A/N: I said I wouldn't do this. Yet I wrote it anyway. This is a very short chapter concerning Reborn.

You'll never be death to me.

How painfully naïve.

How painfully stupid.

For a girl that had been raised in, and came out on top of a war, Reborn still couldn't stomach the trust that had been in her eyes, that still was in her eyes.

Streaked across her slumbering face were strands of her golden hair, dark yet gleaming as if made of golden thread. Her arm was curled across his chest, fingers splayed over ribcage. Caging it in, holding him securely.

He could see that the tattoos that once glowed purple and white were dull now, mere colour inked into pale and freckled skin. They now seemed to be a product of whimsy, of teenaged rebellion instead of what they used to be: a show of power that few could comprehend.

Her present state—asleep, no longer magical, returned from the dead—diminished what she had once been, before she'd died.

They had been sitting together, in Japan, nine years into the future.

The sky had been clouded over, the sun hidden away. Wind had picked up, heralding a storm. He wouldn't have known: he couldn't leave the safety of the Vongola base. Not without the Anti-Radiation suit. It had been too late for him by then, however: he knew he had been dying. Forcefully living through sheer will and her Patronus.

Other than Lal and himself, none of the other Arcobaleno had been able to reach her in time.

That day, she'd sat there, smiling peacefully at him. Knowingly.

Knowing that he was dying. Knowing that she was the one thing that was delaying it. Knowing that her non-Flame, her magic, was only drawing Byakuran closer to finding them.

In a world where technology was supreme, the absence of technology—the holes that lingered in the world where there shouldn't have been—was all too conspicuous. Her very presence, every Patronus that she cast or spell that she conjured, created this… black hole of technology within the Namimori.

Her spells' effects had been ephemeral, but it had been enough.

Byakuran had always known they were in Namimori; it was obvious, that had been where they began, that would be where they would end—but one thing had delayed the inevitable. The exact location within Namimori. He would have find out if she continued.

And for as long as Reborn had been there, breathing and dying all at once, Luna would have continued to cast her spells on him. Drag his lifespan out even further. Because she had been—always will be—stupid, so painfully stupid, to let love come first and reality come second.

She would force him to live, regardless of all else.

So she had to die.

And that day, she'd sat there, smiling peacefully at him. Knowingly.

Let him raise his pistol to her neck, caress the skin covering her trachea with the muzzle of his gun. She had cradled his child's fingers within her own, and had closed her moonlight eyes as his fingers squeezed.

For such a timeless being as she, her blood had been just as red as his.

He had watched her body sag and fall onto the floor, her facial expression halfway in a pained grimace and peaceful contentment. Instinctive in the moment of death.

Such a look hadn't suit her then. Didn't suit her even now.

He had jumped down to the floor to kneel his child's body by hers. Touched her warm features, smoothed her eyebrows out from their furrow. Covered the bullet hole on her neck with his fedora. He knew from experience the back of her head would be mangled. Blown apart, her internal cavities exposed. Her hair had covered the worst of it, quickly turning from a dusk to a rose gold as blood seeped out of the wound. The front, at least, had only a small circular hole where the bullet entered.

He hadn't let anyone other than Bianchi see the body.

She had been the one to dispose of her body for him. Burned it, left nothing behind other than the diamonds and monocle that had escaped the touch of Bianchi's destructive Storm flames.

There had been no funeral for her: Byakuran's advance on them left them no time to mourn their dead, whether it had been the Ninth or Luna or the lesser subordinates.

There had been no time to honour the dead when the living had to survive.

Reborn had spent the night he murdered her etching her name into a slab. As his small fingers closed around the chisel, he could feel a slight tremor in his wrist. At the first tap of the hammer, the tip of the chisel skimmed across the marble, scratching the once-smooth surface irreversibly.

He could have shattered the marble. Redone it. It wouldn't be unexpected for Reborn: he demanded nothing less than perfection. And this last marker of Luna Lovegood was anything but perfect.

He had an inkling that that was what she would've preferred.

Tsuna had been the one to place the slab in the graveyard, his open features unusually closed as he took the marble from Reborn's hands. There had been no words of condemnation on his former student's lips, yet the light in his eyes were judgemental in spite of his understanding.

Reborn ignored it.

"I've given you all three more months." He remarked instead. "Use them wisely."

It had to be enough.

Perhaps she still had no idea of his part in her future's death.

He wouldn't be the one to inform her.

It had, after all, happened in a world that would no longer come into existence. A parallel future, even. Where a different Luna would die by a different Reborn's hands. This Tsuna wouldn't have been the one to set her name down on dirt; this Bianchi wouldn't have been the one to cremate her; and Reborn wouldn't have been the one to put her six feet under.

Luna shifted against him, pulling her arm away, face buried into the pillow.

He reached out to brush his fingers against the black diamonds that still lay tangled in her hair, and was gratified by the lack of energy that surged at his touch. Inert, the diamonds were nothing more than a whimsical, exotic trinket weaved into her golden hair. Their former power could no longer taunt him with memories of a future that would never happen.

He would be satisfied by that.

A/N: And that is the true end of never so much death.

So if you hadn't caught it before, Reborn received the memory of future-Luna's death when they were in the graveyard; he touched the diamonds left by future-Luna, causing the magic to "recoil" and such...

I'm writing a sequel one-shot to this, concerning Luna's return/this alternate reality where Tsuna is a unwitting leader of a vigilante group. It won't come out for a while, however... if you're interested, you could check back in about a year or two? /laughs

Again, thank you so much for reading this, and if you've been her since the beginning, thank you so much for following me through this three-shot!

- Nym