Chrome watches Mukuro go.
Sawda, when she glances back at him, looks properly sad, without the blankness there'd been on his face in the mindscape.
The trust and warmth and love linger in her mind. She can tell that they were just a memory. Even with the vulnerability Sawada is willing to offer by the promise of letting her into his mind, he can't trust her like the trust in the memory - they don't know each other that well yet. But it was a promise to try. For her and for . . .
Chrome hums and flexes her hand, a little sore from how hard she'd tried to squeeze Mukuro's hand.
She starts planning.
()
Reborn had - through some stroke of luck, bad for him or for good for the kid he can't decide - been the one to discover and spirit away Byakuran. He'd been a crying, panicking ball of Flaming child in the middle of the street, right in front of the alleyway Reborn had just offed his target in. Reborn's first instinct had been to shoot him. He was drawing way too much attention to the location. In all honesty, when he wasn't being paid to mind them, Reborn really wasn't the biggest fan of children, crying or quiet.
Unfortunately for him, he remembered at the last second that Aria had asked him not to "cause unnecessary civilian casualties Uncle Reborn, please? I need this kept quiet".
So instead Reborn tunneled through the crowd, adjusting his clothes and focusing his mindset to project the image he wants the crowd to see. By the time he wraps his arms around the boy and exclaims, "There you are! I've been looking all over for you!", all anyone without some sort of pesky mind-guarding defenses will see from him is the most generic middle-aged Japanese man they can think of.
The kid had taken one look at him and cried, "Reborn!" before twisting around to hug him back.
Looking back, Reborn can see that this is the point where he really should have figured out how bad things would get.
Two conversations and three hotel rooms later, he'd managed to pry enough out of Byakuran that he'd decided taking the kid back to Aria was the best course of action. If she wanted him to minimize civilian casualties, she could deal with the clingy child who refused to talk about what Family he was from or how he got to Japan.
He'd dragged the kid back to Italy, dumped him on Aria, and promptly been witness to the Cervello showing up out of literally thin air to present the kid with the Mare Sky Ring. They stuck around only long enough to make sure that Byakuran knew what the ring did before they disappeared. Byakuran had then explained what the ring did to Reborn and Aria, which soothed some of Reborn's suspicions, and did a lot to raise new ones.
Well, Reborn thought, not my problem, and he . . . well, he wouldn't normally put it this crudely, but looking back it definitely felt like what he was doing was fucking off. There was a multitude of contracts available to him as the World's Strongest Hitman! And he really didn't want to deal with the kid anymore.
And then Byakuran called him crying one night because Aria had apparently decided she valued her sleep over the (admittedly low given her status as his niece) threat of Reborn coming after her and had given him Reborn's number. Because apparently, the sole living adult that he trusts right now from all those parallel words out there that he could see was Reborn. Because apparently if Reborn's dead, the world is fucked - Byakuran's own words.
And obviously he didn't stop calling Reborn.
And Reborn, perhaps, maybe, came to like and trust him, at least a little.
All of this is to say, when Byakuran says, "Ah, Tsunayoshi-kun. You always do give the best hugs.", Reborn finally relaxes a little. He'd called Byakuran beforehand to check if he'd met Tsuna enough in parallel worlds to do a possession check. And he'd checked up on Byakuran enough in person, gotten video updates on him from Aria enough that he recognizes the tone in Byakuran's voice when he talks about Tsuna, brief as the few sentences are.
Byakuran trusts Tsuna the same way he trusts Reborn. Not completely, but still, like his world revolves around him.
It's odd when the Tiraboschi boy runs from Tsuna following his checkup, but not Reborn's problem.
()
Chrome hops out of the train car first, the cantankerous old woman there to teach Sawada his fire magic or whatever "the old fashioned way" following right behind. Chrome ignores her and the rest of the people piling out of the train car as she makes a bee line to the pile of Sawada's other guardians collapsed in a pile in the shade of a tree.
"Wake up," she whispers harshly, prodding Sasagawa on the edge of the mess with the tow of her shoe.
"We're resting," someone further in mumbles.
"Well, I'm pretty sure Sawda found a another one of us," Chrome says, daintily stepping around the pile a bit so she can kick at Bovino's feet.
"Another one of what?" someone else mumbles.
"A guardian," Chrome hisses. "I think he found another me, and you're the ones who said this was so important when you gave me that talk-"
"Wait what?" Gokudera asks, sitting up abruptly, making Bovino grumble as he's abruptly moved.
"Sawada found another guardian," Chrome says.
"Wait," Bovino says, squinting muzzily at her from where his head now rests in Gokudera's lap. "But there's already six of us - he's got one of each type. He doesn't need any more."
"That's not true," Hibari Kyoya-san says. Even he looks exhausted, propped up against the trunk of the tree. "Neither of those things you said are true."
"What?" Gokudera demands, twisting around. "But they always-"
Looking put out, Hibari Kyoya-san says, "When the Sawadas do manage to activate their family magic, people connected to them start to get the rainbow fire magic too. It's like a disease. And it does not limit itself to one of each type or even just six people. We've even had the occasional orange fire people pop up. I don't know what framework you're operating off of, but by what the Hibari Family has observed, it sounds like something socially imposed rather than the rules inherent to the magic."
There's a moment of silence, then Yamamoto says, "Wow Hibari-san! That's the most I've ever heard you say!"
"Shut up," Hibari Kyoya-san says, his face right red. "I was just saying that no one's getting kicked out."
"I guess a socially imposed framework makes sense," Gokudera is muttering as he starts pulling up grass. "Enrico and Federico would have probably completed their set if there was a magical incentive for doing so-"
"Alright, not the problem," Chrome interrupts. "Set completeness or no, he found another guardian and you're the ones who know what to do about that."
"Why are you so sure he found another guardian?" Bovino asks, grabbing Gokudera's hand before he can drop the grass on his face.
"He shared a memory with us - with both of us. When we went into his mind to check for possession again - as if it wasn't clear that he's really not possessed. And he made it clear that it was for both of us, not just me," Chrome says. "And it felt . . . warm. It was a memory, but it felt like he trusted me. Like he loved me. And it was for both of us."
"That's-" Gokudera and Bovino trade looks.
"Name!" Hibari Kyoya-san barks as his minder, doing a fairly good job of keeping out of everyone's way, sighs.
"Rokudo Mukuro, from some Mafia family. He's the . . . Fuuta-certified? Top - Mafia Top Expert in . . . Possession, and something else, I don't remember. He was there because of that, to check Sawda for possession again."
Hibari Kyoya-san immediately turns to his minder and she sighs again. "Kyoya-chan, no," Hibari Ipin-san says. "Yes, I do know who she's talking about, and no, we can't kidnap him just so your Sawada is happy."
"But-"
"I'm not even objecting on a moral ground, much as I'm sure your parents would like me to. No, Rokudo-san has a reputation, both on his own as a survivor of the Estraneo Debacle, and yes, as the Fuuta-rated Mafia Top Expert in Minds, Spirits, and Possessions, and as the member of the Tiraboschi Family that propelled them to the honor of being accepted as part of the contracted security for Mafia Land. We are not risking an international incident and possibly lasting enmity with the Vongola Family and Mafia Land over this."
They're all thinking the same thing.
Alright then. We'll take him ourselves.