while now, most likely this was due to the fact that he was well aware that he couldn't fool her with those smiles.

"Yo, Sawada." he softly answered her, though his voice held a heart-wrenching note of exhaustion to it.

She bit her lip.

He was getting worse.

Her fingers fiddling with her normally hidden pendant, Tsuna opened her mouth to bring forward the information the athlete had stopped her from revealing before.

"I-" she didn't get out more than that.

"Sorry, Sawada, I can't talk right now." Yamamoto suddenly cut her off, raising his hand to silence her, a dark look flashing in his normally expressive hazel eyes. "I need to get going." and with that said, the athlete was gone. The only indication that he had even been there to begin with, being the sound of his running footsteps echoing through the corridor on the other side of the door.

For a moment, Tsuna could just stand there, staring at the empty doorway with disbelieving wide eyes.

Did he just…?

Did Yamamoto Takeshi just blow her off?

She… couldn't… believe… him.

Shaking with disbelief, that eerie calm flooding her bloodstream in reaction to what the athlete had done, Tsuna couldn't stop what she did next.

"That... IDIOT!" She screamed at the top of her lungs despite her calm.

She knew that was quite out of character for her, but she just couldn't believe how stubbornly oblivious a person could be. She knew that Yamamoto knew that she was trying to tell him something that would probably both frighten and otherwise distress him, but come on!

She was trying to help him!

She was trying to spare his body from the pain and exhaustion for purity's sake!

She stood there, her hands clenched at her sides as her heart-rate picked up, the air around her fists actually blurring from the heat suddenly radiating off of her skin. She was about seconds away from actually combusting until someone (it was quite obvious who) walked up behind her on light, near-silent footsteps and placed both his hands on her shoulders to catch her attention, turning her around where she stood.

"Juudaime," Gokudera spoke up softly, olive eyes locking with chocolate brown despite the annoyance marring his handsome features as he glanced over to the door, his fingers tightening on the sleeves of her uniform blouse. "Don't worry about that."

"I do worry," Tsuna argued, pushing Gokudera's hands off of her as she turned back towards the door, her lower lip catching between her teeth. "He's going to get hurt," she muttered, her cooled down hand returning to fiddling with her pendant. "I just know it."

"Juudaime." Gokudera sighed, putting on hand on her shoulder to carefully massage at the tense muscle there, not seeming to even realize that he was doing it. "You have enough to focus on right now without worrying about that baseball-idiot."

Turning back to look at her friend, Gokudera jerked his head back towards the desks, allowing her eyes to catch on the art supplies she had laid out before she had decided to approach the athlete.

She let out a long sigh of resignation.

"You win for now..." she muttered, stalking back towards the desk.


Sitting on a branch in the tree outside the classroom window, Reborn was finding it more and more difficult to keep his eyes open.

The normal human being could stay awake for just about three days… but sadly, that rule didn't apply to him, and it was really starting to take a toll on him the more he forced himself to remain standing.

What would the others say if they saw him now?

He had seen when the first-year star athlete had rushed out of the room, and from the way, the muscles in his arm had moved in time with his leaps, he could understand why his student had become so worried about him.

He just hoped that that worry wouldn't trigger the side-effect.


Gokudera was sitting at his desk in his usual lax manner (Gokudera had offered to sit in a more elegant manner but Juudaime had given him a look as though he had offered to blow up her home before telling him she made a point to always paint things as they were, faults and all), his one arm slung over the backrest of his chair and his legs thrown on top of the desk, crossed at the ankle with his other hand resting on top of his knee, his eyes pinned on Juudaime who was sitting on top of the desk in front of him in the lotus position, pen after pen furiously moving over what had once been a blank page in the large sketchbook she had fished out of her bag.

Every once in a while, her messy bangs moved to indicate that she glanced up at him with that observing gaze that was starting to become etched into his memory.

He wished he could actually see the entirety of her eyes.

He watched as she blindly changed the color of pen from the color lying on the desk she had pushed up next to the one she was sitting on, never hesitating, never pausing once she realized that she'd accidentally picked the wrong color and move to pick a new one.

She must know that case inside and out.

To be truthful, Gokudera didn't think he had ever seen her so naturally, blissfully confident as he was doing right now. He had seen her approach that piece of shit Mochida with that… positively frightening calm, nothing but cool confidence written over her face, but it hadn't felt at all-natural when he thought back on the incident.

Now, however, watching her draw… now, she was in her element.

Now, she was perfectly at home with what she was doing.

He couldn't keep his voice back anymore.

"Honestly." he was pleased to see that she didn't jump at his words. The only sign that she had even heard him being the movement of what he suspected/felt like a curious glance she threw at him over the top of her sketchbook before she returned to what she was doing. "I would have never pegged you for an artist."

He imagined that she raised an eyebrow at him.

"Really?" she asked, pausing to pick a new color after returning the one she had previously been using before calmly continuing. "You knew I was a dancer."

Gokudera chuckled softly at her playful tone.

"That fact is pretty obvious given your figure and the way you move." he allowed his eyes to teasingly run over her dainty form, chuckling again at the mock annoyed look she threw him.

Once he calmed down, he allowed himself to relax into the chair before he asked:

"How did you start?"

Her hand stopped moving for a split second before she forced it back into motion, but her overall demeanor had become a lot more tense than it had been before.

Gokudera had to fight to keep the frown off his face.

This did not bode well.

"Stress relief." she eventually answered, though her voice had become much quieter. "It has helped me quite a bit over the past eleven years."

Gokudera had never been so glad for his above-average hearing, otherwise, he would have probably missed her words entirely what with how quietly she was talking.

The words themselves made his fingers clench.

It was surprisingly easy for him to forget that Juudaime had been viciously bullied for just over a decade, no one openly treated her that way anymore aside from those who bullied other students and thus quite frankly deserved to have their asses handed to them and kicked out of the school with their student records tarnished with a warning for whatever school they applied to afterward.

In his mind, Juudaime should never have been bullied in the first place.

Despite the reasons that baseball-idiot had given him, it still baffled him considerably.

She was too kind, too overall warm and caring with such an overwhelming sense of empathy and for better or worse, a seemingly complete lack of self-preservation skills and just the best kind of person Gokudera had ever encountered in all his days on the streets.

All the negative traits her school mates had witnessed should have been overlooked in favor of her shining soul.

She didn't deserve any of it!

Gokudera's face twitched into a truly frightening expression.

Juudaime's attention was firmly glued to her work.

Gokudera twitched to get out of the chair, to get back to his apartment and get a list of all the people that had dared to harm one hair on Juudaime's lovely head.

She chose that very moment to glance over the top of her sketchbook, pinning him with what he got the impression was a serious, pointing look.

"Stay." her voice was clear and steady as she pointed at him, her eyes narrowed.

He didn't want to go against his Juudaime despite what she had explicitly asked of him, he couldn't go against that look on her face, and the fact that what she was currently doing was for a school project meant that he couldn't possibly go against her now as it would serve to ruin her performance and thus possibly affect her grade…

Grumbling in irritation, Gokudera allowed himself to fall back into his chair, his fingers restlessly twitching and overall not nearly as relaxed as he had been before.

He had to take a couple of deep breaths before he could find his voice again.

"I've been meaning to ask you..." he started slowly, cautiously. "You've been suffering from a disability in your brain?"

He watched as Juudaime's shoulders sagged in what appeared to be resignation.

Sighing heavily, she let her sketchbook drop from her face slightly, not enough for him to actually see her work, but enough so as to allow him to see her exhausted expression.

"Yeah." she breathed out in confirmation.

He frowned for a moment.

"But, you're getting better?" he asked, hoping that it would serve to lighten her mood, thinking that she hadn't appreciated being reminded of the limitations her disability had forced upon her.

"Yes." Juudaime breathed with a long sigh, brushing her hair her legs shifting before she brushed her hair behind her ear, her attention stubbornly returning to her work as she once again set the pen in motion. "Right at the start of term, thank the stars."

She was trying to sound dismissive, but it didn't quite work.

There was a story behind her sudden turn towards recovery, he had known that for a long time but hadn't yet been able to get an answer as to what. The fact that she was currently trying to make light of it was quite telling that he wasn't going to like the story.

"How?" he asked, trying not to sound too pushy.

He should have known it wasn't going to work…

"I'm not sure I should tell you that." Juudaime breathed, tilting her head to the side as she changed color of pen again.

Gokudera's eyes narrowed.

"Why?" he had to fight to keep the growl out of his voice.

She glanced at him again.

"It's connected to the bullying," she said with a tone of finality that he hadn't quite heard in her voice before, clear despite the subject, no sign of any form of trauma the memory might have brought to the forefront of her memory.

That didn't stop the rage that bubbled up within Gokudera again.

Something had happened, something that had caused her body to go through a significant chemical change that kick-started the repair-process within her brain. Something that most likely caused her to have to be hospitalized if what he understood was anything to go by.

The list of things that could have caused such a thing was short.

None of the options served to ease Gokudera's ire.

"Don't move."

Juudaime's voice froze Gokudera in place.

Oh… he'd been about to launch himself out of the chair again…

He needed to calm down, and fast.

Letting out a long sigh, Gokudera pinned Juudaime with a long look.

He needed to know.

"Please," he spoke slowly, knowing that she would understand what he meant.

She ignored his face, her attention seemed to be focused on the hand resting on top of his knee. Which, he had to admit was justifiable considering what little knowledge he did have of art did include the fact that hands were apparently the most difficult thing to get right.

Best not distract her from that…

"Gokudera-kun..." she finally let out a long breath, removing her pen from the paper for a moment and leaning back to look at her work from a different angle. "Can we please not talk about this right now?" she proceeded to lift up the sketchbook, turning it around in front of her with what Gokudera could only suspect was an inquisitive expression on her face, what with it being thoroughly hidden behind the sketchbook at the moment. "This is not the kind of thing I want to be talking about as I am trying to focus on my art." she glanced at him from the side of the sketchbook.

"Forgive me," Gokudera said with a small flinch.

He hadn't meant to bother her, even though he should have realized that he should have expected something like this to happen.

He used the time she spent studying her work to rub at the bridge of his nose.

"You will tell me the story one day, right?" he gave her an almost pleading look.

Juudaime sighed as she returned the sketchbook to its original position.

"There isn't that much to tell really." she waved her hand in the air dismissively as she returned the tip of her pen to the page. "The person responsible apologized." he watched as what was visible of her face twitched. "I didn't forgive him, of course, but he did apologize, which is more than can be said of most of the students in this building." she cracked her neck in annoyance, breathing heavily without so much as pausing the movement of her pen.

Truly remarkable, Gokudera thought.

"Besides." Juudaime shrugged. "It's in the past." a light smile played on the corner of her mouth despite the heavy topic. "And the past is not something one should be punished for."

For a moment, Gokudera just sat there, openly staring at her with his mouth partially open.

How could someone be that fucking forgiving?

Sure, she said that she hadn't forgiven the bastard who did it to her, but the fact that she was willing to at least forget the bastard said a lot.

Finally, he felt a smile creep up at the corner of his mouth.

"You're too kind for this world, Juudaime." he heard himself say.

Bringing the sketchbook down, the girl in question gave him a mock annoyed look.

"Stop that." she playfully growled.

He could only smile even wider.


About two hours after school had actually ended, Tsuna had finally called out that she was finished with her base portrait and had begun packing up the tools of her trade.

Of course, she had absolutely refused to allow Gokudera the opportunity to see what she had done, claiming that she didn't like people seeing what she had been working on until she is one hundred percent finished, and since she hadn't actually gotten the base drawing upon canvas… no, she was not finished.

He had given her an annoyed pout of all things in response to her explanation.

In order to ease her friend's mind, she opted to tell him that he was going to be the first one she showed the finished product to.

He lit up considerably at that.

It was as they were walking through the courtyard towards the bike that they heard it.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

It wasn't a scream of fear.

No…

It was a scream of absolute, agonizing pain, tearing through the school grounds that really should have cleared out by now and reaching the ears of the only other two who remained.

The two in question shared a look.

Gokudera, personally, couldn't care less about whoever had gotten hurt enough to scream in such a devastating way. He had heard similar screams more times than he'd like to count or recall through the last few years of his life.

Tsuna, on the other hand, recognized the voice hidden in the scream.

Her hidden eyes widened in absolute worry.

"Juudaime!?" was all Gokudera managed to shout once he noticed that Tsuna was no longer standing next to him and was instead running towards the source of the scream as fast as her long dancer's legs could carry her.

Deceivingly fast despite everything.

He could do little more than follow right after her.

Soon, they reached the baseball field, and there, on the ground, lay Yamamoto Takeshi, clutching at his arm all the while half rolling in place as he desperately tried to dodge the speeding baseballs shooting out of the pitching machine in time with a metronome.

Tsuna couldn't stand there watching for long.

"Get the pitching machine." she barely managed to tell Gokudera before she basically threw herself right into the line of fire.

For a short while, it felt like she was back in ballet class as she had to utilize the skills she gained on the tips of her toes in order to avoid getting pummeled by baseballs before Gokudera reached the thing.

It was a strange feeling…

With no need to be cautious anymore, Tsuna quickly broke into a full-out sprint, sliding to a stop once she was at the downed athlete's sides, sparing a quick thought to keep the flames from seeping into her bloodstream in her worry.

She had no doubt worry was just another fuel for Anima.

Yamamoto had fallen still on his stomach by the time Tsuna collapsed at his side, his upper torso heaving in time with his labored breaths.

Carefully, she turned the athlete around, making sure to not roll him over the arm he was clutching, having spotted the small amount of blood that was seeping through his tightly wound fingers, his face contorted in the pain his scream had "hinted" at.

At a closer inspection, she was faced with the cause of his anguish.

He had broken his arm, and terribly so. Terribly enough that a piece of his bone was protruding from his punctured skin.

Thankfully, Tsuna was not one to get panicked at the sight of an injury.

"You idiot..." she mumbled, carefully picking up his head so as to rest it on top of her lap, adjusting her own position so as to not level his head too high compared to the ground. "You should have kept listening..."

Yamamoto's eyelids flickered before they partially slid open.

"Sawada…?" the athlete groaned out his question, his voice at barely more than a hissed whisper through the pain he was in. His eyes quickly squeezed back shut as squirmed when another wave of pain registered in his exhausted mind.

"Juudaime," Gokudera spoke up when he reached their side, crouching down next to her with a frown etched into his eyebrows.

Yamamoto's eyes flickered between the two of them for a moment before they kind of… rolled back into his skull as he forced two short words past his trembling lips.

"So… tired..."

And with that, he was out.

Her expression serious, Tsuna tilted her head in Gokudera's direction as she carefully slipped her legs out from under Yamamoto's head, already working on figuring out how she should position him with his injured leg.

"Call an ambulance," she told her friend.


Seven minutes later, Tsuna and Gokudera watched as the ambulance pulled out from the school grounds and speed out down the road towards the hospital, its sirens blaring loudly in the otherwise relative silence.

The few seconds that followed, Tsuna just stood there, her bloodied thumbs brushing over her naked elbows as though she was feeling a chill in the air, her lower lip lodged in between her teeth and her eyes pinned in the direction the ambulance had disappeared. Her mind running a million miles an hour.

Finally, she released her lip and spun around to walk towards where Gokudera had parked his bike that morning, her steps revealing that the dancer was now a girl on a mission.

This time, she didn't bother stopping the slow flow of fire pumping into her bloodstream, enough to make her feel lighter but not enough for her emotions to be drowned out by that otherworldly calm.

She wasn't angry, such a thing wasn't necessary.

"Juudaime?" Gokudera questioned as Tsuna opened the bike's seat to remove her collapsed helmet, throwing Gokudera his.

"I need to tell his father about what happened," she said, unfolding the helmet in her hands before raising it above her head to put it on.

"You know his father?" Gokudera asked, his eyebrows almost touching in a frown that spoke of his suspicion to the nature behind this fact, though he did fasten the collapsed helmet on top of his head. Had his face not revealed it, his voice would have.

Sighing heavily, Tsuna raised the visor on her helmet, giving her friend an exhausted expression through a gap in her bangs.

"Everyone knows his father," she explained, her irritated voice muffled as it slipped out through the helmet's openings. "He runs a sushi-shop." she indicated the finality of her words by slamming the visor back down over her eyes, blocking off her barely visible facial features entirely.

Almost relieved, Gokudera nodded in understanding as he unfolded his own helmet over his head.

"Okay..." he breathed.

"Come on!" Tsuna finally lost her patience, snapping her friend out of whatever thoughts he had fallen into to get him hurrying to join her at the bike.

The next minute, they were off.


Eleven minutes later, Gokudera pulled his bike to a stop in front of Yama-Sushi, making sure to lower it to the ground and remove the keys before he got off.

Of course, that didn't apply to Tsuna.

The second the vehicle had begun to slow down in front of the smaller building, she had thrown her leg over the side, jumping off the bike as it was still in motion and rushed inside, all the while removing the helmet as quickly as she could.

The second she was inside, the cashier behind the counter turned towards her.

"What can I get you?" he asked her with a practiced service smile.

Breathing heavily due to the adrenaline rushing through her small body, barely sparing a thought to the furious, powerful pounding of her heart that had begun to softly echo in her ears the moment she had thrown herself off the hoverbike, Tsuna shook her head furiously as she noted Gokudera rushing in after her from the corner of her eye.

"I need to speak to Yamamoto-san," she said, putting her hands on the counter with a desperate, pleading look in her somewhat hidden eyes after she'd handed Gokudera her collapsed helmet. "It's urgent."

Immediately, the smile was wiped off of the worker's face, an expression of worry immediately replacing it.

"How urgent?" he asked, leaning partially over the counter.

"Something happened to his son."

The worker had rushed towards the opening in the wall behind him to the left before she had even finished her sentence, one hand holding onto the frame as he shouted something into the room that Tsuna couldn't hear over the sound of knives being sharpened and chopping at a furious pace that Tsuna wouldn't have thought to be possible.

Unless the sound was created by multiple people chopping at the same time...

She didn't need to listen to that for that long however as the sound abruptly stopped just a second later. The silence that followed was quite frankly, deafening before it was filled by the sound of running footsteps and before Tsuna knew it, she was staring straight into the wide, hazel eyes of Yamamoto-senior.

"What happened to Takeshi?" the man basically demanded despite the overwhelming worry dripping from his deep voice.

Looking at the man, Tsuna got the sense that she was looking at what Yamamoto Takeshi would look like once he reached that man's age, only with rounder eyes and chin that he must have gotten from his mother.

The sadness was written in every wrinkle on the man's face, something she really hoped that her classmate didn't inherit.

Tsuna had to take a deep breath before she could answer the man, the furious pounding in her ears not yet slowing down, though it had gotten a bit quieter.

Seriously, what was up with that?

"He's in the hospital." she managed to say through a series of shorter breaths.

The older man's eyes only grew more worried at her words.

"Why would he be there?"

Finally, Tsuna could hear how the pounding was slowly growing slower, even if it was taking quite long for it to do so.

"His arm broke," she answered the man, watching as his tanned skin paled at her words. "It was really bad, the bone broke through his skin." she continued, needing him to understand just how bad it had been, even though it was making the man's complexion look more and more ghost-like with each word she forced past her lips. "I also suspect that he's over-exerted himself because he passed out just seconds after we reached him." she motioned with her head towards Gokudera whom she knew had taken to standing right behind her, most likely giving the man a mild glare from over her shoulder.

Not that the man was seeing this.

The next second, Yamamoto-senior was jumping right over the counter with a level of skill and agility that someone his age usually didn't have. Gokudera pulled Tsuna out of the way so as to not accidentally get a shoe to the face before the man was bolting out the door, his employees watching after him whilst sharing one worried gaze after the other.

"THANK YOU!" The man threw over his shoulder before he vanished from sight.

For a moment, Tsuna just stood there, listening to the pounding in her ears with Gokudera's hands lingering on her arms until finally, finally, that eerie echo vanished in it's entirely.

"Must you be so kind, Juudaime?" Gokudera asked softly as he allowed his hands to fall from her arms, stepping out around her so as to allow him to look down at her with a light frowning expression. "That idiot doesn't deserve this level of kindness from you after ignoring you the way he did."

Tsuna found herself frowning at his words.

She tilted her head up towards him, bringing her index finger along with it.

"You need to work on your socializing skills," she told him with a light frown, pointing at him somewhat accusingly.

This only made Gokudera frown even more.

"I don't need to be kind to be kind to anyone other than Juudaime," he said this as though it was the most obvious thing on the planet, leaving Tsuna momentarily at a loss for words.

"Right..." she muttered once she finally found her voice. "Of course."

Shaking her head, she left the shop, knowing that Gokudera would be following right behind her.


Everything within Takeshi's vision was fuzzy once he finally got the strength to open his eyes, and when he did, it didn't take long before he realized that something was terribly wrong.

For one, he wasn't in his own room. Instead, he found himself in what he first thought was a lifeless white box before his vision began to clear up and he could spot the window covered by somewhat sheer white curtains and the white door on either side of his eyesight.

It was a sight he was uncomfortably familiar with.

He had visited Sawada in a similar room several times months before.

He was in the hospital.

Bewildered, he instinctively tried to raise his right arm, only to practically shoot straight out of bed at the pain that suddenly shot through the limb all the way up to his shoulder.

Hissing, he looked down at said limb, and his blood ran cold.

His arm… his dominant arm… it was in a cast.

He had broken his arm…

No…

No…

It couldn't be…

Staring down at the offending limb, Takeshi could feel his eyes slowly beginning to sting, informing him just how much the sight was hurting him in ways beyond the physical.

What was he going to do now?

He couldn't hold a bat like this.

He was forced out of his thoughts at the sound of the door being thrown open.

"Takeshi!"

Takeshi's eyes flew open in shock.

His old man…

His old man was standing in the middle of the thrown open door, still in his work clothes and breathing like he'd run all the way there from the shop, his skin pale and looking overall disheveled and even scared.

He looked like he had done back then…

Openly staring at his old man, Takeshi opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't get the chance to.

"You idiot!" Yamamoto Tsuyoshi screamed, reaching out to grab the back of his son's hair in a gesture that had become quite foreign to Takeshi over the past couple of years, bringing them closer face-to-face, their eyes meeting for the first time in ages. "Don't ever do that again!"

For a long moment, neither of them said a thing.

"Old man..." Takeshi managed to utter once the elder Yamamoto finally let go of his hair, suddenly looking awkward and avoiding eye-contact. "What are you doing here?"

The elder Yamamoto hesitated before sitting down on the chair next to the bed, his eyes awkwardly steering away from his son's clammy, exhausted face as he allowed his large, calloused hands to clasp together on top of the sterile blanket.

It felt as though the man was keeping himself from reaching out and touch the cast.

Why was he doing that?

Takeshi felt his heart ache that his old man felt the need to keep himself from reaching out and actually touch his son.

Again… why?

"A young lady came to the shop and told me you broke your arm." his old man said, his aged face twitching in an emotion Takeshi couldn't quite recognize.

This caused Takeshi to frown.

"A young lady?" he asked.

Despite how estranged the two of them had become the last couple of years, Takeshi would like to think that she still somehow knew his father. Last he knew, the older Yamamoto usually called the girls that came over to catch a glimpse of his son as just that.

Girls.

So, for him to address someone Takeshi's age as "young lady"… she must have made quite the impression on his old man during what he suspected to be a LONG conversation to convince the man to leave his work long enough for her to inform him of Takeshi's condition and a few extra minuted to get the man to haul his ass over to the hospital.

"Yes." his old man answered with a nod. "A very sweet little thing she was too."

This got Takeshi thinking again.

The last time he had been able to check, he and his father had had roughly the same definition of "sweet" when it came to people, and in his mind, there were only a few handfuls of girls that he was familiar with that could possibly be described as such when they got talking.

Hopefully, his old man would give him more to go on than that.

Thankfully, he did.

"Came to the shop with this very… angry-looking fella with silver hair." the older man said, looking up at the ceiling with a thoughtful expression on his aged face. "Quite the odd combo now that I think about it." he chuckled to himself, rubbing at the back of the neck.

Takeshi knew that motion…

It was something he did himself when he felt awkward…

Anyway, all other candidates for his savior were immediately eliminated from the athlete's mind, leaving only the one, positively tiny girl that fitted his old man's description.

For whatever reason, Takeshi hadn't actually included her in his first list of possibles.

"Sawada?" he found himself muttering.

Every passing day, that girl just kept on surprising him. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it really shouldn't have. He had spotted moments where Sawada has reached out to give some kind of aid to those who hadn't shown their blatant dislike towards her on multiple occasions. She had frequently been in charge of taking care of the class pets when in primary and middle-school because she was one of the few the teachers knew was responsible enough to actually take care of it and not forget to feed the things.

He had seen her cuddling up with birds, hamsters, and even a snake during free periods at school, but he had never approached her to see if he could take part in it during that time.

Sawada took care of those that deserved her attention.

She had tried to take care of him…

Now that he thought about it, she had tried to tell him something, something that had worried her since the day he had allowed her to look at his arm...

The same arm that was now in a cast…

He recalled the expression she had had when he had panicked and run away from her at the question about how much his teammates trained compared to him. Like she couldn't believe what she was hearing, like she was even afraid of what he was doing, that he wasn't allowing her to finish what she was trying to tell him.

Could it be that… that she had known this was going to happen?

She had known it would come to this, that all the practice was going to break his arm, and he hadn't allowed her to inform him of it…

He had ignored the words of someone that was trying to help him...

Stars… now he understood why people kept calling him "idiot", albeit affectionately.

"You know her?" his old man asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

He nodded dumbly.

"She's in my class."

Suddenly, his old man smiled a small smile that slowly, painfully, turned wider and wider with every passing second. He hesitated before carefully patting the thick cast that now enveloped his son's otherwise muscular arm.

"You should give her a proper thank-you once you're out of here," he said, still smiling even though it looked painful like his facial muscles were straining to keep it in place.

The sight only further fed the completely broken look that donned Takeshi's features.

An expression that the older Yamamoto was obviously oblivious to.

"Yeah..." Takeshi breathed.

In his head though, another thought struck him.

'I am a horrible person'.


A/N: I remember this chapter being particularly hard to get through, one of the toughest not counting the last one which I dreaded finishing for a good few weeks before I finally managed to get those final words down.

With this one though…

With this one, it was difficult to write that last scene, I hope I managed to bring out the emotions I intended with it but I don't quite know, I am a bit emotionally numb, only realizing I'm feeling a certain emotion when it overwhelms me. I didn't realize I was feeling the beginnings of panic until I described to my dad how walking outside made me feel like I was trying to breathe with weights in my lungs, gasping for breath as I am waiting to pay for my groceries (I was worried as asthma runs in my family, and wouldn't that just have been great "ADD, AUTISTIC, ASEXUAL, ASTHMATIC" but no I was just panicking because I don't do crowds)…

Again, I hope I managed to convey what I wanted, I do know there is one scene a few chapters from now that legit made me feel choked up writing so I'm looking forward to releasing that.

Until next time.

This has been:

A message from her Ladyship.