Consequences

Epilog of the story, Tsuna's growing up story before Reborn came.

Thank you so much for being an awesome Beta, Quetoa!

The moment Nana's parents met Iemitsu's, the four of them knew that their grandson was going to be quite the remarkable child, and that their lives would never be the same again. Especially when, not two weeks after the wedding day, Nana reviled that she was pregnant. Iemitsu had left for work (Iemitsu's father called bullshit, but said nothing about it.) and the parents all sat down with her to discus what was going to happen, seeing as her child was going to be... well...

Well.

Sawada Megumi had had a vision for the child becoming the single most powerful being on the planet, in multiple ways and not all of them good, but she assured Nana that the future was never really set in stone and that her child would be born with a good heart, a good soul, and a good head on their shoulders. Yamada Ayumi just nodded in understanding and sympathy when her daughter turned to her in horror.

"What? How does she-" Nana turned her head back to the other woman, her mother-in-law, so fast everyone else in the room thought she gave herself whiplash. "How do you- wait." The panic in her eyes was so clear and it was gone as fast as her head turn. "Are you... a seer too?"

Megumi nodded, "In a way, yes. Just not the same as your mother, Yamada-san here."

Ayumi laughed quietly behind her hand, "Oh, please, dear, you can call me Ayumi."

Megumi smiled, a small giggle leaving her lips, "Only if you call me Megumi, OK?"

They giggled and Nana blinked, trying to grasp what was going on. She looked at her father and the man beside him, her father-in-law, and stared at them until one of them spoke. Thankfully her father, Yamada Masahiro, ever the man of wisdom, said kindly, "You know how mine and your mother's powers skip a generation?" numbly, Nana nodded. "Well, it appears that the Sawada's would have the same condition as we do, just not the same powers." the nearly new mother looked down to her stomach and wrapped her hands around the infant growing inside her.

"So... what will my baby be able to do?" she asked meekly. She wasn't sure who she was asking, but was so grateful when her mother's voice was the one to answer.

"My sweet Nana," she started and placed a hand on the young woman's arm, "You know what my powers are, so you know that no matter what, he or she will always have someone on their side, someone to guide them. You know your father's powers, so you know that your child will be able to take on everything that comes their way."

"And my husband," Megumi cut in and Nana turned to her in enquiry, "Ietsuna-san has the power of Pyrokinisis, so he or she will always be protected, and I have the power to see in to the future, and although it's never set in stone, your child, our grandchild, will know what their life will throw at them, and will be able to know what to do." she said reassuringly, a small smile on her lips.

"And besides," her father-in-law began, causing the others to look his way. "As far as I can tell, your mother is the only on who's powers started right away. Mine, Masahiro's and Megu-chan's powers all developed in our teen years. So it's not like it'll all happen at once." he smiled, the look gently touching his eyes.

Nana nodded and looked around at the other 4 adults in the room, looking them all in the eye, and said quietly,

"I... I think I'm... going to pass out now."

And with that, her eyes slid shut and she fell to the side, her father catching her with his telekinesis.

The day Sawada Tsunayoshi was born, Sawada Megumi woke up from a vision that made her both very sad, and so very very happy. Her grandson was going to find his soul mate rather young, marry them, and live happily ever after. What made her sad, however, was that her husband was missing. And the only reason she could think of for him to miss this amazing day would be if he died.

'The future is never set in stone.' she reminded herself, 'I hope our grandson finds his true love, and I pray that my husband will be there to see it.' she thought, turning over on the bed and curling into her husband's side. Another 2 hours of sleep would do her good. Nana wouldn't have her baby until noon, but Megumi wanted to be there a bit early, just in case.

Tsuna was nearly a year old when Nana figured out that her father-in-law was wrong. Nana raised her eyebrow, watching as her baby boy laughed at his toy, dancing 'all on its own', his little arms swaying this way and that as if conducting an orchestra. Smiling down at the baby in her lap, laughing and giggling, the house wife felt an immense love like no other, something she was sure came with every mother. She looked back at the toys across the room, 4 more added to the first, and they were all dancing like the ballerina's on the T.V. screen, and she sighed. Her Tsu-kun was going to be a handful, wasn't he...

"Mama! Mama!"

"What, Tsu-kun?"

"Can Tsu-kun go play with the pretty lady with the really long black hair over there by the well?"

Nana may not have been gifted with the same abilities as her mother or her 3 year old son, but she had grown up around spirits and she could, at the very least, tell the intent of a spirit in question. And this 'pretty lady' Tsuna was pointing at was nothing that she could see, just a well that had a plaque that read "Beware, the dead that dwell here." and considering the murderous intent she could feel practically oozing from the well? Yeah, no.

"No, Tsu-kun. You can't go play over there. Lets go home so that I can make dinner, OK?" she said with a smile, pulling slightly on his hand to try and coax the child into going with her willingly. Tsuna was having none of it.

"NO! I wanna play! I wanna play! I wanna play!" with the last 'play!' he shouted, Nana could see a couple pebbles behind him shake from where they were on the ground. 'Crap.' She sighed and picked him up, holding him to her hip and walked away, all but ignoring the screaming child in her arms. The only way to avoid a temper tantrum of monumental proportions was to get away from what he wanted and distract him.

She began humming one of her favourite songs, one her own mother would often hum to her when she was a young girl, and listened to Tsuna calm down. Once he had stopped crying, about 4 blocks away from the well, Nana set him down and looked him in the eye.

"Do you remember what grandma Ayumi said about some ghosts being bad, and some being good?"

Sniffling and rubbing a snot covered sleeve over his eyes, he nodded.

"Right. That pretty lady in the well was a bad ghost. Trust mommy, she wanted to hurt you, and that's why you can't play with her, OK?"

His bottom lip trembled, but he nodded and extended his arms out, asking for a hug like only a child could. "Tsu-kun's sorry." he mumbled.

Nana smiled and gladly scooped him up in a hug. "It's OK." she said kindly. "Let's go home so mommy can make dinner, OK?" He nodded again and she set him down, taking his hand and walking home.

"Hello? Ietsuna-san? It's Nana."

"Oh! Nana-chan! You can drop the formalities, dear, we're family!"

Nana laughed a little. "I just have a small question for you."

"Of course, my dear, what can I help you with?"

"How did you discover that you had your powers?"

A pause. "... why do you want to know that?"

"Because my little Tsu-kun has started playing with fire."

Another pause, longer than the first. "... How?"

"Well, Tsu-kun blinks and the candles flick on, then he blinks again and the candles flick off. He's been giggling and laughing for the last 5 minutes."

"Oh my god, really?!"

Nana laughed again, a touch more reserved and maybe a little nervous. "Yes. Is there something wrong?"

"Well, no... but I first discovered my powers when I accidentally set the family cat on fire. At 18. That kind of perfect control... are you sure it's just the candles he's lighting up? Nothing else around him?"

"Believe me, I checked. Yes, it's just the candles."

"OK... wow... just to be sure though you might want to invest in some fire-retardant curtains and couch covers... also, some fire extinguishers. At least one for every room. Two for his bedroom."

The mother laughed again, "Anything else?"

"Yeah. Be prepared for anything. Literally. Is he really just five?"

The first time Tsuna showed any signs that he was having visions, and remembering the dreams that showed him the future, he ran into Nana's room, yelling about how his dad was coming home. Nana was awake in moments, trying to calm her son down. He was so excited, he was crying and beginning to move her bed around the room as he bounced on it over her legs.

"OK, OK, that's enough! Calm down and talk to me, alright?"

"ALRIGHT!" he shouted in Nana's face and settled the bed on the ground (in the wrong place, but Nana would straighten it out when there wasn't an over zealous 6-year-old in her lap). The mother groggily sat up and wrapped an arm around Tsuna's waist.

"Uh huh." she mumbled, a yawn escaping her lips. "What time is it anyway?" and although she asked out loud, she began looking for her alarm clock, though finding it after being spun around the room was a difficulty of it's own.

"Hmmmm Gigi says it's 2:38 in the morning!" Tsuna supplied helpfully (and thankfully, quieter).

"Gigi? Oh, your guide?" she asked, a small pout on her lips and her free hand rubbing at her eyes.

"Yeah! Gigi told me his name, but I can't really say it, so he said I could just call him Gigi! But that's not why I woke you up!"

"Right." she replied with a giggle. "Something... about your father coming home?"

"Yeah! Yeah! Daddy is coming home! And he's bringing a friend!"

"A friend?"

"Yeah! Um... he's really old. Like... Grandpa Masa, old."

Nana laughed softly, before an idea came to her. "Tsu-kun... how do you know that?"

"Um! I had a dream and it woke me up and I started to tell Gigi and he told me to come tell you, even if I had to wake you up!" Tsuna looked down at the bed, almost sheepishly, "Sorry that I woke you up, Mama."

Nana smiled at her little boy, and said kindly, "Well, for something this important, I don't mind. But how about you and I catch a bit more sleep, yeah? You can sleep in my bed tonight, ok?"

"OK." Tsuna said, a yawn of his own creeping past him, forcing him to crack his jaw with the size of it now that the adrenaline was leaving his system. Nana pulled the covers back a bit, just enough to let Tsuna crawl in with her and settled back against the mattress Tsuna now fully in her arms. Tsuna began to mumble about the vision he had, telling her that in 3 days, Iemitsu would be back. They fell back to sleep together just like that, Nana staying up just long enough to see that Tsuna really was fast asleep once again.

And sure enough, 3 days later, Iemitsu came back. He spent the day with her, and the night, Tsuna for some reason not using any of his powers, despite having used them nearly every hour since discovering them. The second day, the three went to the airport to meet Iemitsu's 'boss' (which Nana had been informed by Ietsuna-san was actually the boss of a big Mafia) and Tsuna found himself more afraid than anything of this man.

Ghosts.

The man's past haunted him worse than any ghost Tsuna had seen, and the literal spirits following behind the man told Tsuna that this person was not someone he should be friends with, for his own good. For the next two days, Tsuna avoided him like the plague, only coming out of his shell enough to come to the kitchen for meal times.

The morning of the third day, Tsuna said the first thing to the stranger deliberately at the breakfast table. While poking at his cereal with his large spoon with one hand, and rubbing sleep from his eye with the other, Tsuna paused, eyes wide as if just coming to a conclusion.

"Oh."

The simple, small word was enough to get the attention of all the adults at the table.

"What is it, my tuna-fish?" Iemitsu asked in a babying tone. Tsuna looked up, right into Timoteo's eyes and said, clear as day,

"I'm sorry for the loss of your sons."

The ninth left the house that day feeling a little out of sorts, his hyper intuition telling him that there was something different about that boy. He didn't really register Tsuna's words until next to 5 years later, when it became apparent that his sons had all killed each other.

Tsuna was just seven years old when Nana noticed something odd was happening to her child. Not in the way she expected, at the very least. Every time she thought of her husband, how he had been gone for most of Tsuna's life thus far, 'For work' (which she had been told by Ietsuna was a load of shit meaning the Mafia) her little boy would take her hand and suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, her anxiety and fear, depression and anger would simply vanish like it hadn't even been there in the first place.

It was... weird.

She decided to take Tsuna to his grandparents to see if any of them knew anything, and together the 5 adults figured out that their sweet little boy had a new power, one entirely his own. With just the touch of his bare hand to anyone else's, the boy could change the way they felt, nearly to the point of mental manipulation.

He was an Empath, someone who could feel an emotion another person feels as if it were their own. He could take what he feels and force others to feel it too, whether he knew he was doing it or not. An emotional amplifier. The single most powerful empath any of his grandparents had even heard of before.

For the whole of the following summer, all five adults concentrated on training Tsuna how to control his powers, how to recognize when to use them and when to with-hold them. Tsuna found the whole thing funny, and told them all that 'Gigi' had had this discussion with him multiple times before, and that he was sure he knew when he should and when he shouldn't use his powers.

Nana was awoken one early morning by the worst screaming she had ever heard come from her son's room. The heart stopping scream made the woman launch herself blindly from her bed and she rushed to Tsuna's room as fast as she could. She reached the door and pulled on the handle, only to find that Tsuna had locked it, probably with his telekinesis, and considering his still ongoing screams, likely not on purpose.

"Tsuna?" she called, trying to keep calm despite the increasing horror and fear she could feel beginning to creep into her very soul. She had her suspicion that those were Tsuna's current emotions and not her own, but it only made her worry increase ten-fold. More so when she received no response from her baby. "Tsuna, what's wrong? Open this door, please!"

It took a few minutes, the mother coaxing her son with soft spoken words she knew her son could hear and the screaming finally dwindled into whimpers, the door opening quietly. In the farthest reaches of Nana's mind, she had always wondered what her son would do if he felt distressed beyond anything she could help, and she now wished she never wanted to know, as she looked upon the room, nearly in ruins. The table was over turned, books, movie and games thrown all over the room, the book case that housed them was in slivers of wood no larger than her hand. His bed frame was literally in pieces, his mattress and box-spring below were somehow folded in the closet in a way she knew couldn't have been done by any human's strength. Tsuna himself was cowering in the corner of the room, not on the floor where Nana could easily hold her child, but on the ceiling instead, wrapped tightly in his blanket.

"Mama?" Tsuna whimpered lightly, a shivering ball of fear.

"I'm here, baby. What happened?"

"I... I had a vision." Nana just about cried from hearing him, but she held herself together and began trying to wade her way through the mess, when there was suddenly a pathway from the door to Tsuna's corner.

"Mama's here now." she said quietly, pulling the small ball of blanket and boy into her arms. Why was it so cold in his room? She shivered but pushed the question to the back of her mind and began to take him out of his bedroom. "Let's go make some warm milk, and you can tell me all about the vision." she said, the fear in her mind dissipating some as soon as she had grabbed him. He shook his head however.

"No... I don't wanna talk about it."

"No?"

Tsuna shook his head against Nana's neck, and shuddered. "I wanna go to grandpa Masa's."

"I'll call him in the morning then."

The next day, or rather, five hours later Tsuna and Nana were riding the first bus out to her father's shrine in the next city over. He had said he was going to call Megumi and Ietsuna, and they all would convene there, since it had the largest space for the things they could do. It was there, in the largest open space on the shrine grounds where Nana discovered that her son had a vision of killing a man, 10 years older than him, 5 years from now.

Her little boy was going to do the worst things she could imagine to another human being (roasting them alive, then tearing them limb from limb before letting the man die?) and he was so scared, just absolutely terrified of himself in his vision. He looked just so sad when he then asked for his grandparents to seal his powers, completely, stopping him from being able to kill another human.

He screamed out loud that it wasn't fair that he couldn't have his powers sealed, even though it was explained multiple times, by every adult there, that his powers were growing, bouncing off each other and becoming stronger by the day. For the next 3 weeks, Tsuna took extra lessons from his grandparents, lessons they hadn't intended to teach him for a good 5-10 years.

"Tsunayoshi-san," Megumi said, taking in her grandsons' eyes, his determination to make sure that his vision never came true, and sighed, looking back out to the garden were her husband and Masahiro-san were playing with fire. "The future is never set in stone. That is indeed a fact. However," she paused and looked back to him, looking deep into his eyes. "Trying so hard to alter what may well happen despite, or rather, in spite of your efforts is something I will not stand for." she paused again, taking in his silent acknowledgement, without any means of agreement there. She sighed again. "Tsunayoshi-san, rather than think about what you can do to stop what might be very well inevitable, think about what may have cause the scene in your vision. Details. Can you remember them?"

"I thought memories changed a little bit every time we think of them." Tsuna responded, a pout still lingering from his out burst of hate nearly 3 weeks before.

"Yes, they do. But visions are different from memories. Until they happen, they stay with you like you just had them. That's probably why you're so actively trying to shut the vision down." she saw him wince and look away, and continued in a smaller, softer voice. "You remember everything, don't you?"

It took him a moment, but he nodded solemnly. Megumi hated her next few questions, but she needed to ask them to try to understand and hopefully help her grandson. She could only hope she could really help the poor boy.

"What do you remember most about your vision? What hits you hardest?"

It took Tsuna a good few minutes before he finally shuddered and whispered, "The smell."

"Not your emotions?" Megumi asked gently, genuinely surprised with his words. He shook his head rapidly, pulling his knees up to his chest and hugging them.

"I wasn't right, in the vision. I kept thinking that 'this is for the best' and that he needed to die. I don't know why he needed… needed to die, but in my head, all I felt was this horrible joy that I was killing him. That I was the one to end his life. It wasn't me… but it was at the same time. But the stronger thing I remember was the smell of his skin burning, and his blood boiling, and-" his hands flew to his mouth and he turned away, his sudden nausea palpable in the air.

She looked away to give the boy a moment to compose himself, watching instead as the two men were watching them far more than watching the little ball of fire they were tossing back and forth. 'That's an accident waiting to happen.' She thought, looking back to her grandson, heaving over the waste basket. Evidently the nausea won.

She waited for him to resettle on his seat before asking, "Can you continue?"

He shook his head no, "But Gigi says that I have to power through this. That I have to continue."

Megumi laughed a bit behind one hand, "Did he now?"

Tsuna nodded. "Yeah… I kinda wanna tell him he can stuff it." She laughed a bit louder than before.

"Shall we go to another room and continue there?" she asked kindly, receiving another small nod in reply. They stood and Tsuna flew to the woman's side, attaching himself to her hip. She began guiding the child through the corridors, toward the main hall where people would come to pray to the Shrine God housed in the temple. (She sent pointed looks over her shoulder to her husband to clean up the small mess in the other room.)

"Why are we going to the main hall?" Tsuna asked almost two steps before they entered.

"Because this hall is where many people find peace and sanctuary. Tsunayoshi-san, take a moment and let your empathy roam this hall, tell me the feelings that have gathered here. Use them to help you through your vision." She said sagely, and let go of his hand, watching him as instead he closed his eyes and started to walk through the large room, and she could really feel his power here.

The child wasn't just exploring the place with his emotions, he was drawing in the leftover emotions in the room, amplifying what he could and giving back. With a small smile, the first in nearly 3 weeks, Tsuna went up to the main shrine depiction of the God, bowed and said politely, "Hi, my name is Tsuna. Thank you for keeping my mom safe while she was growing up."

"Tsunayoshi-san? Who are you talking to?" Megumi looked over to Ayumi, who had previously been sweeping off to the side entirely unnoticed until her voice had filled the hall. Tsuna looked back over his shoulder with a confused pout.

"What do you mean, 'Who?' I'm introducing myself to the Tochigami-sama." *

"The… The Tochigami-sama? Tsunayoshi-san are you sure?"

Tsuna turned around entirely, head cocked to the side and a pout of concentration on his lips. "Um… Yeah, I'm sure? Why? Can't you see him too, grandma?" Ayumi dropped her broom, a hand coming up to her mouth.

"No…" she said weakly, "I've felt his presence at times, I've heard his voice only once before, when Nana was in danger when she was little, but I've never been able to s-see him."

"R-Really?" Tsuna blinked, cocking his head to the side.

She nodded and Megumi quickly walked over to her side. "Tell me, please, Tsunayoshi-san, what does he look like?" Ayumi asked in a shaky voice. Megumi took hold of the other woman's arm to help steady her.

"Um… like the paintings. Only more beautiful, kinda like a girl with purple lips." The tension that Megumi could feel in Ayumi's body drained in an instant and the woman laughed.

"Hahahaa… so what brings you two to the great hall?" she asked once she calmed down a touch. The smile never left her lips, but her laughter had subsided.

"I brought Tsunayoshi-san here to see if the residual positive emotions of this room would help him tell me the details of his vision."

"Oh, what a good idea!" Ayumi said, clapping her hands together. "would I be able to sit in on this? I'd very much like to know what happened."

Megumi smiled and nodded, before she turned to Tsuna, "You don't mind, do you?" Tsuna shook his head with a pout.

"What?" Megumi said with a smile. "Did you think I'd forget why we came all the way out here?"

Tsuna's hands went behind his back as he looked to the ground, his foot scuffing the floor. "… maybe." The adorable action made both grandmothers laugh out loud and they began to herd their grandson to the other side of the temple shrine. Megumi lit some incense once when they had entered the hall originally, and the sharp smell of apple wood was now filling the room.

"I thought that since the smell was so bad in you vision, the incense would help you. If the smell gets too strong in your memories, just take a deep breath through your nose and smell the incense here. Alright?"

"OK, thank you, grandma Megumi." Tsuna said as he pulled down a couple of seat cushions from the closet off to the side of the statue of the Shrine God. He was stalling, Megumi could see that much, and she let him continue to do so until he was settled on the seat.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, bringing up his hand and made a pulling motion off to the side and a bucket came floating into the room. "Just in case." He muttered to himself, settling the bucket next to him.

"You all set?" Megumi asked. Ayumi sat just off to the side, watching her friend and her grandson continue where they had left off. Megumi asked question after question, getting detail after detail, and Tsuna got more and more comfortable talking about it as the hours went on. Finally, after 3 and a half hours Megumi asked the one question she had been putting off for Tsuna's sanity.

"And what about your emotional being? You said you were and weren't yourself in the vision."

Tsuna flinched and looked away, taking a moment to gather the good energy around him before answering. "I'm not sure still. I was myself, but I wasn't in control…"

"Was it like a possession?" Ayumi asked, her voice so sudden after not being heard for most of the conversation, Megumi startled, forgetting the other woman was actually there. But then she turned to her grandson, much more interested in his answer.

He looked like the question had been a revelation about the vision.

"…oh. Yeah. That… that sounds right. But not by a spirit. I think I was … possessed by my powers?" Head cocked to the side and a finger on his lips in thought, neither grandmother could deny his cuteness just then, but the boy's words struck them as odd.

"What do you mean?"

"I remember not being in control, not really. And I didn't have to move my hands around in order to use my telekinesis… or my pyrokinesis, for that matter. I didn't have to move anything, really. I just thought it, and it happened." He paused to shiver, his hands coming up to hold his arms tighter around him. "I remember thinking that he could still defy my orders if he still had his arms, and then they were ripped from him. I remember thinking that he was angry at me, I don't know why, and then that I would show him what boiling rage really was. And then he started steaming, and screaming like he was chocking. When I… when his arm came off, that's when it was visible that his blood had boiled from the inside. There were still bubbles." Tsuna whispered the last sentence, tears gathering in his eyes again.

The knock on the door was unexpected, and it seemed to affect Tsuna far more than Megumi or Ayumi. The boy jumped literally 3 feet into the air, his telekinesis pulling the table up with him, and he dropped back down to the floor painfully. The bucket, thankfully unused, flew at the door, and hit with a loud thud.

Nana opened the door quickly, a frightened version of her son's name on her lips. She looked at him and his grandmothers in confusion when she saw that the boy was fine, if not just picking him self up off of the floor. "What was that sound just now?" she asked innocently.

Tsuna pointed at the bucket, now lying just off to the side of the sliding door. "I'm sorry," he said, sitting up right, "I got startled and threw the bucket at the door. Are you ok mom?"

Nana knelt down next to Tsuna and smiled, "I'm fine. Are you?"

He nodded. "But I would like dinner soon?" He looked at Megumi, "Please? Am I done for tonight?"

The woman sighed. "Yes, you can go have dinner. Masahiro-san is cooking tonight's dinner, right?"

Nana nodded, "Yeah, my dad loves cooking." She looked pointedly at Tsuna, "Without his telekinesis."

Tsuna just grinned.

The next morning, before Tsuna woke up, the 5 adults convened at the coffee table in the living room. There were two sets of beaded bracelets on the table, one in blue and teal beads, and the other a dark red. Megumi and Ayumi had gotten together the night previous and discussed what all they could do. They were both shrine mikos, and they knew to a certain degree how to bless objects to do certain things; they were by no means certain that these charmed beads would work correctly, but they had faith that the beaded bracelets would contain at least half of Tsuna's ever growing powers.

The blue and teal beads would hopefully work of Tsuna's telekinesis, and the red on his pyrokinesis. Originally, the four elder had thought that combining the two bracelets into one necklace, and Nana had denied the thought on the principal that combining them would weaken the effect (a fact that had somehow slipped their minds), so they separated them.

When Tsuna woke up, Nana called him down and talked him into wearing the beads. (She didn't have to do a whole lot of convincing, this was what the boy had wanted all along anyway.) It took a lot more getting used to that Tsuna had imagined, simply because he was so used to using his powers to do little things he now had to de by hand. It was frustrating for him in the beginning, but after nearly a year, it got a little easier to bare.

Tsuna sat up with a gasp, his newest vision still shining in his eyes. With heavy breathes, the young 13-year-old looked around the room, eyes landing on his guide.

"Gigi! It starts today!"

What starts today?

"Don't be like that. You know what I'm talking about. You've been anxious for it to start all year!"

So, the famed hitman, Reborn comes today?

"Yes!" Tsuna smiled a sharks' grin, eyes filled with a mixture of wonder and mirth. "Today starts my destiny."

Aaaaand that's it! This is my new story, god save us all. Fuck. Why do I do this to myself?