#proof apollo wear hawaiian shirts

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus. (Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei

Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira

Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

CHAPTER 10: DO YOU GOT ROOM FOR ONE MORE TROUBLED SOUL

The Vindice was the culmination of parts. The chewed-up, spat out parts of what remained of the Best the world had to offer. The Giants of their time, whose shoulders now act as the stairs of success, steep and treacherous. In the same manner, the Vindice was the culmination of broken, dazzling minds. 

Bermuda Von Vichtenstein was no stranger to eccentrics, in a past life he had dabbled his fair share, and his kin were cut from the same cloth. 

But these men. These men that Ryohei Sasagawa had dragged in, sopping with an untimely downpour, were unbearable.

Verde, the supposed hidden trump card, all but crawled over the metal skeletons, getting shoe-marks on the fresh weld and jostling the delicate wiring. On his knees, Verde turned components around and upside down, inspecting everything like some sort of uncouth child would a shiny seashell. Only it was the very fragile, very important pieces of the Machine.

Water splashed Bermuda’s cheek and he bristled. 

Reborn, the pest, slicked his wet hair back from his face with all the pomp and flamboyance of a preening peacock. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over his arm, exposing his dress shirt that had turned tastefully transparent. He was dripping water on the floor. He hadn’t even wiped his sandy shoes.

Ryohei Sasagawa, the instigator, grinned at the two things he had brought upon Bermuda, joyous in his ‘progress’.

“Do you know where we have more copper solder?”

“Storage 3.”

“Ah, good. I’m so glad we’re labelling the rooms now.”

“Truly, it makes life so much simpler.”

Bermuda didn’t react.

Instead, Bermuda gritted his teeth against the loud clapping that came from Verde as he sat upon the floor, his glasses still rain-dotted and shoes crunchy with gravel and sand.

“Give me my design!” He called out, fisting a pen out of his pocket as his socks squelched. “Blueprints! Notes, surely you have them, I would never create something without the relevant calculations.”

“You’ll have to ask their code breakers, Verde. It seems even the Vindice cannot distinguish your chicken scratch,” Reborn chimed idly, then he stopped, blinked, and looked at his watch. “Ah, right on time. Pardon me, dear Ryohei, I hate to leave you in such lacking company, but I’ve something to pick up.” 

“Sure! Oh, dude, while you’re up there, could you swing by nonna Hellena’s shop? She’s got that dinner I ordered waiting for us,” Ryohei said, and rubbed his hands together eagerly. 

“Will do,” Reborn inclined his head before he disappeared through a swirling mass, courtesy of a Vindice ghoul. 

Ryohei bounced on his feet as he watched Verde all but wrestle a stack of notebooks and folded papers from inside a well-stuffed folder. The Vindice codebreakers floated around him, tattered bandages stained with ink, spectacles and monicals smudged and the frames rusty.

Verde, ghastly pale, looked right at home as he adjusted his glasses and scratched the stubble on his chin. He leant the notebook up against that massive metal base and spread out the folded blueprints. Eyes, quick as lightning and just as bright, flitted across between crooked penmanship and the strict ruled lines of diagrams, ratios exact, footnotes copious. 

Ryohei looked utterly elated as Verde called for paper, and — to Ryohei’s delight, and Jaeger's gripe — began making more notes in that same, abhorrent handwriting. 

“Astonishing,” said a ghoul that loomed over Verde’s shoulder, spectacles glinted red from the fresh solder burnt overhead. “Who taught you to write?”

“No one. I taught myself,” Verde uttered, and started a new page.

“Shame. I would’ve much liked to have them shot.”

Ryohei grinned.

☀

For three days, Verde didn’t leave that amphitheatre of metal skeletons and solder for anything short of a bathroom break. He poured over those documents, reverse engineering his own future-thought to find exactly what the Vindice were missing. 

Because that was their issue. There was something missing. 

The composition and procedure for the glass walls of the Machine. It wasn’t illegible, or convoluted, or coded— it was missing.

…Or, more specifically: Excluded. 

Verde stared, cross-legged on the uneven stone floor of the amphitheatre. In front of him, the pages were spread out in an array. He blinked and moved a page, unfurled another large sheet with the Machine drawn in bright white ink. 

Still, he found no indication of a method, or even an allusion. He was baffled. Verde would never forget to include something so important. He had seen the original package, every paper and file crammed into the small, beige bundle. He, and whoever he had worked with, had been adroit in ensuring every necessary detail fit in place. 

Verde frowned. 

The air in the amphitheatre was moist, perpetually chilled-wet, the walls sparkled with condensation. Verde was pretty sure his pants were damp, his shirt had long become that specific kind of uncomfortable that came from the lack of dedicated moisture sensors.

It was night, then. It got colder in the Vindice caves when the sun went down. 

He was close, Verde could feel it. It was like lightning in his lungs, the smell of ozone on his hands. In a few days, maybe a few hours, Verde would make a breakthrough.

A vibration in his pocket. 

Instantly, Verde was irked. That livewire in his veins died to a low buzz. His focus was broken. This would add another hour to his discovery.

His pocket vibrated again and, with no less than great reluctance, Verde put his future-notebook down. Verde grimaced as he read the notification that blipped across his PDA.

☀

Deep within the catacombs of the Vindice’s Simone Base, the quarters of the only Suns for miles glowed with warmth and the soft scent of cardamom. 

Reborn reclined comfortable across his pile of plush pillows, silken pyjama shirt unbuttoned just right and just a touch too tight around the chest. A tasteful flash of the edge of a nipple. The waist of his pants rode low, teasing his Adonis belt and the strap of Calvin Klein. 

Ryohei grinned as he watered the potted tree in the corner of their quarters, the UV lamp that hung overtop almost eye-searing when compared to the soft, amber bulbs Reborn had selected for the space. The nonna from Ryohei’s favourite restaurant had given the small tree to them as a ‘housewarming’ present, some kind of Simone-style magnolia that boasted red-green-orange leaves all at once. 

“Wow! Look, there’s a bud! It’s gonna flower to the extreme!” Ryohei cheered and poured more seaweed fertiliser into the soil. 

Reborn drummed his fingers on his knee, impatient. Snubbed.

Because Ryohei wasn’t talking to Reborn. No, not this time. Ryohei had seemed to be utterly rapt with another man recently, someone else in his heart and in his hands—

Leon the Chameleon reached out from Ryohei’s arm to gently grab a green-gold leaf in his three-fingered foot, investigative. Then, Leon slowly plodded his way to bask beneath the UV bulb.

“Look at you go, little dude! Self-care!” Ryohei boomed, gassing Leon up as he sat there, tail curled in content.

Under the pile of pillows, Reborn’s pager vibrated once. Reborn stopped drumming.

He frowned as he read the message, thumb running across the black, metal shell. Reborn looked over to Ryohei who bustled about the room, never one to settle easy even so late at night.

Ryohei rinsed out the watering can and set it aside before he proceeded to wipe down every surface to an inch of its life, getting between nooks and crannies for dirt that wasn’t there. He paced, steps light and springy. Then Ryohei dropped to the floor and started counting as he alternated between push-ups and sit-ups.

Reborn rested his cheek on his fist and watched. Ryohei had been restless since Verde had arrived. Ryohei wanted progress and Verde was taking his sweet time down in the dome. 

The pager beeped again. Reborn was tempted to let the damned thing slip between the bed and the wall. 

“Who’s trying to call you? Is it important? You haven’t taken any jobs in a while, is that what it’s about?” Ryohei asked, peering over the edge of the bed.

Reborn blinked at him. Ryohei disappeared, then he popped up again, then dipped, then returned. Still doing push-ups. Still burning with energy. 

Reborn huffed affectionately and rolled onto his belly, a throw pillow hugged to his chest in a way that squished his pectorals into cleavage. 

Ryohei’s eyes flicked; up, down, up. Then he disappeared again.

Reborn grinned.

“I take on jobs exactly when I wish to, my dear Ryohei,” he said slowly, and Ryohei smiled when he came back up as if to say ‘of course’. “But it does seem like something has come up. Otherwise, I doubt I’d be called upon.”

“Is it something cool?”

“Unlikely. At most, it’ll be mildly interesting. Nothing like I get from you, my Ryohei.”

Ryohei snorted, “Not everyone has a Machine to save the world! Give ‘em a chance, Reborn!”

Reborn hummed, “I suppose. And not everyone is from the future.”

Ryohei didn’t pause, biceps working to take his weight, shoulders flexed, back muscles taut. His posture was perfect, flat enough to eat a meal off of.

“Ah, I guess you wanna talk about that now, huh?” Ryohei laughed awkwardly. “I said I was sorry! I forgot!”

“And then you forgot for three days more,” Reborn all but purred, and Ryohei pouted. 

“We got busy.”

“Oh yes, so busy. Running around, showing Leon the whole of Simone Island.”

Ryohei gave a loud whine and flopped on his back. Reborn let out a laugh and peered down at the man below, splayed out with arms wide, warm skin flushed with the workout. Underneath him, Reborn could see the cold tiles mist, the heat of Ryohei’s skin leaving a shadow in his wake. 

“So, Ryohei Sasagawa. Who were you, before you were mine?” 

Ryohei stared up at Reborn, at the way the amber lights played on the edge of pale, silken pyjamas. Ryohei knew those pyjamas were smooth against skin, cool to the touch until early in the morning, just at dawn, then that silk had taken on the heat of two Suns under the same sheets.

“Well,” Ryohei uttered, pondering on where to begin. “I was born in this town called Namimori. My dad ran a gym, my mum worked for the local newspaper. I have a sister— but you knew that.”

“What is her name?” Reborn asked, his cheek rested on his arm.

“Kyoko! She’s the sweetest thing, you’d like her!”

Would like her. Does like her. Will like her. 

“I was the captain of my boxing club in middle and high school. Did a few semesters of university and then dropped out, I’m just not built for studying,” Ryohei continued, trampling that panging thought. “But that was fine! Boss was too scared to go to Italy alone anyway, no way was I leaving my little bro stranded!”

Reborn’s fingers played with the decorative embroidery stitch of their sheets, soft threat against his fingertips. Ryohei watches his fingers move as he talks, eyes bright with an edge as soft as the thread as he reminisces. He’s eager, he’s jovial. Everything he’s kept bottled up pouring forth.

But still, no names. So careful, his Ryohei. Like a hammer in the hands of a stonemason.

“How old were you when you joined your Family?” Reborn asked, hearing ‘middle school’ so many times. 

“Fifteen! There was this big inheritance issue between Boss and his adopted cousin and, wow, they nearly levelled the school! Had a bunch of Mists around to hide everything.” Ryohei laughed, his belly jumping. “My fight— I was in this big cage. Real cool set-up with a bunch of really bright, hot lights, I couldn’t see! So I went and shattered them using the salt crystals from my sweat!”

Reborn blinked, and let his eyes drift to the dip in Ryohei’s clavicle. The UV light in the corner glowed a soft white light which pressed against Ryohei’s skin. Then his eyes snapped back to Ryohei’s face, the quiet prolonged. 

Ryohei laid there, arms spread like a crucifixion, breath slow. He looked dazed, distant. The sacrificial lamb of his Set.

Reborn didn’t utter a word. Not of encouragement, intrigue or comfort. 

The UV light snapped off with a click. The timer run down.

“Let’s go to bed, Ryohei,” Reborn said finally.

Ryohei’s fist clenched. Left-hand side. Sometimes he complained about it aching. ‘Early-onset arthritis’ a doctor had told him once upon a time, because that was what happened when you shattered your fist. 

“Let’s go to bed, my dear Ryohei.”

Ryohei took a breath through his lips, tasting cardamom and smoke and summertime air even so deep in the caves. 

“I’m still their big brother,” he said. “I’m still their big brother. Even if I never will be again.”

When Ryohei settled into bed, it was to the cool touch of a silken pyjama shirt and the scalding brand of skin. And as he closed his eyes and drifted, Ryohei felt warmth lay over his still-clenched fist. Felt that heat seep into his skin and soothe the ache in the joints. 

Ryohei hoped if he didn't say anything, Reborn wouldn't let go. 

Ryohei didn't know if he could do it. Again.

☀

A line of townhouses made of cut stone and limewash paint. Old, but well kept, their windows aglow with a warm, yellow light as a summer’s night took the town. Shadows cut the yellow glass, children and adults, families in silhouette as they set their tables for dinner and toasted to another good day gone.

Taste the air. Count the doors. 

Reborn’s shoes clacked against the uneven cobblestone as he walked the street. He took a breath and tasted fog, tasted lilacs. There was one door too many. 

“This is entirely unnecessary,” Verde grumbled, scratching at a notebook with a pen running low on ink. 

Reborn didn’t deign to answer him. For the past two hours of travel, he had been making a fine effort in ignoring the fact that Verde existed. Reborn reached for the doorknob and swung it open.

Verde’s shoes scuffed the stone stairs loudly as they entered the foyer, and Reborn heard the moment those footsteps all but disappeared. The smell of lilacs and damp came stronger. It seeped into their clothes— Reborn had to remind himself to let it happen, let it breathe into his lungs.

They were meeting in Viper’s territory. They were easily the most skittish of the group, the ‘team’, so it was no surprise that Reborn and Verde were met with thorough investigation.

Reborn stepped over a tentacle that slithered across the floor. It made way for Verde who walked on blindly.

The door at the end of the hall seemed to fade in and out of sight, like eyes adjusting in flickering light. The hall tilted, flexed like a gulping throat, the carpet squelched underfoot thick with saliva—

“I see you made it,” Viper grumbled as Reborn and Verde entered the room. 

Viper was slumped a bit in their chair, seven seats wrapped around a large circular table. Their hood was up, eyes obscured, hands out of sight. 

“You never call unless it’s important,” Reborn said and pulled himself a chair. He sat, one knee crossed over the other. “I hope this holds true. I have places I’d much rather be.”

Verde dropped himself into another seat and immediately started using the table space, pulling out more notebooks and scraps of paper from his pockets and spreading them around. He muttered something, before grabbing a blank paper and proceeded to fill it with symbols and code.

Reborn glazed around quickly. It seemed he had been fashionably late. 

Every one of the other seats, save two, had been occupied by the rest of their company. Fon sat comfortably as he waited for the meeting to begin, his hands tucked into his sleeves and his eyes closed lightly. Under the table, Reborn could see his foot just barely bounce with restlessness. 

Beside him was Lal Mirch, arms crossed over her chest and chin raised to show severe, steady eyes. Her uniform was tight to her, hair pinned back and sleek. There was a thin chain around her neck, barely peeking out from beneath her collar. 

Reborn quirked his brow. That was new.

On Fon’s other side, Skull rocked in his chair. The young man balanced precariously on the back legs, arms raised to disperse weight as boredom crawled into his bones. 

And, in the last seat, sat Luce. Always early, always eager to welcome everyone personally. Luce smiled at them as they all got comfortable. In the centre of the table sat a plate of sugar-dusted scones, cream and jam supplied with spoons embellished with the Giglio Nero coat of arms. You could feel it on your tongue, rich with cream and sweet with jam. 

The basket sat untouched. Reborn could smell her perfume, some kind of tangerine blend. Bright and citrusy. 

“It’s so good to see you all again,” Luce beamed as everyone settled and Skull’s chair clattered as he rightened himself to attention. “Viper, would you like to begin?”

At her bay, Viper cleared their throat. 

“We’ve been posed a new request,” Viper began and a scroll unfurled along the centre of the table. “A set of artefacts. Somewhere in Brazil. The amount they are willing to spend is exorbitant.”

Reborn relaxed into his chair with little regard for the crusty parchment and flamboyant script. Rich eccentrics with a hankering for traditionalism were in no short supply. 

“This is something that can be done solo?” Fon pondered, reading the curling cursive seemingly cast by a quill. 

“Unfortunately no,” Viper murmured and indicated a map as four points took a purple glow of their influence. “The four artefacts are connected and react in tandem when touched. As soon as one is displaced, the others will alert the guards. All four will have to be taken at once.”

“Several kilometres apart,” Lal Mirch said and traced the map's key to get an idea of scale. “Too far for your illusions then?”

Viper pointedly did not respond. 

“So it’s a smash and grab! Easy money!” Skull crowed and crossed his arms behind his head. 

“Read the stipulations, newbie,” Reborn sighed. 

Skull leant over and squinted at the page. It was times like these Reborn wondered if the youngest of their merry band had ever taken an eye test. 

The words ‘covert’ were emphasised. Whoever wanted these artefacts didn’t want the original custodians to know they were gone until it was too late.

Reborn read the payment statement and wondered if it was worth it. An 11-12 hour flight to Brazil and then whacking around in the mosquito-infested, South American jungle when he could be enjoying a night in with Ryohei, prying stories and whines from smiling lips. 

After all, Reborn had yet to hear about himself. Where would Reborn be in thirty years, pushing fifty-five? And how he had played a role in Ryohei’s young life, a role so large he had whispered “Reborn” while kneeling on a church’s floor. How he had made him look happy.

Reborn tried to imagine it himself, older, mature, greying at the temples. Tried to imagine how he had entangled with Ryohei, young and eager to impress, to break out into the world like nothing short of a big bang.

Cute as it was, recalling those young eyes from the photos in Ryohei’s suitcase, Reborn was glad he had met this Ryohei. His Ryohei. Tall and loud and muscled and eye-searingly bright.

Reborn liked looking up.

Skull made a loud noise at something Lal Mirch said and threw his hands up in the air, nearly knocking Viper’s candelabra. The shift in lighting brought Reborn back to present, and with him, a low lying…dissatisfaction. 

Reborn tilted his head forward and let the brim of his hat cover his eyes. He observed. Skull laughed as Lal Mirch half-heartedly attempted to organise a strategy with Viper whose face was lemon-pinched at the concept of cooperation. Fon breathed in deep as Verde’s pages kept piling up and crawled to encroach into his space. And overwatching it all with a smile and a warm, motherly gleam in her eye, was Luce.

Ah. That was it. 

They were lacking. No drive, no fire under their heels. He had been spoilt recently.

Reborn frowned, his Flame stirred. 

Luce looked at him. Eyes wide and alert. 

“Is something the matter, Reborn?” She asked.

There was something in her tone, but Reborn was glad for the invitation. 

“I’d much like to bring someone along,” he said, airy and casual. Like he wasn’t offering to add another person to their already precarious balance. Like his Flame wasn’t flickering and sweeping, licking at the underside of his ribs with the scent of Dual Guardianship.

Like she could smell it, Lal Mirch turned her head first. Everyone else was slow to follow. 

Reborn regarded the woman out of the corner of his eye. Lal Mirch was interested. Her Flame hissed like the white noise of rainfall.

Verde glanced at Reborn with a raised brow.

Reborn remembered how Ryohei had laid out on the floor with arms wide like Icarus after a fall. His voice sad-happy-nostalgic and heavy as he spoke of a Family of a future long past. How he spoke gently of his Sky, too immature and inexperienced. Of his Mists, always willing to enshroud him. Of his Rain, Storm, Cloud and little Lightning. A Set too small for him, that he still wanted to cradle in his hands and protect from the world— 

Reborn looked upon those Flames before him. Purities of the highest degree, size almost colossal, and with an individual drive near unmatched. And a vast Sky who welcomes even Reborn with open arms. 

He could imagine Ryohei at the table, another chair at his right-hand side. Almost seamlessly in place, warming the Set from the inside and setting them on fire in just the right way to send them running for greatness. 

“Well—” 

Luce’s voice broke through. It cracked unpleasantly, caught off guard. 

“It is…certainly something to think about!” Luce smiled. Reborn watched her slide her hands off the table, hidden clenched in her lap. “I’m so glad you’ve found someone you like so much Reborn!”

The ‘but’ hung in the air. 

No one said a word.

Reborn saw Lal Mirch fix her collar, that little chain around her throat now completely out of sight. 

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: “The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus. (Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Author: @leftnotright

[lcbotomy]

sunxking said: Apollo lounges, stretched out on a foldable lawnchair atop the tallest building in Dubai. He has an ice cooler next to him, and from it pulls a bottle of beer with not nearly enough proof to get the Metahuman drunk. Popping the top off, the Sun King offers it to Lobo, greeting him conversationally. ".....So. My husband had an emotional affair with one of his fuckboys."

Lobo was leaning back on his bike. The engine was humming softly, working almost like a massage chair. To top it all off, he was wearing a flashy Hawaiian shirt and swimming trunks. These were the typical relax wear of the last Czarnian. Still, he gladly took the free hooch! “No shit, huh? Typical.” He took a long slurp.

“That’s how it starts, Whitey. First it’s all sunshine and fragbows, and then next thing ya know? They’re balls-deep n’ porkin’ the maid.” He finished the beer. “Sometime’s its an emotional porkin!”

[theherblifeblog]

Women of Cannabiz Tell All at Toronto's LiftExpo

Anyone deeply curious and passionate about cannabis in Canada (and the world) was at Lift & Co.'s Expo May 24-27 in Toronto, and I can tell you: the world hasn't seen anything like this before.

Never in history has a cannabis gathering invited everyone from those wearing Hawaiian shirts and weed paraphernalia to professionals and investors in thousand-dollar suits, and put them smack-dab in a startup culture of excitement and innovation. 

Industry veterans who've been attending for years say they remember when the conference was just a big room that needed a lot of air freshener and saw a lot of Jamaican flags and Bob Marley apparel.

Despite it being my first time at the conference, I was on a mission. Not just to learn, but to explore how and where women were showing up in this industry. I was on the lookout to profile and peek into women's cannabusinesses and the experiences of women working in cannabis. Because we all want to know what it's like, don't we?

We all want to know if the "grass ceiling" is real in this unconventional industry, how to outgrow it, and what it takes.

I gotchu, girl. 

Holly, Marketing Manager at Apollo Applied Research Inc.

Apollo is a medical cannabis research clinic that works with patients to help them understand, source, and consume medical cannabis responsibly through personalized treatments and evidence-based care. Apollo is a strong clinic and research organization with many women in leadership roles (with studies coming out on PTSD , and chronic pain and cannabis).

Why do you think the industry is good for women?

It's innovative by nature, so we have the opportunity to break a bunch of norms: not just those related to cannabis, but gender stereotypes as well. I know a lot of the women in the industry came from other industries and bring their personal, amazing insights to cannabis. We have the opportunity to forge our own path without it being set in stone, so we get to really be autonomous leaders here.

What are you most excited about with Apollo?

One of our research studies (on chronic pain) is in peer-review with a medical journal right now. When that comes out, we'll be able to confidently say X amount of people have been able to reduce the amount of opioids they're on by X amount BECAUSE of medical cannabis and Apollo's methodology. There's a lot of information in the industry, but it's all "may" and "might", so we’re excited to bring a little confirmation to the cannabis table.

Where do you want the industry to be in 5 years?

I'd really like to see the medical and recreational industry separated. Right now everything's very mish-mashed: most people don't even understand the industry in Canada. They don't know that dispensaries are illegal, that you need a prescription to access cannabis, and that the only legal suppliers of cannabis in Canada are Health Canada approved licensed producers.

If you’re looking for cannabis for medical purposes, you wouldn’t go to the OCS, because you wouldn't take medical advice from someone who works at LCBO, right? You're going to want to go to a doctor, get the medical advice you need, and get a personalized treatment plan. 

What advice do you have for women getting into the industry?

Be fearless. I'm a firm believer that most people in the industry are just rolling with the punches and don't always know what they're doing because it's so new. The research and understanding of cannabis is constantly evolving, so you don't have to be the most knowledgeable or skilled. You just have to be curious, eager, adaptable, and passionate.

Brandy, Founder at Queens of Cannabis

Queens of Cannabis is a female-owned and -operated dispensary and delivery service in the GTA, which can also help you get a medical prescription (for free). It serves as a social structure for women who have been disabled or chronically ill and can't find traditional forms of employment, and has fundraisers for Sistering and the 519.

What inspired you to get into cannabis?

I worked for the federal government at the time that I was in a severe car accident, which severely damaged my neck and my spine. I went through the pharmaceutical gambit,  was on eight pills a day, and was literally foaming on the insides and next to death. Finally, I was retired and found relief when I tried cannabis for the first time. It eased the chronic illness in my stomach. When I started taking cannabis exclusively, all the pharmaceutical's negative side effects went away, and my mental sharpness came back. 

I realized I needed to let everyone know that this is actually medication because of the stigma I went through at work. There was no possibility of taking cannabis, especially back in 2008, but this is a healing medicine and I want to help people understand that through my story.

What are you most excited about?

The prospect of craft growers, as well as lounge licensing. 

What concerns you?

More government controls on cannabis than on alcohol. Alcohol kills thousands. My friends have died because of drunk drivers, but I've never lost friends to cannabis. I'm concerned that the government is going to take a harsh stance on it when it's not a harsh product. 

Ann, Founder at Erbanna

Erbanna creates cute accessories (like stash bags or vape cases) that keep your cannabis discrete while still looking fabulous and fashionable. 

How did you get started in cannabis?

I was going to see a comedy show with my friends: we're all professional women in our 50s. We all decided we wanted to imbibe beforehand, and it was ridiculous. We were like teenagers... giggling and laughing... and then everything smelled: the car, our bags. I started to think, "There must be something to help with the smell now that we are starting to legalize.”

So I did a search, but didn't find anything on the internet. Flew to Colorado thinking maybe their stores would have something because they're cutting edge... but still NOTHING.

I thought that if I felt that way, other people must feel that way. There are too many women out there who consume to just leave that on the table.

Then, I started researching how we could make a really pretty bag, (not like a skunk sack which is 100% smell proof), but would have enough liners and zippers that if you have it in your purse or counter, it's not reeking. After that, I just started to create. I then turned to a friend who was familiar with manufacturing and we started. We have no middle men: we're the designers, we're the production, we're the manufacturing, we do it all.

What do you want to see in the industry?

We went from concept to business so quickly, which was incredible, but we wanted to break the current negative stereotypes about the women who consumed. There's so many different types of cannabis consumers: professionals, patients, artists. 

I wanted to create a feel-good product for a feel-good product. You made this choice, you feel good about this choice, so you shouldn't be sneaking around with it. You should integrate it into your life in a way that fits, flatters, and helps you feel good about your choices. Because I felt good about MY choice.

Why do you think this industry is great for women to get into?

We make the majority of the care-taking and medical decisions for our families. Understanding the medical benefits of cannabis is big in making that decision - so it's important for women to be informed. But not only that, as businesswomen: it's a new industry and we can step in and have leadership positions, start a company, and be respected. 

Cannabis has come from this surfer dude mentality to a respected business,  and woman have had and should have a place in that.

Advice for women looking to get in?

There's a lot of really good networking in this industry: more so than I see in any other industry. We do a lot of collaborations. We talk to a lot of people. That sort of social business network is very beneficial here.

Myrna, CEO and Founder at Aqualitas

Aqualitas is a licensed producer from Atlantic Canada, who has a female CEO and majority-female leadership team, cultivates using a green aquaponics system (for less environmental impact), and is one of the few cannabis companies that have National Research Council grants and partnerships with universities. Aqualitas has also won an Innovacorp grant, a CleanTech energy award, and was highlighted by the Washington Institute of Environmental Law as having an excellent, green reputation (in an otherwise energy negative industry). 

Why do you think this industry is great for women?

When you look at this industry, in particular from a medical side, and how many decisions are influenced by women either as consumers or caregivers, you start to see how important it is to have a presence in the industry. We're surprised how few women are in executive level positions. We're very proud to be doing that. 

Also, if you look at women entrepreneurs, you can bring us to the bank even if we can't get the bank. The risk tolerance, how conservative and frugal women are, and how responsible they are with the money they have? Women historically do a lot with a little.

So I think that this is a really great time to be putting those transferable skills into the work we do in cannabis. So whether it's marketing and branding, or product development, or cultivation: you just have to say you're here and ready to learn. There's some amazing women cultivators in this industry who came from horticulture backgrounds. There's opportunities for women in capital and industry and finance and all the other ancillary markets that are popping up.

If you go to the grassroots communities and talk to the women, especially from the dispensary level, or health and beauty or topical products... the majority of the people I've spoken to who’ve had really great insight have been all women.

What inspired you to get into the industry?

I was a disabilities lawyer for most of my career and worked in the vulnerable services sector. I worked with employers and not-for-profit societies that work with people with intellectual, physical disabilities and also vulnerabilities like homelessness, addictions, spousal abuse, child abuse. From the disabilities side, I saw clients who get great benefits from the use of medical cannabis. I was very inspired by that.

And then, I thought it was a really natural extension to go into this industry. I saw it as an opportunity to bring advocacy to the table. 

What are you most excited about?

I see Aqualitas as a real leader on the global stage. We've only had our license since January 2018 and we've had amazing traction in the international market already - Germany and Poland specifically.

When people come into this space and ask, "Which of these are good companies - not just economically, but good values, production standards, ethics, and approach?"

I want Aqualitas to be one of the first three names that come out of anyone's mouth when they talk about cannabis. I want people to say that that's who we are. And we're not a particularly promotional group of people. What I've found is that the best way we've been able to evolve our story is to tell it one person ats a time, exactly as I'm doing it with you right now. 

That's been the best approach for us. We don't have the biggest booth or highest banner, but we're slow and steady and good at the core. 

Sister Kate, Founder at Sisters of the Valley

Sisters of the Valley are a group of self-proclaimed non-denominational nuns that create CBD salves and tinctures as a spiritual organization built for the empowerment of women. The "order" was started by Sister Kate to erase the negative stigma around cannabis and create jobs for women who believe in its' healing powers. Their order grew from Sister Kate's anarchist activism in the Occupy movement (which began with her saying, "If pizza's a vegetable, I'm a nun.") Now, the order has 13 sisters, is operating in 6 countries, and brought in over $1.1M in its’ third year of operations. 

What are you most excited about with the Sisters of the Valley?

Being in Canada and having a growing sisterhood here... because that's where all the grownups live. We have great demand for our product: our big problem is we sell out of everything. Essentially we could go from a a million dollars to $50M if we could just supply it.

Do you have any concerns about the industry?

It concerns me that there's so many people who don't understand that there's non-psychoactive cannabis. It concerns me that regulators are nuts, trying to regulate and tax a plant that they've demonized for 100+ years. It's like suddenly deciding the dandelion plant is heavily taxed - it's insane!

Advice for women?

Just start. Show up. Go to your local 420 club. If you want to learn to grow, hang with the growers. If you want to learn the laws, hang with the lawyers. But there's a 420 activist movement in every place in the planet - and I know that because those are our supporters and they've catapulted us to fame. Without them, nobody would have heard of us. 

I tell women, get connected! Cause that's what I did. And don't be afraid to be that gap between the old black market and the new legal market. 

 Siobhan, CMO at Cannalife

Cannalife Botanicals is a female-owned and -operated health and beauty company that creates whole-plant medicinals and topicals from CBD and THC. 

What got you started in cannabis?

I was disabled in a car accident and spent 10 years being put back together after having been a national athlete: a figure skater. I ended up in a wheelchair. During one of my major surgeries here in Toronto, I was having a really hard time with morphine. My doctor saw that I was in physical and emotional crisis, and asked me if I've ever tried cannabis. That was 25 years ago and I've been a cannabis advocate ever since.

What are you excited about with cannalife?

We make full- spectrum, whole plant medicine that uses plant alchemy: cannabis in collaboration with other amazing plants to get the optimal effect for patients. We're clear about what strain we're using, what our ingredients are, and test all of our products in a lab. I'm excited that we're able to help people with pain management in a really holistic way, and about introducing cannabis to the cannacurious and people who may still be fearful.

I'm also really excited about reducing the stigma of stoners and utilizing our brand to help facilitate the positive use of cannabis in a daily, active lifestyle. We collaborate with Flower & Freedom to put together snowshoeing, yoga, and all sorts of other events with them. It's been great to encourage people to use cannabis in their training and their everyday life.

Advice for women?

Reach out! Don't be scared. There are some amazing communities - my new favourite one to follow is #dopeladies. The more we have women like Miss D, Jamie Shaw, Amanda Siebert, and Barinder Rasode... the more women can stand out and be role models. Saying "I'm a mom, I'm a taxpayer, I'm a pretty helpful citizen in society" helps, because the more we can have open conversations about the true consumers, the better off we'll be.

Don't be shy: I'm talking about sexual health on a regular basis... and if you can't love yourself, how are you supposed to love somebody else?

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus. (Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

CHAPTER 7: ...ICARUS IS FLYING TOWARDS AN EARLY GRAVE

They were going to raid the Vindice. The ghoulish wardens of the Mafia. The boogeymen to Dons and freelance alike. 

The Vindice. The very name could stop a man in his tracks. 

Reborn should have known they were going into this without a plan.

“Repeat that for me, Ryohei,” Reborn asked, staring at the man who smiled unabashed. 

They were standing on the edge of a gravel and dirt road, vineyards all around the rolling hills, ripe with sweet grapes. In the distance, cradled between two crests, Reborn saw a building, a cellar door and bistro, with a handful of tourists wining and dining on the balcony.

“We,” Ryohei said, sounding so excited that Reborn nearly forgot what the man had spouted not moments ago. “Are you going to stage a fight and draw the Vindice to us. Then, when a portal—” Reborn blinked. “Opens up, we just push our way through and bam! Vindice raided!”

Reborn stared at Ryohei, an eyesore target in his sky blue, lime green, and lemon yellow print shirt. Then Reborn shrugged. 

They were going to raid the Vindice, a plan would just make them inflexible. 

“Very well,” Reborn agreed, and Ryohei stared bouncing on the balls of his feet, eyes bright, an utterly live wire full of energy.

“Extreme! So, hit hard and make it a show! We wanna bring the Vindice before the police!” 

Reborn shot him without further prompt. 

Ryohei leapt to the side, eyes wide and alert. There had been fire in those bullets.

Far off in the bistro, Reborn could hear the crowd forming, shouting and chaos taking over that cellar door. They had an audience. A direct breach of Omerta.

Ryohei spun around and slammed his fist just short of Reborn’s shoulder, hands hot and alight with yellow and gold. He punched left, right, hard and fast. Reborn ducked and weaved, a fedora-donned blur.

Ryohei stepped forward, Reborn moved to meet him, gunmetal all but at melting point in his hands. Reborn dodged another one of those bone-breaking punches— but didn’t dodge the second, nor the shockwave that erupted from those fists.

Reborn gritted his teeth and tried to breathe through the rattle in his chest, through the heat in his nose and throat. Ryohei grinned, utterly exhilarated, raring to go and ready to be alight with fire and Will. Reborn took a breath through his lips and tasted sunlight and wine.

He smelt dirt and rot.

The Vindice had come.

A spot, a portal, made of condensed shadow and night swirled into existence in that summertime vineyard, bountiful grape vines bowed away as if to hide. Chains, one and then two, lashed out and anchored into the soft earth. They pulled taut, links clinked and clanked. 

A gust of air cut through the vineyard, cold, wet and laced with the sour stench of weeping wounds and decay. 

A pair of hands reached through, clad in gloves, white and dotted in yellow. They clutched at the chains and dragged a body through. A head, then shoulders, covered in tattered and tarnished bandages—

Ryohei shoved his hand in that mummified face, “Scuse me! Pardon me! Extreme raid in progress!” 

Reborn gave a sharp laugh of shock before he saw Ryohei turn to look at him. Ryohei stood, one leg already in that writhing mass of darkness, and reached to Reborn, offering his hand, still alight with the last remnants of his Flame.

“Come on!” He urged, grinning with teeth and eyes so bright against the backdrop of the hellish portal.

Reborn reached out and grasped that searing hand, squeezing tight until he could feel every bone under sunkissed skin. Ryohei laughed and hauled Reborn up into the portal.

The ghoul gave a muffled scream into Ryohei’s smothering hand as Ryohei shoved his way through, the two men trampling over that bandaged body and into the halls of the Vindice.

“Sorry!” Ryohei called over their shoulders, and Reborn caught a glance of their doorman miserably rolling onto his belly.

Almost immediately, the two men came to a stop before a large iron and stone door. It looked hefty and solid, far heavier than Reborn could move—

Ryohei barrelled forward without pause, reeled his fist back and in a blaze of gold and sunlight smashed his fist into the door. It gave a boom that resounded through the room, and Reborn felt his eardrums flex under the force. A crack ripped up the centre of that door and Ryohei twisted and swung again, Flames crawling out from between his clenched fingers.

The door gave a great groan before Reborn threw his arms up and covered his face as rocks and gravel showered the entryway. He huffed and dusted himself off.

Ryohei stood in the empty doorway, his hands clenched at his sides with fire and light crawling up his arms. He let out a breath through his teeth, bared in a grin as the last of the dust settled and rocks scattered the floor. 

Ryohei took off and Reborn didn’t waste a moment to follow.

Reborn looked around as they ran through the maze of halls almost Roman in structure, tall, looming ceilings and stone pillars that towered so high they almost seemed to curve. It was dark, and damp, and reeked of rot and something he could only describe as centuries of condensed resentment. 

Reborn took it all in with lavish and glory. 

Reborn had raided the Vindice. Who the fuck did that?

He nearly crashed into Ryohei’s back as they came to a sharp stop, shoes kicking up water from the shallow puddles that pooled between the old bricks on the floor. Reborn looked around Ryohei to see two members of Vindice, floating like wraiths in their way, chains hanging from their hands and writhing like snakes.

“Hi!” Ryohei greeted and Reborn was utterly enthused. “Long time no see! It’s me, Ryohei, good to see you! You guys know where Bermuda is? There’s no, like, signs or anything around.”

Reborn scoffed hard enough to hurt his throat, and then stepped around Ryohei to join him at his side. “Yes, I would recommend a directory or at least plaques on the doors. Does wonders for efficiency.”

Ryohei beamed at Reborn, “See!”

The Vindice continued to look at the two men who stood before them. One turned their head to the ghoul beside them, “Could we—”

“No,” the second said and chains lashed forth.

“I think we’re getting through to them!” Ryohei cheered as they broke apart and dove from those chains. 

Reborn shot twice, the thought of holding back not even crossing his mind as the wraiths dashed toward them. He jumped and danced around the chains that snapped at his ankles and snatched at his waist, trying to bind him up and tie him down. 

A Vindice reached for Reborn and he spun around, gun out and ready and sent a Sun-laced bullet directly at the wraith’s chest. The ghoul dropped to the wet floor, bandages soaking in the brown, gritty water.

Reborn ran around the body and joined Ryohei as the man ducked and weaved the chains sent at him. Ryohei laughed, grabbed a chain and yanked the Vindice towards him. The wraith grunted as Ryohei’s Flaming fist caught him in the stomach, folding over the man’s arm — it almost looked like the wraith didn’t have bones, just a bundle of bandages shaped as a man.

Reborn raised his pistol and aimed for that top-hat-donned head— He whipped around and shot three times, deflecting the chains that had lashed out towards him.

The Vindice ghoul with soaking bandages lurched toward him, a bullet hole still blazing in his chest. 

“Oh yeah! The Vindice are kind of undead!” Ryohei called out over the sound of gunfire and metal clangs. 

“Excellent timing, Ryohei,” Reborn hummed, and continued to unload his pistol into his target, staggering them over and over as he backed into Ryohei. “So, what’s the plan? We can’t kill them.”

“Just gotta find Bermuda! Or Jaeger, he works too!” Ryohei answered simply.  

“You still haven’t told me who Bermuda is.”

“Who are you to speak his name—” Ryohei slammed his fist into the Vindice’s jaw and sent that bedraggled body careening into a pillar.

“Their Boss! He’s here somewhere, keep going!” 

“We’re trying to find the Vindice Boss?” Reborn asked as they took off down the winding halls again, leaving behind their assailants. 

“Yeah!” Ryohei nodded and they came to another door, locked shut.

Reborn raised his pistol and shot the lock, fire and Sun making the metal burn red hot and malleable as Ryohei barrelled into the door and bashed it open. The lock went skittering across the floor as the two men continued on their path.

“Stop where you are,” a Vindice rumbled, standing in their path, chains lying on the floor all around.

“You know where Bermuda’s office is!?” Ryohei called out, still running full speed.

“You will not go further—”

“So sorry, very busy, you understand,” Reborn chimed and shot at the ghoul’s head.

Ryohei leapt at the stumbling Vindice and slammed his fist down over their head. They hit the ground and bounced, and Reborn followed as Ryohei continued to rip and tear a path for them through those ominous halls. 

“Fuck,” Ryohei cursed as they reached the end of a route.

The wall was tall and solid, heavy with interlocking bricks of solid stone lashed with ancient chisel marks. The structure was reinforced by hefty metal bars and bolts the size of fists. A single brick alone looked like too much for one man to move, let alone break. 

Reborn heard the clank of chains behind them.

They were close. 

“Dead end,” Reborn frowned, gazing upon that towering wall. 

Then Reborn looked to Ryohei beside him. Reborn’s watch told him they had been running for over half an hour. Half an hour of sprinting, fighting and breathing that stagnant, chilled air. Ryohei looked ready for more.

“A dead end,” Reborn said again, “Since when had that stopped you, dear Ryohei?”

Ryohei turned his eyes upon Reborn, and in an instant, Reborn was flush with heat. Those eyes were aglow in the abyss, fire in the dark — like he was a flame incarnate, Ryohei blazed from the inside out. A solar flare wrapped in skin.

Then Ryohei grinned with teeth and cheeks, and like a match to gasoline, his Flames erupted .

“You’re right! Who cares about walls!?” 

Ryohei turned to face the imposing wall before them. Reborn could hear the clink and grind of chains from behind.

Ryohei bounced on the balls of his feet, his Flames rushed through his veins, a fire lit in his belly. He reeled his fist back, and with an almighty boom that impossible wall came crashing down.

“Extreme!” 

Reborn looked through the dust and debris, and for a moment he was blinded. For a moment, it was as if Ryohei had cracked open the walls of the Vindice and let in the Summer sun. 

Then Reborn’s eyes adjusted, and the scene came into focus. That searing light gave way to the figure atop the rubble of the walls of the Vindice, Ryohei alight and brilliant as his Flame lit the halls — and lit the legion of bodies bound in bandages.

“Sasagawa Ryohei,” a man, gnarled and slumped, said slowly. 

His voice was gravel and ash. His vocal cords longed for the comfort of grave dirt. 

“Hi Jaeger,” Ryohei greeted, “Have you seen Bermuda?”

“You will leave now,” Jaeger said, then turned his head in Reborn’s direction. “You and your fellow.”

Reborn smiled as he dusted himself off and joined Ryohei atop his pedestal of rubble and stone. 

“And after we came all this way? You even let us in yourself, so kind with that portal,” Reborn laid his hand on Ryohei’s shoulder and felt his palm burn. “Surely you can afford us a quick audience with your ‘Bermuda .’”

There was a ripple of discontent in that mass of bandage and rot. Reborn grinned further.

“You have no room to speak, boy,” Jaeger rumbled, “You do not even know why you are here. Blindly following.”

Reborn hummed down at the man and moved to rest his elbow on Ryohei’s shoulder, leaning his weight. Ryohei took it without complaint.

“He was going to raid the Vindice. No way was I not coming.” 

Ryohei let out a laugh and Jaeger’s shoulders raised in frustration. 

“Indeed,” a young, small voice said. 

Then the crowd split in a swift motion as all made way — For a child. An infant, no more than maybe three years old, floated through the divide. 

“Indeed, you’ve raided the Vindice, a neutral territory dedicated to upholding the law of the Mafia,” the child continued, unhurried as they made their way to the front. “You’ve also broken the sacred vow of Omerta. Two unforgivable transgressions, within minutes of each other.” 

Chains rose up from the crowd, tens of them clashing and thrashing and catching the light. Neither Reborn nor Ryohei moved. 

“All for what, Ryohei?” The child, Bermuda , asked.

“An Arcobaleno,” Reborn murmured to himself. 

He had never seen one in person before.

There was no noise. No telltale sound. No gracious warning. 

Just an absolute heat that drenched the room and scorched everyone inside. The puddles of murky water on the floor hissed away with a white noise sizzle, the stone walls creaked and cracked, the metal bars groaned. 

Reborn refused to remove his elbow, even as he felt his skin scald. He refused to look away. To miss this man made of sun and fire and glory. The Coming of Apollo in mortal flesh, donned in khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. This Apollo, this Ryohei , let his Flames surge until Reborn could taste sunlight and cinder on his tongue.

“For what?” Ryohei repeated, and there was brimstone in his voice. “For what!?”

Reborn felt his collar go damp with sweat. The Vindice did not move.

“For the world as we know it!” Ryohei bellowed. “For the future we have left! For the day my nephew takes his first steps! I am here to see this through , Bermuda!”

Ryohei stormed forward, sandals clapping on the dry stone as he marched towards those Vindice figures. Reborn stood and watched, eyes wide and taking in everything without pause. He couldn’t look away; he couldn’t miss a thing.

“It has been months , Bermuda, and the Machine has not been built!” Ryohei continued, “The Tri-Ni-Sette has not been fixed! What are you doing with it!? With my family’s future!?”

Again, the Vindice was hit with a wave of oppressive heat and that stench of rot was thick in the air. Bermuda stood at the forefront and took the brunt, the pin on his hat began to warp. 

“This world will not end!” Ryohei roared, and his Flames were still growing , eating the air and all but clawing at those Flames of Night, burning the ends of those black cloaks and curling those feathered collars. “Not on my watch and I will be watching.”

Ryohei stood straight and his Flames soared high with him. He stood there and like a God of Prophecy and Light, he imposed his Will and branded it into the very walls of the Vindice’s halls.

“The Machine will be built!” Ryohei declared, eye to eye with Bermuda and just an arm’s reach away. “And I will be there to watch it happen! I will carry out my family’s final Will, and I will see it to the end!”

Fuck.

Reborn wanted to kiss him.

Bermuda’s pin plopped onto the stone, melted and mottled. 

“Fine,” he said, a short, bitter statement. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth to keep you out.”

Ryohei settled at those words and slowly, like a candle at the end of its wick, those Flames that scorched their air hushed away. He took a step back, sandals scuffing the floor. Then Ryohei grinned, put his hands on his hips, and let out a booming laugh.

“Hell yeah, no way were you keeping me out, not with Reborn here to help!” Ryohei agreed before he looked over his shoulder to look at Reborn. “Right!?”

Reborn walked towards that man, dressed in that ridiculous Hawaiian shirt. The debris rocked under his shoes; bits of broken metal cracked as they cooled down. He reached Ryohei's side, and without hesitation, Ryohei threw his arm around Reborn’s shoulders. 

Reborn swallowed, his throat parched, his head dizzy. He took a breath and said, “Right.”

“Boss—” Jaeger started, but Bermuda waved him off.

“We weren’t making progress anyway,” he scolded and floated down to scoop up the remnants of his hat’s pin. “You should know, Sasagawa Ryohei, we’ve reached a roadblock. The instructions you gave us are…disorderly, to say the least.”

Ryohei’s smile went tight, his jaw clenched. 

Reborn watched from the corner of his eye.

Then Ryohei took a long breath, the kind that swelled in his belly and raised his shoulders. He let it out slowly. Reborn felt every moment of it, pressed so close to that searing side.

“Well,” Ryohei said finally, his grin still in place — even if just as an excuse to bare his teeth at the Vindice. “I know just the dude! We’ll need to convince him though, he’s a stubborn guy.”

Reborn stood straight, bright and eager beside this man of sunlight. Reborn was ready. Wings waxed and set and ready to follow this Sun over the next horizon, for the drama and stakes of their next mission. 

They had just successfully raided the Vindice . What could top that? Where would they go next? Pyramids and pagodas? Mountains and canyons, the depths of the Mariana Trench? What high hell and great chaos awaited them—

“Does anyone have Verde’s number? Or address?” Ryohei asked the room. “I think he’s working with a university’s funding right now, but I can’t remember which one.”

Reborn turned his head to face Ryohei, his expression utterly serene. 

“Verde?” Reborn repeated, hoping he had heard wrong. Hoping that that little green annoyance of a man hadn’t been mentioned. 

“Verde,” Ryohei nodded. Then his face lit up like sun through the clouds, realisation dawning upon him. “Reborn, my man, you know where Verde is, right!?”

Reborn thinned his lips.

“Why would I know where Verde is?” He asked, more than a little petty.

They were only on the tail end of their first adventure, and Ryohei was already talking about bringing in another man! The still dizzy part of Reborn’s mind lingered on the excited gasp of ‘my man’ and the way it made his skin feel like it was on fire.

Ryohei blinked at Reborn with those same eyes so full of unwavering faith and some kind of deep-rooted trust — like Reborn was somehow everything right and sure in Ryohei’s world, a God-given truth. 

“You do, don’t you?” 

Reborn stared at Ryohei.

“I do,” Reborn relented.

Ryohei beamed, “I knew it.”

Bermuda gave a short scoff and rose up to rest on Jaeger’s shoulder. 

“Then I will leave the footwork to you,” he said, then looked to the Vindice. “In the meantime, the rest of you, clean up this mess.”

A Vindice ghoul floated over and landed beside Bermuda and Jaeger. 

“Boss, can we talk about plaques on doors?”

Reborn glanced at Ryohei. They grinned.

☀

“Get in,” said a Vindice ghoul.

Ryohei smiled in thanks and walked into the office of Bermuda Von Veckenschtein, Reborn in tow.

Reborn looked around the office. Ancient and weathered, this office did not receive the care and upkeep of a ‘Don’s, but just by its contents, the room could easily rival that of Vongola. 

“Hi Bermuda!” Ryohei cheered as he sat himself down on an antique chair. 

Reborn sat in the one next to it, not convinced the upholstery wouldn’t give out from underneath him. Nonetheless, he reclined and raised his chin as Bermuda finally looked up, bandaged face riddled with irk. 

On his desk sat a damage report. Reborn looked directly at Bermuda and smiled. 

Bermuda sighed and pushed away the report.

“So,” Reborn began before either man or ghoul could speak. “I believe it's high time I’m filled in on some of the details, no?”

Reborn crossed one knee over the other and threaded his fingers together, looking between Bermuda and Ryohei. Bermuda frowned at Reborn and said nothing. 

“You have no room to speak, boy. You do not even know why you are here. Blindly following.”

Jaeger had said that to his face. Had called Reborn ‘boy’. ‘Little Icarus’ — Reborn was livid. He was in the dark, the fun was burning off — he wanted to bask in the light and seize this circumstance he found himself in.

Reborn knew this was going to be like pulling teeth. He had walked into something much bigger than he could have guessed by following Ryohei. The Vindice barely wanted Ryohei, a key player, here. Reborn would have to fight for his place at the table—

“Sure!” 

Reborn blinked. Bermuda's head snapped around.

“Sorry for skipping the details. Kinda got caught up in the rush,” Ryohei said and turned in his seat to see Reborn better. “So, we’re trying to save the world! There’s this thing called the Tri-Ni-Sette System that kind of powers the Earth. Like the gears inside a clock, or something. But it’s falling apart, like a rusty clock! So! I was sent to help the Vindice here make a Machine that’ll help make the world not explode! …Or stop turning. Or something — don’t really know what happens if the Tri-Ni-Sette breaks. Don’t wanna know, you know?”

Bermuda stared at Ryohei.

Reborn smiled.

“Why is the System failing?” Reborn asked, and Bermuda's hands clenched on his desk.

“Oh, so, the fuel being fed to the System was wrong. It was stripping it or something.”

“Fuel,” Reborn urged.

“Sky Flames,” Ryohei answered. “Strong Sky Flames.” 

Reborn turned his gaze to Bermuda. The Boss of the Vindice, the Head Warden of the Mafia — condensed down into the form of a child. Drained. Consumed. 

“The Arcobaleno.”

Bermuda frowned.

“ Retired Arcobaleno,” he corrected, “The chewed up leftovers of the men we used to be.” 

Ryohei smiled thinly at Bermuda, a kind of gentle grief lacing that expression. 

“Sky Flames are too light and rough for the System,” Ryohei said.

“Then what's left?” Reborn frowned. 

Bermuda sat back in his chair, booster cushions teetering under him. 

“The Simone,” he said, “The last of the Earth Flames.”

Reborn raised his eyebrows in interest and Ryohei leant forward. Reborn had never heard of ‘Earth Flames’ before. Yet another secret of the Mafia, hidden deep in the underbelly — which brought about the question: who was Ryohei, and how did he know? 

“How have you gone with contacting them?” Ryohei asked, hope laced in his tone. He was privy to the Vindice’s progress now, and he was going to know everything. 

Bermuda regarded Ryohei for a moment before reclining in his seat and said, “The Vindice have established a base on Simone Island, and have a dedicated guard protecting the Family.”

The Earth Flames had their own island . And island Reborn had never heard of . He had memorised every lateral line on the map years ago, nearly every naut of sea. And yet here Reborn sat, hearing the new utterance of ‘Simone Island’ like it was common.

Reborn glanced at Ryohei out of the corner of his eye. He could tell just by looking: Ryohei had been to Simone Island before.

Ryohei gave a sigh of relief. “At least we have that.”

Bermuda gave Ryohei a long, annoyed look. 

“So, can I see the Machine so far?” He asked.

Bermuda shook his head, “The Machine is at the Simone Base — but rest assured, you will see it once we relocate you. So you can ‘watch’ .”

“Relocate,” Reborn repeated, displeasure thick in his tone.

“Relocate,” Bermuda agreed, seeming pleased to have finally gotten under his skin.

“Relocate?” Ryohei asked, looking between the two men.

“You want to be closely involved in the Machine’s progress? Fine, I will allow it. The Vindice will provide you room and lodging within the Simone Base for the foreseeable future,” Bermuda told him. “It is easier for us if we have all the relevant pieces in the same place.”

Ryohei blinked and tilted his head. 

“I have an apartment.”

“Get rid of it,” Bermuda said. 

Reborn twitched. He thought of the vase of sunflowers and barley. He thought of the dining table with two chairs. He thought of the bed that smelt like herbs and sunshine. He thought of that window, aglow in the night, that called to him with its warm yellow.

“Sure,” Ryohei nodded. “I can be packed by tomorrow morning.”

“Good.”

☀

Ryohei knelt in front of his closet and shoved away his collection of exactly two pairs of khaki shorts in a cardboard box. Socks, and underwear all suffered the same fate as he rushed about the apartment, stripping it bare. 

A vase, two placemats, his favourite mug and an assortment of what Ryohei had decided to be ‘good’ pillowcases were packed. His suitcase sat upright against the wall, two small boxes stacked next to it. 

His neighbours had agreed to take on his bulkier items. The bed to the couple fostering a teen. The dining table to the old lady looking for a replacement. They would come to take their share in the morning. Ryohei would leave the door unlocked.

Reborn watched all of this with dark eyes that followed him throughout the room.

Ryohei started taking down his Hawaiian shirts from their hangers, one at a time, and folded them up sloppily. 

Reborn spoke.

“So you’re leaving then.”

Ryohei looked at the man sitting on his bed, “Yeah? I mean, I need to be with the Machine.”

Reborn hummed lowly. Reborn didn’t look away. He didn’t want to — To let go of this man and this burning feeling he brought with him. To see this moment fizzle out, to see the sun set on this chapter of his story. Reborn wasn’t ready to see it end before it even truly began —

“An island so well hidden will be difficult to find,” Reborn said.

Ryohei smiled, “I’ll see you there.”

(Happy Birthday Reborn -- 13/10/23)

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus.

(Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

CHAPTER 2: I’M GONNA MAKE HIM PROUD IN THE END

Sasagawa Ryohei knew he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. But even a fool could see the writing on the wall when it was so ugly…and so painfully familiar.

Ryohei always knew something was wrong with his relationship with Tsuna. His ‘Harmony’. He knew that it was…Fragile. Straining to keep its hold and bond them through sheer obedience and stubbornness. 

They had been told this was what they had, that this feeling was Harmony. They were told they were part of a whole, part of a Set. That their relationship, their bond, their Harmony was perfect and true. The strongest bond between Flames. 

They didn’t know any better. 

But Ryohei knew. 

Ryohei had always known something was wrong. His — instinct, drive, passion — Flame had been put in a sun-shaped box that was ten sizes too small. Too cramped, too awkward. It wasn’t his place. 

Tsuna, his little brother of ten long years, was not Ryohei’s Sky.

He should have realised sooner. After all, he’s experienced it before — this pain. 

Tsuna wasn’t Ryohei’s first Sky. Ryohei had realised that as soon as he felt that creeping, unsure, frantic nudging at his Flame years ago. He knew what it felt like to be embraced, to Harmonise. It felt like coming home.

And home, for so many years, had been Kyoko. His darling little sister, who always accepted people with open arms and such unyielding optimism. 

Kyoko, Hana, Ryohei. A little Set in themselves. The Kings and Queens of their playground. An indisputable trio. But they had grown. And then Ryohei kept growing. His Sun grew, larger and larger until he saw the way it begin to burn them. He saw their skin flush red, the sweat gathered on their napes. 

And he remembered the pain, the biting pain in his chest, as his first Harmony burnt itself out. Kyoko had cried for days and no one knew why, all Ryohei could do was stay away and let the blisters heal. 

Ryohei had nearly forgotten what it felt like. To be brought Home. Blissful ignorance was so close. And then Tsuna came, with a Sky so vast and welcoming that he thought-

He should have known better. 

But he was so glad he had been part of this Set. This rag-tag band of amazing idiots. They were all so fun and fantastic and so warm. 

“Please understand,” Talbot said gently, “This journey. There is no return. The past will swallow you.”

“This is a one-way trip,” Verde agreed, “Whoever goes, you’re not coming back.”

The stress in the room had been palpable. Who would go back? Who would be cut off from their Family and Set, forever? 

Ryohei watched his Family look at each other, murmuring and biting their lips. They were all so important. Ryohei couldn’t imagine this Set surviving without any of them — Tsuna, Takeshi Hayato, Kyoya, Mukuro, Chrome, Lambo. They were all so necessary. Irreplaceable. 

They were all so thoroughly tied into this Set, utterly perfect in their place. The Set was designed for them, down to the ember. A Set built upon the foundations of beliefs, needs and desires fulfilled. 

The Set wouldn’t survive with any of those Flames lost. But… Ryohei knew. 

Ryohei wasn’t their Sun — oh he wished he was — but he was still their big brother. And big brothers take the hit for the family. They make sure the youngers are happy and safe. Always.

“I’ll go,” Ryohei said again, making sure he was heard.

There was a long silence in the room. Then Mukuro stood from his seat, hands slamming down on the table with a bang.

“Absolutely not!” Mukuro shouted, a fierce look in his eyes. “Ryohei, you are not going.”

Voices piled on top of each other with a vengeance. A chair crashed against a wall, someone ducked a vase. The usual chaos of a Vongola Style Meeting. 

“Enough!” Talbot boomed.

Everyone ceased, teeth gritted and fists clenched. 

“Sasagawa, do you understand what you’re volunteering for?” Talbot asked him, ancient eyes boring into him from across the room.

Ryohei met them without a word. A quiet, tired acceptance, underlay with a damning drive. Ryohei was used to loss; and knowing what he did, he couldn’t wish it upon his Family. He knew the feeling of coming Home, of being welcomed with open arms — and then being forced to leave. 

Ryohei was used to loss. He was the big brother of his Family, he could take it again. One more time for his Family.

“Yeah,” Ryohei said, nodding his head. “I’ll go. Just tell me what to do.”

☀

Among the Vongola’s many sprawling properties which speckled Europe, was the original church of the First Vongola Sun. It was small, with walls made of uneven stone and a roof made of sturdy wood and terracotta tile. The Vongola had been careful to preserve the sanctuary of Father Knuckles.

Ryohei was always thankful for that. 

He sat in one of only ten pews, eyes closed and breathing deeply. Sunlight streamed in from an open window and he soaked it up readily, letting the warmth relax him all over exactly as Colonello had taught him years ago. 

His meditative state of mind was interrupted, however, when the doors to the church were slammed open, two sets of boots clacking against the tile floor. Ryohei grimaced a bit, knowing who was coming down that aisle, and knowing exactly how pissed they were with him.

“Sasagawa Ryohei, what do you think you’re doing?” Mukuro hissed, kicking the pews until he had a clear area to stand in front of Ryohei. “Why the hell did you volunteer?”

“Ryohei,” Chrome frowned something severe, her hands clenched together in front of her in a show of careful control. “Please tell us why you think you should be the one to go back.”

Ryohei shifted in his seat, anxious energy rushing back now that he had been knocked out of his meditation half-baked. His thumb traced the edges of the Sun jewel on his Vongola Ring in a soothing, repetitive motion.

“Well,” he cleared his throat and sat back, smiling a bit, “Well, it sounded fun to the extreme, ya know? I’m going to the past! Even you haven’t gone to the past, Muku-bro!”

“You still don’t have permission to call me that,” Mukuro scowled before sitting himself down on the edge of the upturned pew. “Tell us honestly, you blundering muscle-head.”

Chrome came and sat beside Ryohei, and between the pews and these people, Ryohei was thoroughly cornered by fast encroaching Mist. It was comforting, despite how many would disagree.

Ryohei glanced between the two Mists. Over the ten years united under a Sky, these two had become his closest friends. 

Chrome reminded him so much of his sister, and Ryohei had watched with no little amount of pride as Chrome had truly come into herself as a woman of Vongola. The epitome of deadly grace, Chrome had become an idol for many young mafiosos. 

Mukuro was a monster, just like the rest of them. With Flames bright and vibrant, and a skill so perfected that even Arcobaleno fell to him. Ryohei had taken comfort that, with Mukuro at least, he didn’t need to hold back. Mukuro’s illusions could handle being crushed; again, and again. As many times as Ryohei needed to cool his blood.

Some people thought that Mukuro was taking advantage of Ryohei, tricking him into carrying out dastardly deeds and underhanded pranks. Some people thought that Chrome infantilised Ryohei, treated him more like the teenager he was rather than the man he had become. 

What they didn’t realise was that Ryohei dealt it back as good as he got. Mukuro wanted to cause havoc? Ryohei was always ready to see if he could bring down a building. Chrome wanted him to come be quiet with her? He’ll carry her until she’s chosen a good napping spot in the orchards.

Together, these two had become his closest friends. The most unlikely of matches. But they had been perfect for him — he just wished he was perfect for them. Even now, he could see the redness in Chrome's cheeks as she tried to cool herself down, her Set burning her from the inside out.

“You guys are too important to go,” Ryohei said finally, and Mukuro raised an eyebrow in response. “The Vongola needs you. You’re the Mists, they’ll need you for defence and to hide how bad this whole situation’s going to get before the timeline uh—”

“Recalibrates according to new variables,” Chrome supplied gently, “New choices making new things happen.”

“Yeah that,” Ryohei pointed at her and she gently pushed it away. “But Talbot said that it’d take time. Like a — a cosmic lag. So, ya know, in the meantime, they’ll need you.”

“And why can’t we just send that damned Cloud?” Mukuro pushed, “Not like that guy wants to hang around with us anyway.”

“CEDEF, Kyoya’s important,” Ryohei insisted, “And so is Hayato, and Takeshi, and Lambo — and of course, Tsuna can’t go back! They’re all so important to the extreme!” 

Chrome twisted in her seat, “Are you saying you’re not important, Ryohei?”

Ryohei’s mouth clicked shut. He felt eyes on him, burning into his face, and he resisted the urge to bow his head and hide.

“Never said that,” he muttered, and heard Mukuro tsk in annoyance. 

“Good, cause you’re the only person here who I can tolerate for more than fifteen minutes.”

“What about Chrome?” Ryohei asked, despite already knowing the answer.

“Doesn’t count,” They answered.

Ryohei smiled when they did that. Chrome and Mukuro were perfect for each other. 

“It’s for the best if I go,” Ryohei said slowly, “We can’t leave this in just anyone’s hands. And the Tri-Ni-Sette… I’m going.”

Mukuro stood up sharply and all but gritted out, “It’s because we’re too small, isn’t it?”

Ryohei bit his tongue. 

Mukuro crossed his arms irritably. Chrome clasped her hands in her lap tighter.

“We,” Chrome glanced at Mukuro. “We don’t know what we’ll do without you.”

Ryohei stared at Chrome, her flushed cheeks and sweaty nape. It was mid-February, but she had already started to forgo jackets and stockings. He looked to Mukuro, who hid it well, but Ryohei could see his tie was looser than it used to be. And those gloves he used to love, had been finally cast aside. 

“You’ll be fine,” Ryohei smiled, throwing his arm over Chrome’s shoulder. “You’ve got Tsuna and you've got each other!” Ryohei looked at Mukuro and said again, “You’ll be okay. I’m sure of it.”

Mukuro gritted his teeth, before letting out a huge breath. He crossed the small space and sat on the other side of Ryohei, boxing him in comfortingly. 

“This is all because we’re too small to hold you,” Mukuro murmured, gazing upon the altar where Knuckles used to pray. “Our Harmony, it's too weak to keep you. It always has been.”

“I’m sorry,” Ryohei sighed, and took his arm off Chrome, trying to ignore how she took off her vest as well, covertly fanning herself. “I wish I wasn’t so… difficult for you all. I wish I was right for you. So much.”

“No,” they said at the same time, leaning into his space.

“You do not apologise for this,” Chrome scolded.

Mukuro gazed at Ryohei with a damning determination, a kind of surety Ryohei could only associate with a man who had lived life six times over. Wiser than any one man had a right to be.

“You weren’t too difficult. You were too great for us, Ryohei.”

Ryohei closed his eyes and clenched his hands together, bowing his head until they pressed to his brow. 

Mukuro stared at that Ring sitting just shy of Ryohei's forehead. The proof of his position as the Vongola's Sun, the proof of the ten years Ryohei fought alongside them.

"We won't take another Sun," Mukuro announced.

Ryohei flinched, something sour and something so sweet welling in his chest. They would never take another. Never replace him.

"Even if Tsuna brings in another Sun, someone he thinks is the perfect Guardian. We won't accept them. They can be Vongola's Guardian, but they won't be our Sun. Our Ryohei."

Chrome touched Ryohei's hands, the tips of her fingers grazing the starburst scars that dotted his knuckles. All hard-won scores of the times Ryohei had fought for his Family and family. 

"Our Sun, our Ryohei," she said with a smile.

☀

“You have a week,” Verde said plainly to Ryohei, surrounded by bits of metal and computers flashing with crunching algorithms. “I’m recalibrating the Tri-Ni-Sette Machine to metabolise Earth Flames. Usually, this shouldn’t take too long but given the weight of the situation, we can’t risk any unforeseen malfunctions.”

Ryohei glanced at a screen off to the side, a progress bar slowly crawling, triangulating a direct trajectory to thirty years ago and then some. 

“I suggest you get your affairs in order.”

Ryohei fought the urge to wring his hands, the scent of Namimori air so familiar and cool. He followed a street lined with apartment buildings that reached high into the sky, taking the places of what was once little, family homes back in his youth.

Ryohei turned into an apartment like all the others and rode the elevator up to the sixth floor, knocking on the fourth door. 

Hana opened the door and frowned at Ryohei, her hand on her hip as she stared up at him. She looked worn and more than a little tired, hair unbrushed and clothes rumpled. 

“Hana!” Ryohei greeted and wrapped the woman in a tight hug.

“Oh — let me down you oaf!” She scolded sharply, her feet kicking as she pushed his face away from her.

Ryohei grinned but let her slip out of his hold. She grunted up at him as she smoothed out her already wrinkled t-shirt.

“I hope you brought those dragon fruits with you. Kyoko’s got some killer cravings right now.”

Ryohei laughed and showed the bag hanging from his hand. Dragon fruits and salad dressing — specifically the vinegary Caesar dressing kind. Hana nearly deflated in relief.

Kyoko looked up when Ryohei and Hana walked into the living room. She was cradled in a plush armchair by the window with her feet propped up and her hand resting on the swell of her belly. Kyoko reached out as Ryohei approached, her face utterly bright with joy.

“Salad dressing!” Kyoko cheered, taking the bag from Ryohei’s hands and peering inside.

“Hello to you too,” Ryohei pouted and sat himself down on a footstool beside Kyoko’s chair. “Slow down, Hana’s getting you a plate.”

“Don’t need it,” Kyoko muttered and bit into the fruit like an apple. “Skin’s healthy.” 

The woman then proceeded to take a swig of salad dressing and Ryohei had to look away. 

One would think that Kyoko would crave everything sweet and sugary at a time like this, but it seemed that the baby wasn’t as much of a sweet tooth. They had more of a taste for salt and vinegar, and often it led to Kyoko crying until her tongue allowed her to eat sweets again. 

“You’re looking about ready to pop,” Ryohei said, offering his sister a tissue which she ignored in favour of cracking open another fruit. “Do you have a due date yet?”

“A few more weeks, looking at late next month,” Hana answered for them, scooping up the skin scraps on her wife’s lap and putting the rest of the dragon fruits on a plate. “They’ve definitely got Sasagawa blood in them though, he’s been kicking poor Kyoko at all hours.”

“Maybe he’ll be a boxer like you!” Kyoko beamed, and like she remembered to be a gracious hostess, quickly offered Ryohei a salad dressing-soaked dragonfruit.

“No thank you,” Ryohei denied as softly as he could, he had set her off before when rejecting one of her offerings. In his defence, it had been ice cream and buffalo sauce. 

“Like I’d let that happen,” Hana scoffed and let herself flop down across the couch, wheezing with great fatigue. 

“Rough night?” Ryohei asked, tossing a pillow at Hana for her head.

“Hana’s been doing overtime to clear her calendar for the baby,” Kyoko hummed. “And she’s been doing my share of some of the chores.”

“Your feet and legs are double their normal size, woman. You are not walking around more than you need to,” Hana mumbled into her pillow. 

Kyoko smiled and cooed wordlessly at Hana, making happy little noises as she continued to gorge herself on her weird concoction. Hana glanced at Kyoko out of the corner of her eye and smiled back in a way she only showed to Kyoko.

Ryohei felt his chest grow warm at the quiet affection shared between his sister and sister-in-law. It was times like these, Ryohei was glad that Hana had left him to be with Kyoko. They were so happy now.

It had taken a while for Kyoko to accept Hana, she had always been a loyal little sister. But Ryohei was glad she had listened to him. 

They were good for each other, brought out the best of each other. And they loved each other, deeply and warmly. Kyoko was better for Hana, and Hana was best for Kyoko.

It had stung when Hana had told him she thought they should see other people, after all, he had been so sure she was ‘the one’. But his baby sister got to have her happy ever after, so in the end, it all ended well. Ryohei had come to terms with the fact that, maybe, love just wasn’t for him.

And he got a nephew out of it! So all well that ends well, he supposed.

Ryohei bit the inside of his cheek. He just wished he got to meet them, even just once. Got to see his sister holding her baby, got to spoil them utterly rotten��

“Speaking…Speaking of overtime,” Ryohei cleared his throat, and Kyoko looked over, all too attuned to her brother’s tones. Her brother, and ex-Sun. Kyoko was very good at reading Ryohei. “The Vongola… I’m going on a trip.”

“What kind of trip?” Kyoko asked carefully.

Ryohei smiled thinly, trying to pick out his words carefully. “A long one. Far away too.”

Hana had sat up at this point, her hands in her lap and her eyes sharp — but she remained quiet, letting her wife and Sky speak for both of them. 

“Are we allowed to contact you during your trip?” Kyoko asked. It wouldn’t be the first time Ryohei had to drop off the map for a while, gone incognito. He had a very forgettable face when he managed to keep a cap on his energy. 

“No,” Ryohei admitted, “No, I won’t be…able to talk to anyone.”

Kyoko frowned more and started to pet her belly absently, a kind of self-soothing habit she had formed in the recent months. 

“When will you come back?” 

Ryohei paused for a moment too long, staring past Kyoko and out the window behind her. Out at Namimori. 

He wondered if his nephew would attend Namimori Middle, if they’d walk the same paths he and Kyoko walked so many times. He wondered if they’d use the same classrooms — or if Kyoko’s prediction would come to be and they’d join the boxing club just like their uncle.

“Ryohei,” Kyoko pressed and he shifted his eyes over to her with a sheepish smile. “When are you coming home?”

Home.

“Not for a long time,” Ryohei said gently, and took Kyoko’s hand in his own when he saw that flash of panic in her expression. “This is a big job this time, Kyoko. Your big brother’s got a lot of work to do.”

“Ryohei—”

“But you’re a big girl now, Kyoko,” he smiled, “You’ve got your life together! You’ve got your Bachelors, you’re married, and you’ve got an extreme baby on the way! You don’t need your big brother all up in your business, getting in the way.”

“You can’t go. I’m having a baby, I need you,” Kyoko said, gripping Ryohei’s hand with a vengeance. 

“You’ll be okay, you know that. You have Hana spoiling you, and Tsuna would bend the Vongola backwards to look after your every need. Mum and Dad are also just a call away — God knows Mum’s been ready for a grandchild, she’s just been scared it’d come from me!”

Hana snorted in the background. She had been a victim of the Sasagawa matriarch’s empty-nest syndrome twice now. The only difference was the first time around had been full of caution and warnings about the child being too much like its potential father. 

“But I need you,” Kyoko pleaded, looking at Ryohei and trying to see in his face why he was leaving.

Ryohei grinned, stomping down a sting in his chest, “You haven’t needed me for a long time, Kyoko.”

She had cried for days when their Harmony had broken, withering away like a dried sapling under the sun. Their youth had been on their side, however, and their wounds had healed without so much as a scar. She continued life with her usual bright smiles and unrelenting optimism.

Like she had never even had a Sun. But Ryohei remembered.

“I’m gonna miss welcoming them with you,” Ryohei continued, looking to Kyoko’s stomach. “But you’d probably just yell at me for yelling or crying on the baby.”

“We’re already expecting one screamer, we don’t need another,” Hana sniped from the couch and Ryohei let out a laugh.

“Why do you have to go?” Kyoko asked, still holding Ryohei’s hand in a death grip.

Ryohei looked at her little hand in his own, small and adorned in a shining wedding ring. 

“I’m just doing what I always do: I’m looking after my little siblings. My family will always come first. You, Hana, Tsuna, Chrome, Mukuro, and all the others. I’m going so that I can help you, as best I can.” Ryohei looked at her again and smiled reassuringly, pushing as much Sun and warmth into the air as he could. 

It didn’t do what he wanted it to. Kyoko wasn’t his Sky anymore. 

Her face turned a sickly shade of green and Hana quickly stood from the couch and pushed a cup of water into Kyoko’s hands, a small bucket under her arm just in case. Pregnancy was a finicky thing, and Flames had a history of making things just that little bit more complicated.

Ryohei smiled through it and pulled his Sun back to his chest, letting Hana’s Cloud dapple the space and sooth her Sky. 

“But you’re leaving,” Kyoko coughed, wiping her mouth.

Ryohei looked at his sister and then looked to her stomach, full of life and potential. A child ready to take on the whole world and outshine any of them. 

A dying world, slowly grinding to a halt. 

Ryohei wouldn’t let that happen. Ryohei was going to hand over this world to that little life, and he was going to make sure they had as much time in it as they wanted. To play, make mistakes, love, grow and live.

Ryohei would always put his family first. 

“Hey, Kyoko, Hana,” he began softly, and they both looked over. “Can you promise me that you’ll tell them about me? Extreme stories of their extreme uncle?”

Kyoko opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She wrung her hands in her dress, confusion and stress in her expression. 

“We will,” Hana announced, her hand tight on her wife’s shoulder. “We’ll tell them everything. The time you pissed your pants in Elementary, when you climbed a bathhouse chimney like a damned fool, when you chased everyone who you thought would put up a fight. No embarrassing detail spared, you big oaf.”

Ryohei smiled.

☀

The Vongola Sun Quarters had always been rather modest in design. Embellishments and ornaments restrained to cornices and windows. When Ryohei had moved into the Sun Quarters, he had been told that Knuckles had been adamant about keeping the place humble and simple, and despite the many hands this room had been passed between, they had all respected its origins. 

Furniture and personal taste had come and gone, but the bones of the room remained the same. No one had dared to paint the walls, or commission craftsmen to refurbish the fixtures. The only true change to the room over the centuries had been the electrical lights and security.  

Ryohei was happy he could keep to the tradition. All his things were in boxes, ready to be dispersed to their next owners. The Vongola Sun Quarters were once again bare. 

On his bed, Ryohei’s one luggage sat still open. He was packing everything he thought he’d need or couldn’t part with, everything and anything that could fit in one bag. 

Clothes weren’t important, those could be bought again. What Ryohei packed were photos of everyone, carefully and painstakingly edited by Basil to ensure no Vongola alignments or dates were visible. Photos, keepsakes, first aid kit and underwear. 

Ryohei looked through his diaries, seeing all the notes he had made for himself over the years and deciding which ones to take. What he wanted to remember the most, what he wanted to make sure would never slip his mind. 

There was a soft knock at his door and Ryohei didn’t need to turn around to sense the presence of an aching Sky. 

Tsuna stepped into the room and chewed his inner cheek, desperately trying not to look in any one direction for too long. He had never seen the Sun Quarters so empty before. It was a gaping reminder that Ryohei had only hours left.

“Hey, Tsuna!” Ryohei greeted, turning around and leaning back on his desk. “What’s up?”

Tsuna closed the door behind him and walked deeper into the hollowed-out room. He looked tired, his clothes rumpled and his hair askew. It made Ryohei frown a bit, but Tsuna spoke first.

“I… We need to talk about some stuff,” Tsuna uttered slowly, coming to a stop just a few strides away from Ryohei. 

“Huh? Uh, sure, what stuff?”

Tsuna glanced at Ryohei's suitcase, full of photos and keepsakes. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, taking a moment to breathe and recentre himself.

“Are you sure about this?” He asked, flat and to the point. “Going to the past — Tabolt and Verde said you can't come back. Are you sure about this?”

Ryohei smiled at Tsuna and the way his hands were clenched at his sides. Tsuna was wound tight, nervous, anxious and confused. 

“Yeah, I'm sure. This is important, we can't give it to just anyone!” Ryohei assured, and Tsuna looked at him.

His face was flushed, his eyes were red. Tsuna crossed his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels, shoulders hunched. 

“Are you sure about leaving us?” Tsuna asked, “Leaving our Harmony?”

Ryohei’s smile wavered, his hands clutched at the edge of his desk. 

“Yeah,” Ryohei said again, voice soft in the quiet room. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Tsuna’s face pinched. Ryohei hadn’t even seen Tsuna make that kind of a face when he had been shot. 

“I’m sorry,” Tsuna uttered.

“Hey, come on, little bro,” Ryohei soothed and pushed off from his desk. He crossed the room and grasped Tsuna by his shoulders. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.”

“But I could have been better,” Tsuna whispered, his voice hoarse. “I don’t know — maybe if I had tried harder, listened to Reborn more then—”

Ryohei smiled at Tsuna, at the Sky. 

Not His Sky, but a Sky nonetheless. A Sky that, hurt and scared, had let Ryohei in and given him a home for years. Had given him a Family, a place to belong. 

“You did everything you could,” Ryohei assured, and bent at the knees so he could see those eyes that had captured the Italian Mafia. “We’ve been together for an extreme ten years. Why would you apologise for that?”

Ten years under a Sky who did his best, who opened his arms — under duress or not — and that kept Ryohei close to his heart. A Sky who let Ryohei burn him for ten years. 

How could Ryohei ever resent Tsuna?

“It’ll hurt,” Tsuna murmured, “You’ll be gone.”

Ryohei nodded understandingly, and then said, “But it’ll hurt less than it does now.”

Tsuna flinched hard. He didn’t deny it. 

How could he? Tsuna couldn’t have known what was happening when he was young, fresh in chaos and Harmony. Tsuna had been so overwhelmed with his world all aflutter, there was no way he could have recognised where the fever was coming from. 

Their Harmony was weak, corroded. Tsuna understood that now.  

He wished he didn’t.

For all that talk  of ‘Neo-Primo’, of ‘Oath Flame’, of ‘Vastest Sky’, Tsuna couldn’t even keep his Sun and brother. 

Ryohei squeezed Tsuna’s shoulders and let go. Tsuna could still feel the brand of those hands, an uncomfortable heat that left him parched and needing the cover of his Cloud, the cool of his Rain. 

Tsuna raised his head and Ryohei’s smile was still there, warm and unyielding as ever. 

Their Harmony broke, and settled into ash.

Tsuna swallowed and Ryohei nodded slowly, because he knew. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt anymore, and Tsuna could feel it. The relief had drenched his body, leaving him cool and refreshed, like stepping into shade.

It hurt that it barely hurt.

Ten years — a whole decade — of knowing and loving each other. Ten years of fighting side by side, of the weight of the mafia, the world and life shared on their shoulders. Ten years of trying so hard to be a good Sky, a good Sun, a perfect Harmony— 

Letting go was so easy.

It should have been painful. It should have hurt. It should have been like ripping out a part of their hearts, like prying the pieces of each other from their soul—

Like putting down a heavy burden. Finally lying down the boulder. Finally unlatching the chains.

Letting go was so easy.

Tsuna didn’t know when he started to cry. 

Ryohei didn’t know if it was out of grief.

“You are my little brother, whether you like it or not,” Ryohei said, not a quiver in his voice, not a catch in his throat. 

“Of course,” Tsuna agreed, and didn’t move to wipe his face when a tear tracked down his cheek. He sat in the misery, and tried not to identify where it came from. “Always, Ryohei. You’re family. Kyoko would kill me.”

Ryohei let out a laugh.

“That’s why I’m going, Tsuna,” he continued, and looked around at his room, stripped bare and packed up in boxes. “You, the guys, Kyoko, Hana, and the kids. You’re all my family. This machine thing is our last shot. I want to be there to make sure it happens.”

Tsuna blinked, trying to make another tear fall. His eyes had already dried up. 

“I understand,” Tsuna nodded, hands clasped in front of him. “Thank you, brother.”

Ryohei grinned and threw an arm around Tsuna’s shoulders, jostling the younger man and pat his chest, “No worries, lil bro! Why don’t you go find Hayato and Takeshi? You’re looking less than extreme, and those two always fix you right up.”

Tsuna turned his head and buried his face in Ryohei’s shoulder, pressing hard and sure like he was trying to impress the feeling into his memory. Then he pulled back and wiped at his face, red and flushed, and Ryohei took his arm off him.

“I’ll see you at dinner then,” Tsuna said, standing in Ryohei’s doorway.

He looked bright standing there. Already, the sweat had started to dry, and that red flush had gone pink and receded. Tsuna felt cool for the first time in ten years.

“See you at dinner,” Ryohei waved, and the door clicked shut.

Ryohei dropped his hand and stood alone in the Sun Quarters. Somewhere down the halls, he heard the sounds of crashing in the Mist Quarters. There was a haunting silence everywhere else.

Everyone had felt it. The Sun was gone. The heat had ended.

They were free now.

Ryohei looked at his diaries, still strewn open across his desk. He walked over and grabbed one from two years ago, opened to the page detailing Kyoko and Hana’s wedding — He tore the page out. Ryohei looked for when Lambo graduated from Elementary school. He tore that out too. A series of logs about odd napping spots Tsuna was seen in during crunch time. Takeshi’s twenty-third birthday. Hayato’s existential crisis. Kyoya’s animal adoption phase. Chrome frantically dodging marriage requests. Mukuro using his illusions to create a haunted house for the kids. 

Ryohei tore and tore, ripping pages out one after another. Then he took a pen, hearing the plastic crack under his too-tight grip and began scratching out all the names and dates. He couldn’t decide which book had the most memories, so he took it all. All of his most important memories stacked together in a disjointed, tattered and defaced pile. 

He dropped the pen and let it roll off somewhere, looking at the pages and how high they stacked. Years worth of life condensed into a pile of paper, frayed unevenly at the edges and full of spelling mistakes. 

Ryohei looked over to his luggage and pulled out one of his keepsakes: the bandages he had wrapped his fists with during the battle for the Rings. They were worn and speckled with bits of dried blood and sweat. 

He unravelled one of the wraps and tied the loose papers together into a bundle. It bent oddly in sections, the knot was askew and he was sure the pages were going to be curved into some weird shape within time — it was a ragged stack of memories.

Ryohei tossed it into his luggage and snapped everything shut.

☀

Despite the fact that Verde had been hailed as the next coming of Da Vinci, he had never been particularly artistic with his machines. They tended to be brutalist in design, with sharp edges and geometric shapes. Function over fashion.

It left Ryohei wondering if he was seeing poetry where there was none, searching for light in the dark. 

The time machine was massive. With two swooping arms of wire and metal plating that arched into the air. It was like an enormous metallic laurel, wreathing the platform that would send Ryohei far away and far ago. That machine against the backdrop of Autumn in full golden swing, framed by the orange and yellow trees that rowed the walls of a quiet valley, only made it shine more. 

It looked magnificent. It looked terrifying. 

“I trust you have everything,” Talbot said as Ryohei approached the machine, his hand clutching the handle of his suitcase.

“Yes,” Ryohei nodded, “And I got those fake IDs.”

“The forged identification, yes, that will certainly make life easier,” Talbot agreed, thumbing the side of his bird’s head cane. “And, forgive me for asking again, but you understand what you are getting yourself into, yes?”

Ryohei smiled at the old man, “Yeah, I know. I’m looking after my family, right?” 

Talbot paused for a moment, regarding the response. Then he smiled with wrinkled lips and settled himself on the uneven ground. 

“Indeed,” Talbot murmured.

Grass crunched underfoot and Ryohei turned to meet the many gazes of the Vongola Family, all of them dressed in black suits like they were mourning a loss. For a moment, Ryohei wondered if Kyoko would come to see him off, but then remembered that the baby wouldn’t handle altitude sickness well.

Tsuna stepped forward from the group, dew clinging to the toes of his shoes and making them shine with the machine’s light. 

“Ryohei,” he began softly, then took a breath and spoke again, louder. “Where you’re going, to the past. You can’t take anything incriminating. Anything with a Vongola embellishment, I need you to return.”

Ryohei knew this was coming. He had at least hoped to keep Kangaryuu — but the emblazoned ‘VONGOLA’ that had been stamped across it said otherwise. Ryohei nodded and reached into his pocket, pulled out his Box Weapon and handed Kangaryuu over. 

Ryohei glanced at his Ring, golden yellow and always warm on his hand. He took it off before he could think twice and, like it burnt, dropped it into Tsuna’s awaiting hand.

It happened faster than Ryohei could realise. The Ring, always so bright and vivid, dulled without notice. Then a soft light shone from within, just like all those years ago when it had been unsealed—

A simple, grey metal band with a shield pendant sat in Tsuna’s palm. Locked and sealed. Just as it had been nearly a decade ago back when they had battled for them against the Varia.

“After all, you truly are Knuckle’s true successor,” Talbot said gently.

Ryohei stared at the cold, contained Ring, and he felt his heart soar. He was Knuckle’s true successor. Even if he wasn’t Tsuna’s, even if he wasn’t Vongola, Ryohei was still Knuckle’s.

He shouldn’t be happy. He really shouldn’t and he knew that. But as Ryohei stared at that tightly sealed Ring once more, he knew he would never be forgotten. That once he was gone, whoever came next, whatever Sun came to take his Quarters, his Box, his Family — They’d never truly replace him. They’d never have his Ring. 

Ryohei would never be forgotten. Knuckles would make sure of that.

Mukuro huffed from off to the side, a kind of snide, vindictive sneer to his expression. He was right, whatever Sun Tsuna brought home would never be his.

Ryohei shouldn’t be so happy.

“Calibrations are ready,” Verde called out.

“R-Right,” Tsuna snapped to attention, his eyes just as locked to the Ring as Ryohei’s. 

Verde loudly scoffed from his place wrapped in computers and gestured for Ryohei to hurry up. 

Ryohei swallowed his anxiety and walked the path between his family and all their allies, the machine aglow with a pale yellow light. The machine gave a soft clunk as he stepped up onto the pedestal, and Ryohei noticed how the air seemed charged, nearly vibrating as he inhaled it.

“Remember your mission Ryohei,” Hayato called out, his arms crossed irritably, visibly uncomfortable. “Find the Vindice, give them the info, get that machine built.”

“Right!” Ryohei shouted as the machine began to give a low, rumbling ‘whirr’.

“And remember what you promised me!” Mukuro reminded, the tone coming through gritted teeth.

“Of course!” He nodded, grinning through the nerves. “Of course, I won’t forget!”

“Ryohei!” Tsuna called out and Ryohei looked over. “Make sure that machine gets built! Please!”

Ryohei nodded, fists clenched at his sides. Then his family all bent at the waist, their Japanese heritage resurfacing with a vengeance as they all bowed their heads to their older brother and school-life ‘senpai’.

“Thank you very much!” They all said together.

Ryohei felt his eyes sting and his vision swim. He took a sharp breath.

“Take care of each other!” Ryohei ordered them and raised his arms in a large, boisterous wave.

The laurel’s metallic tips met high above his head, sparks flew-

Ryohei stood in a large field, with emerald trees and grass as far as the eye could see. His hands still raised to wave goodbye.

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus. (Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

CHAPTER 9: I KNOW THAT YOU'RE SCARED BECAUSE HEARTS GET BROKEN

Ryohei’s living quarters within the Vindice were bare and sparse, if, admittedly, spacious. 

A ‘glorified hole in the wall’ some would have called it. 

The stone walls glinted with condensation and old, yellowed light bulbs. The floors were so uneven and gritty the table rocked if you so much as looked at it wrong. There was a persistent smell of damp cloth and fish that stuck in the back of your throat and you could never go blind to.

Well — Ryohei’s living quarters within the Vindice were bare and sparse. Until Reborn had gotten his hands on them.

Ryohei cheered as he threw himself onto his bed, gaping at how it didn’t make that horrible noise when the frame cracked against the once-dipped floors. He laid out on his back and pivoted his head to look around, taking in everything that had happened in the five hours the room had been vacant that day.

The walls were a warm white limewash and Ryohei ran his hand along that texture. The floors were a red terracotta tile, similar to the floors Ryohei had seen in the buildings on the surface, and a soft, dusty beige coloured rug was tucked under his bed. 

Ryohei noted the kitchenette that had been cobbled together in what used to be a dank, empty gouge in the corner. A pot of coffee already steamed on the counter, wine and whiskey filled the shelves. Coming off of that was a small, circular table with two chairs tucked to it, all made of the same warm-toned wood. Placemats sat across from each other, already set with cutlery and an arrangement of plates.

Reborn walked across the room, his shoes struck the red-tile floor, and came to a stop at the table. He raised his hands and gently arranged a floral display of sunflowers and barley. 

Ryohei grinned as he watched, Reborn looked very happy with himself.

“So what took you so long, Reborn?!” Ryohei asked as he got himself comfortable on his bed. 

He paused and looked behind himself. There were more pillows up against the headboard, a whole mountain of them arranged kind of like a pyramid, or bowling pins. Ryohei loved pillows, but he really had no idea what he’d do with all of these. Way too many for one man!

“I had to pack,” Reborn hummed playfully, still fluffing those yellow petals. “Do you expect me to come to an island without bathers?”

“Ah! You’re extremely right! I need to buy some swimming trunks. Hey, Abramo, you guys got a shop for swimsuits?”

Abramo stood in the doorway of Ryohei’s room, visibly reeling from the shift in atmosphere. He glanced at Ryohei, but his gaze was tugged back to the man who had finished arranging his flowers and had moved to pour himself a fresh brewed shot of espresso. 

Abramo’s toes were wet, murky water soaked his sandals as he stood just before the threshold where chiselled rock met terracotta tile. Once again, Abramo was reminded that this little slice of domesticity was deep within the heart of the Vindice’s new nest beneath the Simone Island. 

And how — How had this ‘Reborn’ had the time to do all this?

“How did you get in here?” Jaeger hissed, surging forth from behind Bermuda and a stunned Abramo. “This is no place for the likes of you.”

Ryohei blinked owlishly. He was actually kind of surprised Jaeger had managed to show enough restraint for them to have gotten all the way back to Ryohei’s chambers. But then again, Reborn had barely given them time to realise he was on the island before he rushed Ryohei to come see his ‘renovations’.

Reborn smiled at Jaeger from behind his cup, leant back against the polished stone counter. 

“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. This is the perfect place for the likes of me.”

Jaeger’s coat billowed as he reached for Reborn, hand wrapped in Flame and chains. 

“Don’t bother yourself,” Bermuda called and Jaeger came to a sharp halt. Bermuda sighed as he floated over, resting on his subordinate’s tense shoulders. “Really, we can’t be surprised.”

Bermuda looked around at the new arrangement of the place. He looked begrudgingly impressed.

“Finally, a man with sense,” Reborn hummed, “But I must also suggest you tighten security on the western wing? I practically walked in.”

Bermuda didn’t so much as twitch. 

“Noted.”

“Excellent,” Reborn smiled, before he turned to look at Ryohei who was still utterly aglow at his return. “Now, Ryohei dear, why don’t you get me all caught up on the situation.”

Abramo cleared his throat and gently raised his hand, “Can I? Also get caught up?”

“Oh yeah! Sorry,” Ryohei untangled himself from his pile of pillows and threw an arm over Reborn’s shoulders. “Reborn, this is Abramo Kozato of the Simone! Abramo, this is Reborn, he’s the best!”

“In the world, some say,” Reborn agreed, leant up against Ryohei’s side readily. “Charmed.”

“Uh, likewise?” Abramo nodded.

“Anyway, so, Reborn, this is the Vindice’s Simone Base!” Ryohei began and Jaeger grumbled low in his throat as Reborn set himself on the edge of Ryohei’s bed, cup cradled in his hands. 

“Ah yes, the home of your Machine to ‘save the world’,” Reborn said. “I saw the progress so far, those metal frames in the auditorium. Seven vessels for seven Earth Flames.”

“Right on it!” Ryohei agreed, and threw a thumb over his shoulder to point to Abramo. “Abramo over there is the big Boss of the Simone! He gets to choose who’s going to put their Flames in here since he knows who’s strongest on the island.”

“Sound reasoning,” Reborn hummed, enjoying the scorch of that arm still across his shoulders. “I hear there’s been some trouble. Apparently the Vindice are struggling with handwriting of all things.”

Bermuda hoped Reborn burnt his tongue on his espresso. But Reborn sipped unscathed and, as if sensing the growing enmity, smiled at the little ghoul. 

Jaeger frowned. Bermuda scoffed.

Abramo shifted off to the side, looking between the two parties. Sun and Moon. 

“Bermuda said they’d figure it out soon,” Ryohei assured even as he chuckled a bit. “They’ve got their best guys on it!”

“I’m sure they do,” Reborn smiled at him. 

Abramo shifted, he thought that sounded more like a thinly veiled ‘or else’. Ryohei smiled, completely oblivious to the tension — or happy to have someone in his corner. 

“We do,” Bermuda said shortly, irritation underlying his tone. “In the meantime, you have yet to fulfil your labours.”

Reborn leant heavily against Ryohei’s side and sipped at his espresso again, a twinge of annoyance taking him. Ah yes, Verde. 

“We’ll set out tomorrow morning!” Ryohei announced, pumping a fist into the air excitedly. “Reborn’ll find him easy! Right!?”

Reborn sighed. It was for Ryohei’s great plan to save the world so he supposed he could tolerate that green menace’s presence. 

“Of course, Ryohei dear,” Reborn smiled thinly.

Jaeger huffed at him, pleased that something had killed Reborn’s lofty mood. Reborn didn’t spare him a glance, too busy watching the way Ryohei beamed at him with such enthusiasm and joy. Ryohei was so excited to get out there, to scour the world at Reborn’s direction. Full faith that wherever Reborn leads him it will be to where he needs to be — A part of Reborn wondered if he led Ryohei to a cliff, would this man jump at his bay? With bullets at his heels and sun in his eyes?

A part of him thought: Yes. The same part of him knew Reborn would follow and fall like Icarus to Ryohei below.

“Well, in that case, we’d better get some rest,” Reborn said suddenly and smiled at the people standing in their doorway. 

It was an obvious dismissal. 

“Yeah, we gotta get up bright and early!” Ryohei agreed enthusiastically. Then he paused and looked at Reborn. “Oh hey, did you get a room too?”

Reborn hummed at Ryohei, eyes hooded in some kind of soft amusement, “Oh Ryohei, I’ll be sleeping here.”

As he said this, he gestured to the bed they sat upon. What once had been a crib-like single bed, had been upgraded to a plush twin size. With more pillows than one man could ever need.

Ryohei blinked owlishly at him. Then his face lit up in a grin and cheered, “Roommates!”

Abramo waved pityingly as he closed the door to their chambers, and Reborn could hear the distinct sound of Jaeger's mocking laughter. 

☀

Reborn greeted Ryohei the next morning artfully reclined on his side of the bed, hair charmingly tousled and without a whiff of morning-breath. He stretched and moaned as he awoke, back arched and throat exposed. Then he rolled onto his side, head propped up on his hand and looked to his bedmate—

Ryohei sat on the edge of the bed, already dressed in an appalling yellow, green and purple shirt, and nearly vibrating with energy.

“You’re awake! Good morning!” He grinned as he jumped to his feet. “When will you be ready to go?! Do you want to eat now or on the way or—”

Reborn blinked at Ryohei as he started pacing their space, his sandals clapped on the tile floor. Reborn huffed and rolled onto his belly, watching that man excitedly narrate their supposed journey for the day. As he did, Reborn noticed Ryohei’s — it hurt to look at — shirt had been buttoned up lopsidedly. 

Reborn hummed as he scooted out of their bed, feet sliding into a pair of house slippers. He reached across to Ryohei and started to unbutton that Hawaiian shirt, revealing pecs and muscle beneath.

“Let me have my coffee,” Reborn all but crooned, gently straightening Ryohei's shirt, doing it up. He smoothed his hands across Ryohei’s chest. “Then we’ll head out.”

Ryohei grinned, “Sure!”

Reborn sipped at his morning espresso as he got dressed, half the closet dedicated to his suits and summer attire. He pursued his shirt collection, before glancing at Ryohei’s Hawiian monstrosity. Reborn sighed but selected the shirt that most closely matched that shade of yellow — which wasn’t so terrible when isolated.

Ryohei was bouncing at their door by the time Reborn was ready to go, fedora hat clutched in his hands as he wordlessly urged Reborn to speed up putting on his shoes. Reborn chuckled as Ryohei handed him his hat, before Ryohei grabbed him by the arm and started the all out sprint into the damp halls of the Vindice. 

They broke out into the fresh air and rising dawn of the Simone Islands, Ryohei racing ahead up the steep slope that led out of the island’s quarry. A Simone fisherman down at the port took them across the harbour in his dingey, the poor old man held onto the edge of his boat with a deathgrip as Ryohei took up the oars. Reborn reclined back and held onto his hat, watching the dawning horizon and the way Ryohei’s biceps flexed as he rowed, speed rivalling a motor.

When they came to a stop, it was nearly halfway up the beach on the mainland, that little boat all but buried into the sand. Ryohei looked around and rubbed the back of his head, sheepish.

Reborn only smiled as he stepped out of the grounded boat. He brushed himself down as he looked around the bay. Ah, Reborn knew where he was. 

“Sorry! Thank you!” Ryohei called out as he pushed the old fisherman’s boat back out into the harbour. Then he turned and ran across the sand to join Reborn at his side. “Let’s go find Verde!”

“Very well,” Reborn sighed, before he linked his arm though Ryohei’s elbow. “The train station is a fair walk from here though, so we might as well enjoy the trip. We’ve got lovely weather this morning.”

“Huh? Oh yeah, it’s all sunny,” Ryohei agreed as Reborn guided them up the boardwalk, early morning vendors setting up their stores between the bustle of sailors. “So, where’s Verde?”

“In another one of his underground bunkers,” Reborn grumbled, “You know how he is. So paranoid that someone will steal his research he digs himself a hole. We’ll be greeted by some hair-brained series of traps, no doubt.”

Ryohei beamed and clenched his fists in excitement, his biceps tense under Reborn’s hand. 

“Oh, this is going to be so extreme!” 

Reborn smiled fondly. 

Reborn led them through the market street arm in arm, the summer morning already heated. They arrived just in time for the train to roll in with the screeching of the tracks, commuters pushed and shoved their way onto the compartments with the usual discomfort.

Ryohei and Reborn stood in the corner of the cabin, the scent of coffee and sweat thick in the cabin as the passengers sweltered. Reborn scrunched his nose a bit, Ryohei gave him a placating grin of sympathy.

“We’ll have a car ready for us in Cefalù,” Reborn said, as he idly traced their progress on the train map. “From there, we’ll head to Nicosia. Would you like to get a snack before we start the drive, dear Ryohei? It will be two hours.”

“Yeah sure!” Ryohei agreed, and followed eagerly when Reborn tugged him off the train. 

“What do you have an appetite for?” Reborn asked as he looked around at the options near the station.

“A sandwich is fine! I wanna get on the road quick!” Ryohei announced and pulled Reborn towards the storefront boasting hot sandwiches and miscellaneous finger foods. 

It was only when Ryohei was dual-wielding two halves of a hot sandwich , taking alternating bites and groaning in happiness, did Reborn finally deign to turn and address those prying eyes. 

“Can we help you?” Reborn asked, brow raised in annoyance. 

Octavia, the retired Don of the Vongola Family, huffed at Reborn’s tone. At her side, her son and current Don, Timoteo, gave a chuckle. Both were dressed in civilian clothes fitting a warm morning, obviously out on one of Octavia’s strolls incognito. 

Convenient, Reborn thought with no little distaste.

In her prime, the Eighth had stalked the streets of her Vongola’s territory, taking personal stock of every need and change of her land. It had driven both her Set and protection detail up the walls — but it had been how she had found her late husband. Now, she walked with her only son. 

Reborn glanced behind them. 

And two of her grandsons. 

“Reborn, Ryohei, it’s good to see you,” Timoteo greeted warmly. 

Octavia, while one the most capable of the Vongola Bosses, never quite got a grasp on people. She was quick, nearly ruthlessly efficient, with her work. Under her, the Vongola’s territory had nearly doubled. 

Her son, however, took more after his father’s gentle persuasion. Inheriting his mother’s power, and his father’s tongue, Timoteo was a potent man.

“Oh, hi Ninth,” Ryohei waved with his sandwich. “You out with your family?”

Reborn glanced at Ryohei. What a way to talk to a King.

Reborn shrugged and moved to stand close to Ryohei, then smiled at him as he ate. Reborn should treat Ryohei with food more often if it got him like that, bouncing on his heels and face aglow. He finished the last of his sandwich and began working on the last bites of his sandwich.

“Yes I am,” Timoteo replied to Ryohei, “We needed some fresh air.”

“That’s nice. Reborn said it was a good day for a walk!”

Octavia critiqued the way the two Suns stood, eyes taking in every detail. The way Reborn’s elbow brushed Ryohei’s, the matching shades of their shirts, the turn of Reborn’s body. 

Reborn tutted at Ryohei as he produced a handkerchief from his pocket, taking Ryohei’s hands in his own and wiped the residue from his meal. Ryohei hummed a thanks.

Octavia blinked. Everything about him pointed towards Ryohei.

Reborn smiled at her, eyes dark. 

“Ryohei, you remember my son, Enrico,” Timoteo said and both Octavia and Reborn’s eyes snapped to the man.

Timoteo gestured for his eldest son to come forward. The young man answered the summons with well-hidden hesitance, eyes skipped between each face even as he smiled with a false swagger. 

“Enrico, this is Ryohei Sasagawa,” Timoteo introduced, “The man I told you about a few days ago at dinner.”

“I remember, father,” Enrico nodded and took his queue. He turned to Ryohei and smiled, showing his father’s blood as that warm, homely expression took his face. “Ryohei, I’ve heard a lot about you. Father speaks of you highly, especially your Flame. Such a high purity — you must be a very driven man.”

Ryohei’s smile went tight. The honey-sweet scent of harmony tickled his nose and stuck in his throat. 

Reborn frowned, nose scrunched at that saccharine stench. 

Octavia laid a hand on Timoteo’s arm. Octavia never understood people, but as one of the strongest Skies she understood Flame. And Timoteo and Enrico were walking on dangerous tinder. 

But she kept her mouth shut. Teeth gritted tight. It would be a bad look if the Vongola Don’s mother had to pull Timoteo’s head in in public. It would undermine him, mark him as a man still under ‘mummy’s’ thumb. 

Enrico extended his hand to Ryohei, that homely smile and honeyed scent still thick on his skin. 

Ryohei stared at the hand in front of him, his strained smile unmoved. He could feel eyes on him. People in the street watched from behind newspapers, around corners, from under hats. 

The Vongola heir was on the hunt. 

Reborn watched, teeth gritted, as Ryohei’s hand raised to meet Enrico’s. That starburst scarred hand touched pale, soft fingers that wrapped around him tight. They squeezed, Enrico smiled. 

Enrico lingered. 

Flames reached.

Ryohei let him taste. Ryohei let him burn.

Reborn bit down on sadistic laughter as Enrico yanked his hand out of Ryohei’s and stumbled like a lame lamb back into his father. Enrico’s face was red, his brow wet with sweat, his hair stuck to his cheeks. Enrico panted, chest heaved as his collar went damp. His hands shook as he held them out, palms red and aching, the meat of his thumb puffed. 

Enrico lowered his hands and stared at Ryohei.

Reborn tilted his chin in vindication at that little Sky who trembled before the Sun it couldn’t dream to contain. He leant closer to that Flame, to Ryohei, and let it burn. Let it scald, and let it melt into his skin. A lesser man would have let go.

Ryohei smiled thinly as Timoteo ushered his sons into the care of some incognito Vongola officers. Timoteo never let his eyes stray from him, careful and calculating even as he tried to keep the tone light. 

Flames didn’t always mix. Technically, Ryohei had committed no fault. If anything, Enrico’s behaviour had been bordering on promiscuous to reach for a Flame so quick upon introduction. 

Reborn had seen his fair share of men slapped for their probing Flame. Enrico was lucky to have just been burnt.

“Sorry,” Ryohei apologised nonetheless. Reborn glanced out of the corner of his eye and a frown marred his face. “I’m not really… palatable.”

Palatable. Nice. Dociale. Easy

Reborn had never heard such a less fitting word for a man like Ryohei. Whoever had tried to make him ‘palatable’ had committed nothing short of a cosmic crime. Ryohei wasn;t something you could fit into a set, a predetermined cookie-cutter space for him to slot into like a good little Flame. Ryohei was a Sun; the centre of a solar system. How could something like that ever ‘fit’ in a Sky?

“Palatable,” Reborn scoffed, venom in his voice. 

Ryohei looked at Reborn, his expression turned sheepish. Reborn’s opinion on this matter was known: This was all that fool of a tutor’s fault, and he won’t have Ryohei breathing a bad word about himself.

“It’s no issue, sometimes people don’t get along straight away,” Timoteo chortled and Reborn refused to bristle at the implication that Enrico would try again. “A young man ought to experience some rejection now and then. It’s good for the character.”

“Indeed, and a young man should learn when to bow out as well,” Reborn frowned, sharp eyes watched the way Enrico was coddled by his caretakers, younger brother ordering for someone to get them cool drinks to lower body temperature.

But he could hear it, the gossip, the praise, the urging. 

“Did you feel that? How strong that Flame was–”

“If you get a Flame that strong in your Set, Enrico–”

“You’ve got to Harmonise–”

“You’ll be revered–”

“Catch him–”

Reborn felt his blood boil. Reborn felt the phantom press of his pistol in his palm. Reborn felt his Flames surge–

Ryohei threw his arm over Reborn’s shoulders and let out a booming laugh that jostled both Suns. 

“Right Ninth, Reborn! A real man knows how to take a rejection!” He laughed, loud and boisterous. “I’m sure Enrico will have his fair share, finding a good Set is an extreme journey!”

A true man knows how to take rejection.

Reborn watched Ryohei smile at Timoteo with a touch too much teeth. Take the loss, Vongola.

Timoteo chuckled. No.

Octavia let out a sigh through her nose. She had always hated watching men dance like peacocks with their words. 

Reborn looked at his watch and all but draped himself into Ryohei’s fiery side as he tugged that arm tighter around his shoulders, a clear indication that he wanted to be excused from this wonderful company. His lips curled, nothing short of mocking, as Enrico and his brothers craned their necks and gawked at the ease of their touch. At how Reborn didn’t burn like a leaf in wildfire. 

“Well as enlightening as this has been,” Reborn drawled lamely, “Ryohei and I have a full schedule today. Things to meet, people to do, you know how it is–” Timotoe’s expression twitched. His sons behind him glanced around unsurely. Octavia did not so much as blink. “So we’ll part with you here. Have a pleasant day, Vongola.”

Reborn’s smile was full of nothing but venom and spite as he drew Ryohei away by that searing arm wrapped around his shoulders. 

“Bye Ninth! Bye Ninth’s mum!” Ryohei waved.

Reborn let out a scoff at how Ryohei managed to still sound so civil despite the obvious hunt Timoteo had sicced his son on. But he said nothing as he felt Ryohei lean into him, weight rested on his shoulders.

The walk to the car was sluggish and quiet. Ryohei’s Flames were wrapped up tight, a burning white dwarf.    

“You had nothing to apologise for,” Reborn said as they got comfortable in the car. Ryohei played with the radio and cranked the air conditioning on high. “Enrico got what he deserved.”

Ryohei smiled a bit and wound the window down, the morning sun pressed against his cheek, “No one deserves to get burnt, Reborn.”

Reborn huffed through his nose as he drove them into the narrow streets full of blind corners and potholes. His thumb tapped on the wheel as he waited for someone to do a three(and then some)-point turn.

“But you still burnt him.”

There was a tense stretch of silence. Ryohei picked at his cuticle. It bled lightly.

“I think…that's just what happens with me. When people get too close,” he said, voice quiet in a way that so distinctly did not suit Ryohei. Reborn gripped the wheel. “I can’t help it.”

Reborn glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. He took a breath.

“You don’t burn me.”

Ryohei’s hands were white-knuckled clasped in his lap, eyes fixed on the horizon. Ryohei didn’t say anything further. 

Reborn turned off the air conditioning.

☀

Reborn broke off from the coastal road somewhere around Bivo Badia and took the inland route, avoiding the toll cameras. It added an easy 20 minutes to their journey, but Reborn would happily trade watching Ryohei stick his head out of the sunroof, hooting in glee at the countryside, over the knowledge that the Vongola was tracking their progress on the way to collect — ugh — Verde.

It wouldn’t stop the Vongola. But it would make it that much more difficult. And Reborn was nothing if not a petty man.

A petty man who smiled to himself as Ryohei bellowed “Horse! Horse! Horse in a blanket!” as they sailed passed plots of land speckled with cattle and stock. “Hey Reborn! What’s your favourite animal!? I like kangaroos! Oh, but I fought a bear once, that was great!”

Reborn laughed as he took a turn that made Ryohei grip at the roof. Of course that man had fought a bear.

“I quite like lizards myself. Chameleons especially.”

“Right!” Ryohei called over the wind, his hair swept back and his eyes squinted. Reborn huffed; it was said like common sense. “Oh! Oh! I fought a dinosaur too once! That’s kind of like a lizard! But aren’t dinosaurs meant to have feathers!?”

Reborn blinked out at the twisting horizon, then he asked, “You fought a dinosaur?”

“Yeah!”

And it was said with such joy that Reborn didn’t even find himself questioning the logistics of that. It just meant he needed to figure out how and where so he could say: “oh, fancy that, I have as well. We have so much in common, dear Ryohei.”

Instead, at that moment without having gone toe-to-talon with a dinosaur, all Reborn could say was, “And yet you still buckle at a flock of geese.”

Ryohei ducked his head back into the car’s cabin, “I want to see you fight a flock of pissy geese!”

Reborn smirked and turned sharp right. Ryohei shrieked as he gracelessly fell into his seat.

“Seatbelt please, Ryohei, we’re entering Nicosia.”

The place Reborn took Ryohei was just a bit beyond Nicosia. Where the houses became speckled on the horizon behind them and the paved roads turned to rocky dirt. The grass became patchy with white stone-sand. The wheels crunched as Reborn parked them in the shade of a tree.

“We’ll have to walk from here,” Reborn said as he fished his hat out from the backseat. 

“Okay,” Ryohei agreed and got out without hesitation.

Reborn stared at the rocky, vastness around them, with random thickets of bunched trees. Anyone else would be sweating, having been driven out here by a hitman. 

Ryohei bounced impatiently, head on a swivel as he tried to find a hint or tell of where Verde might be hiding.

Reborn donned his hat and locked the car with a snap.

“So, are you and Verde close or something?” Ryohei asked as they walked in a seemingly random direction, no treaded path or otherwise to mark their route.

“What makes you think that?” Reborn scoffed, not bothering to hide his distaste.

“Well, you know where his little base is don’t you? Wouldn’t that be, like, some sensitive stuff?”

“It is,” Reborn said, “It’s just that he doesn’t know I found it.”

“Oh,” Ryohei blinked before he tilted his head. “Why’d you find it? Did you want to hang out?”

Reborn’s nose twitched, “I needed something of his. Borrowed it for a short time. Verde was none the wiser.” 

Reborn adjusted his hat and strode ahead of Ryohei as the area lost its canopy shade and became slopey with wind-worn rocks. Under the midday sun, Ryohei’s shirt was an eye-sore.

“It’s not very well hidden, mind you. Honestly, a novice could find his ‘secret laboratory’ with enough searching,” he said and kicked a rock.

Given its size and how deep it seemed to be embedded in the ground, Ryohei wasn’t surprised it didn’t move. But then a camera, disguised as a pebble, popped up.

“Wow!” Ryohei shouted, utterly enthused as he squatted down to inspect the tiny camera. “Is this, like, Verde’s doorbell!? Hi Verde!” He said and waved.

The camera dropped back into the rock and was replaced with a gatling gun. It whirred as it prepared to fire—

Ryohei blinked. Then he grabbed hold of that gun by the hydraulic arm and ripped it out with the screech of metal and hiss of electrical sparks.

Reborn covered his mouth to smother his mirth. Oh, Verde would not like that. Do it again.

Ryohei tossed the ruined gun aside and started to knock, insistently, at the dormant pebble-camera. 

“Verde, we need to talk to you! It’s extremely important! Verdeee!”

Ryohei continued to knock, his knuckles pounding the rock until — the boulder cracked. Reborn let out a sharp laugh.

“Oh, sorry,” Ryohei winced, and hid his still-clenched fist behind his back.

Reborn cleared his throat and through his snickering he said, “Worry not, my dear Ryohei. We needed to get in anyway.”

The boulder groaned and grated as Ryohei pushed its mass aside, pried out of the earth to leave a hard-packed crater beneath. A little square of metal sat in the moist soil, slater beetles and worms wriggling at the seams.

“Ryohei, if you’d be so kind as to get the door?” Reborn crooned, and Ryohei beamed at the permission.

“Verde! We’re coming down!” He bellowed and ripped that metal panel off its shute.

Without hesitation, Ryohei clambered onto that ladder that went down, down and down deep into the narrow darkness. He gripped it by the side-beams, and with a squinted grin up at the silhouetted figure of Reborn, he went sailing down. 

Reborn scoffed as he heard the man’s echoed whoop of joy and followed his fall deep into the earth. Reborn felt the metal of the ladder, smooth and treated to avoid rust as the air turned cool and sterile and the light of Nicosia’s midday sun shrank to an ambient pin-prick above his head.

Reborn was convinced there was another way into this base. Verde didn’t have the cardio to climb a ladder like this. 

“Whoops!” He heard Ryohei yelp and Reborn gritted his teeth as he came to a sharp halt mid-fall, knees bent to take the strain. Ryohei’s hand came and pressed against his calf, a searing heat that was almost luminescent in that dark tunnel. “There’s something moving under us.”

Reborn leant back and looked down, Ryohei barely an outline between his legs. 

“Yes, that would be the first of our welcome traps.”

“Oh,” Ryohei uttered, voice reverberating up and down those walls. “Okay.”

And he continued to fall with the rustle of fabric — ending with the great thunder roll of gunfire.   

Ryohei hit the ground rolling, the whirr of mechanical gears and machinery filled his ears as Verde’s security geared for his presence. Bullets pocked the cold concrete floor in his wake, his very eardrums flexed under the gunfire cacophony. Ryohei swung, his fist struck the floor and chunks of concrete bulged to make way. He grabbed a piece, jagged and chalkey, reeled his arm back —

“Yo Ryohei! Come play ball with Fuuta and me! He wants to try out for his school baseball team!”

The machine went down with the sizzle of livewire and the groan of warped metal. 

Ryohei let his hand fall to his side. He felt his heart beat in his chest, one painful pulse at a time.

Ryohei swallowed thickly and straightened his shoulders, eyes set forward to the door that was bolted shut several times over and defended with a passcode. His fingers tingled, chalkey concrete powder and baseball leather thick on his palm. 

“Allow me,” Reborn said, voice all but a song, his hand gracing Ryohei’s back as he walked passed.

Ryohei felt that hand slide across his back, fingertips traced the curve of his shoulder blade and he felt the weight melt off, dragged away like Reborn had plucked it in passing. A pickpocket who’s only telltale was the scalding heat he left in his wake.

He let out a long breath through his nose. For a moment, Ryohei thought he saw smoke. 

“After you, my dear Ryohei.”

Reborn pushed the door open, the hinges squeaked and chaffed. He bowed at the waist and swept his hand into the hall lit with blue-tinged lights and white-concrete walls. 

Ryohei laughed, a choked and quick sound that thawed into something warm and full-bellied. Ryohei reached out and threw his arm over Reborns shoulder as he marched them down the hall.

“That’s some fancy fingering skills, Reborn!” He praised. Reborn had barely needed a moment to get passed the code.

“Why thank you,” Reborn purred, “People do often tell me I’m rather good with my hands. I should show you sometime.”

The air tickled his lungs and felt kind of acrid in his throat — some sort of chemical. Tasted bad. Ryohei scrunched his nose as Reborn pressed a handkerchief to his own. 

Ryohei let go of Reborn’s shoulders to reach for the bolted door at the end of the hall, massive, heavy hydraulic bolts dug deep into concrete walls. His hands grabbed, fingers gouged for grip. The bolts bent, the concrete cracked and the door buckled at the corners as Ryohei all but peeled that slab of metal out of its shell.

“After you,” he joked as he stepped aside, arms sweeping for Reborn’s way.

“Oh, what a gentleman! I’m all aflutter,” Reborn chuckled and fanned himself as he stepped over that heavy, metal carpet Ryohei had laid out for him.

“Please stop this queer mating ritual of yours.” Came the voice that reverberated through the walls like a rolling thunder. 

“I refuse,” Reborn responded, but was overblown by the ear-shattering bellow of “VERDE WE NEED TO TALK LET US IN!!”

“No.”

“VERDE!”

“No.”

Ryohei pouted and waved his arms at the camera, “Come on Verde! It’s extremely important!”

“Nothing could be more important than the continuation of my research.”

“Not even a Machine to save the world being built on an uncharted island populated by a new species of Flame Set and now defended by the Vindice?” Reborn uttered, checking his nails for any imperfection. There weren’t any. 

A silence hung in the halls. 

“Fine.”

Ryohei cheered.

A series of fourteen doors opened with heavy swoops and the chatter of alarms. At the far end, almost blending into the white concrete, was an equally pasty and off-colour looking Verde, the man hailed as the second coming of DaVinci.

“You look like shit,” Reborn scoffed as they made their way over, stepping around deactivated traps, some sort of sickly green pit visible beneath a glass floor. “When was the last time you went outside?”

“December 8th,” Verde said.

Reborn twitched, “It’s July.”

“Riveting,” Verde deadpanned. “Talk about the machine.”

“Ever graceful with the pleasantries,” Reborn hummed.

“Okay, so!” Ryohei began, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “It’s a long story but the short and sweet is that the world is gonna end in like — uh — a few decades? Give or take. And there’s this Machine that’s gonna replace the Tri-Ni-Sette Curse—” Verde blinked at Reborn. “—And instead of Sky Flames, we’re gonna use Earth Flames!”

“Earth Flames,” Verde echoed. 

“Yeah! Great guys! Extremely good food! But the Vindice are kinda stuck and they need someone to figure it out and you’re the only one who can do it!”

“A Machine that metabolised Sky Flames to stabilise the planet has been converted to take Earth Flames and the Vindice is deadlocked,” Verde summaries without missing a beat, mind working at lightning speed, eyes wide and alert as he took in every sparse detail Ryohei spilled. “The ‘Tri-Ni-Sette Curse’ was the predecessor— Never heard of it..Tell me more.”

“The Tri-Ni-Sette System is what powers the earth! Don’t know the specifics, I got told, but I totally forgot it was like ten years ago— but it’s like extremely ancient and used to be maintained by the True Earthlings—”

Reborn turned his head. This was new. “True Earthlings?”

“The race before humans,” Ryohei tossed out, and that did not help at all—

“But they’re all dead. Well, except one. Nice guy, bit creepy. Good heart. Anyway, the Machine is gonna stop the Arcobaleno Curse cause it’s a shit solution and we need you to help fix the machine ‘cause you’re the one who made it in the future! Well, with someone else too but like—”

A hand, hot as the surface of the sun and just as demanding, grabbed Ryohei by the bicep. Nails dug in, bones ground together. Reborn stared at Ryohei, eyes wide and bright and seering.

“What do you mean he made it in the future?”

Ryohei blinked.

“I mean Verde’s the guy who designed it. Will design it. Has-will? Will-has?” Ryohei could feel his brain start to hurt the more he thought about it. “But yeah— didn’t I tell you?”

Reborn smiled thinly, and with a voice full of soft venom said, “No. I didn’t get that snippet of information, dear Ryohei.” Then Reborn stepped forward, eyes alight with something fierce that picked at the very seams of Ryohei and dung in just as deep as those nails in his arm. “And tell me, Ryohei: if this Machine was designed in the future, how did you get your hands on it? Or, how did your Family—”

“My family sent me to fix some things.”

Reborn froze.

“I don’t exist now.”

“Not anymore.”

Ah. It all made sense now. 

The weeks, near months, Reborn had spent chasing heat haze from Kosovo to Bhutan were all for naught. Not because Ryohei was well hidden, but because he didn’t exist. Reborn should have realised, if he of all people couldn’t find someone, the logical answer was they simply never existed. And here he had been, doubting himself.

“We have…much to discuss, my dear Ryohei,” he said, slow and full of vicious victory.

Ryohei blinked again. Reborn saw the moment the retaliation dawned upon him— but it wasn’t of dread, or resignation, or even the thrill of being caught. Reborn stalled as Ryohei leant toward him and a hot hand clasped the wrist that was claws-deep in his flesh. A grin danced on his lips, face aglow with sheepishness.

“Oh, I forgot to mention that, sorry to the extreme! Thought I told you since I told Bermuda, and I just can’t keep track— Yeah, I’m from the future. Thirty years, kinda. That’s why you couldn’t find any of my info! Sorry again, Reborn. Wasn’t trying to hide anymore, it just slipped my extreme mind!”

Reborn squeezed. Teeth still gritted in a smile. 

“Nonetheless, when we return to our quarters, we will be having words.”

Ryohei nodded, “Got it, I’ll make sure I get all the details this time!”

Verde clapped his hands suddenly, and both Reborn and Ryohei’s heads snapped around. Verde’s expression was wrapt, the gears in his head spinning at high speed. The man, dishevelled and bummy as he was, looked the most alive Reborn had seen him in— years. Practically a live wire, Verde was abuzz, hair standing on end and eyes alight.

“I’ve got it!” He announced and spun on his heel, off-white coat billowing. “Gentlemen, I am a genius!”

Verde took off in a run, lopsided and frantic and accompanied by the clatter of falling metal and half-baked projects. Ryohei followed with an infectious grin, the energy in the room found a new conduit. Reborn followed if only to watch when Verde finally tripped over his own mess in the rush.

Verde’s lab, deep in the bowels of Nicosia’s chalky outcrop, was full of all the latest bells and whistles and atomic-level cutting edge. It was all that and a fire hazard, with paper and steel wool and old clothes draped across circuitry. The air was stale and cold, filtered once and filtered again, and Ryohei’s nose itched as he detected that distinct ‘plane-air’ smell.

“You will take me to the Machine— to the Island, I must see the island. Flames, you said. Earth? Fascinating, a whole Set branch. Do they maintain the seven frequencies or is that entirely Sky-centric? And the Machine, take me to the Machine, how goes the progress, where are the blueprints I must see them.”

“Blueprints are back at the Simone base, Bermuda won’t let them out of his sight,” Ryohei responded without missing a beat.

“Then we go!” Verde announced as he spun to face them, folders of documents and a crate of assorted greeblies and tools clutched under his arms. “Now! Take me to my Machine!”

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus.

(Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

CHAPTER 8: YOU'RE SO GOLDEN

The Simone Islands were hot and just a little bit humid. 

Sand peppered the cracks in between the bricks and stones of the paths. A windmill groaned on the horizon on the east side of town. A fountain bubbled in the centre of the square, a sandstone plaque engraved with the name ‘Cozzarto’ .

A gaggle of girls giggled as they walked past, wrapped in pretty dresses of bright reds and pastels. A team of young men worked to heave crates and sacks onto a cart bound for the Simone docks. An elderly couple walked arm in arm, skin dotted with age and sun, faces creased with laughter lines. 

The Simone Islands were hot and just a bit humid. The Simone Islands were alive. 

Ryohei took in a breath, smelling that bay air and freshly tilled soil up on the hills. 

“How are you liking the place?” A man asked, joining Ryohei at his side, fountain spray touching their cheeks. 

Hair a blazing red, and pupils crossed with the stigma of Simone, Abramo, the grandfather of a boy who would be Enma, smiled at Ryohei. His jaw was speckled with stubble that he scratched at with only four fingers; his middle finger lost in an incident at the mill. His mother, rest her soul, said it was redemption for using it so much to offend people. 

“It’s great,” Ryohei said, voice almost light with awe. 

“Ain’t we just!” Abramo agreed, and gave Ryohei a solid pat on the back. “From our women to our wine, you’ll never find anything quite like us!”

The last time Ryohei had set foot on this land, he had never even reached the town. Far down in the thicket, the Simone Islands had been hauntingly quiet. 

The thought that all this was washed away. In a single night. Right in front of the young eyes of Enma’s Family— 

Ryohei looked at the grimm shape that hung above the ground like a man from a noose. 

“Ah, of course,” Abramo turned and looked upon that shade. “Allow me to introduce Basker Ville, our local lurker. Not much of a talker, let me tell you.” 

Basker Ville, the Vindice guard, which haunted the mountains and shores of the Simone Islands. Ryohei had never heard of him before, one of the many wrangled bodies in those damp halls. Now, the first line of defence against the complete undoing of everything.

Ryohei gave his new brother-in-arms a smile. 

Basker gave a low groan that sounded like something heavy dragged across stone. 

“Ryohei,” Abramo said, throwing his arm around Ryohei’s shoulders. “I hear you’ve been moved into the Vindice’s new base down in the old quarry. I’ve been there; bit of a creeping damp problem. If you ever need a break, come hang out with us up here!”

Abramo was trying to be welcoming, and set an example for the rest of the island, which watched on with bated breath and careful eyes. They weren’t used to outsiders after centuries of exile. And so many had come. Ryohei, even after three days now, was merely the most recent of the swathe of folk to the island.

Like Abramo had said, almost overnight, a deep, cavernous hole had been bored into the walls of the vacant quarry. With skill and speed befitting the corpses of history’s Best, a base had been constructed out of the layers of cracked stone and calcified coral. The Vindice had made their home under the feet of the Simone.

The island was shaken, to have the Wardens beneath their floorboards. 

Most of them didn’t even know why.

Only the main branch of the Simone had been told by Bermuda personally. From there, it was up to the Family’s discretion who on the island needed to know. 

“Thanks!” Ryohei smiled, and without hesitation, threw a reciprocal arm over Abramo’s shoulder as well. “Hey, do you know anywhere good to eat around here? The Vindice aren’t big on meals. Ghouls and all. No offence.”

Basker Ville grunted, bandaged face completely unmoved.

Abramo grinned. 

“My good man, let me introduce to you the wonders of Simone-style cuisine.”

Maybe it was the weird herbs that grew on the island, maybe it was the centuries as a closed community, or maybe it was the adventurous palletes of people who were so in tune with the earth they walked upon, but Ryohei had never seen these kinds of variations before.

The Simone did beautiful things to a steak. Their minestrone had an almost minty sting at the end. Their rosemary tarts were kind of spicy. 

‘Flash pickled’ was an entire range of goods, and compared to traditional pickling, it had a distinctly warmer undertone. Depending on the intensity, it could almost taste smoked. 

There was this specific rock that when boiled in sugar and a particular root made the sugar change colour and pop in your mouth. They had more kinds of beer in a single space than seemed anyway safe, and dear God, their wine.

Ryohei happily kicked his feet under the table as he ate his nth meal of the morning. Abramo nearly sick with laughter as the plates stacked up, a group of Mountain Flame folk cheered Ryohei on. 

“It’s your own fault, Kozato!” A waitress laughed as she put down a cup of sweet tea in front of Abramo. “You basically challenged the man when you said you’d pay. He eats more than a Mountain.”

“It’s just so good!” Ryohei groaned, clearing off his plate with his spoon. 

Despite the isolation, Italian blood was thicker than any mulled wine and one attribute had stayed over the generations: food brought people together. And the head chef of this fine family diner, an old woman with a spine like a question mark and a grip that could crush diamond, was all but singing Ryohei’s appetite praises as she pinched his cheeks bruised.

In the corner of the family diner, Basker Ville stood like the monster at the end of the bed. At his feet, a trio of girls sat, threading paper flowers into the holes of his gnarled coat, a pile of red paper napkins between them. 

Their mothers watched on with growing warmth. Basker Ville did not move an inch.

Ryohei grinned as another plate of pasta was brought out to him, with seafood straight from the Simone Bays. He dug into it with gusto, feet doing a little tappy dance on the red tiled floors.

“Ryohei.”

Ryohei looked up as a shadow loomed over his table, and the scent of something damp and something rotten crept into his nose. Ryohei swallowed his pasta, refusing to let it go to waste despite how the taste had soured on his tongue.

“Hi Jaeger,” he waved with his spoon. 

Basker Ville came floating over. Ryohei spied the red paper flowers lining the bottom of his tattered cloak. 

Jaeger looked at the state of his coat. Basker Ville made no move to remedy his uniform. 

Jaeger seemed to sigh. Then he turned back to Ryohei who was packing his pasta into a takeaway box.

“You are to return to Base,” Jaeger announced. “The Machine is ready to be witnessed.”

Abramo looked up sharply, a breath taken from between teeth. 

Ryohei grinned, feeling a surge of excitement and hope bloom in his blood. He stood without further prompting, takeaway under his arm.

“Ready when you are!”

“May I come!?” Abramo nearly choked out, standing as well. The diner was quiet as they watched. “I — I would like to come as well. To see the Machine.”

Jaeger turned his head slowly towards the head of the Simone Islands, regarding him with icy silence.

“Huh? You haven’t seen it yet?” Ryohei blinked, looking at the Simone man beside him. “Dude! Sure, come on!”

“ Boy —” Jaeger began, frustration clear in that single utterance.

Basker Ville appeared behind the two mortal men and in a flurry of tattered cloaks and red paper flowers, Ryohei and Abramo were plunged into that wet stench of decay and rot. Ryohei grunted as he landed on his behind, the butt of his shorts instantly damp. Abramo stood beside him, grounded and unshaken.

“Earths,” Ryohei grumbled.

Abramo laughed and helped Ryohei to his feet, “Up we go.”

Ryohei pouted as he pulled at his shorts, peeling the wet khaki from the back of his thighs with great tactile discomfort. 

Basker Ville groaned and turned to lead the way, navigating halls of sandstone and bedrock, lined with carved-out pillars that harkened back to the Roman Headquarters. Bits of seashells and ancient coral pocked the walls. Abramo trailed his fingers along the wet tunnel, feeling the layers of stone and the passage of time that had built the very land his ancestors walked upon.

Ryohei waddled after them in his wet shorts.  

The sandy floors crunched into stone, and Ryohei was tempted to see if his breath would fog as they walked deeper into those tunnels that wound and twisted beneath the island of the Simone. At one point, he heard Abramo murmur, “We must be near the tavern,” like he could have somehow mapped their progress by memory.

Basker Ville gave a soft huff in response. It sounded like the rattling of rusted plumbing.

They walked for a few more turns, the hallways branching off and splintering with doors lining the way. Ryohei glanced at one as they passed, ‘Maintenance Room 3’ the plaque read. 

Ryohei snickered. 

It got colder. Ryohei felt his skin pebble with goosebumps. Abramo rubbed his arms. Their footsteps splashed in shallow puddles that pooled in the grooves of carved stone. It smelt of sea water and dead fish. 

The tunnel curved down steeply, bits of seashell and sand slipping under their sandals. 

A door stood at the end of the dark tunnel, layers upon layers of Vindice chain crossing the large stone and steel slabs. Basker Ville groaned as he approached the doors, a dark Flaming hand outstretched. The door warped, darkness leaching through the cracks. It spread like a mould and smelt equally as musty, moist and rotten. Basker Ville stepped aside, and Ryohei stepped through the portal.

The ground was hard-packed stone under Ryohei’s sandals, and the scent of fish was deftly cut by the sharp stench of hot, welded metal and solder. The room was a cavern freshly carved out of the island, gems and mineral deposits dotting the walls and vaulted ceiling, those gleaming riches now unimportant and just another part of the structure. Three grand doors were in each third of the room, each one made of metal and stone and chained down like a Vindice criminal under watch. 

Multiple Vindice ghouls floated around, their coats cast aside or sleeves rolled high on their thin, bandaged arms. They carried crates of scrap metal, tanks of butane and coal, and bags of sand. They crouched as they worked with spanners, floating high overhead as they bent beams into arches. 

A tunnel off to the side burnt red hot, waves of pure heat wafting out as the sand was dragged in. Faintly, Ryohei could hear glass shatter.

Wires of copper and coolant branched like bulbous roots, sprawled across the floors like wandering vines. Seven large metal bases had been built into the bedrock floor, arching structures of red-hot metal beams wound tightly together like the bud of a rose about to burst into bloom. They stood grand in the centre of the room, at least two men tall and catching the light of Flame and fuse as the Vindice welded. 

Ryohei crossed the room, stepping over the wires carefully. They were heavy; if he bumped them, Ryohei didn’t doubt that he’d be the one to move before they did.

He reached the seven bases, lined up in the centre of the cavern. Seven spots, for seven Flames. The new batteries, the new Machine to save the world.

Ryohei touched the base. The metal was cold. It was incomplete. The Machine had no power. 

“This place,” Abramo uttered as he stepped out into the cavern, looking around in wonder. He looked up at the rocky roof. “We’re under the church.”

“Indeed. Your church was built upon the part of your island that went deepest below sea level,” Bermuda’s childish voice rang out as he floated over. Behind him, Jaeger followed. “I see you’ve arrived finally, Ryohei.”

“Yeah,” Ryohei answered, still squatting beside the centre base. He took a long breath that tasted of burnt metal. “You guys have been busy. It’s looking good.”

“But unfinished,” Bermuda said, and looked upon the metal frames. “I hoped to be further along. To test this theory.”

“It’ll work,” Ryohei said, voice stern and sure. 

Bermuda regarded him coolly, unfazed. He couldn’t let himself be moved so easily. Not again.

“A theory,” Bermuda uttered.

Ryohei gritted his teeth, but let the topic lay.

“So,” Abramo spoke softly, coming to touch the machine as well. “This is where you want us to put our Earth Flames?”

“Correct, once the Machine is complete, we will require you and your most powerful representatives to inject your Flames,” Bermuda said.

Ryohei looked at the Machine, still just a skeleton of the one Ryohei had helped power in his youth. There was a distinct difference though — this one was bigger. Even now, in its stripped-down state, Ryohei could tell this Machine would amount to something mammoth. 

When it was finished. 

“What’s the part you’re stuck on?” Ryohei asked, rapping his knuckles against the metal base. 

A Vindice ghoul grunted at him in warning.

“Two components,” Bermuda sighed and floated towards that small tunnel that wafted with heat and glowed an ominous, sweltering red. 

Ryohei stood up with a groan and followed after him, as the stench of a hot kiln grew stronger. 

The room was solid stone from ceiling to floor; trails of scorch and smoke climbed the walls. Metal rods leant against anvils, great sheers and tongs littered tables. Several bodies of exposed bandage and rot worked the room, shovels in blackened hands as they fed the three, gaping, hungry mouths of the furnaces, carved out of the bedrock of Simone Island. 

Abramo coughed as he stood behind Ryohei. The air was dry and leached life from his throat as he tried to breathe. 

A Vindice corpse lumbered across the workshop, metal rod in hand. They dipped the end in a vat of something utterly molten. Steadily, they twisted and dipped, twisted and dipped, until a great blob of red hot sat perched on the rod. The Vindice crossed the room, still twisting to keep that mass from drooling off, and poked it into the belly of the furnace. 

They took a breath. Their stomach expanded, their barrel of a chest rose. They pressed their gnarled, dry lips to the end of the rod and blew. 

The blob ballooned, and swelled, and the Vindice raced to a large, metal chamber — a mould — and blew again. The molten balloon grew. Back and forth they ran, tempering, heating and blowing until the metal chamber caught the edges of the red bubble. And with another great gust of breath, the bubble took shape, a cylinder, two men tall, and cast in glass inches thick.

Carefully, two other Vindice transferred the slow cooling glass to the far side of the room. The floor sparkled and crunched under their shoes. They set the cylinder in place, a kind of bareboned version of the Machine’s base. Still sealed at the top with warped glass, the chamber was almost rosie as it cooled, and as the last blotch of heat leached away, a Vindice ghoul raised their hand.

Flames of Night erupted within the cylinder. It flickered and swayed, seeming to eat at the light around it.

The glass cracked. A long, spider-webbed split that grew, and stretched, and clawed its way across the glass. 

Ryohei threw his arm up as the chamber exploded. Glass rained down on their heads, all small shards and fine crystal powder.

“Five seconds,” Bermuda mused. “A new record. Well done.”

The Vindice in the room nodded in thanks and swept up the shards to be poured into the vat, melted, and everything began again. 

“The first issue we have met is the container. The blueprints call for glass specifically, but no glass we craft can contain Flames. The frequency they emit when pure is too much for it,” Bermuda explained, watching the craftsmen try again, and again, and again.

Hands blackened, bandages soaked in sweat and fluid, lips chapped and cracked. Cuts and burns littered their broken bodies. In the light of the furnace, they glittered, glass in their hair and embedded in their skin.

Bermuda watched.

Steadfast. Stubborn. Too willful to lie down, even in death. His Vindice would persist.

Ryohei dusted the glass on his arms into the vat and shook out his shirt. 

“So you need some special glass or something?” Ryohei asked as he picked bits out of his hair. 

“In short,” Bermuda uttered. Then Bermuda turned and, without preamble, floated from the room. “The second issue is more technical. Whoever designed this Machine was a genius. Whoever scribed it, however, was an idiot.”

Ryohei grinned. He didn’t have the heart to tell Bermuda that the ‘genius’ and the ‘idiot’ were one in the same. Verde, nor Tabolt, were very good at explaining their creative process. 

“It is taking a small team to decipher whatever madness their handwriting and lexicon is.”

Ah, that was Tabolt, definitely.  

“Haha, sorry ‘bout that! In their defence, they were in a rush!”

“Clearly,” Bermuda muttered. “No matter. They’re making progress. Whether it be through your ‘Verde’ or the Vindice, the instructions will be deciphered.”

“That’s the spirit!” Ryohei cheered and gave Bermuda a pat on the back.

The Vindice Boss wobbled in the air, before he gave Ryohei a sharp and scathing glare. He rightened his hat with a huff.

Ryohei gave a sheepish smile. Abramo snickered.

Ryohei looked around eagerly as they exited the tunnel and crossed that central amphitheatre that housed the metal bones of the Machine. Just seeing it, the tangible progress towards his Family’s Will — it was enough to inspire Ryohei again. Lit the fire under his feet.

He couldn’t wait to get out there and track down Verde. 

Bermuda led them to another one of the three doors and a portal warped to life. On the other side of the chain door was a staircase. Made of stone, coral and dangerously steep, it reached up, up and disappeared behind the curve of the earth. 

They climbed those stairs, Abramo trailing his fingertips along the wall, feeling the jut of ancient sea shells and slate. Their soles crunched on the sandy stairs, and slowly, Ryohei could feel the soft touch of a breeze across his face.

The stairs reached a landing made of stone, scratched and slashed with chisel marks. On one of the walls were five deep divots, lined up and worn in, like some sort of shelf. Abramo let out a sound of recognition.

“Wait, this is—” Abramo uttered and looked up.

Ryohei followed his gaze and saw a trap door, old and metal. He looked to the divots — a ladder — and climbed. He reached the trapdoor and pushed. The metal hinges groaned, dust and dirt crumbled from the seams. 

Ryohei breathed deep.

He could smell incense.

Ryohei blinked, eyes adjusting after so long underground. He looked around. Pews sat before him, old and well-worn, even with their glossy finish. Stained glass windows lined the stone walls, depicting prophets and saints. Candelabras flickered, barely visible against the slanted afternoon sunlight.

Abramo had said the Machine was built under the church.

He heaved himself up and out of the hatch, the rough lines between the tiled floor bit into his palms. 

Ryohei felt his nape catch alight and scorch down his back.

Ryohei spun. The mortar dug into his knees. 

That tall, lithe silhouette sat in position of pride upon the altar, one knee crossed over the other. Around him, candles were in their stands, each one warm and lit, leaning and flickering as if to reach and touch sun-kissed skin. A burnt match hung from his fingertips, the smoke curled.

They tilted their head and Ryohei saw the shadows peel away, and a satisfied smile was lit by the sweet touch of golden hour. The sun caught those black eyes and shone like something precious, something great. Full of life and freedom. The Greatest. 

Ryohei grinned with teeth and heart. 

“Reborn.”

Reborn, the very embodiment of the golden hour and dripping with light, shadow and heat upon that flaming altar, smiled back.

“Hello Ryohei.”

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus. (Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

CHAPTER 5: AND ICARUS' LIFE, IT HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN

Reborn wondered how he had missed it. That massive Sun. A supernova, sitting just out of the corner of his eye. 

That Sun was nothing short of massive. 

How the hell had he never met him before?

The man in the church got to his feet with a swift grace, entire body coiled in preparation. A fighter, that much Reborn could be sure of. And a seasoned one at that.

And yet, as Reborn looked upon his face, no name came to mind.

How had he never heard of him before? A Flame that sheer size — there was no way the Mafia would have left it alone. Reborn could say that from experience. 

Reborn watched their Flame, feeling how brightly it burnt. He just couldn’t get over how huge it was, it was bigger than Reborn’s. 

And Reborn had no name for it.

Curiosity curled in Reborn’s mind, a kind of itching purr that demanded he satisfy. He turned and slowly moved through the pew, crunching kaleidoscopic stained glass and stepping over a cooling cadaver. 

“And who might you be?” Reborn purred, watching those Flames flicker and swirl.

The Sun was happy to see him. They were scared to see him. The latter he could understand, the prior, however…

The man in the church chose which side to listen to. Like a shot, he burst from his spot in the pews and was bounding down the aisle towards the doors.

“Oh?” Reborn uttered, watching the retreating figure, clad in an eyesore of a Hawaiian shirt. “Playing chase, are we?”

He took a moment to check the load in his pistol. Then he cast an uninterested glance upon the body left in the aisle. 

“I’m sure they’ll find him,” Reborn shrugged and fixed his hat. 

Reborn felt his lips slip into a grin as he gave chase, following the warm scent of sunshine and the bright colours of that shirt. 

The man had chosen to slip into the masses of the town square, but that only did him so many favours when he was the only one for miles dressed so ridiculously. All it took Reborn to find him, perched upon a rooftop, was to scan the crowds for a nauseating mix of bright pink hibiscus and neon green palm fronds. 

Reborn smiled when he spotted him, walking through the crowd like he was right at home. Didn’t so much as look over his shoulder.

This man was used to being tailed. 

How had Reborn never heard of him?

Reborn watched the man duck into a store, and idly peruse some products, finding an excuse to stay out of the open. He hummed and tilted his head.

Then he lifted his head as the Sun came strolling out of the shop, a kind of newfound drive to his stride. His body language was that of someone who had made a decision, had made a plan. 

Reborn followed him with sharp eyes, waiting for an action.

The man turned into a side street off the main, empty save for excess produce and only wide enough for one man. Then he broke into a sprint.

Reborn raised an eyebrow. This mystery Sun was trying to run again.

Reborn sighed and loaded his gun, watching the man sprint without breaking a sweat. Reborn was going to have to work on his cardio.

☀

Reborn sat in a dark room, fingers lightly drumming on the barrel of his pistol. Before him on the table were papers strewn, every hint of a man with Sun in his veins and a scar on his nose collected in these documents from Kosovo to Bhutan. Reborn had searched hard for these, with minimal information to go on and had called in a few favours too.

And yet, there was no trace of a man named ‘Ryohei’.

Well, there was. An obvious paper trail that was so civilian it was nearly laughable. A fittingly below-average high school record, a general course at a community college, and a bit of on and off work at some defunct convenience stores and warehouses. Not to be misunderstood, whoever cobbled this together was good, good enough to all but send Reborn on a wild goose chase for a whole week. But when Reborn looked closer, chased the details and examined the fine lines, the story just fell apart for him, every file and ID sliding off Ryohei like oil on water.

“What’s your name?” Reborn had asked, standing over the man, a foot on his chest and gun at his head. 

The man was almost glowing under him, chest heaving with every breath after nearly an hour worth of running under the hot Italian sun. He looked like he wanted to do more. Never enough, always just a bit more of an edge, a bit more of a bite, a bit more of a bullet in his shoulder and under a heel. 

Reborn had smiled at that, feeling that fire burning in his veins in reply, gun heavy in his hand.

“Ryohei,” he had responded after a long pause. Nearly breathless.

It wasn’t a lie. 

Of that, Reborn was sure. 

Reborn had met his share of liars in his time, knew just about every tell and could spot one in the crowd with just a glance. This man, this Ryohei, wasn’t a liar. Not this time.

And yet, as Reborn sat at the table and frowned down at the picture provided to him by a broker of some gnarly-jawed man with a starburst scar all along his nose ridge, Reborn was coming up empty-handed time and time again. 

Reborn couldn’t find Ryohei. And he was so excited.

Usually, even the best-hidden men could be found within days, maybe weeks of hard searching. Reborn had been searching for nearly a month at this point. 

Who the hell was Ryohei? And how the hell had Reborn never heard of him?

Reborn leant back in his chair, hearing the wooden frame groan with him as he remembered that supernova dressed in a Hawaiian shirt. That man who was practically alight with Sun, it was like seeing a flame in the night. 

Ryohei was an utter beacon. The biggest Reborn had ever seen and with such a vibrant Will—

How the hell had Reborn never heard of him?

Reborn put his hat on the table and ran his hand through his hair, trying to soothe the sizzling in his skin and the bubble of his blood. Just thinking of that man made Reborn’s blood run faster, like a Pavlovian response. 

He was just so delightful. 

“What? Do you think I’m some kind of miracle worker?”

Ryohei hadn’t missed a beat, “Kinda? Yeah?”

Reborn blinked, peering at Ryohei through the bars. Then he puffed up a bit, shoulders squared, and looked rather proud as he said, “Black car. They’re driving fast.”

Ryohei grinned at Reborn, “Knew it.”

Reborn chuffed, “Such faith.”

What gave Ryohei such blind faith in Reborn? Such an intense trust and regard that even on the barrel-end of a gun, Ryohei still smiled with teeth and reached to hold Reborn’s wrist with a burning hand. It was equal parts foolish and flattering.

Reborn used his fingertips to trace the plates of the gun, feeling the vent and gear, warm to the touch with Sun swirling in the barrel. 

Trust, excitement, recognition, fear, faith. Ryohei had such faith. What gave Ryohei such faith?

A misguided, self-serving imagined version of Reborn? Maybe. Maybe in the beginning when Ryohei’s eyes had flashed with fear and a nearly heartbreaking hope as he uttered the name ‘Reborn’ like a prayer on that chapel floor. 

Reborn had nearly broken into shivers when he had met those eyes, brighter than a solar flare, that looking past and beyond him. And Reborn had watched as those eyes changed, burnt brighter with a renewed energy as Ryohei ran and gazed upon Reborn with a kind of intimate understanding, like Reborn was somehow ‘his’. 

Reborn leant his jaw against his gun, remembering those rough knuckles against his skin. Reborn had wondered how his face hadn’t caught ablaze at that touch. White-hot as pale hair and as all-consuming as a booming voice.

Ryohei nearly melted Reborn.

Reborn’s eyes dropped to see Leon quietly plodding along the table, documents and photos dragging behind his tail. Leon peered up at Reborn and the blurry photo of Ryohei, propped up against a bottle of wine.

“I’ll be seeing him tomorrow. I’ll get my answers then,” Reborn told Leon and took a sip of sun-sweet wine. “It’s a date.”

☀

Reborn hated the tale of Icarus.

The tale of a little man who flew too close to the sun, went above his ‘station’ and came crashing down, his hubris his undoing. ‘Little Icarus’ had been whispered into his ears ever since Reborn took his first big bounty. As he rose in infamy, so did the chant of little Icarus, little Icarus, little Icarus, fall down!

The only difference now was that Reborn was far from ‘little’, and anyone who said otherwise was a fool.

Now, the people chanted Icarus, Icarus, the world’s greatest Icarus, come crashing down! Prove you have risen above your station, reached beyond your dues. Show us your wings are made of wax and let us bask in the warmth as you lay burning at our feet, as human and simple as the rest of us!

That one day he would find his match, find his ‘sun’ and burn for the rest of these simple, mortal men who knew better than to reach too far. That his lust for everything, would leave him with nothing.

Reborn had always excelled, simply because he never accepted anything less. If there was a skill in this world, Reborn wanted to harness it, break it down to its smallest parts and understand it, inside and out. He never did anything with half a heart, he wasn’t built that way. 

A Sun was active, constantly bubbling with near volcanic-levels of Activity. And a Sun of Reborn’s size and purity? It was no wonder he had been abandoned when he was young, his mother must have suffered heat stroke simply holding him in her womb. 

Reborn was in a constant state of action, needing a constant release. Run faster, jump further, fly higher on wings of wax. Nothing satiated him, nothing could keep him down. Reborn had experienced far more than a single man could ever. 

He had lived beyond his years, and had acted out all their fears. Done everything all those folk who chanted ‘Icarus’ were too scared and mortal to do. 

And so they chanted and whispered behind their hands about the tale of Icarus, and how Reborn would, inevitably, come crashing down. How Reborn, who represented everything they wanted but were too scared to reach, would burn for their egos.

That one day he would find his sun.

But Reborn knew that no mere ‘sun’ could burn him out. He’d need nothing short of a supernova. For someone like that to exist, it was impossible. He could have heard of them by now, their tale.

And as Reborn sat upon that pew in an abandoned chapel, watching the candlelight caress sun-kissed skin while the scent of smoke filled the air, he began to wonder if he had found his impossibility. His supernova.

Ryohei’s voice was soft and gravelly as he said, “I don’t exist.”

“Why?” 

Ryohei shrugged, “Same reason as you, I guess.”

“So you’re Mafia-connected,” Reborn said, finally having proof of that suspicion.

Ryohei’s smile was weak but warm, and he cradled the newly stuck match in his palms like it was something precious as he led it to the wick. The light ebbed and flowed across his cheeks, that bandage, in his eyes. It lit him like a summer’s morning.

“Yeah, you got me. I’m Mafia-connected.”

“What Family?” Reborn asked, wanting to know who had claim on Ryohei, on his Flame.

The match was snuffed again, and Ryohei shrugged as he put aside that match. 

“I can’t tell you, sorry.”

“That’s two.”

Another match struck to life with a hiss, seething into existence. 

“Are you in Harmony?” 

Ryohei’s hands flinched back and the little flame on the candlewick died out before it had a chance. Ryohei thinned his lips and said, “Not anymore.”

Oh. 

Reborn watched the way Ryohei’s face dimmed, and crossed one leg over another. 

Ryohei had been in Harmony, but it had not gone well. Reborn stored that piece of important information away.

“I see,” Reborn uttered, never looking away from that reproachfully sad expression on the man’s face. “Where do you currently live? Your base of operations.”

“The red building on the corner, just a bit further than where we met earlier.”

Funny. He’d give away his home address faster than the name of his ex-allegiance. Ryohei was still loyal, even if only to their memory. 

Faithful, loyal. What a delightful man Reborn had found for himself. 

At a distance, so warm and inviting like a mid-summer day. And the closer you got, the hotter he burnt, creeping closer to the surface of the sun itself, an entire star’s worth of nuclear heat. 

So hot to the touch, Reborn wondered if he’d melt if he reached out and grasped it.

One more push.

“Why are you looking for Bermuda?” Reborn asked.

“I can’t—”

“Then that’s three,” Reborn said, and let that heat flush all across his skin and seep into his suit.

Ryohei flinched and dropped the match, brown eyes wide in the candlelight. Reborn caught it before it could land on the tablecloth and lit the final candle, letting that light bloom in Ryohei’s eyes.

“Ryohei,” Reborn said slowly. They weren’t not touching, never touching, but leaning so close Reborn could nearly physically feel the way Ryohei’s Flame thundered like a heartbeat. “Who is Bermuda?”

“I can’t—”

“Uh-uh, remember the rules,” Reborn tutted, and smiled when Ryohei took a deep breath to try and calm himself down, only to choke on the scent of Reborn’s cologne. “Answer me, Ryohei. Who is Bermuda?”

The hesitation was clear, Reborn could almost hear the cog turning in Ryohei’s head. 

“We had a deal.”

Ryohei shifted his weight, feet finding a solid hold on the ground in a balanced stance, and Reborn felt that incandescent moment shoulder-blades left a scorching path along his chest. It was accidental, a fleeting glance, but Reborn had to resist the urge to unbutton his dress shirt to check if there was a brand left in his chest.

“I’m not meant to tell you. Just know that,” Ryohei said slowly. 

Reborn hummed low as Ryohei’s voice washed over his ears, and leant that final distance. The touch was utterly sultry and spread to every nerve in his skin, setting Reborn alight like he had been doused in gasoline. 

Reborn reached forward and grasped the altar on either side of Ryohei, feeling the cool wood on his palms — so different from the heat that was burning its way down his throat as he laid his chin on Ryohei’s shoulder. 

“But you will,” Reborn hummed, feeling like he was basking in a fire, utterly purged down to that black pit of a soul he carried with him.

“Bermuda is—”

Answers. Reborn wanted answers so badly. Who was Ryohei and why had Reborn never heard of him before? A Mafia man with an absolutely massive Flame, completely under Reborn’s radar. An impossibility. A supernova in a Hawaiian shirt.

Reborn wanted answers. But not now. 

“Nevermind. I don’t need to know yet,” he said and peeled himself away from that utterly torrid body. “Why spoil the fun now? A good hitman knows when to wait,” Reborn purred, “You’ll tell me, Ryohei, in due time. Even if you’re gasping it out.”

Ryohei blinked. Then he grinned, eyes bright as he vehemently agreed, “Right! Earning your answers through a fair fight is the most extreme way to get to the truth!”

There was a long pause, and then Reborn let out a quick bark of a laugh. Oh, Ryohei was such a delightful man. Dense as a brick, but so blindly honest and had such faith in Reborn’s character. 

And while he was a bit off, he wasn’t wrong. Reborn had intended to have this inferno of a man on his back, but he was more than cordial to the idea of being the one to put him there. Nothing got the body loose and hot like a good workout, afterall.

“You want to fight?” Reborn breathed out, calm again with a small smile playing on his lips. “We can do it like that too. I’ve never been one to turn down a bit of tasteful rough play.”

Ryohei grinned wide, unabashed with his enthusiasm and brighter than any sun.

“Oh Ryohei,” Reborn sighed, gazing upon that utterly luminescent face.

Then Reborn witnessed the first light of the new daylight up the stained glass window behind Ryohei. Blue, red, green and yellow utterly aglow with sunshine and donned Ryohei with a halo of sunlight.

☀

The window unlatched with a soft ‘click’ and long legs slipped in. Black, polished dress shoes touched the floor without a sound, followed by a slim torso and a fedora clad head. The figure stood in the room, straightening his suit jacket as he took stock of the place.

Ryohei’s living conditions were less than stellar. 

Water stains were seeping through the off-white paint in the corners, and the drapes were an unappealing shade of spoilt yellow. The apartment itself was sizable enough, plenty of room for a single person or maybe a couple, but whoever had owned it before had obviously not cared for whoever came next, with all the damage left behind.

Reborn grimace at the sticky substance left on the hardwood floors, remnants of some kind of carpet.  

The room was mostly spartan and sparsely furnished. A bed, a table and chair and a boxing bag leant against the corner. There was minimal cushioning for minimal comfort. Ryohei didn’t spend a lot of time in this place.

Reborn touched the surface of the dining table and felt the grooves in the soft, wooden top. Thin, curved lines, strikes and dents. Used for dining and writing. Reborn could just imagine Ryohei lent over this table late at night, a lukewarm meal at his elbow as he glared holes through whatever task he had laid before him. 

Reborn turned and walked through the room, hearing the floors groan under his steps and the sound of running water hiss through the walls. Ryohei’s wardrobe was eye searing, and Reborn had to resist the urge to slam the doors shut as soon as he opened them. Hawaiian shirts, a collection of maybe ten or so, with a pile of assorted green-grey cargo shorts dumped haphazardly in the bottom. 

Then a flash of unseasonal black caught the hitman’s eye, and he turned to see a pair of fine dress shoes tucked into the corner. He pushed those vibrant colours to the side and pulled another flash of black off the rack.

A suit. Expensive, bespoke and tasteful. Mafia grade to the highest degree — ‘to the extreme’. 

Reborn withheld a snort as that scream echoed in the far recesses of his mind, followed by a Pavlovian rush of heat. 

So, Ryohei had a proper suit and tie. Whatever Family he had been in, he had served publicly. Perhaps even as the Don’s Guardian, if the quality of this suit had anything to say. 

From Japan. A competitive boxer. Out of Harmony and a possible Don’s ex-Guardian. 

Reborn caressed the suit with his hand, feeling the sturdy seams and luxurious fabric. He’d love to see Ryohei dressed in this one day, suited up like a proper Mafioso, dressed like the utterly monumental Flame he was.

He hung the suit back up with a mournful farewell and let it disappear behind the swath of Hawaiian shirts again.

Reborn scanned the room again, before coming to a stop beside Ryohei’s bed, still messy from the morning. He sat himself down on the edge with a huff, feeling the sheets, softened from use, and some kind of herby scent from the soaps Ryohei used in his nightly showers.

He leant forward and reached under the bed frame, palming around the dusty floorboards until his fingers caught on something in the dark. It groaned as Reborn dragged a suitcase out into the light.

Reborn unlocked the latches with two distinct snaps and opened the suitcase. 

The photo of a young woman smiled up at him, her hair short-cut and a warm honey colour. She had her hand on her stomach, cradling a belly swollen with pregnancy. 

“I have a nephew on the way.”

Reborn looked upon the woman: the shape of her eyes, the curve of her smile. This was Ryohei’s sister. A recent photo too, if this was the nephew incoming.

He examined the photo and the background. Wherever the woman lived, she did so with comfort. She was surrounded by soft, woven blankets, wood, metal and marble furniture, and no few works of Japanese ceramic arts. Beside her was a plate of sliced blood oranges despite the weather outside the window. Unseasonal, imported, expensive. 

Ryohei Sasagawa had come from good money — or distributed his own.

Reborn gently turned to the next photo. The same woman, this time with another lady of pale skin and black hair. The both of them were dressed up in white, gazing upon each other as newlyweds.

Reborn flipped to the back of the photo but found no penned-down date or names. 

He went to the next photo, being careful to keep everything in the order he found them. A man and a woman sat together in a dimly lit room, each cradling cups that were visibly steaming. From what he could see, they looked undoubtedly similar, almost to the point of siblings with their build, style and colouration. But Reborn wasn’t convinced, if anything their similarities rang more true to imitation, he’d say. 

The woman was facing the fireplace, eyepatch and expression of near-dozing cast in that soft light. The man’s face was obscured by shadow as he stared straight ahead toward the camera. The only feature Reborn could make out was the red glint from the man’s right eye. Reborn kept note of that identifying trait. 

He moved to the next one; a bright afternoon in a park or field, with the figures of several youths running amok. There was a young girl dressed in red, a boy in cow print and another boy dressed in a green, knitted vest and jeans. All of them were running towards a familiar in the foreground of the photo. Sasagawa Ryohei stood with his arms open to those children, his face round and bright, he looked barely a day over eighteen in this photo. Young, vibrant.

He was dressed in a white singlet and nearly covered in dirt, a sunhat hanging from his neck by the drawstring. Reborn let his thumb trace the edge of that smile, face all crinkled up in a laugh as the sun got in his eyes. 

Reborn looked up as the sound of running water shut off, and with it, that low roar from the bathroom shower. The shudder of a towel rack, the thump of wet, bare feet hitting a bath mat over tile. 

The door opened with a near cacophonous creak, and Ryohei came striding out of the bathroom, a towel tied around his waist and another around his shoulders.

Reborn leant back on one hand, reclining on that bed, tipped back his hat and gazed at Ryohei. That photo hadn’t done his biceps justice, and Reborn was always one to appreciate a good, broad chest. Years of conditioning had gone into that body, with supple, bouncy skin showing hydration and good meals. He was the utter definition of ‘fighting trim’.

Ryohei turned his eyes on Reborn from the bathroom doorway, pale blond hair plastered to his forehead and in his eyes. He reached up and pushed it all back, before he grinned and said, “Hi Reborn! Fancy seeing you here—”

Then he saw what was in Reborn’s hands, and in an instant, Reborn felt his heart slow into a Pavlovian response. Calm down and assess, take control of the situation. Never panic.

Reborn smiled, and tipped the picture in Ryohei’s direction in acknowledgement. “Your sister, she looks a lot like you.” 

Ryohei crossed the room, leaving behind wet footsteps that caught the yellow bulb from the bathroom and looked like gold. He approached, backlit by that warm, honey light. It crept over his shoulders and defined the curves of his skin, carving him out like something Reborn had seen in museums and vaults.

“Very beautiful,” he murmured, head tilted back to witness the Flames lick at the inside of Ryohei’s chest, the water on his skin slowly evaporating one trailing droplet at a time.

Ryohei looked down at him, something so very protective flashing through those all too emotive eyes, before he said, “Yeah, my little sister’s really beautiful. She had boys fighting over her all the time.”

Ryohei took the photos out of Reborn’s hands, hot fingers grazing Reborn’s own, and placed them back into his suitcase. He knelt and snapped the case shut, but not before Reborn saw a pile of ripped and torn pages, bound in a bloody and yellow bandage. He caught a snatch of what was written in Japanese characters, scratchy and rushed, a flow of conscience.

‘——— jumped out of his skin when ——— and I set up a trap, never seen him so spooked. Funny as hell.’

‘When —— and —— said their vows, mum told me to stop crying so loud but I was so happy for them.’

‘——- and ———- set up this huge party for ———’s 21st birthday-’

The clasps snapped shut and Ryohei pushed the suitcase back under his bed. He lingered there for a moment, staring at the bedsheet, swinging still.

Reborn looked down at him, at the water dripping from his hair and down his spine.

“What is all that in the suitcase, Ryohei?” He asked, despite already knowing.

Ryohei lifted his eyes and Reborn made sure not to breathe too quick. He had grown used to seeing those eyes looking up at him, under his foot with a gun ahead, or racing beneath Sicilian roofs. But he had never seen them like this, those warm eyes so…Dull. Tired. Lonely.

Ryohei was lonely.

“My family,” Ryohei answered, always honest to a fault. He never lied. “What I have left of them.”

“You speak about them like they’re still around,” Reborn said, still looking down at Ryohei who had yet to rise, still kneeling in front of Reborn, dressed in only a towel. He didn’t bring it up, lest Ryohei try and change that. “What is stopping you from seeing them?”

Ryohei’s face pinched, a kind of bone-deep agony clear in his expression. Then he smoothed it out, a well-practised motion, and responded, “I’m gone.”

Reborn raised an eyebrow. Not ‘I left’. Ryohei had said ‘I’m gone’.

“How unclear,” Reborn uttered and Ryohei gave a sheepish smile.

Ryohei gave a heave as he got back to his feet and went about drying off. He grabbed a pair of boxers and pants and pulled them on, hopping around on one foot when he got stuck. 

Reborn huffed in amusement.

Ryohei pouted at the man but came and sat next to Reborn on his bed, laying back with his hands behind his head. He hadn’t wiped down his chest properly, still gleaming in patches as he grinned up at Reborn, back in his usual mood without missing a beat.

“People pleaser,” Reborn commented, and Ryohei gave a laugh.

“Me? Maybe, yeah,” he admitted, and gave a lazy shrug. “I think I’m pretty selfish.”

Reborn raised an eyebrow.

“Selfish,” he repeated and gave a short laugh. “Selfish? I suppose I can see it.” Then he tilted his head, eyes as black as the pit stared down at Ryohei. “But, of course, I’m not much of one to talk. Compared to me, you’re a saint, I’m sure.”

Ryohei glanced to Reborn. He looked unconvinced, but smiled anyway.

“Who were the women in the photo?” Reborn asked.

Ryohei gave him a look. Ryohei knew Reborn had figured out who was in those photos for the most part — But Ryohei was never against talking about his sister. It wasn’t like Reborn could track her down.

So Ryohei put his hands behind his head as he reclined and happily told Reborn stories of his sweet little sister, and her best friend and wife. He told Reborn about how she wanted to be a ballerina, and then a policewoman, and how she slowly, over the years, had indoctrinated her child-hating wife into the idea of having a little baby together with IVF. A perfect combination of what her wife loved the most: herself and his little sister.

“That must have been expensive,” Reborn commented idly, listening to the man reminisce of his sister like he had been bottling it in for months.

Ryohei laughed, “Oh it was. But Boss paid for it. He’d bend over backwards for her, and they knew it.”

Reborn glanced down to Ryohei. By the man’s pinched expression, he knew he had slipped up.

“Who is your Boss?” Reborn asked. Ryohei looked away and didn’t answer. “He sounds generous. Paying for your sister’s IVF.”

“Yeah,” Ryohei agreed. “He’s always looked after her.”

Reborn waited, listening for another slip-up, another leak. Ryohei didn't volunteer anything more.

“So, how’d you get in here?” Ryohei asked, and Reborn gave him a look. 

He was asking that now?

“Window,” Reborn huffed, and Ryohei gave a short laugh. 

“Of course! You really like windows. Your grip must be extreme!” Then he took one hand from behind his head and offered it to Reborn. “Give me an extreme squeeze! Go all out, I wanna see what you’ve got!”

Reborn huffed in amusement at the fiery-eyed look. As always, a show of strength got Ryohei rearing to go. Reborn shifted his weight onto one arm and reached across.

Ryohei’s hand was hot. Reborn nearly flinched.

He felt like his hand was being scorched, that those fingers and palms would leave singe marks in the shapes of fingerprints and fate-lines. Reborn remembered a fresco in the Sistine Chapel with outreaching hands, barely grazing the very tips of their fingers. Reborn gripped that searing hand tighter. He thought he could see wax leaking from between their fingers.

“You can do better than that,” Ryohei teased and Reborn nearly cringed as his bones bowed in his hand. 

Reborn felt his lips twitch. Right, Ryohei was no old fresco, peeling from the walls.

Reborn crushed that hot hand in his grip. So that when he took his hand away, he’d see the shape of his fingers forever moulded in that flesh, the arches of his fingerprints pressed into skin, and his fate-lines intersecting with Ryohei’s.

Ryohei let out a whoop of surprise and praise, giving his hand a testing tug.

“Wow! That’s an extreme grip!” He laughed, “But, I think I can beat it!”

Reborn grit his teeth as Ryohei’s strength redoubled, the muscles along his forearm and bicep rolled and tensed under his skin. Not to be outmatched, Reborn responded in kind, sitting up for better leverage.

Ryohei gave a gasp of outrage and sat up too. 

Reborn looked down at their hands, both white-knuckled. He was going to have bruises tomorrow, without a doubt. He smiled with teeth. Might as well make them last. Reborn made a snatch at his Sun core, and his grip snapped shut. He shifted his weight, and with a smile of teeth and eyes full of sunlight, began to push back on Ryohei.

Ryohei blinked, instinctively going tense to resist being pushed onto his back. He tested the push, and Reborn drove harder. 

Ryohei beamed, and Reborn watched sunshine creep into those once despondent eyes and light them up. Ryohei pushed back, and Reborn braced himself. On his knees on Ryohei’s bed, the toes of his polished shoes digging into the blanket for leverage. If Reborn had thought Ryohei’s hands were hot before, it was nearly unbearable now. 

A lesser man would have let go.

Reborn sank into the feeling, full bodyweight pressing down on one, two hands as Reborn reached for more of Ryohei, for more heat. 

Ryohei grinned up at Reborn, arms shaking under the strain. Then he got up on his knees, the two men aligned and he bared down on Reborn. Reborn lost some ground.

“Don’t give up yet!” Ryohei cheered and Reborn scoffed.

“Do you always encourage your opponents? Or am I just special?” Reborn teased, bowing his head like a bashful maiden.

“If they deserve it!” Ryohei answered, always honest to a fault.

Reborn braced as Ryohei pushed again, searing hands against his, his elbows reaching behind his torso. Reborn was losing in a battle of strength. But he wasn’t upset. How could he be, when Ryohei was grinning at him like Reborn had hung the sun in the sky that morning just so Ryohei could go out and play.

Reborn could easily win this. Shift his weight, move to the side and Ryohei would fall under his own bodyweight and Reborn would come out on top. 

But what was the fun in that? Playing with tricks and wit, when all Ryohei wanted was a good old-fashioned tussle. Reborn chuckled, arms shaking, and when Ryohei pushed again. They went down with a roar of effort and laughter.

Reborn’s hat rolled off the side of the bed. 

A soft sound neither men noticed as they heaved, eyes bright as solar flares and bodies alight with sunshine and exertion. Reborn couldn’t remember the last time he had put so much physical strength into something, let alone a simple tussle game.

Reborn stared up at Ryohei, his hands still burning with fingers threaded together, pressed to the bed on either side of his head.

“I win,” Ryohei grinned, hovering over him on all fours, the little water left on his shoulders glinting like stars and gold.

Reborn smiled. He didn’t feel like he had lost at all.

☀

Ryohei’s home, despite being spartan and empty, was always warm. Reborn demanded it so, he refused to be chilled when spending time with the man.

Ryohei himself didn’t seem to mind. Nor did he mind how Reborn seemed to have taken over that little apartment on the corner. 

His boxing bag had finally been hung up in the corner, and the floor was free from that suspicious, sticky residue. The weather-murky windows had been scrubbed clean, and the kitchen had been heartily stocked. The dining table had another seat and two placemats draped in place. 

Ryohei sat on his bed and watched Reborn fuss over a floral arrangement in a large vase. They had grabbed the flowers from a young woman vendor on their way back from some alley-end, the midday exercise still pumping their blood. 

Reborn had smiled when he saw Ryohei holding that arrangement of sunflowers and barley. ‘Unwavering faith’, ‘praise’ and ‘bountiful cooperation’. There couldn’t have been a better match for the man. 

Reborn huffed as he finally got the arrangement to sit right, and moved the vase to the mantle of Ryohei’s bricked-up fireplace.

“Looks pretty,” Ryohei said, and Reborn nodded.

“Remember to change the water regularly.”

Ryohei gave a lazy salute and flopped back into his bed. He felt restless, the excess energy manifested as shuffling and rolling, his feet kicking as they hung in the air.

Reborn scoffed. Reborn had already exercised Ryohei once today, but that didn’t seem to be enough. Reborn shifted his weight, feeling everything becoming warm and limber, his blood catching alight.

Ryohei glanced at him, those eyes watching close at his every move and breath. Reborn smiled, showing teeth and the narrow of his eyes. 

Reborn stepped around the table and crossed the room, his shoes clacked on the polished, hardwood floor. 

Ryohei was off the bed and out the door, halfway down the street as he hopped on one foot to try and fix his sandals. Reborn chuckled as he watched Ryohei struggle with that sandal, crouched upon a sun-warmed terracotta roof. He burst from his spot, following Ryohei close behind as the man ducked off the main street and into their playground of winding brick corridors and uneven cobblestone.

Reborn skipped over a drain pipe and slid down the side of a steel roof. He leapt off the edge of a balcony and came crashing down on the cobblestone path. Ryohei couldn’t stop in time, and Reborn took the impact with his arms open.

“Whoa!” Ryohei had to grit his teeth as they rolled and Reborn felt those scarred, hot hands cup the back of his head, bracing his skull. Reborn breathed in deep, the air whistled, his nose all but crushed up to Ryohei’s unbearably bright Hawaiian shirt. 

The hand came off his nape and Reborn rose sat back on his heels, staring down at Ryohei who grinned up at him, even with Reborn’s pistol pressed to his forehead. Ryohei waved his prize in hand, Reborn’s hat clutched in his grasp.

“Haha, sorry! Didn’t see you come down!” Ryohei apologised.

He yanked the hat away when Reborn reached for it. Reborn reached again, and he pulled back further. Ryohei smiled wide, impish and bright.

Reborn scoffed. What an attitude to have with a hitman’s pistol pointed at your head. 

Ryohei snickered and fitted that hat atop his own head of wheat-blond hair. He grinned up at Reborn from under the brim of his hat. Reborn swore he could see those eyes, aglow like a morning star, in the shadow.

Reborn chuffed and took his hat back with a swipe.

“Never try to pair my hat with that shirt,” he sniffed, and brushed his hat of dust before donning it back in its rightful place.

“I thought black went with everything,” Ryohei said, running his hands through his hair to fix it after Reborn’s rough swipe.

“Don’t talk like you have a fashion sense.”

Ryohei just smiled. Then Reborn whipped around and unloaded his magazine into the space someone had occupied a split seconds ago. 

Reborn had known someone had been watching since they had left Ryohei’s apartment. That sticky sensation of eyes had trailed after them the whole way.

“Think they’ll come out now?” Ryohei asked.

He had known too, his restlessness and kicking all because of those eyes that followed him all afternoon, and lurked just outside his home.

“Our little voyeurs?” Reborn hummed, “They’ll have no choice. Either they come out, or you’ll get some more exercise, Ryohei.”

Ryohei visibly glowed at the suggestion, and Reborn pat his chest placatingly. Oh, but Reborn was long overdue to have another good hunt with Ryohei. Tracking down those young gangsters had been wonderfully refreshing, and Ryohei had really come out in colour, running alongside Reborn as they tracked down their target.

Three men stepped out from around the corner, their hands waisted to show they weren’t there for a fight. The two men in the back were mid-tier, b-list Mafia at best. The man in the front, however, was a mean mug any Mafioso worth their salt would recognise. 

Reborn glanced to Ryohei, who was squinting at the man like he swore he knew him somehow. 

Okay, mayhaps not any Mafioso worth his salt. Once again, Reborn was left to wonder what rock Ryohei and his Family had lived under to not recognise—

“Coyote Nougat, in the flesh,” Reborn said, and felt more than saw the moment Ryohei realised who was standing before them.

He tensed under Reborn’s thighs, and the hands that had been laying on the ground inched to grip Reborn’s leg, nearly squeezing his calf. Reborn didn’t move, gun still pointed dead centre of Coyote’s forehead.

The man was clean-shaven and had a hard face, with all the wrinkles of a man in the Autumn of his life of violence. Despite being in his mid-50s, Coyote Nougat was well-muscled and had a body that was quick as a whip, with a mind to match. All befitting the Storm of the Vongola.

Reborn didn’t know why the Vongola Don’s Right Hand was staking out Ryohei’s apartment, but Reborn wasn’t so vain as to think it was all because of him. 

“Reborn,” Coyote greeting, inclining his head. Then he looked to the man under Reborn, “Ryohei Sasagawa.”

Ryohei smiled, full of gritted teeth.

“Hi Coyote!” 

That was said with familiarity, something Ryohei had said time and time before. Ryohei knew Coyote. 

Reborn watched Coyote.

Coyote did not know Ryohei.

“The plot thickens,” Reborn hummed and Ryohei thumped him on the thigh. 

Coyote cleared his throat, “Ryohei, if you’d come with me. You’ve been invited for an audience with the Vongola Ninth.”

Ryohei blinked, “Uh, why?”

Reborn felt his lips curl up in the corners as Coyote and his men collectively twitched. Hundreds of men, women, both, and in-between were clambering for an audience with Timoteo of the Vongola Legacy. The King of the modern Mafia. 

And Ryohei, dear, sweet, stupid Ryohei simply said, “No thanks? I don’t really wanna meet your Boss — I mean, I'm sure he’s a cool guy, no offence but- I dunno, I don’t think I need to?”

Coyote, the Storm Guardian of the Vongola Don, opened his mouth, and visibly paused. Then he frowned and said, “Do we really have to have this conversation like this?”

Ryohei tilted his head, “What do you mean?”

Reborn grinned like an absolute imp.

Coyote sighed through his nose and then gestured to the way they were poised upon the ground. 

Ryohei, bless his soul, pushed himself to sit up and Reborn only shifted in his lap to allow that. Ryohei himself didn’t move any further, and waited patiently. He had done as asked: he wasn’t laying on the ground anymore.

Coyote closed his eyes in a moment of calm and prayer.

“It’s in your best interest to come with us, Ryohei,” Coyote persisted, “The Boss wants to talk to you. And I will do everything in my power to make it happen, so you’d best come willingly.”

Ryohei stared at him, “You’re threatening me.”

Reborn took in a deep breath, almost tasting the Sun in the air. He gripped his postil tighter, feeling it heat up in his hand, Flames boiling in the chamber.

“I’m telling you,” Coyote said.

Reborn felt the hand on his calf squeeze tight, singeing a handprint into his skin through the material, melting him down to the bone. He didn’t need to look at Ryohei to tell he was alight, a bloom of sunshine in the corner of his eye, nearly blinding his peripheral. Reborn breathed, ready for whatever would come with a standoff between the Storm of the Vongola and this utterly unprecedented supernova-

“Fine!” Ryohei whined like a petulant child, and Reborn nearly fell off his lap as the man stood up, beating off the back of his Hawaiian shirt. “Fine, I’ll go see him.”

Reborn lowered his gun as Ryohei said this, his eyes narrowed slightly. What did Ryohei do that would get the attention of the Timoteo of the Vongola? His curiosity burned under his skin even as he slowly holstered his pistol again, letting the metal sting his fingers.

“Sorry Reborn, we can hang out later maybe?” Ryohei sighed, scratching his nape sheepishly. 

Reborn blinked. He wasn’t invited? To a show like that? 

He looked to Ryohei. Shoulders tight, eyebrows pinched, smile strained. Ryohei was not happy. He didn’t want to go with Coyote, and he definitely did not want an audience.

Reborn took a step back.

“Some other time then,” Reborn said lowly, keeping his eyes on Ryohei. A threat, a warning.

Ryohei smiled, “See you tomorrow then!” A promise.

Reborn nearly laughed.

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus. (Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

CHAPTER 6: IF THIS IS HOW IT FEELS TO TAKE A FALL…

Ryohei smiled thinly as he sat on a comfortable, leather upholstered chair, his hands clasped in his lap and his feet planted firmly in the rug that lined the floor of the Vongola Mansion’s main drawing room. He was seated in the centre, perfectly poised to see the painting and ornaments of the room.

Ryohei refused to look upon that single painting that hung over the head of the couch across from him, the Vongola First Generation spread across the wall. Mukuro had said it was referencing ‘The Last Supper’, and was used to remind allies and enemies alike of what the Vongola had done in shaping and maintaining the Mafia. 

Ryohei had always found it funny how similar he and his family looked to the First Generation.

Now he wished anything but.

Giotto looked so much like Tsuna. It wasn’t funny now.

He missed his family. Kyoko was due to go into labour in thirty years and five months. He hoped she wouldn’t be too upset that he missed it. 

Ryohei closed his eyes and calmed himself and that sting in the back of his eyes.

“Sorry for the wait,” came a warm, fatherly voice and Ryohei had to pry open his eyes so he wouldn’t see all those times that voice, rusty with age, had told the emerging Vongola Generation stories of his own time, of his mother Octavia.

“No problem! So, what did you need to talk to me about?” Ryohei smiled, and Timoteo, barely into his fiftieth year with hair a dark chestnut, smiled back.

Ryohei looked upon him, clean-shaven and young, and realised why Xanxus might have thought there was a chance. Timoteo sat on the couch across from him, just as a member of the Vongola staff served them some light food and coffee. 

Ryohei blinked at the set they used. The Important Guest Set. 

Timoteo smiled.

“Help yourself, Ryohei. I quite like the biscuits, Maria makes them fresh for guests.”

Tsuna had once utterly gorged himself on these biscuits when they were new to the Vongola Mansion, and the kitchen staff would all but bend over backwards for their soft-cheeked princeling. He had spent the rest of the afternoon kneeling beside a toilet, Hayato patting his back and Takeshi assuring him that, yes, he would survive this. Ryohei himself had been put in charge of ensuring Tsuna kept to his strict biscuits-per-day limit. 

Ryohei took a biscuit and shoved the whole thing in his mouth, humming at the buttery, sugary taste. He hadn’t had one of these things in months.

“This is good!” He grinned and pinched another one from the plate. 

Timoteo chuckled and then looked around to the room almost wistfully, the adornments, the paintings on the walls. There were landmarks of the Vongola territory through the ages, the Second Boss looming behind his desk, a still-life of the Fifth’s Jur knuckle dusters with an arrangement of fruits and candles. 

“I like this room. It has a good feel to it, like a walk through history.” Timoteo touched the couch he sat upon. “This seating set was a gift from the Governor of Provence, Villars. That painting there, done by Paul Cézanne. This one, the one behind me thought?” 

Ryohei gritted his teeth as he was told to look upon those faces. 

“It was done by a woman, Sister Lodovica. She lived in a convent nearby, and worked closely with a man named Father Knuckles.” Timoteo pointed to the man two seats down on the right-hand side, caught in mid-laughter like that was the only way the artist could remember him being. “He was the first Vongola Sun, a man many of us still look towards when the darkness of this life becomes too much. The Patron Saint of the Vongola, almost,” Timoteo finished with a laugh.

Ryohei smiled thin. He knew all this. 

He had spent his fair share of time sitting alone in this room, staring up at that painting, hoping he could have what Knuckles had, that the Patron Saint would bless him with a Family and Home. 

But with the whole of the Vongola looking for guidance, Ryohei’s prayers must have been lost in the noise. 

“You look like him, you know?” Timoteo almost breathed out, looking upon Ryohei with something almost…covetous in his tone.

Ryohei pressed his feet into the rug and settled back into his chair. There it was. That Vongola Greed. That desire to hold onto everything they were so proud of, their heritage. Tsuna had worked hard to beat that old blood out of the Vongola, Enma at his side, but this Vongola was still steeped in their old sin. The history they refused to let go of.

“Tell me, Ryohei,” Timoteo said, “How well do you know your family tree? Do you, perhaps, have any Italian heritage? Blond hair isn’t exactly Japanese, I must say.”

Ah, so Timoto had done his research. He knew Ryohei was Japanese, so he had definitely done some digging and came up with Tabolt’s trail. 

Ryohei tilted his head, trying to think, “Not that I know of. I mean you know how after two or three generations things can get,” Ryohei made a vague motion with his hands. “Messy?”

Timoteo nodded understandingly, despite how strictly the Vongola monitored their bloodlines. “Of course, of course, without proper bookkeeping it does get foggy after a while.” 

Timoteo then took a sip of his coffee, humming in satisfaction at the taste. Then he sat the cup in his lap, palms cupped around the mug to soak up that warmth. He looked at Ryohei, a soft smile in place.

“Ryohei, are you aware that you have a very, and I do not say this lightly, strong Flame?”

Ryohei breathed deep, taking the scent of coffee, biscuits and badly concealed Harmony. Ryohei fought not to scrunch up his nose in distaste. 

That moment of hesitation seemed to be enough for Timote to reach his own conclusions. He cradled his cup in his hands and looked over to Ryohei, a concerned pinch in his brow, and in that moment, Ryohei saw the face of every father. 

Except his own. 

That quiet concern did not suit a Sasagawa. 

“Then you must realise a strong Flame, out on their own? It can get dangerous, to say the least. You’d have eyes on you wherever you go. You’re just fortunate to have chosen our Vongola territory to settle in, or you’d have been swarmed by Families for recruitment!”

Ryohei smiled and tilted his head at Timoteo, “Like you are, Vongola Ninth?”

Timoteo, to his credit, didn’t so much as waver.

“If you would like to join us, of course, I wouldn’t turn you away. In times like these having someone to call Family can make all the difference.” Timoteo hummed a bit, that look in his eyes again; young, jovial and sharp as a hawk. “My eldest son, Enrico, is around your age, maybe a bit younger. I think you and he would get along, he’s rather sharp, if a bit shy. I think your boisterous attitude would do him well.”

Silence hung between them. The artisanal clock, all but deafening. 

Ryohei continued to smile, but didn’t move. Timoteo waited.

The painting of the Vongola First Generation seemed to stare down at Ryohei, with those half-lidded eyes a soft amber glow. 

☀

Reborn strolled the streets of Sicily with his hands in his pockets and his eyes turned heavenward, watching the stars dot the night sky. 

He was bored. Usually, at this time of night when the urge burnt his heels, Reborn would galavant his way across town to that red building on the corner, and slip into that second-storey apartment where Ryohei’s window was always aglow in the dark, no matter the hour. But, Reborn had already passed that window tonight. It was dark and dull, no spark in the night. The Sun wasn’t home.

Instead, Reborn found Ryohei on some lonely bench, sitting in the bloom of a streetlamp, his head tilted back as if to bask in that honey-yellow light. 

Reborn crossed the distance, watching the rise and fall of his chest, each controlled, measured breath. His hands were loose in his lap, his feet were pressed into the earth. Ryohei was meditating, utterly still in the night.

Reborn loomed, a long, lanky figure dressed in black from hair to toe.

Warm brown eyes cracked open, and Reborn got to witness, up close, the moment Ryohei’s expression softened, and his eyes lit up like he was looking directly into the midday sun. Reborn stared at the reaction, soaking it in.

Then he let his lips curl, hands behind his back as he bowed from the waist and observed Ryohei, letting his eyes rake the man’s whole figure. 

“You look like you could use a drink.”

Ryohei let out a short puff of a laugh, “Yeah, I probably do!”

The bar was a shady hole-in-the-wall, with more class than deserved for a pub of Mafia goons. But Reborn wasn’t here to be gawked at, and this particular bar had no shortage of booths and nooks for those paranoid Mafia men to squirrel themselves into.

Reborn picked two seats at the far end of the bar, well soaked in shadow where the dull ambient light didn’t reach. They settled on their stools and Reborn ordered them a drink: two whiskeys, neat, leave the bottle.

The bartender didn’t need to be told twice. 

Reborn rested his elbows on the bartop and fingered the rim of his glass, watching the amber liquid ripple and stir at his touch.

Ryohei slammed his cup down on the table with a puff of a sigh. Reborn blinked. Ryohei had just taken a generous helping of neat whiskey like a shot. 

“That hits the spot,” Ryohei groaned, “A good burn.”

Reborn huffed and took a sip, feeling it bite his lips and sting his palate. Ryohei poured himself another glass and Reborn realised one bottle wasn’t going to be enough as Ryohei drank it down like water.

Reborn shrugged and did the same, tipping his head back as he took easy gulps.

Suns were notorious for their alcohol tolerance, and a Sun of Reborn’s size, let alone Ryohei’s? They’d be stone-cold sober by dawn. Their Sun would burn it out of their system within hours.

It took an unethical amount of liquor to get Reborn drunk.

But with how fast Ryohei was drinking straight, neat whiskey, he might get close to it tonight. 

Ryohei hummed and played with his cup for a bit, watching the light warp through the glass, the two of them quietly drinking their way through another bottle. The bartender resolutely did not look in their direction. 

“What happened with the Vongola?‘ Reborn asked, putting his cup down on the table and tried to breathe through the burn in his throat even as Ryohei continued to drink like a fish.

Ryohei’s lips were still pressed to the glass when a pouting frown formed. 

“They wanted me to join or something.”

Reborn glanced at him. Being asked to join by the Vongola was no joke, but being asked by the Boss? You’d be set for life—practically political immunity within the Mafia.

“What did you say?” Reborn asked, stirring the contents of his cup. 

Ryohei shrugged, “Said no. I don’t really wanna get involved with, you know, Families anymore.”

Reborn took another long drink.

“Families are a messy business,” he agreed. “All those loyalty ties, bargains and politics. All too restricting for my tastes.”

Ryohei hummed in acknowledgement, but not true agreement. 

“I didn’t mind that part honestly. It wasn’t too hard to figure out.”

“Oh?” Reborn eyed him as Ryohei finished off his glass, and the last of their second bottle wordlessly. The bartender offered them another, and Reborn inclined his head in thanks as their glasses were refilled. 

Ryohei grabbed the bottle and poured them more, topping up their glasses until the whiskey nearly rolled over the edge. 

“Did you have to deal with politics a lot in your old Family?” 

Ryohei seemed to wince and swallowed half the glass in a single singing gulp. But, Reborn saw, even those winces were slowing down. Nearly two whole bottles of whiskey within half an hour dredging Ryohei’s nerves.

Even Suns took a while to burn off that much so fast.

“Yeah, a bit. I mean, I wasn’t their foreman, but I can be charming!”

Reborn let out a chuckle.

“Yes, very charming,” he purred, and Ryohei, bless his soul, beamed at the praise.

Then Ryohei tipped the other half of his whiskey into his mouth and swallowed with revel, like that burn comforted him as it traced a line down his throat, chest and pooled in his belly. Ryohei sighed and relaxed, that whiskey finally melting his muscles and the tensions with it. 

Again, Ryohei poured himself another cup. Reborn couldn’t remember the last time he drank so much in one sitting. Where his belly felt warm with whiskey, and his head felt cloudy from the heat the man beside him gave off as, one glass at a time, the two worked through five bottles of neat.

Ryohei laughed as Reborn complained about his eyesore of a Hawaiian shirt and, not for the first time, tried to convert Ryohei to the wonderful world of solid and cohesive colour schemes.

“But I like my shirts!” Ryohei said, pulling at his collar to see the pink flamingos on blue skies. “And colours always go together! I knew this guy who had, like, three different hair colours and a whole uniform! And they pulled it off great!”

“I do not wish to meet this person,” Reborn said flatly and all Ryohei did was giggle.

“Damn, they were great. My first proper Mafia fight too! They really broke me in,” Ryohei recalled almost wistfully, and Reborn saw him gently rub his left hand, running his thumb along the knuckles. 

Ryohei’s hands were covered in scars. Each a tally of the battles he had fought.

“Your first? Popped your cherry, did they?” Reborn chuckled and took a sip of his drink. “What, did you get roped into a turf war or something?”

“Nah, inheritance issues,” Ryohei shrugged, then he smiled, a soft, bitter thing that made Reborn keenly aware of how much alcohol Ryohei had drunk that night. “That was when I was brought into the Family, when I was made their Sun. I fought for them on the first night, no one knew what was coming. We had never had to deal with something like that before.”

Ryohei took a gulp from his cup, then snorted so hard he nearly coughed the liquor back up.

“My Boss,” he started, voice thick with humour, “He had a huge crush on my little sister. The completely-lose-your-cool kind. I didn’t realise it at the time, but thinking back on it, the poor bastard probably could have used someone to tell him ‘hey, she’s a lesbian’. Probably would have saved him, like, three years of his life.”

He took another drink, and smiled when Reborn gave a pitying scoff. 

Ryohei emptied his cup and opened his mouth. He grinned and kicked his feet under the counter as he talked, voice all grumbley with whiskey as he told Reborn about his Family — and his family. He told Reborn about their trips to the beach, the stupid games they played at sleepovers. How they had trained together, bled together. Learned about everything life had to offer — one way or another.

“I sat them down one day, got everyone on the roof,” Ryohei giggled, yet another glass in hand. “Spent the whole of lunch giving them The Talk. God, their faces! It took all lunch because they kept screaming! But the teacher said it was important, so I needed to tell them!”

Reborn snickered into his cup and had to put it down, the true and pure earnestness in Ryohei’s voice utterly tickling Reborn. He had turned in his seat during the regaling, watching Ryohei and all the information he had been spilling.

All of it careful, not a single name dropped, not a single detail unobscured. A perfect omitter.

Ryohei laughed with him and threw his head back as he drained another glass. Then his laughter faded off, his smile lingering even as that slow, loneliness started to seep out. That weight he seemed to always carry, could never burn off, floated to the top of the bottle.

“I miss them,” he said, voice suddenly low and bitter-sweet. “I wish I hadn’t hurt them.”

Reborn leant his elbow on the counter and listened.

“I wish I had been right for them.” He took a long breath that shuddered down his throat, “I knew I didn’t quite, you know, fit in the set. It wasn’t Boss’ fault, he didn’t know. He’d never had a Harmony before. None of them had.” He reached up and rubbed his jaw, “We didn’t know what we were getting into. We were just following what we were being told to do.”

Reborn frowned.

“Boss — He had this tutor. The most extreme man I ever met. He was the one who brought us together. He—” Ryohei coughed, “He chose me in a pinch. They ran out of time, they needed a Sun to fight. I was nearby.”

“It’s not his fault either, though. That tutor thought he was doing the right thing, the best he could work with but… But I just wish I was the Sun they needed. The Sun they deserved.” Ryohei bowed his head and laid both his hands on the back of his nape. “I burnt them, Reborn. I burnt them, for years, from the inside out. My family, my little brothers and sisters. They were so tired of the heat.”

“What complete and utter bullshit.”

Ryohei blinked and pulled his head up, looking at Reborn with a confused wrinkle to his brow. Reborn sat on his stool, arms crossed and a severe frown on his face that spoke of several different kinds of pissed and indignation.

“That tutor is an absolute idiot,” Reborn continued, his cheeks flushed with whiskey and his arms heavy even as he pointed at Ryohei. “He didn’t take into account what could be coming, and made you suffer for it? He didn’t manage his time well enough, so he went ahead and grabbed anyone off the street to force a Harmony! Did he not realise, or was he just willfully ignorant that you can’t just stuff a bunch of boys into a room and expect them to create a sustainable Harmony? Jesus Christ, he fucking forced a Harmony.” 

Reborn pressed his hand to his face like he was reeling. Then he ripped his hand away and glared full force again.

“As a tutor, he should have seen the damage he was doing not just to you, but the whole Harmony! You were obviously too big for that Sky! For that Set! How did he not see!?” 

Reborn reached out and grabbed Ryohei by that unbearable, flamingo print Hawaiian shirt, and said in a voice that gave no room for doubt, “It was not your fault. It’s not your ex-Sky’s fault. It’s that stupid fucking tutor’s fault. If anyone burnt your family, it was the man who put them in the line of fire.”

Ryohei stared at Reborn, hanging off every word said even as they pounded his ears like an assault. He swallowed, collar tight against the side of his throat in Reborn’s fist.

Ryohei looked upon Reborn’s face, flushed with alcohol and righteous anger. 

Ryohei laughed. And laughed. A loud and deep laugh that bubbled from the belly and pulled at his cheeks. He saw his vision blur, tears stung the corners of his eyes. His head felt hazy, his shoulders felt light. 

He wheezed and let his head fall back, laughter bubbling over as the warmth of whiskey and something that rang so close to closure mixed hot in his belly. Ryohei felt warm to the core. 

Reborn stared upon Ryohei’s face, laughing from the belly, loud and clear and utterly lighting up that corner of their dark, murky Mafia bar with sunlight and glow. Reborn swore he could feel the wooden bartop under his hands warp from the heat, his cheeks flushed like he was basking in a summer’s midday.  

Reborn stared upon Ryohei, and realised the feeling that bloomed in his stomach, that scorched paths down his back like melted wax. He breathed in, and felt the air scorch his lungs and feed that undeniable realisation—

Reborn was falling in love with Ryohei Sasagawa.

But before he could cringe, before fate allowed Reborn even a chance to flinch back from the blaze that lit under his heart at the moment of horrible clarity, the dawning of this thunderstrike, Ryohei leant forward. Ryohei leant towards Reborn, inches away, with eyes brighter than the sun and a grin that could ignite a horizon. This man was tipsy and powerful as he leant over Reborn, those yellowing wall sconces haloing him as he said the words that would damn Reborn to an eternity of wax between his fingers and sun in his eyes—

“I’m going to raid the Vindice! Wanna come with?”

And Reborn felt it, the moment it was welded into place. The moment, with a promise of unrivalled chaos and near stupid endeavour, that Reborn realised that he was falling. Falling in love with Ryohei. That he, Reborn, was going to be in the fiery pits of tar and feather of love whether he liked it or not. 

This man who burnt brighter than the sun itself would not settle for being a passing interest, or a momentary blip in the grand scheme. Ryohei would not be a footnote in Reborn’s story, a side character in his legendary anthology. Ryohei would blaze bright, front and centre. His epic, his supernova. His Icarian Sun. 

Reborn gazed upon Ryohei, who called for another round of whiskey and drank that liquid fire without a flinch. Reborn swallowed and felt wax burnt his oesophagus. 

He was going to chase this sun, fly high and reach for it until his fingertips burnt black and gold and he could feel the grind of stardust between his teeth. He would follow this glow, this heat, this feeling, wherever it took him, see the world bathed in this man’s light.

And if he crashed and burnt? If one day Reborn heard the rush of wind in his ears and felt the scorch of his skin? If this love of his burnt him alive and left him brokenhearted and black with ash? 

Then it would be a hell of a story to tell. A turning point in his legendary anthology. A dramatic odyssey of love and loss befitting the World’s Greatest Hitman.

Because Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus. 

And if Reborn was going to burn, he was going to be blinding.

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus.

(Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

CHAPTER 4: I’M HERE IN SEARCH OF YOUR GLORY

Ryohei ran. 

He ran until he found the main street of the town again, his heart pounding and Sun vibrant in his veins. All that meditation out the window as he desperately tried to control his breathing, trying to get that face out of his head.

Reborn. He had seen Reborn.

Tsuna’s tutor — or at least the man who would live to be.  

Ryohei clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to squeeze out the fight or flight. To try to squeeze out the heart-wrenching relief.

He had seen Reborn. His little brother’s tutor. A man who — in the form of a child — had brought his family together, who had been the one to bring him into the fold. The man who had seen Tsuna’s potential, the potential in all of them, and had directly brought about the strongest generation of the Vongola Mafia.

He had seen Reborn. Kind of. It was a version of Reborn, one who had no idea who Ryohei was or what he meant to Ryohei. 

A man untouched by years of Arcobaleno Curse. 

Ryohei turned into a store along the strip. He could still feel eyes following his back. He was still being followed.

He needed to lose him. Ryohei still had to find a way to get in contact with the Vindice, he had no time to be dodging bullets. 

Ryohei frowned to himself as he turned over a bag of apples like he was checking for blemishes. Ryohei had no idea how to get Reborn off his tail. He knew the man was smarter than him by leagues…

He went to the counter and bought the bag, 

Well, he just had to outrun him. 

Ryohei picked up his suitcase and made sure that the clasps were all in place. The sun shone bright into the townsquare, dappled by sweeping window shades. Ryohei made his way through the crowd, listening to the snippets of conversation as he did. His pace was unhurried, leisurely. If it weren’t for his suitcase, Ryohei was sure no one would have been able to spot him out of place. 

Ryohei banked a sharp left into an alley, barely wide enough for one man. A sharp right, and then a left. Ryohei jumped over boxes and skid across dried up mud.  

He could hear him up on those rooftops. The ‘clack-clack-clack’ of shoes against terracotta tile, the clatter of windows shutters slammed open. 

And he could feel the burn. Like the hot sun beating down on his nape on a mid-Summer day, relentless and burning. 

It made Ryohei sweat, it nipped at his heels, it scratched at his nape. He ran faster, breaking out of the alleys to sprint down an unoccupied lane.

Okay, ‘running away’ plan wasn’t working as, uh, planned.  Ryohei pushed on, breaking into a full out sprint even then he saw the alley end ahead of him, the path breaking for a man-made stream.

Overhead, a shadow cut through the sunshine. 

Ryohei jumped across the canal. 

A gunshot rang out.

Ryohei hit the ground and just barely moved before a flagpole fell from a balcony. Another gunshot made a dent in the cobblestone beside Ryohei’s foot.

“You’ve got quite the stamina,” he heard a voice croon from the otherside of the canal.    

Ryohei stepped back as another shot went to his feet. Then another, and another, dancing around the bullets with an increasingly narrow margin for error.

“And quite the bit of fancy footwork,” Reborn continued, and seemed to seep out from the alley and into the light, his shirt a vibrant yellow in the sun. “That footwork technique. Boxing?”

“Yeah!” Ryohei responded before he could think better, old habits that refused to actually die. 

“Oh, excellent,” Reborn smiled, hands relaxed at his side — Ryohei didn’t find that comforting in the least. “So you’re a boxer then?”

“Extremely!” Ryohei grinned. “Boxing is extreme! You should try it, you’d do great! Maybe in the featherweight category, but you’re fast!”

Reborn seemed to twitch at ‘featherweight’. 

Ryohei beamed. 

There was a soft clatter and Ryohei looked down, a dented bullet rolled away. Right, he was being shot at. Maybe, just maybe, right now was not the best time to ask Reborn to try his hand at boxing — but damn it, Ryohei knew Reborn would be great at it and he wanted to see that! Why was everything so unfair!?

Ryohei steeled himself and ran. 

Bullets ricochet off of the walls, bits of brick and masonry spraying the back of his shirt. Gunfire let loose to the left and Ryohei ducked right, slipping between large crates and into another narrow alley. 

Ryohei ducked and dove, dodging the hot metal of fresh bullets and that burning gaze on the back of his neck. 

“Oh, shit!” Ryohei swore as he came to a halt.

A tall wall of stone stood at the end of the alley, solid and thick. A dead end; Reborn had shepherded him here. 

Ryohei turned around. 

Reborn was walking down the alley, a dark shadowy silhouette against the bright mouth. His pace was casual, unhurried. He was confident that he had won, that he had Ryohei trapped in this dead end alleyway.

“Let’s make this easy on everyone,” Reborn called out, slowly walking closer. “Just tell me what I want to know, and I just might let you live.” Then he seemed to think on it for a moment, that fedora hat tilting to the side slightly. “Or not. Depending on my mood.”

Ryohei gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, waiting. He needed Reborn to get closer.

“Quiet now are we? You were chatty just a moment ago, or are you only interested in talk of boxing?”

Closer. Closer.

Reborn shrugged, “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try—”

Closer. Now!

Ryohei spun and slammed his fist into the stone wall, feeling fire and Sun burn in his blood. Brick and mortar bit into his knuckles and gave way. He felt the wall buckle and the shadow cast over his head — Ryohei sprinted, running into that cloud of dust and stone.

Gunshots rang in the air, bullets whizzed past, and then the wall crumbled behind him with a series of cacophony crashes. 

☀

Ryohei noticed he was running a lot now.

Ryohei’s arms were over his head as his feet pounded the street. A window shattered to his right and a lamppost hissed out to his left. Overhead, the sound of a jacket billowing as a shadow jumped between balconies. 

Ryohei didn’t know what he had done, but it seemed that since that day, Reborn had put a target on his back. He’d had to punch his way out of more deadends than he could count (Hayato wouldn’t have been impressed) each one harder than the last — and he couldn’t deny it: it was fun.

Between the weeks, near months, of trying to get the Vindice’s attention, and the restless, lonely nights in that shoddy little slum house Ryohei had found for himself, Reborn’s chases were so refreshing. Freeing. Exhilarating. To the point that Ryohei found himself looking forward to them. To sprinting through the back alleys, to jumping across roofs, to punching down walls, to dodging bullets.     

The screech of metal rang out and Reborn dropped from a fire escape directly into Ryohei’s path. They stood there, high strung and anticipating.

“Do you box professionally?” Reborn asked.

“Nah, never went pro,” Ryohei shrugged, watching the way the man seemed to almost frown, disappointed.

Reborn hummed quietly, eyes going over Ryohei again. 

“But you did competitively.”

“Yeah, for a few years when I was younger. It was great!” Ryohei grinned, then took off to the right, leaping over a small garden bed and around a corner.

He had begun to look forward to the conversation. Quick and snappy, almost like a disjointed flow of thought that somehow always seemed to make sense when he was running this fast. 

“This is—” Ryohei glanced at a sign he sprinted past.

Reborn answered from overhead, not even winded from the near-hour of full-speed roof-hopping. “Via Zucchero, lovely bakery further up the street—”

“Four streets south is the doner kebab shop — I want kebabs.”

Another gunshot and Ryohei tucked into a roll.  

And always, Ryohei found himself grinning. By the time Reborn cornered him down some dead end alleyway, Ryohei would be grinning like some adrenalised loon, panting and exhilarated. 

He swore he saw Reborn smile sometimes too. 

Then Ryohei would run. 

More than once over the weeks, near months, Ryohei had debated staying. Debated leaning forward and biting Reborn’s bullets — God what an extreme fight that’d be — but Ryohei would always use that hair-thin self-restraint of his and flee just in time.

Something that thin would snap eventually. 

☀

‘BERMUDA COME OUT’ was written in big, bold letters on the side of the building, harsh and angry, each letter easily metres tall. Ryohei stood there, hands on his hips, a paintbrush in his Hawaiian shirt’s breast pocket and another clutched in his hand. 

“Bitches,” he muttered under his breath, and irritably rubbed his nose, getting more bright yellow paint on his face.

He would have rathered red, to make it all foreboding and grizzly looking. Really get the message across, you know? But he had stolen the cans from a nearby construction site, so hazard yellow would have to do. 

“Hello Ryohei.”

Ryohei blinked and then turned around. Reborn had a gun pointed at him. 

“Oh, hey Reborn!” He smiled, and tossed his paintbrushes in the half-empty tin. “How are you? How was your weekend?”

It had been, maybe, two weeks ago that Ryohei had let something slip. His name hadn’t seemed like something too sensitive, ‘Ryohei’ was a rather common name. And Ryohei had thought it was unfair that he knew so much about Reborn and that Reborn knew so little. 

‘Ryohei’ was a common name, it was okay. 

“I’m well. Finished some work,” Reborn answered amiably. 

Then he pulled the trigger. Ryohei ran.

“I see you’re dipping your feet into public art installations,” Ryohei heard as he ran deeper into the back alleys of a system of warehouses and industrial buildings. “Tell me, who is Bermuda?”

Ryohei leapt over a discarded flag pole and scrambled over a chain-link fence, landing with a crash down on the gravel on the other side. He dove into an alley and tucked into a roll under haphazardly stacked wooden pallets. The crack of metal came from overhead and Ryohei threw himself up against a wall as a metal handrail hit the ground heavily, spitting gravel and dust up into the air. 

Ryohei pushed off the wall just as it became poked with bullet holes. A left and a right, he swung through the grid-like streets, bullets holes left in dusty foot-prints. 

An almighty crash echoed off the walls of the warehouses, and Ryohei barely had time to react as the thundering of hooves came paired with the guttural, almost trumpeting sound. 

Ryohei was pretty sure this was a tech and hardware manufacturing area — but Ryohei was never one to turn down a bullfight.

Ryohei turned, planted his feet and grinned when he saw the creature of pure muscle and blind rage come barrelling down the road towards him. He lowered his centre of gravity and watched it come closer, hooves crashed against the path. 

The bull met Ryohei at the intersection, horns first. Ryohei wrapped his hands around those horns and pushed back, his feet slid across the loose dust on the road. They locked in a stalemate, hot breath fanning his face and ruffling his shirt as the bull heaved and pushed against him. 

Ryohei planted his feet and grit his teeth, feeling his heart thunder in his chest as he redoubled the grip on the horns. He grunted and took a step forward and then jumped, swinging himself up onto the hump of the bull’s back. 

“Woohoo!” Ryohei cheered as the bull bucked and rebelled, running blindly through the roads, trying to smash Ryohei into the sides of buildings.         

Ryohei laughed and hooted as he held on with his legs, one hand fisted into the short mane and other raised high above his head. He rode that bull through the street, letting it bound and break through barriers, navigating this maze for him.

Another bullet grazed Ryohei’s shoulder and he glanced behind him. He couldn’t see Reborn, but Ryohei could hear his footsteps across the rooftops, and he could feel the burn of him following close behind.

Ryohei looked down to the bull and brought down his fist, letting it slam against the back of its skull. The bull dropped in a heap, eyes unfocused, unconscious.

“Thanks for the extreme ride!” Ryohei said and with a great heave, rolled it into the shade. Then he stood back and grinned, still feeling that adrenaline pumping through his veins and so giddy. “Fuck that was extreme!”

A bullet whizzed past his cheek and Ryohei scrambled back into a sprint.

“Okay, okay I’m going!” He shouted over his shoulder, laughter in his tone. 

He turned back around and gave a yelp as he hit the ground, hands over his head as the angry, vengeful honk of geese bellowed in his ears. The flap of wings and cacophonous honks were coupled with the painful pinch of their beaks, going for his calves and the ends of his Hawaiian shirts. 

“You can handle a charging bull, but crumble at the sight of a few geese?” Came the voice from the rooftops.

“You would too!” Ryohei gasped, tucking himself into a tight ball and rolled his way out of the mass of feathers and violence. “Get off me! Get off! Off- ouch!”

Ryohei grabbed the goose by the neck and threw it back into its gaggle.

“Bastard bit my dick,” Ryohei wheezed and waddled away, clenching at the leg of his khaki shorts and breathing through his teeth. 

On the nape of his neck, Ryohei could feel that burn utterly wash across him, light and fluttering like a summer breeze. He was glad to see someone was enjoying his pain. 

Ryohei pouted but continued to run, that gut-pinching pain finally starting to wear off (but never forgotten). He dodged left as a bullet chipped a building and in the distance saw the bright yellow and black barrier of a construction sight. He jumped the barrier and kept going, seeing piles of dirt and debris, and that warning sign for a pit.

Ryohei spied the large hole in the street and workmen pottering around it, shovels in hand. 

“Coming through!” He bellowed and made the jump, flying across the pit, his shirt flapping up around him.

“What the fuck?”

“Hey, isn’t that the guy who took our paint?”

Ryohei hit the other side running. He stumbled but caught his footing on the loose dirt and sand, escaping into another alley and away from the hollering workmen. 

With heart pounding and body utterly alit with energy and adrenaline, Ryohei grinned as he dodged the hail of bullets that came. They pocked the earth in his wake and Ryohei could feel the heat on his back grow more intense, burning him left and right, bullets snatching the corners of buildings and herding Ryohei like rowdy livestock down into the day’s deadend. 

Ryohei turned around.

Reborn walked down from the mouth of the alley, a stark, distinct silhouette of a fedora and sleek, suit-clad frame. He walked leisurely, unhurried. 

Ryohei clenched his fists and watched Reborn walk closer, resisting the urge to bounce on the balls of his feet. He gritted his teeth, bared in a grin. 

That hair-thin self-restraint snapped.

Ryohei wanted to fight Reborn. 

He wanted to share blows with Reborn, dodge and weave and land blow after blow. See who was faster, see who was stronger, see who could keep getting up over and over. Reborn was strong, he was fast and, God, his aim was inhuman. But Ryohei wanted to see if he could take him on, Reborn in his prime. 

That would be an extreme fight. It got his heart pounding just thinking about it.

Reborn continued to walk, his shoes made a soft ‘clack, clack’ on the road with the occasional crunch of gravel. The distance between them shrunk, one step at a time, and more and more of Reborn came into sight, the darkness almost peeling off of him.

Reborn was close. Close enough that Ryohei could see his eyes, dark as the Pit — but so bright. So full of life and light, so full of energy. 

For a moment, when he looked at those eyes — blacker than black and yet as bright as any sun — Ryohei swore he saw Reborn. 

Not the Tutor, not Tsuna’s Mentor, not that jaded, bitter and twisted Arcobaleno. Those eyes, the eyes of the Tutor were always murky, tired, worn and yet somehow burning with spite. 

In these eyes, Ryohei saw Reborn. The man who had been chasing him, playing with him, giving him an escape and laughter. Ryohei doesn’t know if it's the adrenaline in his blood, but Reborn looked — He looked so bright. Alive. Free like he had God damned wings. 

This was Reborn in his Prime. Before Tsuna, before the Curse, before it all. 

This was His Reborn.

Ryohei was elated. Ryohei was terrified. 

Ryohei needed to run. 

He spun on his heel and slammed his fist into the wall, feeling the bite of brick and braced himself for the spittle of mortar. His fist throbbed with a sharp, prickling pain. The wall stood strong. 

“Reinforced concrete with seven inches of Lightning-infused steel,” Reborn announced, the ‘clack, clack’ of his footsteps growing closer. 

Ryohei felt his heart drop. He turned again quickly and nearly choked, Reborn was so close. He back up, all the way to the wall.

Finally, finally, Reborn stopped. He watched Ryohei with those sunlit eyes. 

The sun hung directly overhead in midday, seeping into the alleyway. There was no hiding now, no shadows, no collapsing walls, no running. 

“Hello, Ryohei,” Reborn said, his voice all but a purr. A cat to the canary.

He was so close. Ryohei could smell the gunpowder and some kind of heat. 

“I think it’s time we had a good, proper chat. Sun to Sun.”

Ryohei gulped. Yeah, Reborn was definitely a Sun. He was advertising it relentlessly, at every turn, bright and vivid, huge and warm. Reborn was utterly flooding the alley with that Flame.

“What’s there to talk about?” Ryohei asked, nervous. 

He wanted to sink into the wall, through it and away from this. He didn’t know what to do, Reborn was so close. Every part of him was screaming to punch, that someone of Reborn’s skillset wouldn’t be so close without reason. He didn’t know if he was safe to push Reborn back, or if any movement would be met with a bullet.

“Oh, so many things,” Reborn continued, and took another step forward. There was a hand’s breadth between their chests. “Let’s start with who you are, Ryohei. I’ve never so much as heard of you before, and there’s no record of a ‘Ryohei’ in any boxing competitions. I should know, I’ve searched every record from Kosovo to Bhutan.”

Ryohei winced, before giving a sheepish smile.

“Well, there were no records!” He said, shrugging a bit to act cool.

“But you boxed competitively. You said so yourself, and your style is competition standard.” 

Ryohei pursed his lips a bit and slowly said, “How do you know I’m not part of some underground boxing ring?”

He wasn’t lying. Ryohei had been part of an illegal ring once. He had been fresh out of highschool and up to his eyeballs in Mafia, with too many lives in his hands but too little control of the situation. Boxing, his release, had been taken from him with graduation, and he had been too worried about leaving a paper trail in any civilian clubs. Ryohei had listened to the stories about Knuckles, his predecessor, he knew where he could go.

“Do you take me for a fool? I said, ‘no record’,” Reborn frowned.

Right, so Ryohei had just been lucky. Or maybe they did have notes on him and it just never came up — too late now, he supposed.

“Maybe they’re just really bad at keeping records? You shouldn’t be mean about it.” 

Reborn was not impressed. 

“Tell me, where did you compete, then? Perhaps I know the arena.”

Ryohei shrugged a bit and uttered a light, noncommittal, “Eh, just this little one. Well, you know, not that little — it was just a place. Kinda dark? I never really asked the name, actually.”

Ryohei blinked as it dawned on him, he didn’t actually know the name of the arena he boxed in. He could walk there, easy, but hell if he knew what they called it.

Reborn stared at him for a moment, before letting out a dissatisfied huff. Evidently, Reborn could tell that Ryohei wasn’t lying — not at hard ask, over the weeks Reborn had faced down with Ryohei’s sieve for a brain repeatedly. 

Ryohei laughed sheepishly and eyed the alley behind Reborn. 

“So you’ve fought competitively,” Reborn said slowly, and Ryohei glanced back to him. “Have you used your skills for, say, hire?”

“...For like parties?” Ryohei asked and watched Reborn’s expression twitch. “A boxer for a party? Like a boxing party — That’s an extreme idea! I gotta remember that! Oh, and those little red frankfurt sausages can be like tiny, edible boxing bags! Genius to the extreme.”

Ryohei grinned as he imagined those little cocktail sausages plated up like punching bags. If Ryohei found a club to join now that he was here — so far from everything — he was sure as hell going to put forward that idea!

Reborn’s expression was a muted mixture of exasperation and amusement. 

“I’ll make a note of that for the next time I want to see you at a sausage party,” Reborn huffed and Ryohei felt that puff of breath brush against his cheeks, reminding him just how close that hitman was standing to him.

“I was more inquiring after if you had a certain affiliation. Say, to a Famiglia?”

Ryohei gave a kind of non-commital sound as he shrugged his shoulders. His foot inched to the side, his eyes never left Reborn. 

“Famiglia? Oh yeah, my dad liked to practise with me back in the day!”

His foot slid across the gravel road, heel scraping the wall. He just needed enough room, just enough pivot, and Ryohei could get around-

The gunshot was deafening in Ryohei’s right ear. 

Ryohei took a sharp breath and gritted his teeth as the tip of Reborn’s gun touched his chin. The metal was hot against his skin, and Reborn pushed, making Ryohei tilt his head up or risk a burn.

Usually, even a round of fire would only make a pistol warm, but Reborn infused his bullets with Sun. Ryohei could feel it in the way the gun nipped at the soft skin under his chin. 

“Now, as much as I love a good chase, I think I’m due an explanation,” Reborn all but purred. 

Ryohei needed to get out of here. He couldn’t keep dodging questions like this, Reborn’s patience would run out. 

Ryohei pressed his hand to the wall behind him, reinforced masonry with Lightning-infused steel. 

Could he break through it? Not easily, but… Fuck if he didn’t want to try! An unbreakable wall?! Built specifically to block his way!? Ryohei wanted to test it so bad. How much wind up did he need? He’d need to get some Flame pumping to get through that. Maybe if he got some momentum going—

The click of a gun’s safety snapping off. Reborn’s gun pressed hard against Ryohei’s chin and tilted it higher. 

“Quite brave of you, letting your mind wander with a gun to your throat,” Reborn leaned closer, his eyes wide and bright. “What were you thinking about?”

Ryohei blinked, then he smiled and said, “I want to break the wall.”

Reborn stared with those eyes, dark as night yet brighter than any sun and Ryohei feels like he’s burning under their gaze. 

“Do you think I can do it?” Ryohei asked, hands balled into fists.

White hot, Reborn smiled with teeth.

“I want to see you do it,” Reborn said and leaned back, his gun still outstretched and aimed for a deadshot to Ryohei’s brow. 

Ryohei grinned. His heart beat was a double-time rhythm, his blood at boiling point. The barrel of the gun stared at him like a promise. The wall stood behind him like a challenge. A challenge designed for him. 

Ryohei turned and faced the wall. Seven inches of Lightning-infused steel. Reinforced masonry. All for him. Ryohei was touched. 

He sized it up, the thickness of the mortar, the weight of the stone. Ryohei fixed his stance, feet apart, centre low, Flame utterly vibrant — and eyes burning like the sun on the back of his neck. Ryohei threw his fist forward, Flame and fire alive in his blood.

His Reborn had made this challenge for him.

His fist connected. The bite of brick and mortar. The wall gave a groan, then a screech and Ryohei was swallowed by a plume of dust and Flame.

Ryohei saw the brick crumble and the warped, melted metal. Ryohei felt the heat spread across his back.

Ryohei ran.

☀

The market was quiet in the midday heat, vendors pulling shades over their wares and leaning back in chairs, riposo settling over the street. Ryohei walked about aimlessly, his hands in his pockets and his eyes to the sky. 

“Ah, little Ryo!” A voice called and Ryohei turned to see the familiar faces of the town gossips and his pseudo-informants: a trio of elderly nonnas who sat on a bench all day and somehow managed to have dirt on everyone. “Come, come, we have something to tell you!” 

Ryohei’s elbow still ached from his most recent attempt at getting the Vindice’s attention. Bringing down an old Vongola touch-stone and smearing ‘BERMUDA IS A DICK’ might not have been his most elegant of ideas but damn it, Ryohei was desperate.

“Hey nonna,” Ryohei said happily, grinning at the women over the low mood that lurched through the back of his mind. “What’s the latest?”

“Clair, from the dentist’s office?” One started immediately, like it had been bottled up for days. “She’s been having an affair! You’d think it was with Dr. Tozo, but no — with his assistant! Madeline!”

“Oh,” Ryohei blinked and winced, oh that was not going to be pretty. “Does her husband know?”

“That’s the thing,” she continued, utterly elated that he had brought it up. “He’s in on it!”

“Lower your voice,” the other hushed quickly, despite the matching grin on her own lips. 

“That’s nice! They’re having fun!” Ryohei laughed, relieved. He had had enough break-up stories for a while.

He huffed and lowered himself into a squat as he listened to the women relay to him like a disorganised news bulletin. Everything from a sudden rise in noise around the corner at night to the usual complaints about their granddaughter not getting married yet. 

“Wait, what was that?” Ryohei snapped to attention, a leaf well-shredded in his hands. 

“Isabella has been seeing this boy for years now and—”

“Not that,” Ryohei cut in, ignoring the reproachful looks he got for it. “The noise, what’s that all about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she tsked, waving her hand. “Probably just those little boys who like to play Mafia in their gangs. Honestly, they’re going to receive a rude awakening if they ever run into real Mafiosos.”

“Mm,” Ryohei hummed quietly, “Are there many around?”

The women glanced to Ryohei, “Gangs, or Mafioso?”

“Both,” he said.

“Well, yes. And don’t go looking for them, Ryo, it’ll do you no good to get tangled up in that stuff. Heavens knows better men have been lost to them before.”

Ryohei smiled and slowly got back up, discarding the leaf in his hand. “Thanks for the advice nonna. Hope Isabella’s doing well with that guy of her’s.”

The three women shared quick looks, and each gave soft goodbyes to Ryohei. 

Ryohei scratched at his nape as he walked further into the shopping district. He had wondered how he had missed gangs hanging around, especially if they were making a ruckus in the dark hours. But, he supposed, if it didn’t really matter. Some middle-class kids were playing Mafia, he wasn’t going to go out of his way to tell them to stop — Ryohei didn’t pride himself in being a hypocrite. 

“Hey, Tony!” Ryohei called out, jogging over to a man who was packing up his store for the afternoon break. 

Tony was a portly man with a voice to match his size and a head as shiny as the apples he sold by the dozen. Ryohei always knew when the man spotted him in the crowd, the grocer always rolled the ‘R’ when he bellowed Ryohei’s name like they were life-long friends. He welcomed Ryohei with open arms and Ryohei grinned at the man.

“Ryohei, where have you been?” Tony asked.

“Eh, around,” Ryohei shrugged, leaning against the lamppost outside the storefront. “So, any talk on the town recently?”

Tony grinned as he talked, relaying the juicy stories he had heard and saw both first, second and third hand from his time in the store. He handed Ryohei a pear as he spoke, and Ryohei idly munched on the crisp fruit. 

“Hawaii guy!”

Ryohei blinked at the call but continued to munch on his pear, since he was decidedly not Hawaiian. Then something collided with the back of his knees and Ryohei had to grab the post or risk buckling to the floor. 

“Hawaii guy!” That little voice called out again and Ryohei looked down to see a young girl with tears in her eyes and hair up in a ponytail — he remembered her suddenly, one of the little girls playing with a ball, near months ago. “Can you help?! Someone grabbed Jess and I—”

Her voice hitched wetly and her face went red, nails digging into the flesh of Ryohei’s knees.

Ryohei tossed his pear into Tony’s trash bag and crouched down to the girl’s height. 

“Show me.”

The girl sucked up a shaking breath and nodded. 

Ryohei grabbed the girl by her waist and threw her up onto his shoulder. She shouted guidance into his ear as Ryohei ran through the streets, little hand fisted in his hair to keep balance. 

“Here! They took her from here!” She shouted and Ryohei screeched to a halt.

The girl clambered down off Ryohei’s shoulder and pointed around, frantic and red-faced as she tried to explain everything at once. 

“I- We were just playing, and then a car! And they grabbed Jess and I didn’t, couldn’t, I- I—”

Ryohei knelt down and nodded slowly before asking, “What colour was the car?”

The girl blinked through tears and cried out, “Uh, I don’t- White! It was white!”

“Okay, white, got it. Which way did it go?”

She looked around, reorientating herself and where she had stood during the kidnaping. Then the girl pointed with such force her elbow bounced and announced, “That way!”

Ryohei looked the way she pointed, a straight and narrow lane that broke out into the splintering backstreets of a suburbia. 

“Got it. White car, going that way. Now,” Ryohei knelt down and got the girl to look to him. “I need you to go back to the place you found me, call the cops. Tell them what you’ve told me.”

“O-Okay,” she nodded, fisting her shirt in her hands. “Okay. I’ll ask the grocery man?”

“Yeah,” Ryohei nodded. “Yeah, find the grocery man. His name is Tony.” 

The girl nodded quickly, “You’re gonna find her, right?”

Ryohei smiled and reached over to ruffle the girl’s hair, the brown strands sticking to her tear-tacky cheeks. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll find Jess.”

The girl ran off, disappearing around the corner, and Ryohei straightened. He scanned the area with his eyes, taking in every detail. 

Upturned pots riddled with cracks and poured out soil: a clear sign of struggle. And tyre tracks, etched into the curb.

Ryohei spun and burst forward to chase that car. He followed the girl’s instruction and raced to the intersection, following the main, curving lane until it splintered. Ryohei spun around and bounced irritably, before he found the lines of tyres and took off-

“You’re going the wrong way.”

Ryohei halted hard and snapped to the voice. Reborn melted out of the shadows, handsome face posed with his usual drawl smile, hat obscuring his eyes. 

Ryohei looked at the man, then to the tyre tracks.

“Okay!”

Ryohei ran the other direction, sandals clapping along the path as he made it to the main street. He grasped the corner of a low wall as he came to a stop at another junction in the road. It was quiet, everyone either resting in their homes or away at school or work. 

Ryohei went right — A bullet hit the ground with the distinct, muffled sound of a silencer. 

Ryohei dodged left and immediately set into a sprint.

A line of laundry snapped in the corner and came swinging over Ryohei’s head, bedsheets and undergarments tangling up in his arms until he ripped his way out.

“Reborn! This isn’t the time!” He bellowed and threw his arms over his head as a hail of gunshots continued to rain.

Ryohei gritted his teeth and backed away into an alley and out to its opening on the other side. Then the bullet hell stopped, and Ryohei lowered his arms slowly.

A white car was parked rather neatly along the side of a building, nicely in row with three other cars. 

“Ah! White car!” Ryohei gasped and ran over, tried peering into the windows, only to find them tinted dark. “Darn it.”

A hand came and touched the car with just the tips of its fingers. 

Ryohei looked over. He hadn't noticed Reborn get so close. That was some light footwork!

Reborn hummed and crouched down beside the car, hands already wielding a lockpick set with deft skill. He peered at the lock on the car and frowned, murmuring about ‘poor workmanship’ and ‘peg grinding’.

Ryohei shifted in the spot, trying to be patient. Then he reached over, took the door in his hands and let his Sun balloon. The door peeled from the car with a screech of metal and the crack of locks breaking. He frowned down at the car’s alarm and reached in, gripped the wires and ripped them out.

“Done this before, I see,” Reborn hummed, and Ryohei just gave a sheepish shrug and smile.

Reborn stepped forward and took over the investigation as Ryohei moved aside to toss the car door into someone’s bushes. Reborn took a pair of black leather gloves from his pocket and slipped them on, before he reached into the car.

Reborn pushed aside a box of Pueblo rolling tobacco with his finger, the corners bent and torn from frequent, careless use. An assortment of scrunched up receipts littered the floor, mostly fast food places, petrol stations and arcades. The last thing Reborn found was a green hair tie, discarded under the driver’s seat.

“Does any of this tickle your fancy?” Reborn asked as Ryohei came up behind him.

Ryohei leant over Reborn and nearly seized up at the sight of that familiar hair tie. He reached out and took the tie, “This is definitely the one I gave Jess!” Ryohei took a step back and looked to the streets, trying to find a path or hint. “We’ve gotta go! We’ve gotta find her to the extreme!”

“Why?” Reborn stood as he took off his gloves and stowed them neatly in a packet inside his jacket. “You’re certainly not going to be paid for your troubles. I assure you. Not even the police will follow this, not in this part of Sicily.” He scoffed and tilted his head, the shadow of his hat covering his eyes. “Or will you do it out of the goodness of a bleeding heart? Tens of people go missing in Italy, every day. Will you try and save all of them?”

Reborn glanced over his shoulder as a long silence filled the area. 

Ryohei blinked, snapping to attention. “Uh, sorry, kinda tuned out there. Not great with speeches. So…you comin’ or nah?”

Reborn stood there for a moment, speechless. Then he almost seemed to pout and said, “Fine.” He straightened his posture and continued, “But you’ll pay me—”

“Don’t know how to tell you this, bro, but I have no money. Like nothing,” Ryohei interrupted, stretching the hair tie across his fingers like it’d guide him like some kind of budget divining rod.

Reborn gave a huff and Ryohei yelped as the hair tie snapped back at his face.

“Then I’ll take information.”

Ryohei glanced at Reborn out of the corner of his eye, then pouted his lips and murmured, “Info on what?”

Reborn smiled and tilted his head, body leaning forward. He was almost pressing Ryohei into the side of the car behind them. 

“You, Ryohei,” Reborn said slowly, “No dodging, no lies—”

Reborn barely had time to grit his teeth as a hand grabbed him by the knot of his tie and he was slammed into the car, the two men swapping spots. Ryohei frowned something thunderous as he narrowed his eyes at Reborn.

“I never lied.”

Reborn paused; Ryohei was right. As far as Reborn was aware, Ryohei had never lied to him. 

As far as he was aware.

Reborn slowly raised a hand and laid it on the fist clenched on his collar. 

“Then you’ll have no problem answering my questions.”

Ryohei gritted his teeth and glanced to the hair tie in his free hand. He knew he wasn’t some great tracker, that had always been more up Mukuro’s alley. If he was going to find this girl, he needed help, he didn’t have time to go checking every alley and nook in a town full of them. 

Ryohei looked to Reborn, eyes dark as the Pit started back.

“Fine,” Ryohei said finally, “But there are some things I can’t answer.”

Reborn hummed a bit, and began running his thumb along the bumps of Ryohei’s knuckles in an almost absent minded manner.

“Three questions. I’ll let you veto three questions.”

Ryohei frowned. Three wasn’t a lot, and knowing Reborn, he’d ask all the right questions in just the right order. 

But — Ryohei remembered that little girl fighting with her hair. What would his Family think if he refused help from someone as capable as Reborn. He thought of that little girl, and remembered Lambo and I-Pin running around through Namimori. He thought of that little girl, and remembered how Kyoko reclined in her chair, hand on her stomach.

He got three questions.

“Fine, but,” Ryohei let go of Reborn’s collar and clenched his fist at him. “You only get three minutes.”

Three for three. The length of a boxing match. 

Ryohei could survive that. 

Reborn hummed again and tilted his head, as if regarding if the deal was worth it. Then, Reborn smiled and shrugged. 

“Very well. Three minutes. Plenty of time.”

Ryohei brought his fist and lightly knocked it against Reborn’s jaw, breaking him out of whatever master plan he had brewing in mind. His knuckles pressed into Reborn’s cheek.

“Help me find her, Reborn.”

With a fist to his jaw, Reborn stared at Ryohei, that burn back in his eyes, so hot Ryohei nearly geared for a first — Reborn grasped his wrist again and slowly, so slowly, took it from his jaw.

He squeezed it, before letting go.

“We have a deal,” Reborn said, voice pitched low. “Follow me.”

In moments, Reborn had both of them jumping roofs and clambering across balconies in a mad dash.

“Another set of tyre tracks. A hasty exit of the car, they had no tracks leading away, no time to struggle. We are following another car now.” 

Ryohei didn’t question how Reborn saw all that, nor how he could extrapolate the extra information. Ryohei believed him, and that was all he needed to know.

“Any idea what car?”

Reborn scoffed, and swung to mount a ladder. “What? Do you think I’m some kind of miracle worker?”

Ryohei didn’t miss a beat, “Kinda? Yeah?”

Reborn blinked, peering at Ryohei through the bars. Then he puffed up a bit, shoulders squared, and looked rather proud as he said, “Black car. They’re driving fast.”

Ryohei grinned at Reborn, “Knew it.”

Reborn chuffed, “Such faith.”

They hit the top of the ladder and Reborn changed directions so fast Ryohei nearly slid off the edge of a metal roof in his attempts to stop. He got back on course quickly and caught up with Reborn just in time for the hitman to grab him by the collar and drop into a crouch.

Down below them, Ryohei could hear loud voices and jeers, all of them young and male. They were shouting, cussing and laughing; well acquainted.

They moved and peered over the edge. A group of men and boys were gathered in the decrepit courtyard of an old factory. They were dressed oddly, and it made Ryohei squint in confusion. They were dressed down but everything was well kept, with polished shoes and pressed shirts. It was like they were trying to look rough, but that specific American gang type of rough. No mafioso would go around looking like some common thug.

“Oh it’s those boys,” Reborn signed, and Ryohei raised an eyebrow. “Little boys playing Mafia.”

“Oh! The ones doing the petty property damage?”

Reborn glanced to him. “I see you’ve heard of them.”

“Only a bit. Never thought they’d jump to kidnapping.”

Just as Ryohei said this, a black car rolled into the courtyard and three men stepped out. The last two were each holding one arm of a little girl, frozen stiff.

Ryohei lurched forward, but Reborn stopped him, still holding Ryohei by the collar of his Hawaiian shirt. 

“When did they get guns?” 

Ryohei looked to Reborn, then to the girl, then to the men. Then he looked back to Reborn.

“Don’t know, don’t care. I’m getting the kid out.”

It wasn’t his business where these kids got their guns. If you wanted someone to get to the root of the problem, you’d need someone as driven as Kyoya, thorough as Hayato or selfless as Tsuna. Ryohei wasn’t any of those qualities — not to the extent they would go to.

Ryohei admitted it, he was tunnel-visioned. He was only interested in what was right in front of him. 

And right in front of him was little ‘Jess’, hair a mess, too scared to shake. 

Ryohei quickly scanned the arena, maybe a dozen or more men and boys. He didn’t know how many were armed. Didn’t know what kind of weapons they had on them. 

Ryohei liked surprises. 

Ryohei must have shown his excitement on his face, because he heard Reborn sigh just before that grip on his shirt went slack. Ryohei burst from their ledge.

He hit the ground with a crash and a roll. Yells from the gang announced Ryohei’s arrival and he leapt forward, stepping and swimming and dropping those men and boys. Then he spun and surged towards those two boys holding Jess. Ryohei punched left and a quick right — a muffled gunshot and the last boy, who had appeared from behind Ryohei’s target, fell, eyes rolling back in their head.

Jess let out a tearful cry and ran to Ryohei, grabbing sticky handfuls of his Hawaiian print shirt. Ryohei knelt down as she bawled, speaking in a soft, low voice as he assured her that she was safe now.

“Hey Jess,” he greeted quietly, smiling down at the girl as she seemed to try and disappear into those neon fronds and hibiscus. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

Jess took four, heaving, wet breaths and shook her head. 

“Good! That’s good,” Ryohei smiled, relieved. “Your friend sent me to come find you, she’s waiting in the townsquare with the shopkeepers. Are you able to walk?”

Again, Jess shook her head and wrapped her arms around Ryohei’s shoulders as she picked her up. 

The whole time, Ryohei could feel the heat on his name and that burn of eyes. He settled Jess on his hip and glanced at the boy who had been shot.

Non-lethal. Ryohei pushed him with his foot; the boy was just knocked out. Maybe concussed at worst. 

Ryohei looked to where Reborn stood on the building, only to find empty space. 

Jess coughed through the tears and started to hiccup against his shoulder. Ryohei rubbed his nape and started on the jog back to the square.

☀

Ryohei laid on his back, watching the shadows make shapes on the water-stained ceiling. He had gotten used to the scent of creeping damp in his apartment at this point, the near constant humidity. The sparse furniture almost reminded him of the Vongola Sun Quarters: Humble. 

Empty.

Ryohei signed and took a long breath in and out, letting his body go slack and loose on his thread-bare mattress. Then he sat up, sheets pooling in his lap.

He needed to get out. Out of the four walls and the damp and the humid and the empty. 

Ryohei grabbed a pair of sandals and the brightest shirt he had — a clash of yellows, pinks and blues — and walked out into the hot Summer night. There was no one around, even the late night drunks had gone home. Ryohei walked with his hands in his pockets and his head back, watching the stars. He walked for a while, aimless, counting stars and finding shapes in the loose, wispy clouds.

“Nice night.”

Ryohei stopped and looked to his side with his eyes. Reborn was standing beside him, head tilted back and eyes skyward, as black as the night above them. 

“Yeah, it’s warm. Good for a walk.”

Reborn glanced at Ryohei and smiled, “Nice enough for a heart-to-heart between Suns?”

Ryohei let a breath out through his nose, a long heave of defeat and anxiety. Right, he had a deal.

“Sure,” Ryohei conceded. A deal was a deal, after all, and Ryohei would be damned before he went back on his word. “Sure, what do you want to know? I’ll answer what I can.”

Reborn frowned, “That wasn’t the agreement, Ryohei.”

Ryohei winced, and gave a sheepish smile. Ah, he got caught quick,

“I said I’d answer what I can, Reborn. It’s not my choice, some answers aren’t only mine to say. That was our deal.”

Reborn pouted up at the arched ceiling, but shrugged in acceptance.

“Well then,” he said and gestured to Ryohei to lead. “Shall we sit?”

“I’d rather walk and talk.”

Reborn smiled, “Well then, would you like me to recommend a trail? Wonderful this time of night.”

Ryohei blinked and swore he could hear Hayato swearing up and down that ‘this is a trap!’ 

Maybe it's the exhaustion, maybe it's the need to be far, far away from his one-room apartment full of mould and memories, maybe it's the naïve, sweet and muscle-headed part of Ryohei that equates this Reborn, His Reborn, to freedom, release and that muscle-straining bliss.

“Sure,” Ryohei grinned, “Lead on to the extreme!”

Ryohei could confidently say he had no idea where he was as Reborn led them through a vast clearing of trees. They had left the paved streets and cobbled paths long ago, and Ryohei’s sandals were full of rocks and leaves. 

Ryohei put his hands on his hips and leant back, taking a long breath of that fresh nighttime air. This had been good for him. Shake off the anxiety, get the body moving. No better mood stabiliser than exercise!

“Nearly there,” Reborn urged, and Ryohei didn’t need to force a smile as he quickly followed.

Ryohei looked around as they kept trudging through the growth, something nagging in the back of his mind. It wasn’t that Reborn was leading him to his death or anything — it was that as they walked, Ryohei swore that…

“Oh! I know this place!” Ryohei’s bellow was like a crack in the quiet night and before Reborn could turn Ryohei had already set off in an upward sprint. 

Vaguely, Ryohei heard Reborn chase after him, gun clicking with the safety off. Ryohei’s sandals hit worn cobble and sandstone with a succession of claps on the steps of an old, forgotten chapel, blackened with weather.

Ryohei hadn’t been here in years. There had been a time, though, that this little nowhere chapel had been a frequent touchstone. He had been advised not to get too attached to any one location for his touchstones, a mafioso with a predictable haunt, was a dead one. 

Father Knuckles’ chapel was the only expectation to this rule, as the closest thing the Vongola had to ‘holy ground’.

Ryohei smiled as he gazed upon the blackened stone and weathered bricks. Even over thirty years ago, it hadn’t changed a bit. He could almost feel the stress leaving him already.

A gunshot rang out and the chains locking the doors fell to the ground. Reborn came up beside Ryohei before gesturing to the slowly opening doors.

“Shall we?” Reborn urged. 

Ryohei all but bounced into the dark chapel and set to work. He walked the aisle until he stood at the altar and rummaged through the drawers, until he found the matches exactly where they would be nearly thirty years from now.

Reborn sat himself on the frontmost pew and watched Ryohei set the candles in their station and smooth out the tablecloth.

Ryohei struck the match. Three minutes started now.

“What is your name?”

“Ryohei.”

“Last name?” Reborn pushed.

“None that matters. Not mine anymore.”

Ryohei cupped his hand around the flaming match and slowly, almost meditatively, lit a candle on the altar. Reborn frowned and Ryohei smiled, almost sheepishly.

“It won’t mean much,” Ryohei warned gently, before he said, “Sasagawa.”

“Ryohei Sasagawa,” Reborn pieced together and Ryohei withheld a wince.

He never quite got used to it said in that order. He’d better start now.

“Why are you here?” 

Ryohei lit another candle, feeling the heat on his palms.

“My family sent me to fix some things,” Ryohei answered and watched as the candlewick caught alight.

“Fix what?” 

Ryohei flicked the burnt match until it snuffed out.

“Can’t say, sorry.”

“That’s one,” Reborn uttered, almost like a warning. 

Ryohei huffed, and gave a grimace of a smile, “Sorry, not my choice.”

Reborn hummed, unaffected.

“You said ‘Family’, who are they?” 

Ryohei lit another match against the side of the box. 

“My family is my brothers and sisters,” he answered, smiling into the fire as he remembered those faces, their history. “I have a nephew on the way.”

Far away. Ryohei will have a nephew in thirty years.

Reborn was quiet as the dead behind him. No tell or clue as to what he was feeling or thinking — all except that heat that seared itself into the centre of Ryohei’s shoulders and into the flesh of his nape.

“Where are you from?”

“Japan,” Ryohei said easily and lit another candle. “But you’ll have an extremely hard time finding me, Reborn. You’re free to try if you ever get a particularly boring day, though. There are games of that, actually: missing and unsolved cases. I think you’d have fun with that!”

“Why?” 

“People like puzzles — not really my style but, ya know—”

“I meant why do you think I’d have a hard time finding you, Ryohei,” Reborn corrected, a snort of amusement to his tone. 

And a challenge. ‘Why do you think I’d have a hard time’. 

Ryohei gave a puff of a laugh sharp enough to blow out his match. 

“I don’t exist now.”

“Why?” Reborn asked again.

Ryohei shrugged, “Same reason as you, I guess.”

“So you’re Mafia connected.”

Ryohei smiled and struck another match, gently lighting the next candle and breathing in the heat.

“Yeah, you got me. I’m Mafia connected.”

“What Family?”

The match was snuffed again.

“I can’t tell you, sorry.”

Reborn made a low noise that Ryohei couldn’t pin down, and then said, “That’s two.”

Ryohei gave a weak smile and heard Reborn settle back into the pew with the low groan of wood. He lit another match.

“Are you in Harmony?”

Ryohei’s hands flinched back and the little flame on the candlewick died out before it had a chance. Ryohei thinned his lips and said, “Not anymore.”

There was a pause. 

“I see.”

Ryohei let out a long breath and snuffed the match, too low to risk. 

“Where do you currently live? Your base of operations.”

Ryohei glanced at Reborn with a raised eyebrow, but shrugged. It wasn’t like Reborn would have a hard time figuring that out on his own. At least he was being polite and asking first.

“The red building on the corner, just a bit further than where we met earlier.”

Reborn didn’t make a sound, so Ryohei struck another match. There were getting close to the end. Reborn had already asked most of the big hitter quotations and Ryohei still had one more veto. He was feeling good about this.

“Why are you looking for Bermuda?” Reborn asked.

Ryohei felt the bite of the match on the tips of his fingers.

“I can’t—”

“Then that’s three,” Reborn said and Ryohei dropped the match.

Reborn caught it before it could land on the table cloth and, with such a gentle hand, lit the final candle and let the match burn out.

“Ryohei,” Reborn said slowly, so close to taking up Ryohei’s space. “Who is Bermuda?”

“I can’t—”

“Uh-uh, remember the rules,” Reborn tutted.

Ryohei took a deep breath to try and calm himself down, trying to take in the soft scent of burnt wood and candle wax — but found himself choking on sunlight and gunpowder. The voice was beside his ear this time, so close it was practically ringing in his head.

“Answer me, Ryohei. Who is Bermuda?”

Shit. Shit! Could Ryohei tell him that? Or — Or wait. Telling someone of Reborn’s calibre who Bermuda was would definitely bring the Vindice knocking! Surely! And, yeah, they’d probably be murderous and all that, but Ryohei had really tried to do it the nice way!

“We had a deal.”

Ryohei shifted his weight then instantly regretted it, feeling how he had pressed himself along Reborn’s front. 

“I’m not meant to tell you. Just know that,” Ryohei said slowly. 

Then Ryohei flinched. Reborn rested his sharp chin on Ryohei’s shoulder, hands resting atop the altar on either side of Ryohei. An almost oppressive heat spread all the way through Ryohei, like a sweltering Summer’s day that you just couldn’t escape. 

“But you will,” Reborn hummed, and Ryohei wondered how one man could sound so satisfied.

Ryohei stared at the lit candles in front of them, all lined up and pretty on the altar. He wasn’t getting out of this.

“Bermuda is—”

Reborn let go and stepped back as he said, “Nevermind. I don’t need to know yet.” 

Ryohei spun around, his hand cradling the shoulder Reborn had occupied like he had been burnt. 

“Why spoil the fun now? A good hitman knows when to wait,” Reborn purred, “You’ll tell me, Ryohei, in due time.” Then Reborn got close, so much distance closed in a single stride. “Even if you’re gasping it out.”

Ryohei blinked. Then he grinned, eyes bright as he vehemently agreed, “Right! Earning your answers through a fair fight is the most extreme way to get to the truth!”

Afterall, Ryohei was still hankering for that fight with Reborn. A good proper one-on-one!

There was a long pause, and then Reborn let out a quick bark of a laugh, shoulder jumping as he quieted to a chuckle. Ryohei beamed. He didn’t get to see Reborn laugh often, it felt like a reward when he managed to crack Reborn’s veneer enough to get through his suave-guy exterior. 

“You want to fight?” Reborn breathed out, calm again with a small smile playing on his lips. “We can do it like that too. I’ve never been one to turn down a bit of tasteful rough play.”

Ryohei grinned wide, unabashed with his enthusiasm.

“Oh Ryohei,” Reborn sighed almost fondly.

Then Ryohei watched as the first light of the new day fell across Reborn’s face. Stained glass windows refracted blue, red, green and yellow across the man, colouring him with every shade under the rainbow.

☀

“Boss,” a voice greeted as they walked into the office. “We have been receiving multiple reports of someone leaking intel to civilians.”

“How severe?” 

“Nothing too explicit. So far, everything they’ve said can be dismissed as rumour mongering. However…I think you should look at this.”

A picture was slid onto the desk. A man was the subject of the photo, smiling wide and bright as he spoke to someone off to the side. His hair was cropped short and he had a scar across his right brow, and wore a searingly bright Hawaiian shirt.

“I know that face…”

“Yes, he looks like—”

Timoteo, the Ninth Vongola Boss, stood from his desk and crossed the room to the legacy wall. In the centre, taking the place of honour, was a large portrait of the First Generation. He reached out, photo in hand, and lined up the two pictures.

“He looks almost exactly like Father Knuckles,” Timoteo uttered and Coyote grunted in agreement. “And he’s leaking our secrets? Where is he now?”

“Not sure, we’re tracking him. But wait, it gets better,” Coyote scoffed, taking a puff of a cigar. 

Timoteo was still gazing upon the uncanny similarity between the two men depicted before him. Like the old priest had been ripped into the modern day.

“Intel says his name is Ryohei. And he’s been sighted with Reborn.”

Timoteo turned his head, eyes wide. Then he frowned, expression set in determination as he looked at this ‘Ryohei’. 

“Find him. Bring him to me, I want to talk to our new friend.”

“Of course, Boss.”

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” 

“We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” 

Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. 

 Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus.

(Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei  Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira  Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

CHAPTER 3: I AM A COLLAPSING STAR WITH TUNNEL VISION

Ryohei stood among the trees, alight with florals and fresh sproutlings. A forest in the midst of Spring time — so far from the Autumnal colours of…thirty years from now. 

Ryohei swallowed his panic and took a large breath, tasting the warm air and let it settle inside him. And let the knowledge that it was over now settle along with it. He was, once again, a Sun without a Sky.

Again. 

His Sun flickers in his chest like a solar flare, a single spire of golden light reaching out, out, out— And it felt nothing. No atmosphere to hold it, nothing to reach back to keep it together. No greeting, no welcome, no Home. 

Again. 

The Sun was Skyless Again. He had tried, so hard, to be right. He had tried to be small, tried to be something they could cradle in their Skies and hold in their Harmony. And he had to leave, again. Had to love and lose again. Ryohei had to leave his Home again-

Enough. Ryohei had had enough. Of loving and losing. Of being welcomed Home and then being forced to leave, lest he burn those inside.

No more. No more leaving Home. No more Skies. No more Harmony. 

Ryohei took another breath, taking in the sunkissed air and the life it brought to the world around him. He breathed it all in, letting his chest and stomach expand with it — and felt his Sun swell within him. Sun bloomed from within him, breaking those learnt restraints of Harmony that begged him to be smaller, begged him to be more palatable. 

Sun stretched and Ryohei stretched with it, raising his arms up and bending his back. Every muscle seemed to activate at once, pulling and warming and feeling alive. He felt his blood warm and his hair stand on end as everything filled and grew, Flames roaring free and high.

No more Harmony. No more small Suns. 

Ryohei took one final breath and recentred, feeling his Flames relax into place, light and refreshed for the first time since...Since before Kyoko. He rubbed his chest absently and turned his eyes to the greenery of Spring around him. 

He had a job to do. One last mission as their Big Brother. It was time to get busy.

“I need to find the Vindice,” Ryohei murmured to himself and squinted up at the sun. “I have no idea where their base is…”

Ryohei put his hands on his hips and hummed loudly to himself, wondering how to go about this. He really hadn't thought of this.

Mukuro would track them down somehow, probably involve himself in some great information network to figure out where the Vindice would pop up next. 

Ryohei frowned a bit and rubbed his nape. That seemed hard and tedious. Ryohei didn't think he had the patience for something that long-winded. 

“How do I get their attention then?” He whined and looked off to the side. “Ooh nice flower.”

Tsuna was always the one who dealt with Bermuda. As far as Ryohei was aware, Bermuda just showed up sometimes at the Headquarters like Bermuda knew when he was wanted or needed by the Vongola Don. 

He supposed that made sense. ‘Cause weren’t the Vindice meant to be able to tell when there was an Omerta breach? Like some kind of Mafia “Big Brother” sort of deal?

Ryohei tilted his head. Well, if they were as all-knowing as they said they were then… Maybe he didn’t need to find them. Worth a shot.

Ryohei planted his feet solidly on the earth he had been plotted upon by the time machine, cupped his hands around his mouth and let his chest swell with air.

“HEY! BERMUDA VON VECKENSCHTEIN! BERMUDA VON VECKENSCHTEIN! BERMUDA VON VECKENSCHTEIN!” Ryohei bellowed out into the world, feeling like he was doing a tongue-twister. “BERMUDA! HEY! HEY! VINDICE CAN YOU HEAR ME!? I GOTTA TALK TO YA 'BOUT THAT WHOLE TRI-NI-SETTE CURSE, CAN YOU COME HERE FOR A SECOND!? BERMUDA!? VINDICE!? BERMUDA VON VECK—”

The warm Spring light of the clearing was disturbed by a patch of thick darkness and a chain lashed out from within. 

Ryohei choked on his shout and stepped out of the way as three others reached for him again. More chains shot out and buried themselves into the earth, taught, tight and clinking against each other as that darkness swallowed more and more of the forest treeline. 

Slowly, bodies began to emerge from the murky haze. Bandaged and broken, they dragged themselves through by those chains. A pungent, rotting smell hit Ryohei in the back of his throat and stuck there like molasses as he tried to breathe in sun-warmed air again.

The Vindice were here. 

“Who are you to call upon us?” One spoke with a voice like sandpaper, raspy and cold.

“Who are you to utter his name?” Another hissed.

“Who are you to—”

“Name’s Ryohei!” Ryohei introduced happily, looking around at the small group of Vindice that had appeared, five in total. “I need to talk to your Boss, is Bermuda around? Or Jaeger? Jaeger works too.”

The five Vindice stood silently, each regarding Ryohei with some kind of cautious annoyance. Then they all turned slightly to the one who spoke first. That Vindice slowly stepped towards Ryohei, appearing to float on air and without the slightest sound of a footfall.

“What business do you have?” They asked with their hoarse voice. 

“I gotta talk to Bermuda about the Arcobaleno Curse,” Ryohei answered readily.   

All heads turned on a dime to Ryohei. He resisted the urge to flinch. Ah, that might not have been the most sensitive of ways to go about that. The Curse was a sore spot for the Vindice.

Ryohei shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, half out of habit and half out of instinct, feeling the charge in the air. 

Then one turned and let the darkness swallow them up, disappearing from sight into that void. 

Left standing with four of the Vindice, Ryohei idly started to sway on the spot, looking around the place. He had never been good at standing still and waiting, and having the Vindice mere metres from him didn’t seem to stop that habit. 

“So,” Ryohei began absently, kicking up some dirt. “How’re you guys? How’s work?”

The Vindice didn’t answer.

“That good huh?” He muttered.

Ryohei reached for his Ring to run his thumb along the edges of the Sun jewel, a mindful, repetitive motion — His fingers found bare skin. Ryohei bit the inside of his cheek and put his arms behind his back. Out of sight, out of mind. 

The dark space began to move again, shifting and shaping like something alive. All Vindice stood to attention, two to each side. 

Ryohei straightened his back and shook his head to scramble those thoughts. They’d do him no good now — now he needed to concentrate. He had his mission. 

In a rush, that acrid stench renewed. The scent of rot and death, this time underlaid with a kind of damp that came on a cool night. It was almost cold to breathe in. Ryohei resisted the urge to hold his breath.

Bodies came pouring out of that dark void, one after another until the clearing was lined with Vindice of damaged bodies and bandaged limbs. Their cloaks seemed to swallow the fading light of the evening, dark masses of tatter and tear nearly floating like wraiths before him.

Ryohei tried not to react to how they slowly started to surround him, ringing the man with their line. He wasn’t going anywhere until they were done with him.

“So, this is the one who was screaming earlier,” came a dry voice, wrangled by a childish pitch. “To call upon the Vindice so brazenly. I don’t know if you’re brave, or just foolish.”

“More likely the latter, sir,” a gravelly voice chipped in, low and raspy. 

Jaeger stepped out from the dark portal, a single eye peering out from his bandaged face and glared at Ryohei with such an intense suspicion. He wasn’t the one Ryohei regarded, however, despite his imposing height and presence. It was the baby-sized being, sitting lightly on his shoulder, that drew Ryohei’s attention.

After so many years, Ryohei had forgotten how small the Arcobaleno were. Drained down in both Flame and form. 

Bermuda von Veckenschtein was tiny. Only made more so by Jaeger’s towering figure. But it was his Flame, fueled by the humiliation and fury of his state that burnt and blistered — it reminded Ryohei that Bermuda was not a simple baby. And that size, in this situation, did not matter. 

Okay, he thought to himself, don’t fuck this up Ryohei.

“Hi Bermuda!” 

Somewhere down the line, a Vindice twitched. 

“Sorry to call you out like that, but I’ve got something extreme to tell you,” Ryohei began, trying to fight the nervous energy that made him want to pace while he spoke.

Bermuda didn’t respond, and silently, impatiently waited for Ryohei to continue. 

“Speak quickly,” Jaeger warned and Ryohei rubbed the back of his nape in a nervous habit. “We do not have time to entertain you.”

“Fair!” Ryohei agreed, and reached into his jacket. 

It was deceptively small. The cure to the Arcobaleno Curse, the cure to the stripping of the Tri-Ni-Sette System. The saviour of the world, condensed down into four hand-written notebooks and a large page of blueprints, folded and folded again down to match their size. All of this was placed inside an envelope. The cure to the world fit inside Ryohei’s breast pocket.

“I’ve been sent to help you end the Arcobaleno curse,” Ryohei said, extending the small, beige package towards Bermuda. “And save the Tri-Ni-Sette System from breaking down.”

There was a ripple in the crowd. 

This was a bold claim, Ryohei knew that. He also knew that Bermuda was glaring at him with a mixture of enmity and confusion. 

Tsuna had once asked how old Bermuda was, ‘a few centuries’ was his answer. Ryohei had no doubt that Bermuda had combed the globe once, twice — hell, hundreds of times over to try and find a cure, an end to this Curse. 

Ryohei wasn’t the smartest man out there, but he knew he was lucky to still be breathing.

“You don’t believe me, I get that,” Ryohei continued, keeping his voice even. Bermuda hadn’t moved even once, not a shift of the shoulders or the twitch of the hand. “But, please, at least look at these. They were written and designed by the smartest men I have ever met; entrusted to me for you.”

There was a moment more of stillness. No Vindice moved, waiting for Bermuda’s call. Bermuda continued to stare at Ryohei, like a small gargoyle upon Jaeger’s shoulder.

Ryohei was still holding up the thick envelope, and had been for nearly a full minute now. He kept it out, offering, waiting. He knew how scary a supposed ‘easy out’ was. And to Bermuda, it must have sounded too good to be true.

So Ryohei waited. It was up to Bermuda now.

After what felt like hours, but must have been only minutes of deliberation, Bermuda’s voice came, sharp and gritted. 

“Bring it to me.”

A Vindice stepped forward and reached for the package. Ryohei handed it over without fuss, but watched it, eyes like a hawk, as it made its way across the clearing and to Jaeger’s awaiting hand.

Ryohei had to be ready. If things took a turn and Bermuda decided he didn’t trust Verde’s Machine, he needed to be fast to take that information back. 

Jaeger unpacked the thick envelope, turning the stack of notebooks over in his hand before giving Bermuda the folded paper. 

“You may want to see this,” Jaeger murmured under his breath.

Bermuda took the page and unfurled it. 

“This is…” Bermuda continued to look through the blueprints, turning pages after page with interest. “This is surprising. And you’re sure this will work?”

“I’d bet my life on it,” Ryohei stated without missing a beat. It was designed by Verde and Talbot together. Nothing with that much mastery behind it could fail. “Those who made it are the best the world has ever seen. They won’t fail you.”

Bermuda looked over at Ryohei again, seeming to see him in a new light. 

“It claims here that the Curse is using the wrong ‘fuel’,” Jaeger uttered, showing Bermuda the notebook he had been paging through. “What is the correct ‘fuel’ then?”

“It says it further in the notes,” Ryohei explained, knowing that Verde’s notes weren’t the most linear of instructions. “Sky Flames are too, uh, all over the place? We need Earth Flames. What better to care for Earth than Earth?”

“Earth Flames,” Bermuda repeated, “You know of the exiled Simone.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty good guys. And they’re the key to saving the System.”

Bermuda made a noise of acknowledgement and continued to look through the notebook handed off to him. Then he flipped it back shut and gave it to Jaeger to slide back into the envelope.

“We have nothing to lose,” Bermuda announced, “Very well. we will try this Tri-Ni-Sette Machine of yours. Thank you for bringing this to us.”

“That’s great!” Ryohei beamed.

The line of Vindice began to move, one after another filing into that still writhing portal to darkness. 

Ryohei took another quick look to the clearing, seeing the exact spot his Family had been just…thirty years from now. He shook his head and turned forward again.

The last of the Vindice were leaving. Ryohei moved to follow them, taking his last breaths of sunshine before he would probably surrounded by that smell —

“This path is not for you,” a Vindice denied sharply, pushing Ryohei back.

“But the Machine—”

“We have the blueprints, and all the information we’ll need to complete its construction,”  Jaeger huffed, still clutching the packet of notes. “We, the Vindice, will take it from here.”

“Make sure that Machine gets built! Please!”

Ryohei looked to Bermuda, “I need to be there when the Machine is being built.”

“Why?” Jaeger asked, “Do you possess an important component?”

“Well, no, but—” 

“Then we do not need you.”

“No, I need to be there! My brothers, they said I—”

“Understand us,” Bermuda said, voice cutting through Ryohei’s. “We are thankful for you bringing this to us. If this works, we will be freed from a terrible Curse.” Then he turned his head towards Ryohei, regarding him through bandages. “The Vindice know this System best. We will take it from here.”

“No! No wait, my Family told me to—” Ryohei ran forward and reached out. His fingers grazed the edge of Jaeger’s coat. 

The black portal dissipated like shadows suddenly cast in light, and Ryohei was left alone in that clearing. 

“...make sure it gets built,” Ryohei finished quietly, his fist still extended out in front of him.

Ryohei stood there, staring at where the darkness had once occupied.  

No. Shit, no, no, no this was bad. His Family had given him this job, he had taken this job, and they had trusted him to see it through! He had to be there when it was made, had to make sure it gets built. 

“Vindice!” Ryohei bellowed, hearing the forest echo with his voice. “Vindice! Bermuda! I need to be there! Bermuda Von Vichtenstein! Bermuda! Bermuda! Bermuda!”

There was no answer. Ryohei was alone.

Ryohei needed to fix this.

☀

The Vindice were the arbiters of the Mafia. A great power that struck fear into the very hearts of the greatest among the ‘world-class’ criminals. They knew everything, heard everything. No one could get away with breaking their law, their Omerta.

And yet, Ryohei was out of luck. 

Ryohei had walked through town idly chanting the names of all Vindice he could recall. He had casually mentioned Vindice-level secrets and brought up the Tri-Ni-Sette to more cashiers and little ol’ nonnas than he cared to admit — nothing dire, he didn’t want that on his hands. 

Hell, Ryohei had given a group of kids a show of Flame! True, he had passed it off as a magic trick and had a lighter on him just in case. But still! The public use of Flames in a civilian environment would have had him in Vindicare before he could say ‘EXTREME’ in normal circumstances! 

So it could only mean: the Vindice were ignoring him.

Ryohei had been ghosted by the Vindice. 

He didn’t know what to do.

Ryohei sat on a bench in the middle of a bustling town square, just one of many faces. He had been here… days? Maybe a week? He really wasn’t sure.

His suit had been packed away in his suitcase, in desperate need of a wash. It had been too dark for him, always seeing that black cloth had only made his mood worse. He had needed to buy clothes anyway.

Ryohei, days ago now, had walked into a little second-hand op-shop on some quiet corner. He tried to not see echoes of Kyoko and Haru peering from between the racks. Those two girls loved to peruse the mismatched shelves of second-hand stores. 

Ryohei only needed a few things, he only had one suitcase after all. And after wearing a suit for days, Ryohei just wanted to be comfortable for the rest of this mission — that would span the rest of his life.

Ryohei had grabbed two pairs of khaki shorts, and smiled when he saw their copious pockets, remembering Chrome always asking him to hold her stuff when she wore her pencil skirt.                                                                                                                                                                                 

There was a large basket full of singlets with faded graphics across the chest, ranging from ‘Coca-cola’ to some unidentifiable, niche Italian band. Ryohei sorted through a few and just stuffed them in his basket; they were only a few cents each. Inflation was a bitch. 

With tops and bottoms sorted, Ryohei turned to head towards the counter, when, out of the corner of his eye, Ryohei caught sight of colour galore. Sandwiched between a line up of button down shirts, hung a small collection of maybe seven Hawaiian shirts, so bright and nearly blindingly colourful with their hibiscus and palm frond patterns. 

Maybe it was the days in that dark, hot suit. Maybe it was his low mood. Maybe it was the need to separate the past, from future, from present.

Ryohei had taken all seven of them, the equivalent of 50c a piece. Inflation was a bitch.

Now, Ryohei sat on that little bench in the bustling town square, donned in his brightest Hawaiian shirt, a clash of pink hibiscus and green fronds, and tried to think. 

He tried to think about how to fix this, how to get the Vindice to come back, how to get them to listen. He tried not to think about how alone he was. How lost he felt. Utterly lost. 

He’s alone. Truly alone now. No risky payphone call home. No under-the-table information swap from the Vongola. No brief, passing glances of recognition. 

This was nothing like those other missions. Ryohei was alone.

And he’s failed. Oh God, he failed. 

He didn’t complete his mission right — yeah sure, he got it to the Vindice, but he was meant to be there. His family and Family, everyone, trusted him to be there. 

God, what if Bermuda just decided not to follow through? What if he decided he’d do it later and Verde’s Machine was just sitting in some drawer. 

All this work, all his sibling’s hope, his nephew’s future, all if it wasted! Because Ryohei failed. 

Ryohei leant back on the bench and closed his eyes, hands clenched together in his lap. 

Maybe Mukuro was right. Maybe Ryohei wasn’t the right person for the job. He had gotten ahead of himself, blinded by the idea of being more important than he was. A ‘big brother’ who could handle anything, solve any problem, help no matter the weight. Maybe he had thought too highly of himself. 

Maybe, foolishly, selfishly, he thought this was the best way for him to go. Remembered, honoured, idealised. The man who stepped up and made the sacrifice.

And what a sacrifice he made. Everyone’s future in exchange for his memory.

Maybe he should have kept his head down, and instead of sacrificing himself to ensure that his Family never forgot him…Maybe he should have just let himself fade into obscurity, and let himself be replaced one aspect at a time. 

“Um… Excuse me? Are you sleeping?” 

Ryohei blinked his eyes open and looked down to see two little girls nervously standing together. 

“We, uh, our ball rolled under you,” they said and pointed to his bench.

Ryohei lent forward and looked under him to see that, yes, there was a slightly deflated soccer ball just behind his feet. He must have been deep in his own head not to notice it.

“Here!” Ryohei smiled and handed the ball over the girls. 

The one on the left reached for it, brushing her hair out of her face as she did. She shoved her hair behind her ear, and nearly as soon as she took her hand away, it fell back into her face.

Ryohei’s smile softened, seeing Kyoko’s stubborn face behind that hair before she had cut it off mid-Elementary. She had been so proud of the fact she could shake her head around without being blinded. Hana had been stubborn though and had twisted, tied and sprayed her hair into submission.

“Why don’t you tie your hair up?” Ryohei asked, as the girl kept fighting with her hair. 

“Tie broke,” she answered softly, eating hair as she did.

Ryohei laughed as she spat it out with a frustrated grumble, her friend laughing too. 

“Here,” Ryohei said and reached into one of his khaki pockets. “What’s your favourite colour?”

The girls leant over as Ryohei showed them a fistful of hair ties, all different colours and some intertwined with glitter. Chrome wasn’t the only one who often used Ryohei as a human pocket, Kyoko, Hana and Haru had joined her ranks and after years, Ryohei had long grown used to having an extreme surplus of hair ties in his pocket. These were just the ones he had emptied from his suit.  

“Can I have the green one?” The little girl asked and Ryohei beamed at her.

“Go ahead, take a spare in case you lose it,” he said, and picked out another shade of green.

“Can I choose one?” Her friend asked and Ryohei showed her the selection.

“Thank you,” the girls chimed together and Ryohei smiled as he watched the girls tie up their hair with their new hair ties. 

“Have fun, bye,” Ryohei waved.

Ryohei looked down at his hand, still full of hair ties. A mismatched collection from all his little sisters.

Ryohei shoved them into his pocket again, and took a huge breath in through his nose. Ryohei slapped his cheeks hard.

Someone walking passed hissed in sympathy. 

This was no time to be an extreme bitch baby. He couldn’t second-guess himself now. He was in the ring, and there was no throwing in the towel. It was time to put his big brother pants on and figure out what to do next.

Ryohei got to his feet with a heave and stretched up high, trying to pull his way out of that spiralling mindset.

His mind was all fuzzy and he felt physically drained. He wasn’t in any state to try and make a plan, he knew that. Ryohei needed to centre himself somehow, to calm all that energy that was going into a depressive spiral.

“I need to meditate,” Ryohei said to himself, like an order.

Colonello had told him to find a touchstone. A kind of place where he could always return to reset himself. Collonello had chosen cliff faces, where he could see for miles and breathe in the salted air.

Ryohei had chosen churches. Where he could feel the weight of Knuckles’ legacy, and breathe the incense and candle light. 

It wasn’t hard to find churches or chapels in Italy, even in the suburban town Ryohei had found himself in on the edges of Vongola territory. 

It was quiet in the little chapel Ryohei found, with only one other person in the whole place. They were praying, almost frantically.

Ryohei chose to leave them to whatever qualms they had with God and chose a pew a respectful distance away. 

Ryohei leant back in the pew and let out a long, slow breath, feeling the familiar atmosphere seep into his bones. Ryohei wasn’t a religious man, he had never been raised that way. But it was something about the atmosphere; the curling smoke of incense, the low crackle of candles, the way the light shifted as it came through stained glass. After so many years, churches felt like ‘calm’.

He was pretty sure Hana called that ‘Pavlov’. 

Ryohei took his time tracing the designs in the large, circular stained glass window at the head of the chapel. It was probably a nod to Notre Dame, with its kaleidoscopic design. 

Ryohei wondered if he’d ever have the patience to put together something like that. It must have taken forever—

The window shattered. A man sailed through. The familiar sound of gunshots.

Ryohei hit the ground between the pews, head down and eyes up, trying to figure out who had just crashed through that window and why.

“W-Wait, we’re not enemies! I’ve never done anything to you!” A man yelped.

Ryohei saw the man who had been praying before fall to the floor. He crawled back away with his hands, eyes frantic and looking up at whoever was hunting him.

“You know that isn’t how this works, Emiliano.”

The crunching of glass beneath the hitman’s shoes.

“I can pay you!”

“You couldn’t afford me.”

Ryohei’s breath was steady even as the last gunshot rang out, earsplitting and clear as a whistle. It rang through the halls of that little church.

The praying man hit the floor with a thud. 

Ryohei needed to get out. He didn’t have time to get caught up with some hitman on a Don’s dime. 

He braced himself, ready to move. The church didn’t have any cover, he’d have to make a run for it. 

Ryohei measured his breaths, watching, listening for a queue.

The hitman stepped into sight.

Ryohei’s eyes widened, his breath stopped. 

He knew that face. He knew that hat.

“Reborn,” Ryohei uttered, staring at the man in his prime.

Reborn’s head snapped around, dark eyes locking in on Ryohei from across the pews.

Ryohei stood, his legs bent. He needed to get out. 

Reborn observed him, eyes flitting over his whole form in less than a moment. He seemed to be looking at something beyond Ryohei, both inside and around. Then, Reborn turned, a dark smile taking his face as he stepped over the cooling body of his hit. 

“And who might you be?” Reborn asked.

Ryohei ran.

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS  — Playlist

For anyone who's interested. It keeps the brainrot rotting.

(and a youtube option for people like me who are too stubborn to pay for spotify premium)

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win. Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus. (Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei

Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira

Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

CHAPTER 11: LET'S BE ALONE TOGETHER

When Reborn and Verde returned to the sunset-tinged sands of the Simone Island, it was to the sight of Ryohei frolicking in a shore tipped with gold, surrounded by a flock of boys and girls with red hair and stigma eyes. Reborn stared out at the sight of Ryohei, his shoulders blushed pink and his hair slicked back, children hanging from his arms. 

Pink and red and warm, summer golden-yellows. Reborn thought those would be a good colour palette for a wedding — he should update his mood board. 

Then Ryohei turned, sun-lit eyes scorching the horizon before they laid upon that figure dressed in black, standing on the sand. He grinned, lips wet with seawater, and waved with both arms. 

“Reborn!” Ryohei cheered and, like something out of Baywatch, came wading out of the shore, waves breaking on his calves.

Reborn stared. 

Reborn turned to Abramo, “You have done exceptionally.”

Abramo nodded, arms crossed over his chest, puffed with pride. “Thought you’d like the tight shorts. He chose the worst colours though.”

Verde sighed and walked away, shoulders slumped and eyes squinted against the bright outdoors. Good, Reborn didn’t think he deserved to bear witness to Ryohei dressed in only wet, clinging swimwear.

“How’d it go!? Did you have fun!?” Ryohei asked as he came to a stop in the soft, white sand. 

“A few moments short of painful,” Reborn shrugged and reached his hand across. Reborn trailed his fingers along Ryohei’s sun-blushed chest, connecting constellations of just-there freckles with the droplets that clung to his skin. “I’m glad to be back on Simone soil.”

“Well, welcome home!” Ryohei laughed, hands on his hips and completely unperturbed by the finger tracing along his pectoral. 

Abramo glanced between the men, then the hand that had still yet to drop. He wiggled his eyebrows at them before not-so-casually excusing himself, splashing loudly into the surf.

“How’s the mainland? Everything still intact?” Ryohei joked as he squatted down next to a haphazard pile of towels, pool noodles and discarded clothes. 

For a moment, Reborn was distracted by a single drop of sparkling seawater as it made a journey down Ryohei’s spine and into the tight waistband of Ryohei’s flamingo-themed shorts. He wondered, if he were to tug them, if there would even be any give. 

“Nothing of note,” Reborn hummed, and watched as Ryohei shrugged on one of his many Hawaiian shirts, left mercifully unbuttoned.  

“Reborn, you should swim too, the water’s great! Something about a volcano!” Ryohei said as they began the slow, sandy walk towards the Simone quarry.

Reborn slipped his arm through Ryohei’s and smiled, “That sounds like a wonderful idea. Can’t let a day like this go to waste.”

Ryohei grinned and cheered, scattering the seagulls scavenging along the shore. 

“Wait for me here will you, my dear Ryohei?” Reborn crooned as they stepped through the hazy darkness of the Vindice portal, solder and fumes stung their noses. “I’ll be out in a moment in something more… Comfortable .”

“Remember to bring Leon! He needs some real sun!” Ryohei called and Reborn waved over his shoulder as he disappeared through chained-down doors.

Ryohei rocked on his heels and looked around, the grand atrium of the Vindice’s Simone Base still as impressive as the first time he had seen it. The skeletons of the Machine were filling out with muscle of thick wire. Those heavy, metal bases were bolted deep into the bedrock to support the towering beams, finally set and soldered into place in arches overhead.

Vindice ghouls floated around, carrying boxes of materials, sand and shattered glass. There were loose bolts and nuts littering the floor, as numerous as the crushed-up remnants of ancient shells. Ryohei could feel them under the thin soles of his sandals as he walked, inspecting each frame with barely bottled excitement. 

And at the centre of it all, surrounded by those looming structures of metal and hope, Verde sat on the floor, nearly nesting in his papers. 

Ryohei had barely seen Verde since bringing him to the island, elusive and nearly outsight evasive of all things unrelated to ‘his Machine’. In truth, Ryohei didn’t know Verde well — or knew the would-be- could -be Verde well. The Verde of the future had always been too taken with his creations to deign an audience with the Vongola for anything short of the Tri-Ni-Sette collapsing.

Ryohei could see that same fanaticism now as he made his way over, stepping around the wires thick as great tree roots. He peered over Verde’s shoulder to read what the man was scratching down with a pen running low on ink.

“What?” Verde snapped, quick as a whip.

Ryohei grinned, “How’s the progress? Figured out the glass?”

“Components are missing. Working backwards,” Verde answered, eyes shifting around as if knocked by every new idea in his rattling brain. “Someone— I created intentional voids. I do not know why.”

Ryohei tilted his head, brows furrowed. Verde had left out information. Crucial information. Ryohei squatted down and rested his chin on his knuckles, sandals grinding into the sandy stone floors.

“There's no distinct pattern to the omission. If there's a code, it's not obvious.” Verde dragged a box full of rolls of grid paper, elbow-deep as he scrounged for a loose piece. 

There was silence. Soft breathing. Completely unobtrusive, but almost omnipresent. A heat that warmed the stone under Verde's thighs and dried out the paper in his hands. Inescapable. Like the smell of summer on a windless day.

Verde turned his head and regarded Ryohei, still dripping with water, flecks of shells clung to his shins and between his fingers. His shirt was damp with a mixture of seawater and sweat, the bridge of his nose glistened with sunscreen. And he was still. Sitting on his sandy haunches, sun-kissed face cradled in his seashell-sparkled hands. Watching. Windless.

Verde returned to his work. Verde continued to speak. Less to Ryohei and more to Ryohei’s presence — to the heat —, an engineer to a rubber duck. Ryohei listened wordlessly, eyes bright and alert despite the odd, jargonistic words that flew well over his head.

“Everything else is laid out. Working with that, it will simply be common sense. It will require a heat, apparently even more so than the kiln the Vindice uses now but— there’s a piece missing.” Verde scrubbed his hair, sticking up weirdly with oil and sea salt residue. “I will find it. Given time, I will find it.”

“You will,” Ryohei agreed without missing a beat, without taking a breath, without a doubting thought.

Verde blinked and turned to the man crouched at his side, sand sticking to his legs from the beaches, nose bridge pink from the sun. He was smiling. Unhindered. Unwavering. The sky was blue, the sea was deep, and Verde would solve this puzzle made just for him.

What faith.

Verde clutched his near-empty pen tighter, took a breath and felt his lungs scorch. The near-constant damp of the place ripped from the very fibres of his clothes. Under those smiling eyes, Verde was warm.

People hailed Verde as the next Da Vinci. Under those smiling eyes Verde was Now .

“I will,” Verde said, voice almost raspy-dry. 

Ryohei grinned like a bonfire. Like a collapsing star. Full of blinding life and steadfast, searing, unrelenting Will . 

Oh.

Verde shifted his gaze to the side and saw Reborn standing there, cast in shadow with eyes so bright it was like looking at a sunrise. Reborn inclined his head.

Do you see it? 

How could you not?

He’s perfect—

It’s huge—

It could be ours.

Verde swallowed greedily, throat parched, hands tingling. Reborn regarded him with sunrise eyes from behind the figure made of heat and some astronomic faith — clad in an eyesore of a blue and red Hawaiian print shirt.

Verde felt his eyes sting from the light, but kept them open. He felt the buzzing in his teeth. Verde felt the strike of dry lightning on brushland.

Reborn smiled, vindicated. 

☀☀

Reborn reclined on the wicker lounge, cradling something boozy, fruity and full of crushed ice. The sun beat down on him as he laid there, his open white, linen shirt fluttering in the salty sea breeze and Ryohei’s wet abs reflecting in the black of his sunglasses.

Ryohei grinned as he helped a small gaggle of Simone children build a sandcastle, shoulder-deep in the sand for a secret tunnel. Reborn watched the slick muscles along his back flex. 

“Enjoying the show?” Abramo asked as he came to occupy the lounge beside Reborn, his own crushed ice cocktail sloshing about in his four-fingered hand. 

“It’s a luxury,” Reborn sighed, fixing his sunglasses upon his nose. “I need to enjoy the sights while they’re still so exclusive.”

Abramo glanced at the man from around his cup. Reborn looked smug, a curl to his lip, a lilt to his tone — it reminded Abramo of a barn cat after a hunt, picking feathers from its teeth. Abramo sipped his cocktail and cast his gaze over to the man crusted in sand and sunshine, children clambering onto Ryohei’s shoulders as he knelt on the shore.

“Does he know?” Abramo asked. 

Reborn regarded him out of the corner of his eye. 

Abramo let his cup settle on his stomach as he watched his Family orbit around this new Sun on their beaches, blond hair gritty with salt and seashells, laugh louder than crashing waves and smile brighter than daylight. 

“He’s told you right? About his old Set,” he continued, “Things like Harmony… Ryohei’s been hurt, ya know?”

Reborn didn’t utter a sound as he laid there, dark eyes cast in shadow as the rest of him basked in sun. He could feel his skin burning. He didn’t want it to stop.

“I know,” Reborn said finally, almost too softly. 

Reborn remembered the suitcase full of pictures, full of papers he had yet to read. He remembered the whiskey, how it had let the words float to the top and spill over. He remembered the lonely, lonely look in Ryohei’s eyes and Reborn’s teeth wanted to grind.

Reborn looked forward and saw Ryohei wrestle with the Simone youths, heard the cheers as no less than seven young boys sent him crashing into the shallows. 

“Okay,” Abramo uttered, and Reborn felt the pressure ease, the weight on his chest and crushing gravity. Acceptance was light against his skin. “Nonna Teresa’s pub has an upstairs balcony. It faces the west beach. It’ll be empty tonight.”

Reborn raised his sunglasses and glanced at Abramo. The man was smiling, red eyes soft and warm as he watched his Family play in the sand and the sea, little hands dragging the Sun to follow. 

“Reborn!” He turned to the call and saw Ryohei waving, a child standing on his shoulders. “You coming!? You said you’d swim! Volcano water!”

“Volcano water!” The child agreed loudly and jumped into the sea, almost immediately replaced by another clambering Simone child.

“Be gentle with him,” Abramo said as Reborn rose from the lounge.

“How gentle can you be with something just short of a god?” Reborn asked and threw his sunglasses on his towel, sand between his toes and salt in his hair. Ryohei welcomed him into the shore with open arms, sunflares sparkling on crested waves and red eyes watching everything. 

☀☀

It was getting cold, a southerly breeze biting through the summer night’s heat haze. The low roar of the pub below melted into the drag-and-crash of the tide, salty meals mixing with salty sea air. The door to the balcony closed with a snap, their private table stocked with alcohol and nibbles.

Reborn let out a long, burning breath, a Simone-style whiskey almost scoring him down to the belly. Beside him, Ryohei sat, elbow on the table and cheek upon his fist, staring out at the bay, the last curve of a smile still on his face. 

“What is Harmony like?” Reborn asked, staring out at the pink-orange-red of sunset. 

Reborn had heard stories. The moans of Harmony-drunk Flames post-bliss. They say it's like drugs, but better. Like alcohol, but stronger. Like sex, but deeper. Something that could make a hardened mafioso roll over and show his belly, all sticky sweet like honey and tar. 

“Warm,” Ryohei answered finally, gently, voice just over a murmur. “Like a bath after getting caught in a storm. Like seeing family. Like coming Home after a long…long forever.” 

Reborn listened to Ryohei breathe. Slow, soft draws of breath through his nose. There was a slight whistle, like it had been broken before. The hand on the table, loosely wrapped around a glass, flexed. Scars pulled at rough skin, bumped and callused. Dark at the knuckles. 

“You’d do anything for it. To protect it. To stay,” he said, “It feels like being loved.”

Home. Reborn barely understood the concept. Base, safehouse, touchstone — those were all more familiar to him but Home? Said just over a whisper and with such warmth it all but melted off Ryohei’s tongue and nestled inside Reborn’s ears. 

Reborn tapped his cup with the tip of his finger, a crystal ‘twing’ rang light through the air.

“What was your Sky like?” 

“Which one?” Ryohei asked back.

Reborn ran his thumb through the condensation on his glass, ice clinked as it melted. 

“Your first.”

Ryohei didn’t move, still cheek to fist, still staring out past the bay like there was something out there. Something heartbreakingly close. 

“She was perfect,” he said, a smile in his voice. “She’s my little sister, my childhood friend. I held her hand the day she was born — it was tiny. Tiny little nails.” 

Ryohei took a drink. Reborn mirrored him slowly. 

“We were always together. She was shy before she went to school, used to hide behind me. I would always have to talk to the shopkeeper if she wanted ice cream.” Ryohei looked into his cup for a moment, watching amber whiskey shift and swirl. “She ate a lot of ice cream. Even in winter. Has a sweet tooth. Likes things cold.”

Reborn let the silence settle, let the glass in his hand go lukewarm under his fingers. He sipped neat whiskey with a slow relish. 

“And the second?” He asked, prompting gently.

Ryohei didn’t respond quickly. He pressed his lips to his glass and drank, long, slow draws of the burning liquid. His breath fogged the cup. Ryohei put the glass back on the tabletop with a soft clatter and licked his lips when they tingled from the alcohol.

Reborn watched.

“He was everything.”

Ryohei sounded raw. Like an open wound, meat and nerves, exposed down to the bone. 

“He — He was everything. To everyone. You should have seen it- You will see it. God he was —” Ryohei covered his mouth for a moment, breathed hard against his hand covered in starburst scars. “So scared. All the time. He didn’t want to be there, Boss wasn’t raised to be a, well, Boss . He got thrown into it. He was scared.”

Ryohei shifted in his seat, the old wooden chair groaning under his weight. 

“Maybe…that was why I loved him so much. Boss was scared, all the time, but that didn’t stop him from fighting. From trying . He built a family out of strangers. He fought for a Family that he had only just heard of. He protected everyone — He tried —”

Ryohei’s voice hitched. Reborn didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Eyes wide, fingers clutched his glass. 

“He tried —” Ryohei said again. He swallowed, throat flexing in the sunset light. “He tried to suffer through it. Tried to be big enough, to- to make room for me.” His leg moved, the chair wheezed. “And even then he tried to keep me, to love me, to give me a home even when it hurt . Even when I hurt them— ”  

Reborn didn’t know when he moved. Before or after the bolts and wedges of the old, rickety barstool gave under the heat of a Sun ablaze in self-loathing. But he had lept, feet off the ground and hands stretched out, fingers seeking that burn, burn, burn as they fell—

They hit the old timber deck of the pub. Their glasses shattered beside their heads, amber whiskey soaked Reborn’s sleeve, and matted Ryohei’s hair. Bits of wood scattered around, smelling of smoke and black as char. His hat was somewhere in the ruins.

Ryohei laid there, arms out akimbo. Reborn laid there, arms wrapped tight around Ryohei’s crown. Chest to chest, belly to belly, Flames alight and aching as Ryohei laid there under Reborn.

“I can’t do it again,” he whispered, voice muffled into Reborn’s collar, cologne and sea salt in his every breath. “I can’t lose it again. I’ve already lost so much — I can’t lose a home again .”

Reborn could feel him shaking. A spring wound tight, years of compression bubbling under his skin. Years of being small, of being held tight and forced to bow to fit a box. Reborn let his fingers, wet with whisky, slip. And he stared at Ryohei. At the pinch in his brow, the ache in his jaw, the whistle of his broken nose and the burn of his eyes as they blinked, stubbornly dry despite it all. 

Ryohei was used to loss. He had run out of tears to cry about it.

Reborn had thought about Skies, like all young Flames, he had fantasised about the day someone worthy of holding him would come. A Sky vast and pure and just the right kind of unhinged that would make room for him, bend the horizon for him. A Home. Better than wine, better than sex.

“You won’t,” Reborn said. With such conviction, with such faith —

Ryohei would not lose again. Not now. Not him. Not ‘His Reborn’ . 

Flames rumbled like the coming of a solar flare.

Reborn had thought about Skies, like all young Flames. And he let those dreams, those little thoughts burn with the rest of him as he laid there atop this supernova, his very own Impossibility . 

Flames bubbled. Lashed. Stretched. Reached.

And like Icarus he fell, his forehead pressed to the rough timber decking just beside Ryohei’s. He breathed in deep, scorched his lungs with smoke and sunlight. 

He felt Ryohei breathe against him, chest expanding under his — that shocking Hawaiian shirt still searing in the twilight. 

“You won’t,” Reborn said again. 

Ryohei’s chest rattled, “Reborn—”

“You won’t lose me.”

It hurt. 

Like sinking into a hot bath after a snowstorm. A shock to the system to feel True Heat. 

Reborn felt it tear through him, through his arms, down his legs, up his throat until his tongue tingled and his gums throbbed. And then he looked to the side, his forehead slick with sweat, he saw something divine .

Ryohei laid there, head turned to face him. His cheeks were flush, red and pink and ruddy. There was sweat bubbling on his hairline, slicked back with the fall. His horrendous collar open against the seabreeze that barely cut them a break. The cut on his eyebrow was bright pink like it was fresh again, rebirthed in place. Reborn could see the pulse in Ryohei’s throat jumping a double-time rhythm even for him.

And Ryohei was smiling. Lips puffy and cracked in the corner, teeth knocked just a bit askew from one too many punches without a mouthguard. His eyes were wet — with sweat or tears Reborn didn’t know, but he didn’t care.

Reborn was going to make this man, this Sun, his Icarian Sun , cry for so many reasons. Happiness, frustration, anger, love and every overstimulating nerve he can touch.

And he had all the time in the world. Their world. Their Harmony —

Reborn took a breath, felt his chest expand and relished in the knowledge that he would never know the chill of cold again. 

Reborn reached up, fingers sticky with dried up alcohol and sweat and cupped Ryohei’s shining face. Felt his hand sear like he cradled the molten core of a star.

“Till the fall do we part.”

Ryohei stared at Reborn, sweat dripping from his nose. Then he let out a laugh that boomed from the belly, grin bright and utterly radiant in the twilight. A celestial body plucked from the heavens and laid out before him, barely contained in mortal flesh. Reborn bounced with every heave, would have tumbled away if not for those arms that wrapped around his waist and held on with a vengeance. With desperation. With a plea, and a hope and a faithful prayer—

“Why would we fall?!” Ryohei laughed, eyes bright and voice brighter, glittering with seashell sand and glass. “Don’t worry, I’ll catch ya!”

And that was all it took. Reborn let the air seep out through his lips, let that torrent of heat turn into a slow, molten crawl in his veins. Let it curl up in his chest. Let it find a place to call Home.

“Because you did that so well just now,” Reborn huffed, and looked at the charred remains of the barstool. They were going to have to reimburse Nonna Teresa. She took payment in manual labour.

“Hey! I’m a great catch!” Ryohei defended hotly.

Reborn smiled, so deeply satisfied he could barely find the space to be surprised. “Indeed you are, my Ryohei.”

In the quarry, deep underground, the Vindice all turned their heads. Verde glared through his glasses, his pen creaked in his hand. And in the pub, the Simone raised a glass, welcoming the dawn of the strongest Elemental pseudo-Harmony the world had ever seen.

[leftnotright]

PROOF APOLLO WEARS HAWAIIAN SHIRTS

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing. The world will die.” “We can’t do anything going forward. Going backwards, however, is another matter.” Ryohei had his mission: To go back. To before the most recent Arcobaleno Curse, to before the slaughter of the Simone. To before the Tri-Ni-Sette System finally gave out. Ryohei was used to loss, in the ring and in life. But this time, he promises, he’ll win.  Reborn had his mission: Get in this man’s pants, or die trying. After all, Reborn was nothing if not an Icarus.

(Or: The ‘size matters’ fic)

Parings: Reborn/Sasagawa Ryohei Characters: Reborn (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Ten Years Later Sasagawa Ryouhei, Sasagawa Ryouhei, Vindice (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Arcobaleno (Katekyou Hitman Reborn!), Checker Face | Kawahira Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ryouhei Time Travels

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

CHAPTER 1: EVERYTHING I LOVE IS GOING TO DIE

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing,” Verde announced to the room.

There was a long pause before Tsunayoshi Sawada, the Neo Primo Vongola, choked out, “What?”

The room was full of some of the most influential people in the Italian Mafia. The Vongola Don and Guardians, Xanxus and Squalo of the Varia, Enma of the Simone, Dino of the Cavallone, Uni of the Giglio Nero, Byakuran of the Millefiore and the collection of every Arcobaleno in their late teens. 

“The machine is failing,” Talbot reiterated, sighing regretfully. “The design won’t last as long as we hoped.”

“I thought this had been fixed long ago,” Xanxus of the Varia scowled, his Guardians flanking his chair. Belphegor was already bodily wrapped around a frighteningly still Mammon. “That machine of yours was supposed to be a fucking fix-all. That’s how you sold it.”

“We haven’t heard of any sort of degradation,” Dino chimed in, confused, “So it can’t be mechanical, you would have addressed it already.”

“Dino’s right,” Reborn agreed, ignoring the gentle gasp from the Bronto. “If it were something you could fix, you wouldn’t have let it get to this state, Verde.”

“It’s not the machine itself, no,” Verde frowned, “It’s more pertaining to the fuel. The Vongola Flames offered are not enough to sustain.”

Tsuna sat up sharply, his Guardians shifting in their spots. They had been the ones to supply fuel to the Tri-Ni-Sette machine years ago as youths. 

“So, what? Do you need us to give more?” Tsuna asked, full ready to supply. Their strength had only grown in the ten years since the machine’s creation, if they tried now, surely it would buy them time if not completely cancel the problem.

“If only it was that simple,” Talbot murmured and a sensation of dread settled in Tsuna’s stomach, Intuition whispering that this was not going to be a quick fix. 

Tabolt lifted his sunken eyes and looked to the Vongola Boss. The ancient man usually had an air of youth to him, scuttling about the Vongola Headquarters with his sheep in tow like some merry shepard. But now? He looked truly old. The wrinkles and lines in his face deep, his eyes pained.

“Primitive,” Verde scoffed, turning away from the group. “And that Checkerface was so uppity. His curse caused more damage.”

“Speak clearly!” Mammon hissed.  

“One too many times,” Talbot uttered quietly, “The Arcobaleno Curse, it was slowly stripping away the thread that held the world together. Such an incomplete solution…”

Verde shook himself out and spun back around, seeing all the lost expressions that faced him. He grit his teeth, hands clenching behind his back.

“The Tri-Ni-Sette system itself has corroded. Centuries without the proper maintenance and fuel, the metaphorical cogs of the system have been ground down to mere nubs.”

“Then what do we do?” Tsuna pushed, having enough of this doomsday talk and wanting a solution. “There has to be something we can do!”

Uni, for the first time since the meeting started, looked up from her hands in her lap and said, “Nothing.”

Everyone turned to her. She was still so small, fresh in her thirteenth year and she barely took up any space in the chair. She was so young, but her expression was as jaded as any Arcobaleno.

“The fuck are you—” Xanxus began and Byakuran slid his chair down the table until he bumped up against Uni.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Byakuran laughed, throwing his arm around Uni’s shoulders. “Mind how you talk to the princess, little false-prince!”

Squalo stood up with a shout, “Voi! Where do you get off calling the Boss ‘false’ fuck you Byakuran! I’ll slice that look off your face, just try me!”

Tsuna sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose, a stress headache settling in for the long run. 

“Uni,” he called and the room begrudgingly fell into a hush at his voice. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’? Surely there’s something we can do.”

“Not anymore,” Uni shook her head, her eyes overcast as if she were actively searching for a future where they could. “Like Uncle Verde says, going forward, there’s nothing we can do.”

“So that’s it then?” Dino asked, brows furrowed in stress. “We’re done. The Tri-Ni-Sette system will fall apart and the world will die.”

Silence hung over the room as reality set in. There was nothing they could do. You couldn’t just fix this sort of thing. And they were too late to stop it either. The Tri-Ni-Sette was broken, and they had no way to put it back together.

“We can’t do anything going forward,” Verde reiterated, and Tsuna flinched like salt was rubbed into his wounds. “However, going backwards is another matter.”

Everyone at the table turned at that, baffled and confused. 

“Backwards?” Tsuna echoed.

“Ooooh, time travel!” Byakuran beamed, clapping his hands with enthusiasm. 

“The past doesn’t like being tampered with,” Uni warned softly.

“Yes,” Verde agreed with a weary sigh, “The Bovino Family managed to create a loop between present and the future, however, they were met with significant resistance when they attempted to connect with the past. Records suggested there was some kind of force or energy, similar to the Tri-Ni-Sette, barring them access.”

Talbot moved forward and spread out a large piece of paper on the table, detailing a kind of mechanical monster that was almost, if not more, complicated than the blueprints for their original Tri-Ni-Sette machine. The Bosses leant forward and regarded the diagram critically, trying to understand the schematics.

“Using the Bovino’s research as a base, Verde and I were able to make a breakthrough. A machine that can pierce that barrier between the past and present.”

“We managed to narrow the Tri-Ni-Sette’s point of no return. Just over thirty years ago—”

“That’s!” Skull jumped up, “That’s before our curse! We broke the system!?”

“We didn’t break anything,” Mammon snipped, bristling where they stood, smothered in Belphegor’s arms. “That Checkerface is the one who insisted on cursing people until he burnt out the system.”

“Why are you stopping there?” Fon asked with a soft frown, “Wouldn’t it be safer to go back further? Rather than allowing the system to wear so thin.”

“The past doesn’t like being tampered with,” Verde said, “The further back you go, the stronger the resistance. We can only go as far back as thirty years, seven months, four days and six hours.” 

“How long will this take you to build?” Tsuna asked, turning the page his way and trying to imagine how much this would cost.

“It’s already built,” Verde scoffed. “This is our only choice. Why would I wait to build it?”

“Question~!” Byakuran crooned, kicking his feet under the table. “It’s great and all that you made this time travel machine, I’m a huge fan of that trope, but how does that help us when the machine also failed?”

Tsuna shifted because Byakuran was right. Their machine had failed to both fuel and maintain the last of the Tri-Ni-Sette. Even if they took it back, they were using the wrong ‘fuel’. They’d end up with the same issue, in the end.

“Simple,” Verde hummed, “We use the correct fuel. Sky Flames are a volatile Flame, they’re too light and impulsive. The Tri-Ni-Sette needs stability.”

Talbot smiled thinly, “What better Flame to care for the earth, than Earth?”

Enma of the Simone looked up for the first time, eyes bright in confusion and surprise. 

“Earth Flame?” Enma uttered, idly running his thumb over his Simone Ring. 

Earth Flames, with their dense Gravity and strong synthesis with the planet, was the perfect fuel. It probably always had been, but with the rise of Sky-centrism and the fall of the Simone, it had been swallowed into obscurity. Forgotten until it was too late to beg for it back.

Adelheid lifted her chin from her station behind Enma’s chair and smiled. Vindictive. In the end, the Simone had the last laugh. Even if it did cost the world.

“And what of the machine?” Xanxus asked.

“With some reconfiguration, the current machine is more than enough. I’d like to remind you that my creation is perfect,” Verde uttered with almost a grit to his tone. “It just came to be too late.”

“In summary,” Talbot elbowed his way around Verde’s posturing and took centre stage before the table. “We have the blueprints for a competent Tri-Ni-Sette Machine, and we know what is needed to correctly and sustainably fuel the system.”

“So,” Xanxus crossed his arms and leant back in his chair, regarding the room with a callous and stubborn eye. “Now it’s just a matter of who’s going back.”

The hope that had risen in the room plummeted with a heavy hush. 

Who would go back? Over thirty years ago. It was before many of them were even born. 

“Please understand,” Talbot said gently, “This journey. There is no return. The past will swallow you.”

“This is a one-way trip,” Verde agreed, “Whoever goes, you’re not coming back.”

Tsuna stared when they said that, his mind, usually aflutter with thought and Intuition, was utterly silent. His hands clenched on the table.

A one-way trip. He couldn’t ask anyone to do that. To leave everything behind and never come back. To be left, alone, in a time so far back…

No, he couldn’t ask anyone to make that sacrifice. 

“I’ll go,” Tsuna decided.

“No,” Reborn shot down. “The Vongola needs their Boss — same for you Dino. No Bosses will be going.”

“But Reborn!” Tsuna urged, turning to the hitman who glared at the rebuttal. “We can’t just send anyone, and I can’t ask anyone to make this sacrifice. They all have lives here, people they love—”

“And you have the whole of Vongola and your Guardians relying on you,” Reborn scolded, “You will not go.”

“I could go,” Enma offered, but Talbot raised his hand to stop him any further. 

“No, we will need you, Simone.” Talbot said, “Whoever goes back, it will take time for the timeline to recalibrate according to new variables. In that time, we will need Earth Flames to hold us together.”

Adelheid reached out and gently squeezed Emna’s shoulder, both as a comfort and a warning. The Simone would not survive losing another Boss. 

“I understand,” Enma nodded, “We will help any way we can.”

“Thank you,” Tsuna uttered gently, and smiled when Enma reached to lay a hand over his own.

“I can go!” Skull offered, jumping up in his seat again.

“No Arcobaleno,” Verde sighed and shoved Skull back into his chair. “The residue energy from the curse would interfere with the jump. It’s too fragile to add an unknown variable.”

“Then who can we send?” Xanxus snapped.

“Why don’t you go?” Gokudera grit out.

“The Varia need me,” he shrugged.

“I’m sure they’d survive.”

Squalo burst out a bellow that threatened to pop ears and the two Right Hands began to snipe at each other from across the table. The room descended into quiet chatter as each faction discussed their assets, who had more to lose, who they couldn’t bear to be without.

“I’ll go.”

Everyone snapped around. 

Sasagawa Ryohei, the Tenth Sun Guardian, gazed back at them with a hand raised. 

“I’ll go,” Ryohei said again, making sure he was heard.

[leftnotright]

Writing Patterns Meme

[Plain text: "Writing Patterns Meme" in big text. /End PT]

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern!

I was tagged by @hopeswriting, thanks for roping me in! First time I've done one of these, very exciting

“The Tri-Ni-Sette machine is failing,” Verde announced to the room. [Proof Apollo Wears Hawaiian Shirts]

The previous Cavallone Don’s study was full of old clutter and new dust. [A Textbook: Education]

Silvestro gazed out the window blankly and the morning bus grumbled at the station, engine shivering in the cold morning as those poor dawn commuters stumbled into empty seats, dropping down in isolation, not wanting to share the space they had. [Not of Glass, But Diamond]

How should I start this? [The Baker's Daughter]

‘Wear heels,’ they had said. [Help Line]

Xanxus stifled down a shiver as a gale blasted through the streets, refusing to show the people side-eyeing him any sort of weakness. [The Xanxus Manuscript]

Death was an odd experience. [Strawberry Kisses]

BigBang joined [Trust Issues Abound]

"Hey Hark! See ya later, don't be a stranger! Come around any time you want!" [Guardian of Life]

(Bonus WIP cause I just missed the mark 10. It was a good day. A warm day. Perfect for the beach [And A Boat])

What have we learned?

[Plain text: "What have we learned?" in medium text. /End PT]

It looks like I tend to use dialogue as a launching point, especially for stories I remember having a hard time getting started. Like you Hope, I also often name the key players of the fics. Other than those, I can't really see a pattern, possibly because of the stretches of time between each of these lines being written. If anyone can see a theme, feel free to call my one trick pony ass out.

Overall, I can comfortably say that my opening lines have gotten better over the years, with Baker’s Daughter my oldest, and Apollo my most recent. Opening lines still suck though XD

I tag @evilminji and anyone else who wants to jump on!