He dies raging, choking on dirty blood and bitter disappointment, reaching out a hand that will never be taken, yearning for an acknowledgement he will never receive.
His last word is a childish plea for a connection he has been forever denied, and it burns fire-hot against tremblingly pale lips. Pain is his only association with the title, and so it is perhaps fitting that it hurts to so much as speak it aloud, this first and final time he gives in and allows such weakness.
When he next wakes, fully himself once more, he is immediately thrust into battle and given no time to acclimate, to come to terms with his revival, to truly understand what it means for him and his goals. He channels his anger-frustration-confusion into each blow, each powerful swing and parry, falling back on his age-old ideals as a knight and ignoring anything that might distract him from it.
Now, with Mukuro and his accomplices apprehended by those masked enforcers that even Reborn had been leery of provoking and his friends patched up and carted off by the Vongola medics, with his own wounds tended to and nothing to occupy his time until the next inevitable conflict, he has no choice but to confront the truth of the matter:
He is born again, a boy of fourteen and a homunculus of barely ten, whatever his outer appearance back then. He is an adult, maybe, or something resembling a man. A macabre mix of the two. He is Tsuna is Mordred is both is neither. He is at once an omen and a possibility, a good and bad end, the result of choices made and just remembered.
Tsuna is Mordred at his best, knight-worship and his mother's adoration, loyal comrades and a kingdom for the taking. Mordred without his inhumanity, unstained by the sin of his conception, unknowinging of heartache or tragedy.
Tsuna is what Mordred could have been, had Fate played him a kinder hand. Bright-eyed and bolstered by dreams of a better world, enchanted with chivalry and righteousness in a time where both seem to be sorely lacking, Tsuna practices kindness and compassion like it's a matter of course, to any and everyone, without the need to grudgingly bite back his dislike or reign in his darker impulses.
Tsuna is Mordred who had his right to rule acknowledged by a father who looked at him and saw more . Tsuna is Mordred whose father came back for him , who looked at him- at his blonde hair and red eyes, the curve of his jaw, the calluses on his fingers and the marrow of his bones, blood and brain and sinew, heart and soul- and found a successor, a son, something of value. Tsuna is Mordred whose father looked at him-
-and just this once, did not look away.
On the other side of the coin, Mordred is Tsuna whose mother knew nothing of unconditional love. Mordred is Tsuna whose birth was at least one parent's deepest regret ( -he is not quite sure which one ). Mordred is Tsuna whose idolization of knighthood was tarnished by the very man who represented the pinnacle of what it meant to be a knight.
Mordred is what Tsuna could have been, had Destiny found him wanting. Tainted and wounded, embittered by cold eyes and cruel words, Mordred is ambitious and talented, the obvious choice to inherit, and it is his arrogance and charm as well as his aching need for approval which stirs his fellow knights to rebel- so painfully, viscerally human when compared to their unfeeling doll of a King.
Mordred is Tsuna at his worst, world view shaken and his father's scorn, comrades felled and kingdom crushed beneath his heel in a fit of childish temper. Tsuna without his forgiveness, deprived of a loving childhood and space to grow and learn, ignorant of life outside the battlefield and his mother's schemes.
They are the same in essence, and it is only in their experiences do they differ. It is both easy and supremely difficult to reconcile Mordred's memories and identity with Tsuna's own. They're bleeding through, blurring at the edges. He doesn't know where Tsuna ends and Mordred begins. Perhaps there is no need to differentiate, at all.
Because...he died.
Mordred died on a hill of corpses, run through by his father's lance and that final cool dismissal, and "Tsuna" died the moment Mordred sparked to life again in that abandoned amusement park amidst bright orange flames. He is still Tsuna, but now he is Tsuna-who-was-Mordred. He can no more ignore the life that came before than he can keep the tide of grief and horror "Mordred" brought with him at bay.
So he doesn't.
He is Mordred, son of Arthur Pendragon. The Knight of Treachery. His name is known around the world. His tale has been told hundreds, thousands of times, many with different variations, in a myriad different tongues. But there is one constant: he is the villain. He is the harbinger of doom, the bringer of tragedy, the name forever associated with King Arthur's downfall. Of course, these retellings are treated as no more than stories and myths, with many liberties taken and key details changed to suit the teller's narrative, but…
Even the few who manage to get it right, or as close as centuries of embellishments and passage through word of mouth would allow, do not cast him in a hero's light. He is afforded sympathy and often pity, but it is the pity with which one looks upon a lame horse or particularly dimwitted child. No one believes in his cause or that his father was wrong to spurn him. They curse his name, or laugh at his foolishness, or shake their heads in disbelief at his audacity, and not one of them believes he is fit to be a King.
For the first time since his mother cupped his face and told him he was born to take his father's place, he wonders if she might have been mistaken.