Call out to the ones who commented! Shadewatcher specially for the previous chapter.
For everyone who read this and liked it thanks.
It was too late when I realized that there was a slight Reborn x Verde and I don't even ship them. It just kind of happened.
Always preferred Reborn x Bianchi to anything else.
_
'Sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'
Reborn calls bullshit.
He's watching words -vicious, mean, truthful words but never anything they meant- slowly, steadily, chip at his Family, piece by piece.
The only Family he has in this world.
The only thing he has left after his body, his soul, his life had been stripped from him. Cruelly, viciously, stripped.
He's gonna lose this. To words.
He's gonna lose this and like everything he has lost, he won't be able to do anything about it.
He thinks it might be easier, if Fon just throws the punch the Storm is visibly holding in as he snarls at Verde. If Viper just dunks everyone into some nightmarish world of their own creation, shove in their face all the torture in the world, rather than just curling in a corner, a ringing emptiness in their head so similar to the one in Reborn's ears, listening to Lal shriek at Colonnello while he simply listens, eyes only on her and tears on both cheeks. Lal should just punch him. And Skull should actually do something, for once in his life act like a Cloud, rather than just glaring at Reborn.
If they're fighting, Reborn can step in and stop them.
But no one's doing anything because they can barely even carry their heads, or the pacifiers too big for their necks and he doesn't know what to say to... stop this.
_
It's Viper that leaves first.
It's only a whole month later that everyone finally understands that they're not planning to come back. Fon follows as he always tends to do with the Mist. Lal and, of course, Colonnello. Skull walks rather than drive, leaving behind the car Verde had given him to cope with his size.
Reborn stares at Verde across the table. There's the clank of the chinaware -Luce's chinaware.
And Reborn can't understand him. Not anymore. Not like those nights he'd go onto tangents that no one but Reborn could even follow.
But his voice had been a comforting buzz in front of the fire place.
Reborn can't say anything, still.
Because Reborn is so, so terrified of making this worse than it already is.
He leaves that day, after only a bite of the risotto Verde's cold automaton had prepared them.
_
He meets them again, years and years later, definitely far past what he'd always believed to be his life expectancy.
And they sicken him.
Because Fon smiles so empty. None of that too bright gaze and too sharp smirk or that gait that subtly, ever so subtly, purposefully grates at one's pride. Lal and Colonnello... There's Lal, and there's Colonnello. Lal still racked with guilt, stubbornly using the pacifier to stay under the cursed form. Skull is... somewhere, like the Cloud that he is. And Viper is nowhere to be seen, only faint whispers of their name, as Misty as Misty can be.
Skull had always been such a people person and Viper, he knew, appreciated company. They must be lonely.
Verde's somewhere, with no need to eat or sleep or drink, he had no trouble keeping up the twenty-four seven work hours. And no one's really there to pull him from his work anyways.
And Reborn's in Vongola now, loosely associated but still associated.
Reborn can't... He just can't.
He can't do this.
He can't look at them and not hate what they have become, in their fear to be hurt again, hiding from the world in their own ways.
Especially knowing that he mirrored them.
That he buried his self deep into his work, not a single free moment, never letting his mind stray too far back, and creator of chaos everywhere, playing pretend that everything is under his control.
Fuck, he can't do this.
_
It... surprisingly, gets better.
As long as he stays far away from them, just near enough to listen to the bits and pieces of news but never face to face, and there's no dry spell of job and he doesn't stay too long in one place and never keep to his thoughts and surrounds himself with noises and people and it's a difficult balance to keep to remember names and faces but not too much that they'll haunt him years down the line when the rest of the world has forgotten them except him and-
It gets better. Just a bit.
He still sometimes reaches too far but most of the time, as long as he keeps a straight head, he doesn't miss punches anymore. Though sometimes, when he sits for too long, the next time he tries to move the body is ill-fitting again and he has to start all over from the ground up.
It's getting better.
And he kind of hates that.
_
He finally can't hold out anymore.
A wall had appeared between him and the world, and he had watched it being built brick by brick and didn't do a single thing to stop it.
Viper's dead, they say.
Not dead, dead.
They can't do that until... They don't know how long this is supposed to last.
Dead insane. Their mind has regressed apparently. The lost of their empathy and the other crippled powers. Reborn had only his telepathy to loose and even now it's still aching. He could only imagine the pain the most powerful esper had to go through as they're mentally maimed.
Reborn feels tired. Soul tired.
He can't go on.
The world is just a blur and he has a new student again.
And Reborn will teach again, pass on what he can, mold them into someone that can take on the world and everything that it throws in the way Reborn is tired to continue doing, and he hopes that he doesn't outlive this one.
Again.
... His Will is fading.
_
He finds himself in a future. A dark, grim, future.
They are dead.
They were killed.
And they hadn't been able to do anything against it.
He hadn't been able to do anything against it.
Reborn sinks in a complicated despair.
Finally!, a part of him sobs in relief.
No, no. I don't want to die like this.
I don't want us to die like this.
So many things left unsaid.
He never wanted any of them to die broken and whatever is left of his Will fades even more, and the weight of the Pacifier increases again.
He's been saying, for decades, of how he can't bear it anymore.
But it's not until now that it truly hits him. Now that he imagines another ten years of nothing changing, Tsuna growing, eventually older than even he had been before the curse and, inevitably, dying. Like the rest of the mortals in this ever changing world.
Like every life in the Reality and Universe that they carried.
It's not an anguished snarl.
This time, there is only resignation when he whispers.
Please. I can't go on like this anymore.
Someone, end this.
Checkerface answers.