Chapter Sixteen - A Slow Tumble Down
Tsuna woke, feeling lethargic and heavy. There was a persistent drag behind his eyelids, like he hadn't slept enough, despite the fact he'd gone to bed early and woken up before his alarm. He couldn't even remember waking during the night.
Still, he got up and got dressed for school. The gentle bustle of awake life was already sounding from below, along with the drifting smell of the bitter, filter coffee Reborn drank first thing.
Opening the door, Tsuna came face to face with a girl, who was smiling timidly. Stood behind her, both hands on her shoulders, was a grinning Mukuro.
Tsuna honestly wasn't surprised anymore.
"Vongola," Mukuro greeted, sounding far too chipper for Tsuna who still felt as if he could sleep for another twelve hours. "Mukuro," Tsuna yawned into his palm. "Is this the beneficial person you wanted me to meet?"
"Oh, this? This is Chrome. I found her."
That sent alarm bells ringing in Tsuna's fuzzy head. Slowly, he lowered his palm.
"Mukuro, what do you mean you found her? You can't just take people from the street! Are you okay?" he directed this at Chrome, who nodded shyly.
"I didn't take her from the street," Mukuro sounded affronted, but the smile on his face was still far too devious to trust. "I took her from the hospital. Quite easily actually. They really should work on making their patients more secure."
"In no way does the fact you took her from a hospital change the fact that you took someone."
"It's okay," Chrome said quietly. "I'm quite happy with Mukuro-sama."
"Mukuro-sama," Tsuna repeated back at her. His head hurt. "Mukuro, what have you done."
Mukuro sniffed, lifting a hand to flip some of his hair. Tsuna wished he wouldn't be so dramatic first thing in the morning.
"Saved her life," he said imperiously. "Chrome here was in the intensive care unit following a horrific car accident that resulted in the damage of several of her organs. Her parents would have just left her there on life support for however long it took."
"Mukuro, you aren't a doctor. You can't decide whether or not someone is well enough to leave the hospital if they have multiple organ damage!"
"If you look a little closer," Mukuro began, placing his hands back on Chrome's shoulders. "I put her back together again. It gets so tediously boring being confined to this wonderful house."
"So you don't get arrested," Tsuna started.
"But!" Mukuro interrupted. "Chrome dear, who was in a coma, reached out to me! We made a wonderful, mutual agreement. I get to see what she does, hear what she does, and she gets to wake up perfectly healthy!"
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'terms and conditions apply' but Tsuna just sighed.
"Chrome, was it? Are you happy with these conditions?"
"Very," Chrome murmured softly.
"You don't have to call him Mukuro-sama," Tsuna added.
"He's done much for me in a short amount of time. I feel it's the least I can do." Chrome smiled. Tsuna felt something between his shoulders relax at the genuineness in her expression.
"Breakfast will be soon," he advised. "Don't let him keep you from meeting everyone else we have crammed into this house."
"As if I would ever miss a wonderful meal from the wonderful mama," Mukuro gasped, almost mockingly, but then he was steering Chrome away down the corridor.
Tsuna watched them go, wondering if he was still sleeping before deciding to leave them to their own devices for now. At least until Mukuro broke something or caused a ruckus.
Breakfast hadn't been as anticipated as Tsuna thought it would have been to his sleep addled self. He'd pushed food around, but entertained a few mouthfuls of toast and made sure to drink all of his water, if only to appease his mother.
It hadn't stopped her from jabbing a thermometer into his mouth without warning at one point, frowning at the slightly higher than normal but no more dangerous temperature.
"You tell the teachers if you feel any worse, Tsu-kun," Nana fussed, wishing she could keep her son home but knowing that his growing friendships and education were more important than a temperature less than two degrees above the norm. "I'll come pick you right up."
"We'll look after him," Yamamoto said enthusiastically, a hairsbreadth before Gokudera could and the resulting ribbing and banter between the two of them made Tsuna's head throb.
It took until only the second lesson of the day that Tsuna decided he probably really should have stayed home.
Starting off at an innocuous itch on the centre of his left palm, Tsuna reached for his pencil case and noted a black splotch marring his skin. Nausea curdled suddenly and unwanted in his stomach, a clear enough memory of suffering from a poisonous sickness that had let spiders crawl out from under his skin and chew him down to the bone.
But the only food he had eaten had been at home, and Bianchi was contrite enough now to keep her head ducked and her volatile opinion to herself unless it concerned either Reborn or her brother.
Tsuna clenched his hand into a palm, nails biting into his skin as he lifted his right into the air.
His voice was reedy as he asked when called upon, "May I be excused to the nurse?"
And perhaps, if he'd look a little less tired, a little less wrung out and bedraggled the teacher would have told him no. But she pursed her thin lips and agreed, before returning to the lesson, telling him not to spend his entire day wasted sleeping in the infirmary.
Tsuna gathered his things into his bag and debated whether or not he'd be gone long enough from class to need them on his person. Taking to his feet, the decision was abruptly ripped from his hands.
It was what Tsuna imagined a transitioning cutscene to be like. One moment he'd been climbing out of his chair, the next he was on his back on the cold tiled floor of the classroom, head throbbing and faces hovering over him.
" – hear me?" the face that was his teacher said.
"Yeah," Tsuna replied, his tongue feeling weird in his mouth, his mouth itself feeling like it was stuffed with cotton. He tried to get up, and hands gently guided him upwards so he was sitting.
"Stay on the floor for now," the teacher advised. "You didn't hit your head on the way down but it was a tumble down. Yamamoto has gone down to the office to call your mother."
Tsuna blinked slowly and groped for his bag, which Gokudera handed over, his eyes wide with worry. Tsuna fumbled out a bottle of water and took short drinks from it, trying to curb the ache that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Twisting the cap back on, he caught sight of what was once just a small black splotch on his hand was now a caricature of a skull grinning back at him.
As if his life wasn't weird enough already.
His mum picked him up quick enough, fretting all the while as she and the nurse herded him to the car, his wobbly legs thankful for the support. By the time he was home the fever had gone from mild to moderate, a sheen of sweat to his skin.
The skull had opened its maw, teeth stretching wide. Word by word, a sentence was crawling along his skin.
Tsuna kept his hand close to his side, only daring to read what it was telling him when he'd been ushered into his bedroom, the curtains drawn to let in just the barest light.
One day I'm afraid there will be no one left to care.
It was like a punch to the gut. Bile rose in Tsuna's throat and he swallowed back the intense urge to vomit. Staggering out of the bed, he eased the door open and called down, "Mama, have you seen Reborn?"
"He's in the kitchen, shall I send him up? You should be resting, not learning."
"I just have a quick question," Tsuna replied, and let himself crawl back into the bed.
Reborn was there faster than what a person of his size should be capable of.
"A mafia boss shouldn't get sick with the common cold," Reborn chided, and it was so normal Tsuna wanted to cry. Reborn thought he was just ill.
He thrust his hand out from the cocoon of blankets, fingers spread wide to display the words that curled up and around his wrist, expelled from the mouth of whatever had taken residence on his skin.
The look on Reborn's face wasn't comforting.
"How long has this been here?" he asked, tugging at the brim of his hat, words quiet and tight.
"The words since I've been home. The skull for just under half an hour."
Reborn's hand tightened on his hat.
"Gokudera should have known what it was. Why didn't you come home sooner?"
"I didn't show anyone," Tsuna withdrew his arm and moved to sling the other over his eyes. There was a new one, on his right hand, and what he was going to say next caught in his throat at the sight of it, arm held aloft.
Sometimes I wish the death could be real, to stop the pain for everyone.
Reborn saw it, if only because his attention was drawn to Tsuna's unnatural stillness.
"Stay here," he said, voice stern, a core of steel to it Tsuna hadn't heard before. And then he was gone before Reborn could explain what the words the skulls spelled out even meant.
Deep down though, Tsuna had a hunch, knew what the inside of his head looked like when it was spread across his skin like ink on a blank page. Secrets for all the world to see.
So he huddled down into his bed, drawing the covers over his head to block out the world. At the very least, while Reborn was gone he could rest his eyes and ignore the weight of his heavy heart.
Reborn didn't come back soon enough, a doctor in tow just to find Tsuna had taken a last breath just moments before, his skin a patchwork of secrets and guilt and shame.
"It's called Skullitis," the doctor, Shamal said, as he prepped a needle with something. "Although, I'm surprised to see someone alive with such an extensive spread."
There were words peeking through the collar of Tsuna's shirt, black against his pale skin, skin that made his bloodshot eyes all the more prominent.
Reborn's face was pinched, and there was something unnerving to his silence that made Shamal laugh anxiously.
"I don't normally treat men, but Reborn convinced me this was important. And I suppose you are the Vongola Decimo."
"Shamal," Reborn said, and in that moment his squeaky voice held something so terrifying that even Tsuna could barely refrain from recoiling.
"Of course, of course," Shamal tittered, and fell almost immediately silent as he rolled up Tsuna's sleeve and read the array of words scattered across sweaty skin.
"Don't try to read into them too much," Tsuna croaked. "It won't make much sense."
Shamal hesitated, but at Reborn's nod, he expertly inserted the tip of the needle into the crook of Tsuna's arm and pressed the plunger.
"It'll take a few hours for it all to flush completely out," Shamal said as he pressed a plaster into the spot of blood left behind. "But you shouldn't have any more lasting side effects other than feeling a little drowsy perhaps."
"Thank you," Tsuna mumbled, clumsy fingers rolling down the sleeve to hide again.
"Any later you might have suffered irreversible, fatal organ damage. The good news is, is that it won't happen again. It's rare, but generally a one off. Sort of like catching chicken-pox that can kill you."
"That's enough, Shamal," Reborn replied coldly. "I'm sure you can show yourself out the door. If I hear you bothering mama, you will regret it."
Shamal didn't stick around long enough to say goodbye, just gave a nervous smile and trotted away, not quite fast enough to be called a run.
When the front door slammed shut, Reborn turned to Tsuna and apologised.
Tsuna, still tired, confused, recovering, just blinked.
"I could have been here sooner. For that, you suffered."
"To be honest, Reborn, I went to sleep and didn't even realise I'd died. If there was pain, it wasn't there. I'm fine now."
"That is beside the point."
"Reborn there is no point. You – you can't protect me from every unforeseen thing that happen to crop up. Are you going to – to protect me cancer? From a car accident? From a brain aneurysm or something that make me drop dead with no warning?" Tsuna rubbed at his eyes. The exhaustion made him want to cry.
"Don't be unreasonable," Tsuna finally added. "I get that you'll want to keep me from being killed in any mafia related way, but there's no way you can control the world itself to stop the natural course of things from killing me."
Reborn made a sour face.
"You can't change the rules of the world," Tsuna said softly, sinking back into his pillows.
"No," Reborn begrudgingly agreed. "But when I'm done with you, you will."
the words had to be wrung out of my cold dead hands. this chapter did not want to be written.
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