Time crawled by.
He was drifting in a sea of numbness, shapeless and weightless, and it felt a bit like flying. Emotions were a distant memory, something blurry and half-forgotten that couldn't reach him anymore.
The other kids in the cell came and went, circling him like silent shadows, watchful and wary. Out of them all, a blond boy stood out simply because he kept coming back. Again and again and again. To poke him in the ribs with a bony finger, to prod him in the back with the tip of a foot, to gloat and brag and show off with words as sharp as razor blades. But then something changed. The smug smile faded, slowly turning into a frown that became a scowl. Green eyes narrowed. Bony hands tightened into fists.
Careful, a monster whispered from far away, carrying an echo of watch your back and don't look weak and Vito.
A blink.
And everything was silent again.
"You're just going to give up?" the boy asked. "You're just going to roll over and let them win?"
Another blink.
The boy left with a muttered curse.
Times crawled by.
It was like free-falling. Sort of. Down and down and down in a place of darkness and ice.
Searchers gravitated around him, their voices a background buzz of white noise.
He closed his eyes.
Breathed.
In and out.
Time crawled by.
Hands touched him. His body was shifted, lifted, and suddenly he was in another room.
Bright and empty, like the one where –
Deep inside, there was a crack.
No.
His thoughts scattered like a handful of sand lost in the wind.
(Do. Not. Remember.)
They tried to get him to eat, to drink.
He choked on liquid and almost drowned in a cup of water. The cold food shoved down his throat came back up before it ever got the chance to hit his stomach. He heaved and coughed. The back of his throat burned, but it was a muted sensation, as if he'd just stepped out of his body to watch a stranger being sick.
Another flurry of activity and, somehow, he was on a bed, wrists and ankles bound to side rails. Words were thrown around, starving and unresponsive and shock. Someone stabbed a needle in his arm. That should have hurt.
Maybe.
Probably.
He stared at the white coats whirling around him and didn't make a single sound.
There was – there was a tightness in his chest. Like the beginning of a scream bleeding in the emptiness inside. He observed that oddity from afar, then gently pushed back, away and away until it was like the scream hadn't ever existed.
Times crawled by.
They moved him often, maneuvering his limp form to stick electrodes and sensors all over his skin.
The floating sensation increased.
A machine beeped incessantly beside the bed. Red lines danced over a small screen. Numbers changed and blinked in tandem with his pulse. The noise could have been distracting, even annoying, but there was no feeling beating in his chest and so the shrills signals didn't matter.
Sometimes, it felt like he could glide right through the ceiling and straight into the sky. Which wouldn't have been such a bad thing.
Right?
Time crawled by.
He closed his eyes and didn't open them again.
Everything around him was dark – as if a black cloak had been thrown over the world, as if the sun had died and there was no starlight to show the way back. Strangely, he found himself instinctively seeking out a spark of golden fire, a flicker of familiar Flames that should have been there.
There was nothing.
He was alone.
Emptiness filled his dreams and sinking deeper into its cold embrace was a relief.
He slept.
(Coward, a voice hissed in his ear. Weak and useless and m U R d e R e r.)
Time crawled by.
And then, one day, the world exploded.
Sirens started shrieking from beyond a closed door. They didn't register, not at first, and neither did the faint shaking running through the floor and walls.
But he was still alive. Despite everything, against all odds, he was still alive. His hearbeat was strong and steady, his lungs working, his brain crackling with electrical impulses. As if a command to live had been carved into his very bones, his body wouldn't completely shut down, wouldn't just let go.
And so.
When dark smoke entered the room, when the air around him became more poison than life – he woke up.
Not with a bang or a scream, but with a tremor.
It started with a sore throat, a swelling ache that swept down across his chest. The dark void he was floating in suddenly wasn't so disconnected from reality anymore. Something heavy and painful tugged at him, like a bond snapping taunt.
He panicked. Fought back.
Sensations fluttered on the edge of his senses.
He struggled harder, caught somewhere between awake and asleep, and it was like trying to hold an ocean within your cupped hands. The more he resisted, the more he could feel himself slipping away.
No. The word drifted around him. No, I don't want to go back.
He coughed, wheezing and panting, and this time it hurt. He was choking. The dizzying realization of being linked to a suffocating body bloomed in his mind.
And suddenly, it made perfect sense.
He – right now – he was dying, wasn't he?
An earth-shaking roar answered that thought. A whirlwind of panic and Flames rose from bellow and it shook him so badly that –
He fell. And crashed into something small and solid.
Tsuna's eyes snapped open.
.
.
The room was filled with smoke.
Tsuna jerked upright, only to bounce right back onto the mattress. A metallic sound came from beside him. His wrists throbbed. They felt sore and a little numb, like body parts that had stayed unmoving for too long.
Tsuna blinked, realizing in a daze that he was tied with cuffs to the side-rails of a bed. He pulled at the restraints, weakly, his mind still reeling from the shock of being conscious for the first time in days.
Shouts and yells reached his ears. A siren blared its shrill song in the hallway. Then everything shook as an explosion rocked the building.
Tsuna gasped, pressing his face into the mattress.
It was overwhelming. Too many sensations assaulting him from all sides, too much information to process, too many instincts battering at the inside of his skull.
He must. There was. Something. Important.
Someone important.
(Where was – )
Heat flared in Tsuna's chest.
Get up, the Flames whispered. Get up now.
Yes, that sounded like the right thing to do – though impossible at the moment. Everything was too ... wobbly.
Tsuna tried to blink the universe back into focus. It was a slow process, and still black smoke swirled into the room. It came in from under the door and through the air vent, growing thicker and heavier by the second.
The world had stopped spinning. His vision was clear again.
Tsuna pulled at the cuffs. They didn't give an inch.
Get up, the monster repeated. Leave. Now.
Fire pounded at him, straining and pushing against the frayed leash of his control.
"Fine," Tsuna said to the empty room. "Fine."
And he allowed a fraction of his Flames to rise to the surface.
They rushed out with a triumphant cry, soaring from Tsuna's core and instantly filled him to the brim with potential. They sang of freedom and shattered chains and cold places, and the power they carried was just enough to make him move.
Tsuna sat up.
He glanced down at the cuffs. Dislike spiked in his heartbeat, underlined by an intense need for the damn things to be gone, now, right now. His response was all animal instincts after that. A single thought, a quick pulse of intent – and his wrists easily passed through the cuffs with a hissing sound. Nothing was left but a mess of gutted leather and steaming metal.
Tsuna froze, waiting for the collar around his neck to react.
Nothing happened. It didn't even let out a sound of warning.
Strange. Not unwelcome, but strange.
Tsuna let out a slow breath.
He clambered out of the bed and his knees immediately buckled.
He dry-heaved, belly twisting painfully, and it only got him to inhale more smoke. He clung to the side of the mattress as white spots appeared across his vision like a firework, bright and loud and blinding.
The world tilted on its axis. Darkness crept closer, beckoning with soft promises of sleep and peace and –
(Again, try again)
Flames moved under his skin, pinching and snapping with sharp teeth.
(We're strong. Get up.)
Tsuna stood up again, and miraculously managed not to fall flat on his face. From there, it was only a matter of stepping away from the bed and leaving the room. Slowly. Carefully. One foot in front of the other.
Left, right. Left, right.
The door was unlocked.
Tsuna grabbed the handle, pushed, and it swung open without resistance.
He entered a lab room. There was no one in sight. A couple of abandoned papers littered the floor and one chair lied on its back, as if someone had abruptly stood up and sent it crashing on the white tiles. Everything was silent.
Tsuna crossed the room and went through a second door. A short hallway stretched out on either side of him. The smoke was thicker out there, shifting and swirling near the ceiling like stormy clouds. It was getting really hard to breathe.
Tsuna coughed, his eyes painfully dry, and turned right even though he knew – he just knew –that going left would have lead him outside.
But no.
Not yet.
(Where was –)
He reached inside as he walked, giving a light tug at the fire burning in his chest. It answered with a deep purr, bringing back the echo of a location. A direction. Tsuna picked up his speed. Sort of. It was more of a lopsided scramble than an actual run, but it got the job done. He was going forward and that was good enough for now.
Another door. A flight of stairs.
And then screams.
"No!"
Shouts abruptly exploded further ahead in the hallway. A loud bang put an end to the commotion, immediately followed by a second and third one.
"Yeah," a voice said in the ensuing silence. "Definitely not going for a stealthy exit."
"No kidding." A second person, one that sounded young and stiff.
"Leave the next one to me, okay? I can take them."
"Please. You'll only manage to get yourself killed in a blaze of stupidity."
A snort. "Isn't it supposed to be a blaze of glory or something?"
"Depends on the level of idiocy involved. Yours hit critical years ago. How are you even still alive?"
"Hey!"
Tsuna didn't pause, didn't allow himself to falter or hesitate, because he wasn't sure he could ever bring himself to move again if he stopped now.
He rounded a corner and was met with a scene of carnage.
Bodies lied on the floor, like broken dolls clothed in white coats soaked through with gore and crimson. Several of them had scratches and small marks on their faces, as if they'd clawed at the skin there to reach the flesh underneath. Their expressions were twisted, contorting into grimaces of horrified disbelief.
Three boys ambled in the middle of the slaughter.
One of them had a scar running across the bridge of his nose. His hair was as blond as sunlight and his eyes were large and dark. Maybe brown? Or green? Tsuna was too far to say for sure. Another kid stood beside the blond, a thin figure of skinny limbs, black hair and pale skin that glared at the world from behind a pair of broken glasses.
And then there was the third boy – the one covered in blood that held a strange weapon with three sharp ends in his left hand.
The air shifted around him, hot enough to push back the black smoke that floated near the ceiling. It circled him, encasing the three of them in a small cocoon of invisible patterns that danced and twisted and pulsed with awareness.
Tsuna stared.
They probably came from another cell. He didn't know any of them.
"Oh?" The third boy noticed him and tilted his head to the side. "I didn't know there was still someone left over there."
Tsuna opened his mouth. Words tumbled out. "I was sleeping."
"You were sleeping," the blond repeated incredulously. He made a wide gesture to indicate their surroundings. "Through this. Are you an idiot?"
"Huh." The kid with glasses muttered.
The blond frowned at him. "What?"
"Nothing. Just thinking about the irony of you calling someone an idiot."
"Dammit, Chikusa!"
"Be quiet," the boy holding the strange weapon cut in.
He didn't raise his voice.
The bickering behind him died.
"Are you from another cell?" the boy asked, cocking his head to the side.
Tsuna nodded.
That got him a considering look, weighting and judging.
And then the boy smiled. "You woke up just in time for the fun then," he said, spreading his arms around him, as if to show off the dead. "Lucky you."
Tsuna didn't answer. He just just kept going, stepping into the circle of glittering air because the place he wanted to reach was somewhere at the other end of that hallway. The unnatural heat pressed down upon him, teasing and mocking. There was something mean in its warmth – something that was all sharp edges and broken pieces.
The boy watched him. "You're going the wrong way," he said. The curve of his lips turned sly. "The exit's behind you. I can show where it is."
"No need." Tsuna met mismatched eyes and didn't look away. "It's fine. I don't want to leave yet."
And he let his own Flames flare up around him.
It hit the foreign heat with a warning growl, and the bitter presence inside reared back in shock, startled out of its game.
The boy's lips parted. He blinked. Once. Twice. Next to him, the other two kids tensed, drawing in sharp breaths.
Tsuna ignored them all.
His feet carried him forward, carefully avoiding the broken dolls lying around. He kept his mind blank – so, so carefully blank. Just another couple of steps and the floor would be white and clean again.
(Where was –)
"Wait."
A hand closed around his left shoulder. Tsuna paused, glancing back.
The boy's eyes roved all over his face and his expression was –
(Intense.)
– curious.
Tsuna swallowing the scream that was trying to crawl out of his throat and forced himself to wait.
"Give me a second," the boy said. "I'll get rid of this for you." His smile came back, wider than before. "As an apology for disturbing your sleep."
A pale finger tapped the metallic band that had been wrapped forever around Tsuna's neck. The thing gave a little whirring noise, then a beep and a click. It fell open and tumbled down his front, landing at his feet with a dull sound.
Tsuna stood utterly still.
The air around him wavered, displaced by something hot and invisible. The boy's Flames poked his arm, curious and without a hint of the cruelty it'd displayed moments ago. Tsuna's fire perked up at that, suddenly interested. A probing tendril of burning orange reached out. Brushed against cool mist.
A floodgate burst open in Tsuna's mind.
Sensations slammed into him, hard and fast.
(–p-a-i-n and r-a-g-e and e-x-h-a-u-s-t-i-o-n and I'l-l-k-i-l-l-y-o-u –)
It felt like drowning, except that he could still breathe.
Tsuna snatched his Flames back and jerked away.
The boy swayed. "Oh," he whispered. "You're a Sky."
(What?)
Tsuna shook his head. He stepped around the trio, his fire pulled tight and close around him. It gave a grumpy rumble of annoyance at being reeled in, but thankfully settled back under his skin without a fight.
"What was that?" A voice rose behind Tsuna, shrill and thin – the blond, who sounded as if he'd choked on his own tongue. "What the fuck was that?"
A door swang shut and Tsuna didn't hear the rest.
Dizziness hit him out of nowhere.
He leaned against the nearest wall, gasping. A flash of red pulled his attention downward. Blood stained the hem of his grey pants, and his bare feet were covered with gore.
Tsuna hunched over and heaved.
Bile splattered on the floor with a wet sound.
(Keep going. Don't stop.)
"I know," Tsuna muttered, wiping his mouth. "I won't."
His destination was right there, after all. He had to try.
Tsuna pushed away from the wall and his feet carried him forward, retracing a path he'd taken many times before.
Another hallway and, finally, a door.
It was locked.
Tsuna struggled with it for a moment, pulling at the handle and banging at the electronic keypad.
Nothing worked. The stupid block of metal wouldn't budge.
(Hurry.)
Yes, he had to hurry. He knew that already.
Tsuna wrapped his hands around the door handle and focused.
Fire rushed out in the open, licking up his skin with Flames as bright as the first sunrise. He hastily grabbed them, and they let themselves be corralled and channeled without a hint of resistance, flowing down his shoulders and arms to gather in his hands until it looked like he was holding two supernovas.
The handle twisted between Tsuna's fingers, then melted with a hiss and a puff of steam. He kept going, splaying his fingers wide on the door and the lock underneath. A push and his hands went all the way through reinforced steel.
Tsuna fumbled with the gaping hole he'd just made, pulled the door open, and tripped into the cell.
Hot air rushed past him, and he had to look away to protect his eyes. Then he saw them. Kids were huddled together against the opposite wall, sitting close to each other as if their bodies could provide some protection against the smoke.
Tsuna's eyes greedily ran over the group. Seeking. Searching.
(Where was – )
"… Nero?"
"Not here." Vito stood up from the cluster of shivering children. He coughed. "It's been weeks, half-breed."
Tsuna froze.
Weeks.
Of course.
He'd known that.
He'd been there.
(He'd done it.)
So why had he still come looking for Nero anyway? Even though it wouldn't change anything, even though it wouldn't bring him back, even though he was gonegonegone –
"Don't you fucking start that shit again." Vito grabbed the front of Tsuna's shirt and shook him a little. "You don't get to shut down now," he spat, voice hoarse from smoke and anger. "Not before you tell me what's happening out there. Where are Amadeo and Jenoah?"
"Don't know," Tsuna said, and it was strange to hear his voice coming out so calm and controlled when it felt like he'd just shattered into a thousand pieces all over again. "But we should leave."
"No shit." Vito roughly let him go, and went to get a look at the hallway. He peeked out, left then right, and blanched.
"I can get you out," Tsuna said, still distant and sort of floating outside of his body. "I know the way."
Vito glanced back, eyes narrowing with suspicion.
"I can," Tsuna insisted. "Trust me."
He didn't care either way, but out in general seemed like a good idea, one that Vito and the others could get behind.
The rest of the kids had joined them by now, stumbling and crying and half blind. Not counting Tsuna and Vito, there were four of them – four terrified kids that stared at Tsuna with pale faces and wary hope.
They were counting on him, Tsuna suddenly realized. To lead them out. To survive.
The weight of that responsibility was crushing, and it smacked him right back into his body. He staggered, abruptly aware that those were children in front of him – people with feelings and futures and lives.
Tsuna looked at them with wide eyes.
He opened his mouth to throw up.
"Don't get left behind," he heard himself say instead. "Stay close together and hold hands if you need to. Leave –" He paused, swallowed hard, and continued, "Leave the rest to me. I-I'll make sure we all get out of here."
Hesitant nods all around. Several kids reached out and latched onto the person closest to them until they'd formed a sort of human chain.
Tsuna turned around.
A hand grabbed his.
"What?" Vito sneered at Tsuna's suprised face. "I'm not taking any chance. I'm staying right here next to you."
Except that he was holding on tight enough to break Tsuna's bones, radiating intense fear and helplessness and I don't want to die.
Tsuna gave a jerky nod. And headed out.
He let his Flames' whispers guide him, avoiding the worst of the fires by ducking into side rooms and small passages. The children were quiet behind him, silently trailing his every move. Even the youngest one – a little girl who couldn't have been older than four – didn't make a single sound.
It felt like an eternity had passed when cold air finally slapped Tsuna's face.
He blinked, realizing he was in a small courtyard, the one where together with Nero he'd dreamed of Outside.
The kids spilled out in the open around him, hacking and coughing as they ran away from the fire. Black clouds billowed out into the night sky, blotting out the stars and the moon. The roaring of the flames at their backs was deafening, threatening to swallow whole anyone who dared to linger inside.
Tsuna flexed his hands. His nails bit into his palms, hard enough to leave marks. How fitting, he thought, that at the very end he would find himself there.
"Dammit," Vito growled, prowling all over the courtyard. "That's no exit, half-breed. We're fucking dead!"
"No." Tsuna unlocked his jaw. "We're not."
He walked toward a wall and observed it critically. It was gray and cracked. Tall, but leaning slightly inward, as if it would collapse on itself if given enough time.
They did not have time.
Anger spiked in Tsuna's chest, stabbing right through the emptiness where Nero's Flames used to be. Self-loathing, cold and sharp, followed in its wake. Because he was so weak. Because he'd failed.
"Hey," Vito's voice broke the silence. He pointed a finger at Tsuna. "What the hell?"
Tsuna looked down. Sparks of fiery amber floated around his body like small fireflies and his eyes felt hot. Very, very hot. Which meant that they were glowing. Tsuna knew it because he'd heard some of the scientists talking about it a long time ago. Something about a reaction to pain and how close to the surface he allowed his Flames to rise.
That was alright.
Tsuna didn't feel like hiding his monster anymore.
What was the point? He was alone.
The children were still watching him, waiting for a miracle they'd been taught to never expect.
"Stand back," Tsuna said.
They all did, taking one, two, then three large steps away from him.
Tsuna faced the wall. He made a fist.
And punched.
.
.
That's it for this time. Damn, I'm beat. Work's kicking my ass.
Next chapter: Tsuna's lost in Italy. Things are not going well.
See you next chapter :)