Hotaru was distracted.

Initially he thought it was worry because they'd all gotten hurt during the Sky Battle and come back for healing because it would be impossible to hide, but when she still had that small furrow between her brows at the party, Takeshi knew she was deep in thought about something.

He pushed a plate of sushi in front of her, and counted to three before she blinked in realization.

"Oh," she said, eyes focusing first on the plate that had appeared before her, and then on Takeshi himself. "Thanks."

Takeshi waited until she had eaten one and swallowed before asking. "Are you okay?"

Hotaru looked at him, violet eyes fixed on him. The weight of her gaze was piercing as they searched for something, as if she were the one who had asked the question instead of him.

"Just a lot on my mind," she said at last. "I feel like I should be the one asking you that, though."

Takeshi shrugged easily, no pain left on his body. All the wounds that had been inflicted on him during the Sky Battle were gone now, erased by Hotaru.

But that wasn't what she was asking.

"I am," he said. He wasn't all that fond of making things more complicated than it had to be, and with the end of these Ring Battles, it was simpler now.

They won, and Tsuna was more relaxed now, far less anxious than he'd been these past few weeks. He got his revenge match against Squalo and won.

Everything could go back to normal. Back to sleeping in class, to playing baseball, to hanging out with the others.

He had absolutely no reason to not be okay.

Hotaru must have seen the sincerity in his answer, because she smiled like a weight had been taken off her shoulders.

"Good," she said, before her smile turned from acceptance to a little teasing. "Let's try to keep it this way. What are you going to do if you get hurt while being reckless and I'm not there?"

"Ahahaha." He rubbed the back of his head, sheepish. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize to me," she scolded. "Just make sure you take better care of yourself, and stop getting hurt. I don't want to enable you into thinking you're invincible or invulnerable."

It was worry, Takeshi knew, because Hotaru had told him when she first revealed her secret that she could only heal minor things, not major injuries.

He didn't really worry about the 'I'm not there' part, because Takeshi didn't imagine a future where she wouldn't be in his life.

It was weird, waking up in the morning without the impeding feeling of doom and anxiety that had been haunting him these past weeks.

Weird, but not in the bad way. Just the way of slipping back into what was right and familiar after not having had it for a while, like returning home after a vacation. The last few weeks hadn't been a vacation, but it had been different enough that everything around him had felt foreign.

Tsuna stepped down the stairs of his house, enjoying the feeling of ease that they'd all fought to regain. This was the life. This was the normalcy that he'd been wanting to get back. This –

There was a tall man with an intimidating face, not helped by the facial tattoo he had, surrounded and climbed by the kids in his house like he was a playground structure. He was sitting crossed-leg on the wooden floors of his house, dressed in a button-up shirt and black slacks, a fashion that did absolutely nothing to make him appear like a salary man at home playing with children after a hard day at work despite the many who wore that very same type of clothing.

Tsuna stared. Lancia stared back, though his gaze, unlike Tsuna, held less of the 'um what are you doing here' and more of 'get them off me please'.

"Um," said Tsuna with his usual eloquence. The ring battles had been unexpected, to say the least. The battles themselves, but also because some people he never expected to lend him a hand had done so. Not just his friends, or Ryohei, but also people like Mukuro and Chrome and even Hibari. Sure, they'd done so for their own reasons – although Mukuro's was still something he couldn't really understand – but they had been there, nonetheless.

Lancia, too, had helped him keep his normal life safe.

After getting the kids off him – most of this was thanks to his mom, who announced that food was done and she needed help with setting the table to draw them away from Lancia – Tsuna took a deep breath and then gave a deep bow of his head to Lancia.

"Thank you, Lancia-san."

The tall man shrugged. "Like I said before, Vongola. Just repaying a debt."

He said that, but that didn't change the fact that he really had made a massive difference. Tsuna wasn't dumb enough to not realize that.

Lancia caught his gaze, grinned and reached out a hand. It was obviously a gesture for a handshake, and Tsuna, unsure about what this was about, nonetheless reached out to shake his hand.

"Not going to lie," he said. "I nearly didn't show up. I was getting a – feeling, you could say, from Mukuro. Or at least, the direction where I could feel Mukuro's residue in my head."

Tsuna winced before he could stop himself, and Lancia's grin turned wry, as if to say 'yeah, I know'.

"I haven't exactly forgiven him," he said. "It's not like he's seeking it, either. That would be weird, I guess."

He tried to imagine Mukuro apologizing, and somehow the image he came up with was insincere.

"I just understand him, I guess." Lancia shrugged, like it was nothing. "When someone spends that much time connected to your mind, even if you disagree with them, you do learn how to see things from their point of view."

It was clear that there was a lot of complications there, and that there was nothing Tsuna could do here. This was territory he didn't have the right to go wading in. This wasn't an invitation, or a cry for help. Merely an explanation, at least from Lancia, justifying why he had shown up.

And Tsuna, who was just grateful for the help he had received, did not violate that by trespassing where he had no right to go.

Lancia dug in his pocket before bringing out a ring. It wasn't nearly as ugly as the Vongola Ring, but it also wasn't subtle, either. A thick thing forged out of a black metal like the Vongola ring with silver outlines and a silver snake around a small orange stone.

"It used to belong to my boss," he said. "Apparently the rings of bosses are special or something, beyond just what they represent. Keep it as a good luck charm."

Tsuna bit his tongue on the ring tastes of mafia bosses, something that was easy to do because of the panic that flooded his mind at the thought of accepting it.

"Lancia-san!" he yelped. "I can't accept this!"

It was a ring that belonged to someone who obviously held far more meaning to Lancia than to Tsuna, who didn't even know the guy. There was no way that he could hold onto something so significant, he was going to end up losing it in like two days. It might not even end up being his fault that the ring was lost – it could slip into the sewers, or be sucked up in the vacuum, or Lambo might end up hiding it away in his hair before losing it.

Lancia actually snickered when Tsuna tried to convey just how likely this ring would soon be lost, likely forever.

"Then you'll have to just make sure to not lose it," he told Tsuna, which in turn made Tsuna want to rip out his hair in frustration. "Best of luck, Vongola."

"It's Tsuna, Lancia-san," he mumbled in protest, recognizing that this was basically a lost battle. The mafia really had some very headstrong people in it, and he was just a normal guy. There was no chance of victory.

Lancia blinked, as if that was the most surprising part of this conversation.

. . . oh. Oh, maybe it was, because he couldn't remember ever really introducing himself to Lancia. Now this was just awkward and he had no idea what to say.

"Tsu-kun? Lancia-san?" His mom, bless her soul, turned her head around the corner at the exact right time. "Aren't you coming to eat? At this rate there won't be any food left."

"Right," he said, so relieved he could have cried. "Let's go eat, Lancia-san. My mom's an awesome cook. The best. Everyone says so."

Still with that strange look on his face, Lancia followed.

Tsuna had really been hoping that his life would return to normal now that the battles for the rings were over, and in retrospect, maybe that was the problem. That he had dared to seek normalcy in his weird life and dreamed of what he shouldn't have. The gods were laughing at him somewhere.

After Lancia and Basil left, Tsuna was ready to just enjoy boring life once again.

And then Lambo shot Reborn with the Ten-Year Bazooka and Reborn just disappeared and didn't come back.

Which led to him running around town searching for Reborn – either his present self or his ten year in the future self that he had never seen – before realizing he should find the source of this problem, aka Lambo.

And then being hit with the bazooka himself, to travel ten years into the future.

His life.

Ten years later was apparently not going to take it easy on him either, though, because Tsuna found himself in a freaking coffin filled with flowers.

He tried to not think about that, which was made a little easier by the distraction provided by Gokudera. Future Gokudera of ten years in the future, who was taller, and in a suit – though he still had his piercings – and called him Tenth.

"I got hit by Lambo's bazooka," he blurted out, because Ten Years Later Gokudera had grabbed his arms so tightly, so desperately, that he really didn't want to follow that line of morbid thoughts and draw a conclusion from all the disturbing hints around him.

Gokudera's devastated, desperate face really didn't help matters by changing. It only turned a little more thoughtful, but the base emotion remained the same. "I see . . . so we only have less than five minutes . . ."

His jaw set in determination.

"Listen carefully, Tenth," he said, voice heavy and firm. "We don't have time for details, but when you go back to your own time, you have to remember and do exactly as I say."

Ten years had really made him mature. Tsuna swallowed, nervous at the discrepancy of the person he knew who had changed in the space of ten years, and listened, begging his poor memory to not fail him.

"When you go back, you must find and eliminate this person immediately."

Of course, his memory promptly decided to bounce out at Gokudera telling him to murder someone.

Tsuna protested, but Gokudera continued on, even pulling out a picture of some redheaded guy in glasses that looked so normal it all felt like a joke.

"If Irie can't meet him, then Byakuran's sphere of influence grows significantly lesser," Gokudera of the future was saying, and Tsuna's brain was still stuck on the 'you must find and eliminate this person' part of what he'd said.

"Why," he blurted out, when Ten Years Later Gokudera was completely undeterred by any of his protests at murder, "am I in a coffin?"

Almost immediately Tsuna regretted his attempt to change the subject. If he had slammed a frying pan into his face, Gokudera might have looked less pained.

But before he could say anything – before Ten Years Gokudera could say anything – he was engulfed in smoke, and replaced with the Gokudera Tsuna knew, from his own time.

It was already bad when Reborn went missing. It was really bad when he ended up in the future with Gokudera and got stuck past the five-minute deadline, and absolutely horrible when everything seemed to point at him being dead ten years in the future.

But being attacked, nearly killed, and then being told – by the same woman who nearly killed them with a weird centipede – that Reborn was dead in this future felt like a hole had been torn in him.

Lal Mirch seemed like she was going through a checklist, almost, as she added methodically one more item to freak him out.

"The Vongola Headquarters fell two days ago and was destroyed."

'Vongola' at this point was a word synonymous with 'chaos' in his life, but to hear it in that context made his lungs freeze over.

"Currently there are no confirmed survivors from HQ, and the Ninth is unaccounted for. The CEDEF team hurried to the rescue, but we lost contact not long ago."

CEDEF. The team his dad was on. The Ninth, who apparently survived the robot Xanxus put him in but went missing ten years later - now.

"What?" he choked out.

Lal calmly named the culprits, and unfortunately one name Tsuna did recognize from earlier - Byakuran.

"The keys to dominating this era's war are the rings," Lal continued blandly, like his mind wasn't on the verge of breaking down. "By stealing the rings and boxes, they were able to build their own strengths, which is why they raided the Vongola."

Tsuna looked down at the ring, wrapped in the small chain Lal had given to them. The rings he fought for recently, though it was technically ten years ago.

It was too small to be so significant, so bloody, and he barely suppressed a shudder.

"Some say the rings are proof of a covenant forged between humans and those who dwell in the dark, made to gain greater power. Whatever their origins might be, they contain a force beyond human understanding, and that is why they must be protected. You've seen them burning, yes?"

Yes, and it was weird.

The explanation he received wasn't any less weird. The rings could be lit on fire by willpower – without needing bullets, which was both a relief to hear and just sad because he was relieved at the thought of not being shot to light himself on fire which meant his standards were just next to non-existent this point – and they could open up boxes with weapons.

And, as the robot that sensed them now proved, they also emitted some kind of a signal if the chains weren't wrapped around them.

Tsuna wrapped Lancia's boss's ring with the thin chains as fast as his shaking fingers could, and by some miracle didn't drop it, but it was too late. Lal got ready to attack when something struck the robot, and a harsh vibration ran across its entire massive body like a quake before coming to a jerky, halting stop.

Lal exhaled softly, and lowered her arm without firing. "Just in time, Yamamoto."

From behind the robot stepped out a tall man, with a katana.

"Hey, Tsuna," said the man that could only be the future Yamamoto. The next optimistic words and bright grin, familiar despite the changes ten years had brought, only proved him right. "The pinch-hitter's arrived, just in time."

Even in the dark and ten years later, the shape of his face and features were recognizable. Not that there weren't changes – a scar on his chin, something that couldn't pass as a shaving accident to someone with eyes working halfway, and an air that was just different from the Yamamoto he was familiar with was there – but it was Yamamoto Takeshi, nonetheless.

Tsuna let out a huff of relief, his knees nearly buckling at the drain of adrenaline.

Behind the Scenes:

Lancia: keep it as a good luck charm or something.

Mukuro: (Did you forget what happened to that boss and the Family?)

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Lal: they're proof of the covenant between humans and those who dwell in the dark.

Kawahira: *deeply offended* excuse me, they are proof of humanity's potential, it's not our fault that power can corrupt. This is like the whole Pandora issue all over again, I swear. The misrepresentation will kill me one day *throws hands up in air in exasperation*

Arcobaleno: oh really?

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I'm going to try to skip parts that are less necessary because I'm already being burned out at work and this is supposed to heal me not burn me further. So if I do give a lot of focus onto a character or section, it means it's either relevant to the story, or I just like it very much for personal reasons.

(Which means that Lancia? Absolutely necessary. I only wish his part could have been longer. I will take no complaints, I love him and I wish he appeared more in canon.)

Jokes aside he appears to give the ring because that's him figuring it's the least he can do for Tsuna. He's not going to join a new Family, but this is his way of saying 'this guy has my support'. His previous Family basically has one asset and that's Lancia.

As mentioned previously the TYL part is 3 arcs and Hotaru makes like one appearance (very) later so. *deep breath* give me strength.

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Sweet Dreams~