Chapter Fourteen - Two Worlds, One Family
Tsuna felt very very wrong. He tried to sort through the dregs of his memory of that day, feeling the strange lethargy of reawakening from death that hovered just below the feeling of wrongness.
Getting to Kokuyo Land. Fighting. He'd been squished, once, by the big weapon the man called Lancia wielded. Everyone after that had lost their light-hearted attitude to the day, Yamamoto and Gokudera dispatching Chikusa and Ken with ruthless efficiency.
Then finding Hibari. Tsuna remembered that like a punch to the gut. Whatever had done that to Hibari would in no way be healthy for Tsuna to meet.
A boy, his age. Mukuro –
Tsuna started, suddenly able to see a black veil lifting from his eyes. But, when his arm moved, it wasn't him moving it. When he pulled himself to his feet, it wasn't his will that did it. When his arm stretched forward, hand curling into a fist, it wasn't him.
Abruptly, the memories came back. Tsuna was distraught to find not all of them were his.
In one, Mukuro would be waving a trident in his face as he professed his sins, professed his plans, professed his suffering.
In the other, he would be strapped to a table, watching as a needle came down, down, towards his pupil, his eyelids peeled open and held there.
A stab to his chest, a well-aimed thrust so point had broken skin, punctured his heart. A murmured, 'sorry, but it has to be done. No one else would get it right'.
Screaming, somebody screaming. Someone else, louder, shouting and then the sound of flesh on flesh, a stifled whimper, a choked off sob. Back into the small room, where he could press his face to a cold, cold wall to will away the ache, and listen to whoever was on the other side cry.
It took nearly all Tsuna had to push that away, to compartmentalise watching as a pile of small bodies would grow larger and larger with each passing day, left to rot in the empty room he was to pass by every time they took him out to torture him anew.
Because what he was seeing was not him, but the other person residing within his body. Mukuro. And he had no right to be there.
Tsuna found the wrongness. He wrapped his fingers around it, tight, watched as the arm that had lifted faltered. And with all the strength he could muster, he gave a shove.
Sound, real sound, came back abruptly, loudly, like Tsuna had been wearing earplugs and ripped them out, or as if he'd left a soundproofed room and stepped into a busy street.
"You," Mukuro said, standing opposite him and trembling faintly, one hand grasped around a bloody trident. "You were dead."
"Sorry," Tsuna couldn't help but saying, wincing even as the word left his mouth. "It happens a lot," he added, as if he wasn't trying to internally scrub away the new memories with the mental equivalent of steel wool and bleach.
Mukuro stared at him then, almost too intensely, a tilt of the head. A section of hair, loose from the rest, slid over his shoulder and turned shiny as it caught the light. Tsuna abruptly realised Mukuro's hair wasn't black, just a dark shade of blue, highlighted by the weak rays of sunlight peering into the room.
"You were never there," Mukuro began, uncertainly. "I knew every face. I tore that place down, brick by brick. I burned it down and salted the remains. You weren't one of the test subjects that escaped."
"Oh, god, no," Tsuna said with feeling. "Definitely not. I've lived a wonderful life at home, with my mum, and I'm sorry you didn't get that. I'm not a test subject I'm just…robust."
Absently, he rubbed at his chest, fingers catching the three near perfect holes in his shirt.
"Robust," Mukuro echoed. "I stabbed you in the heart, a fatal injury, as we all saw, and you call yourself robust."
"Well, it's not exactly the first time."
"Getting stabbed?" Mukuro was more than a little bewildered, and even seemed to shoot Reborn a look that could be construed as disappointment, for not keeping Tsuna – and his possessable body – safer.
"Yes! Well, no, I've been run through before – " and Tsuna regretted the words instantly because of Gokudera's full body flinch, but powered on anyway, - "but I meant the whole dying thing. Wasn't the first time."
Mukuro sighed, almost theatrically, dramatically, as he hefted his still bloody trident.
"I suppose I shall have to try and make this time the last."
"If you even dare," Gokudera began, voice loud and sharp, and was interrupted by the door to their battleground bouncing open, someone slamming it in their haste.
"Sorry," Chikusa gasped into the ensuing silence, "but the Vindice. They're here. They got Ken, and Lancia."
"The jailers," Reborn murmured. "Deciding to take the arrest into their own hands, instead of waiting. It is best we stand aside and let them do their job, lest we anger them."
Tsuna heard him speak but was watching the silence communication between Mukuro and Chikusa, Chikusa's composure broken and Mukuro's face tight.
Unbidden, a memory not his of heavy shackles, burning wrists and ankles, the clank of chains, made him shudder and, before he could second guess himself, Tsuna called, "Mukuro," to get the other's attention.
"What?" Mukuro asked, teeth bared as if in a snarl. "Careful of a cornered dog, Vongola, they bite the hardest. I will not let you hand me over without a fight."
"When you stabbed me," Tsuna began, hurriedly, aware of the time slipping through his fingers, time he needed to explain and act. "When you stabbed me, your body, it goes?"
"It's part of the process," Mukuro replied, slowly, warily. "One cannot control two bodies, two minds, at the same time. Everything I am must become you."
"Then you need to do it again," Tsuna couldn't even believe the words tumbling out from his mouth, but knew they had to be said if he wanted Mukuro out of this room safely. "Do it again, so they don't find you."
"You think I want your trickery – " Mukuro's voice was harsh as he approached Tsuna, knuckles white on his weapon, and Tsuna simply replied, soft and low, just for Mukuro, "I saw all of it."
"…what?"
"What they did to you. The others. The survivors – if that could be called survival. The suffering. The pain. I felt all of it. I'd be angry too. I'd want to die too, and I'd probably be as stubborn as you too, to live long enough to burn out the corruption from the ground up. But, Mukuro, you can't do that locked in a cell. You can't live in a jail, living in fear of the day and hiding at night because it's too much like four white walls and a guard with a heavy hand."
Mukuro was trembling, and Tsuna reached out to touch the back of his hand, grasping it when it wasn't pulled away. Something in him felt lost when Mukuro moved, clutched back desperately, and his heart wondered when this boy in front of him had last been hugged.
"In there, you won't be able to help them. Out here, with us, with me you could do so much more. Chikusa, Ken, Lancia. I can't help them. I can help you, and you can help them."
"You truly mean it?" Mukuro asked, voice hushed, filled with want, desperation, confusion.
Tsuna just smiled and closed his eyes when Mukuro brought the trident up once more. A hand, curled around his neck, a sharp point to his chest. A murmured, "Thank you."
"Mum," Tsuna called as he toed off his shoes. "I've got a friend, Mukuro, can he stay for a while? He's having trouble at his place."
Mukuro hovered at his shoulder, dishevelled, dirty and bloody, but Nana simply smiled up at him from the doorway of a kitchen that smelled like good food and home and said, "Of course. Welcome to our humble home, Mukuro dear."
Nyeh. Done. Poor Mukuro.
This will now slightly veer off canon just because of the fact Tsuna has unofficially adopted a Slightly-Psychotic-And-Not-Entirely-Good Boy.
Bonus points if you know where the chapter name came from.