Chapter Nine – Sometimes gentle, sometimes not
Tsuna remembered drowning with a clarity he had long wished would fade away.
The current had been strong, the water cold and unforgivable and, huddled on the bank and crying was a girl less than half his age.
In the wildly churning water of the Namimori river, leash caught between two rocks and just shy of strangling the poor beast, was a small dog.
It doesn't take long to put one and two together. Tsuna had been raised by a selfless mother and felt he was almost as selfless himself.
The sky above was overcast and grey, the wind biting and chilling. The threat of rain hovered on the horizon, bringing with it the promise of winter in the iciness of fallen water.
The river, while nearly chest deep on him and of a coldness that took his breath away, would have swamped the young girl had she tried herself. The hem of her dress was already wet from the spray and she was already shivering.
Tsuna remembered that day, when his fingers turned pink, then purple, then white with the cold of the water, trembling as he fiddled with the collar wrapped snug around the water matted fur of the dog.
He remembered cradling the dog to his chest, the animal panting and whimpering and shivering as it weighed him down. It had been easier to untangle the leash without weight attached to it the collar wrapped around the forearm not holding an animal.
He recalled how he had braced his free hand on the lifted, artificial river bank, the water sloshing angrily at the concrete. How he had placed the dog carefully onto solid ground.
How the loose rocks and silt shifted treacherously underfoot when he made to haul himself out of the water and he slipped back, gasping in shock as the cold water washed over his shoulders.
Another shaky footstep underwater and his foot wedged into a gap, twisting painfully enough for him to buckle a knee and get a mouthful of mulchy water, the girl holding desperately onto her pet as she screamed again, less for help for her dog and more for help for Tsuna.
The concrete was slippery under his palm as made another desperate bid to pull himself out of the icy grasp of the river and the water caught him under the armpits, throwing him off balance as he was forced several feet down the river.
His left foot found purchase when he flailed to a stop, fingernails torn and bleeding as he scrambled at the concrete.
His right foot, sore and almost certainly sprained, slipped into the part of the river that was deeper than the rest and Tsuna lost control of the situation with deep set sensation of horror as he was washed away with the current and fought to keep his head above the dark water.
There was a leaf stuck to his face.
The river took a sharp bend that he was dragged with, back impacting with a rock and, as the breath whooshed out of him, he inhaled at the right enough time to get a lungful of brackish river water and then he was choking and scrambling at his throat, his eyes burning as oxygen eluded him.
His feet kicked wildly, desperate to make contact with the river bed, to propel himself higher.
His head bobbed over the surface long enough for him to suck in a brief breath, coughing harshly. The girl was still screaming, scrambling down the riverbank after him, her tiny dog yapping and bounding after her.
Tsuna was washed under again and was abruptly jerked to a stop as something snagged his jacket. His fingers, frozen and so sore they were almost numb, immediately started clawing at the catch where he'd been caught, twisted at an angle he couldn't get his head higher.
His lungs were aching and his eyes were burning as he squinted them open to try and see what he was doing. There was a bleeding wound on his arm he'd not noticed before, the red trickling out and clouding away in the rush of water.
Everything was going cold and numb and reflexively, desperately, he tried to gasp for air, water flooding his mouth and throat and lungs.
His vision spotted black and he stopped fumbling at his jacket. He felt separated from his body, detached and no longer in control.
The water was no longer cold but a pressure he could only feel like the barest whisper.
His lungs heaved in his chest, again and again but all the action caused was for more and more water to creep in to where it didn't belong.
Tsuna blinked and saw the stars around him, floating and hovering and glittering.
When he blinked again, it was to the feel of rough earth under his cheek, the taste of vomit in his mouth and the violent upheaval of his body as more water was expelled from his stomach.
It took a long time, but when Tsuna rolled over to his back and gazed up at the sky, the sun was already beginning to crest the horizon, bathing the sky in shades of red and orange and pink as the dawn greeted the world.
Tsuna coughed violently, fetid water bubbling past his lips. The back of his mouth tasted like blood and his fingertips were blue.
Every inhale felt like a solid weight on his chest that was getting heavier and heavier.
Tsuna rolled back onto his side, curled up in a bid for warmth, and sobbed, each breath ripped from a throat that burned as fiercely as any fire.
Yes. Tsuna rather vividly remembered how it felt to drown.
That was why, when the girl dressed in several layers of padded clothing and sports equipment teetered over the edge, hit the water with a punched out scream of impact, and immediately started flailing, Tsuna only hesitated for a single second (and remembered what it felt to become one with the stars) before he was hurtling over the railing after her.
He hit the water as he heard Gokudera's startled shout above him, Yamamoto calling his name, Reborn's soft voice following him down.
It wasn't as cold this time, didn't snatch the breath from his lungs.
A hysterical, tightly packed part of his brain began to shriek in fear, his arms locking up briefly even as he closed them around the thrashing girl.
Get out, get out, get out, get out, it screamed at him, and, echoing in the back of mind he heard the gurgle of his lungs as he drowned and drowned and drowned before finally tearing free of the rocks that had so cruelly ensnared him.
There was a blank space in his memory then, where he couldn't compute how he got from A to B, but suddenly he was on the riverside, swaddled in jackets and trembling as he stared at the peaceful flow of water.
The girl – Haru, his brain supplied, even as Tsuna relived what it felt and sounded like to have water rush into the space it didn't belong – was crying, curled up and shivering.
Tsuna had two jackets. Something in his throat jumped, once, twice, three times, a nervous tick.
Haru got the spare jacket, his shaking hands lifting it from his own shoulders, knuckles bone white, before he wrapped it around her.
She sobbed.
Tsuna coughed then, back arcing, shoulders hunching, and the memory of water trickling over his lips, cold and biting, haunted him.
A hand settled on the curve of his spine, a quiet voice murmuring above him.
He couldn't breathe, his lungs tightening further and further as a black wave crashed over his head and a little girl's screams followed him into oblivion.
"You're hyperventilating," said a faraway voice. "You're having a panic attack and you need to start breathing again."
Tsuna wheezed in, the noise aching and inhuman, the air rattling in his chest like a pile of loose pebbles and hurting more than it was worth.
The hand on his back fisted in the wet material of his shirt and then loosened, gently rubbing circles.
"If you don't start breathing now, you're going to pass out," that same voice warned.
A quiet part of Tsuna wanted that to happen. A much bigger part of him refused, knew the nightmares that would creep into his mind would be too much so soon after the impromptu dip in the Namimori river.
His next inhale felt less like he was breathing glass and more like he was human again.
"Good, good," the voice praised, soothing and warm.
The little girl screamed again in his mind; a dog barked.
Tsuna's exhale was a sob and he hunkered down further.
"Is he g-going to be alright, desu?" someone hiccupped from the left of him, and Tsuna lifted his suddenly heavy head to make eye contact with the girl he'd recklessly saved.
With her sodden features and wide, guileless eyes, Tsuna was briefly reminded of Lambo. The strong urge to comfort her stemmed from that.
"H-Haru, right?" Tsuna rasped and the hand rubbing circles on his back settled down.
The girl nodded sombrely, a wet curl of hair stuck to her cheek. Tsuna's fingers twitched as he fought the impulse to pull it from her skin.
"I'll be okay. Will you?"
"I – Haru will be fine," she declared after a moment's falter, eyes darting to the peaceful river. Something in her expression twitched, a flicker of fear.
Tsuna felt a responding emotion in his stomach as he looked towards the river himself, clear and calm and nothing like the day he'd drowned.
Nothing like the day where he had sank beneath the surface, where he'd gasped and struggled and then simply drifted in that hollow pocket that was neither life nor death.
His stomach twisted suddenly, violently, and rebelled.
Not a moment later, he was emptying his breakfast onto the concrete next to him and lifting a shaking hand to his mouth as his body bucked weakly as he uselessly heaved.
A water bottle was shoved into his free hand and his fingers closed around it of his own accord, tighter than necessary as water sloshed over the lip.
Tsuna drank it eagerly, guzzled it down, anything to get the taste of pungent river from his mouth, nothing more than a memory but more potent than he'd like.
Tsuna remembered drowning.
If asked, he could point at the place he'd waded in to save a dog. Could point out where he sprained his ankle, could show where the river caught him and washed him away.
It would take little prompting from there to show where he had drowned, had stared through the water at the sky passing over ahead and felt like a speck of dust when left to his thoughts and the rushing sound water – or had it been his heart pounding in his ears as he struggled for air?
A brisk walk, no more than five minutes away, he could show you the exact spot where he had woken up the dawning light of the next day, his skin as pale as paper, fingertips wrinkled and everything aching with the frigidness of his limbs.
He'd lost a shoe and somehow that had made him cry harder at the time.
When Tsuna swilled his mouth with water and spat it into the river, he looked at Haru, pale aside from blotches of colour on her cheeks and nose, her eyes puffy and her ears purpling. He looked at her and remembered what it had been like, to drown and choke and for his body to give up before he was ready.
And, as he watched her shiver and tremble, he tried to imagine what it would have been like if he hadn't of walked by when she was balancing on the railing, murmuring to herself and waving her hockey stick. If he would have heard about her on the news that evening or the next morning, of a young girl caught by the river and found dead, her corpse bloated and white and blue and her face peaceful in death.
Something bitter unfurled in his chest, because no one had been there for his body. Something warmer wrapped around the bitterness, swaddled it tight and didn't let go because instead of being bitter no one mourned his death, he should be glad he prevented what could have ended a young girl's life.
Reborn sat down next to him, close enough for Tsuna to feel the brush of his jacket against his thigh.
Gokudera was tending to Haru now, talking to her in smooth, dulcet tones.
Yamamoto was a little behind him, hand still pressed to his back and thumb moving in absent, thoughtless circles.
"This isn't then," Reborn said, both pragmatic and cryptic, eyes unfathomable. Leon, perched on the rim of his hat, made the leap between the two of them and landed on Tsuna's knee with a damp thud. The lizard waited very little before it clambered up Tsuna and settled beneath the collar of his shirt, scaly, dry warmth pressed to his cold wet skin and hemmed in by his shirt.
"I know," Tsuna replied, and remembered what it felt like to give up when, for a brief moment, the world had stopped turning and he'd seen the stars.
Breathing water was like breathing air after all, Tsuna mused. It just didn't take as long before death came crawling over.
Tada! A chapter where Tsuna didn't actually die (but reminisced all the same).
Hope you enjoyed it!