noun: comfort, peace

Reborn stays behind with the Ninth, and Tsuna tries not to make it anything more than it is. They'd have a lot to talk about after the conversation he had with the Ninth, about him, or something else entirely, Tsuna doesn't actually know anything about what kind of relationship Reborn has with the Ninth.

He knows they're close, that it's more than a professional relationship, that there's complete trust and loyalty between them. Tsuna doesn't want to think about what that means for his relationship with Reborn.

He knows Reborn won't tell the Ninth anything that'll compromise him, and it's enough. He hasn't anything to tell even if he wanted to anyway, because as much as Tsuna is certain he wants to cut his ties with the mafia for good, and as much as Reborn figured it out at least at the same time he did… Tsuna doesn't know how he can possibly make that happen.

[He does.]

"I'm home."

"Welcome back." His mom stops at the doorway of the kitchen, looking at him, but he keeps walking. "You're pretty late, Gokudera-kun and the others were worried."

"Yeah. It's okay, I saw them outside."

"Did it go badly?" she asks softly.

Tsuna pauses on his way up the stairs. "I don't know."

"Okay." Her voice turns upbeat. "What about dinner?"

"Not hungry."

"Okay, but I'll leave some for you aside anyway in case you're hungry later."

"Thanks," Tsuna says, and climbs up the stairs again. He opens the door of his bedroom, and needs a moment to process the sight of Enma, neatly sitting at his low table, a glass of juice in front of him. "Enma-kun?" he shouts in surprise.

"It's my guard duty today, Tsuna-kun," Enma explains.

"Oh…" He smiles sheepishly. "Right. Sorry."

Enma tilts his head curiously. "What's wrong?"

"Ah, u—um…" Tsuna considers brushing it off, but it's not the words that come out of his mouth. "There's something I kinda want to talk about… if that's okay with you." Enma nods, and Tsuna sits next to him at the low table. "I was told by the Ninth… to decide whether I want to become the Boss of Vongola by the morning before the ceremony." Is it bad to dump all his mafia burden on Enma? Tsuna doesn't want to cross any boundaries, and it might be too soon to have this sort of serious talks with him, but Enma has agreed, and he's mafia too. More than that he's mafia like him, not out of choice as far as he can tell, and his words come out easy, freely, in a way he has never been able to talk about the mafia with anyone else before. "Ninth said to do as I wish, but… I could tell that he honestly wants me to become the boss and revert the family back to how it was during the days of Primo."

Enma makes himself more comfortable, pulling up his knees against his chest, and wrapping his arms around them. "Vongola Ninth said that?"

"Yeah, but—"

"That's good then, isn't it?" Tsuna blinks, catching his eye. "Because you said you don't want to become the boss, and now the Ninth told you you're free to refuse."

"Oh…" Tsuna looks away. "Yeah, it's good."

"But it's not, is it?"

Tsuna curls his hands into fists, gripping his pants between his fingers. "It's just… Enma-kun, it's the right thing for me to not want to become the boss, isn't it?" He looks up at Enma again, earnest, because he wants nothing but honesty from him, even if he disagrees with him. "It's the right thing to do, isn't it?"

Enma marks a pause, but his voice gives Tsuna no reasons to doubt him. "Yeah, I think it is."

Tsuna relaxes, nodding. "But what if… what if doing the right thing for you, for the people you care about, means bad things will happen to other people? What if to do the right thing you have to do it in a bad way? Would you still be doing the right thing then?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know." [He does.] "And if I refuse to become the boss, when the Ninth says I'm the only one who can make Vongola better… Wouldn't everything bad Vongola do after that be because of me?"

"How would that be your fault?" Tsuna says nothing, a weak smile pulling at his lips. He had said the same thing to the Ninth, that it wasn't his responsibility for him to bear, but he can't get the Ninth's words out of his head anyway. If he really has the power to make a difference for the better, isn't it his responsibility to act on it? "How are you supposed to make Vongola better anyway?"

"The Ninth said that in Primo's time, Vongola was a vigilante group created to protect the people, and it only began to change starting with the second generation."

"Was it?" Enma asks, his voice off, cold, and Tsuna frowns. Enma looks away, pulling his knees closer against his chest, hunching his shoulders. "And you'd do that, Tsuna-kun? If you become the Vongola Boss. You'd make it a vigilante group again?"

"But I don't want that," the words spill out of Tsuna's mouth, unbidden. Enma glances at him, and Tsuan widens his eyes, horrified. "No, that's not what I meant!" he hurries to say, leaning on the table. "Of course I'd try to make it better, but I—it just doesn't feel fair that it all comes down to me, you know? That I'm just supposed to agree to pay the price of leading Vongola through that process, that I have to. And—" Enma's face is unreadable, not quite closed off, but Tsuna's voice wavers, quieting down. He sits back down on his heels, taking his hands off the table. "I think you know, Enma-kun… that I'm not fit to be a mafia boss! I suck at sports and studies and everything else… And I really don't think I can stand above people and give out orders…"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Eh? Ah—" Tsuna raises his hands in a pacifying way. "Sorry, was that too much? It's just that I don't have anyone I can talk to about mafia stuff, you know? Not like this anyway." He lowers his hands, smiling. "It's just… Hayato actually believes that I should become the boss—or did, once. And Reborn is practically here for that reason too. And remember what you said to me at the shrine? I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, because it was the first time I was told to run away." Tsuna puts his hand behind his head, embarrassed all of a sudden, but he's genuinely grateful and happy to have met Enma. "You're the only one that understands what it's like for a member of the mafia to hate it."

"Don't put me in the same category as you."

"Eh…?" Tsuna stills, his smile falling from his face. Enma isn't looking at him, his usual apathetic look on his face, but there's a dark look to it too.

"Unlike your lot, my family has had a lot of scary things inflicted upon us by other mafia families."

"What do you mean…?"

"The Shimon family has dealt with a lot of crap from other families because we're famous as a small and weak family." Enma looks him in the eye, and his eyes are harsh, angry, accusatory. "You could never understand our pain, Tsuna-kun."

Tsuna flinches, snapping his head down. He digs his fingers into his thighs, ashamed at his carelessness. Enma may hate the mafia like him, but his hate goes much deeper than his, Tsuna could tell every time he has caught only glimpses of it whenever it slipped past Enma's detached attitude. He opens his mouth to apologize. "That's not fair," he hears himself say instead.

"Stop talking to me about fairness." Tsuna flinches again, tensing. He didn't know Enma could sound like that. "What do you know about how unfair the mafia can be?"

"How could I not?"

"You're Vongola," Enma says, spitting out the word like—like what? Tsuna's never heard anger like that—no, he has. He's heard it before, in Mukuro's voice. Even the hurt under the anger is there too. "And their precious, only successor too. The World's Greatest Hitman himself has taken you by your hand and safely lead you through the mafia ever since you had to become part of this world. Or am I wrong?"

He isn't. Tsuna has seen times and times again how much he has been spared from the worst of the mafia, how much worse his situation could be right now. He raises his head, holding it steady even when he meets Enma's eyes again. Enma is right, but that doesn't have to mean Tsuna is wrong. "I've met my hardships still. Went through painful experiences too. Have you ever killed someone, Enma-kun?"

Enma widens his eyes, appalled, his anger subsiding only to flare harsher. "Do you even—" He forcefully purses his lips, holding his breath, and compassion flickers across his eyes before raw grief drowns it whole. "Yes, I have. Have you ever lost someone, Tsuna-kun? Have you ever had to watch them being taken away from you, not able to do anything?"

Tsuna's heart sinks in his stomach, his throat closing up in horror. How literally he meant it? How horrible was it? "I haven't," he makes himself says, keeping any unwanted feelings out of his voice. "I'm sorry you had to."

Enma looks away first, his body tensed, and Tsuna averts his eyes from him too. The silence stretches between them, heavy and strained, until Enma eventually speaks up. "I'm sorry you had to, too." Tsuna says nothing, grateful as he is for Enma taking a step towards him too, but he doesn't let himself hope. "We're not the same."

Tsuna nods. "We aren't." Enma and him are so very similar, but they're different in the one way that might make their similarities not matter at all.

Enma is not mafia out of choice, and he hates it for everything it has taken from him.

Tsuna is not mafia out of choice, and he hates it for everything it has taken from him, but it could have taken so much more and so much worse from him, and nothing it took isn't something he can't take back from it, or something he can't heal from with time.

[Enma hates the mafia so much, and at times, in the way he looks at him, in the way he says his name, it's like he holds him personally responsible for it.]

"But—" Enma starts, and Tsuna holds his breath. "There are times when I feel that I could be friends with you, Tsuna-kun. Tsuna-kun is different from the other scary mafia people."

Relief washes over Tsuna so strongly, not only he hopes again, but it's belief they can make this work. "I already consider us friends!" he says, putting all the conviction he feels in his voice. Enma might not see him as his friend yet, but he is already Tsuna's friend, and he knows they can make it work despite their differences. And even if they can't, he wants to try to make it work anyway. "I've never met anyone in the mafia who I can relate to as much as I can relate to you! And the others too…!" Enma looks so surprised, Tsuna lets himself smile, lets himself sounds happy and hopeful, because Enma has to know he means every word. "I mean, Rauji-kun is playing along as Lambo's subordinate, and so Lambo's really excited every day. Onii-san has formed a friendly rivalry with Aoba-san, so he's even more energetic than before. Takeshi's got a new member on the baseball team, and he seems like he's having fun every day. And Hayato's really happy that he was able to talk to Shitt P-san. Even without the ceremony," Tsuna finishes, beaming, because if this is the end of it, he wants Enma to know how grateful he is for the happy moments they've had, "I really think it's great that we were all able to meet each other!"

Enma looks so stunned, Tsuna's heart clenches a little. Maybe they're similar in that way too, and it's the first friends Enma makes outside his family.

Enma's face softens, and Tsuna catches a glimpse of his smile even as he hides it behind his knees. "You should just do whatever you want. What you think is right. Even if doing it in a bad way is the only way you can do it, even if it'll mean bad things for other people." I don't know, Tsuna almost says again, but he does. "You should," Enma says again, as if he heard his thoughts. "Because sometimes selfishness means caring, means loving. Means protecting. Ruthlessness too." He marks a pause, something passing between them as they look into each other's eyes. "And if you feel you have to shoulder whatever will happen because of it, then wouldn't you do that easier knowing you only did it because you felt it was the right thing to do?"

"Maybe," Tsuna says, taking in his words, the Ninth's voice fading away as he does. "Thank you."

"I think I'd understand you a lot better too."

Tsuna misses a beat, the way Enma said it making him pause, but he smiles, because they can make their friendship work. They can. "I'd like that. And I hope you'll let me understand you too going forwards."

A/N: I'm getting these two boys somewhere, but yes, they'll have to go through a bit of conflict first.

Also good news, but I finished writing this story! So just settle comfortably for the last stretch.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Any and all review are appreciated.

Thank you for reading!

- Hope

Answers to Guests' comments:

Mori: exactly! and at the same time their situations are just similar enough they can't help but bond with each other and want to become friends. thank you for your comment!