a/n: it's only been a year and a half, really. thanks to everyone who commented, i was just looking through them and thought, oh, well i guess i should write some more. to the person who asked, people in london are absolutely swearing on the daily, though who knows what they do in japan

When Tsunayoshi came back to himself, he was in the middle of nowhere. His clothes were tattered, his hair a mess, and dirt seemed to cover every inch of him. With it all, there was this ache of bone deep tiredness. He was completely and utterly exhausted. Without preamble, he flopped onto the ground with a large sigh.

Things really weren't going his way.

Waking up somewhere else was a Thing anyway. A pretty Bad Thing, in all honesty.

Japan really wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Tsunayoshi said a silent prayer to his mother in forgiveness for the thought – she had evidently held a strong love for her home country that he had easily picked up on during their life together – but so far, his welcome to the great land of his ancestors wasn't really that pleasant.

He couldn't deny, though, that he'd felt more alive the past day than he had the past month.

Hell, even having nowhere to go, well, that wasn't so new. Having nobody to rely on? It felt pretty familiar, unfortunately enough. It sucked to hell and back but in all honesty, Tsunayoshi wasn't in that good a situation even before his magical travel to the past escapade.

No, what he was leaving behind was a cold, grimy flat in east London. He would have been kicked out of it soon enough anyway, because his mother had finally kicked the bucket a month before he turned eighteen, and three months after being finally being diagnosed with malignant cyst. It was shitty that her earlier complaints weren't taken seriously, shitty that the healthcare service was too overrun in their area to bother following up on it, shitty that they thought it was a regular old ovarian cyst than the actual cancer that it was. It was shitty that, because he had been working, since he was legal – and a bit before, honestly – because they had some savings but not much, and because of the bureaucracy of applying for aid, he spent the last month of being a legal minor trying to arrange his own mother's funeral. The government was slow on the uptake on the best of days, and maybe they thought the job made him old enough to ignore, but they only got back to him by the time he was eighteen, legally an adult, and beyond the help that he had originally asked for.

And yeah, sure, he could probably get by. Eighteen came with a minimal pay rise but a pay rise regardless, and he would have had to downgrade from renting a flat to a room, and probably ask for benefits to get by, maybe pick up another job. He didn't need any more education, really, because he finished secondary school and that was what really mattered. Maybe he would have liked, in some other life, to go to university, but it was what it was. Life was kind of crap, and bad luck hit people indiscriminately, and he just happened to be on the bad end of some. He was sure, after a few months of – rightfully – feeling sorry for himself, he would have pulled right out of it.

Alas, there was no way to tell what would have happened if his life continued on that trajectory. Instead he was in the middle of bloody nowhere – like, was that a mountain? – his clothes in ruins, though god knows how his underwear survived – out of breath and way out of his league. He escaped from a shoot-out – an honest-to-god gun fight, and yeah, his area of London wasn't good, but they still didn't get guns – jumped out of a building and literally caught fire.

Really, he thought Japan was supposed to have no gun crime either.

Tsunayoshi needed a plan. He was a do-don't-think kind of guy. He'd picked up a job when they needed it and forewent further education to continue to work as soon as he could – which, to sixteen-year-old him, didn't seem soon enough. He helped him mum as much as he could, tried to keep the house in order for when she could come back, and then, when she inevitably didn't, bucked up and made sure she had a place to go in the ground. Maybe it wasn't the Japanese ceremony he would have liked for her, but there was only so much that could be done.

So. He needed a plan. A place to stay. Some clothes, ideally, and money and food and a way to go unnoticed because he sure as hell didn't want to know what people would do to someone who could catch fire.

(He wouldn't think about it, really. He wouldn't think about anything until his tasks were done and he was fed and clothed and safe. If he got through his mum's death like that, he could sure as hell get through this.)

Overall, he needed to get out of this tiny-as-hell town. Evidently everyone knew each other from appearance alone – and he'd think about that Mochhi-guy later, thank you very much – and Tsunayoshi was a city boy at heart.

To Tokyo it was.

– x –

It was Tsuna.

But no– no it couldn't be. Tsuna was dead. Gokudera saw him die with his own two eyes, put his body to rest and tried to forget that under the make-up and fancy clothing, the empty husk of a body riddled with bullet-holes was the only thing left of the one man he truly came to love.

But it was his flames. Gokudera didn't know why, or how, but there was not a single chance on earth that he could mistake the Tenth's sky flames. Their feeling was burned into his being, his very soul. He dreamt about them still, could taste them on the back of his tongue, remember their feel, their warmth, their everything. Being a guardian meant that Gokudera carried a portion of those flames in his core, right up until their owner breathed his last. And that empty, gaping maw that used to hold those precious flames had been filled once more for a single, devastating moment outside that hotel.

God, and Tsuna's coffin had been disturbed. Was he- was he really…?

Gokudera shook his head and barked out an order to their getaway driver. They needed to lose their tail before they could think about going back to base, and they had to do it quickly if Mochida wanted a chance to live. Gokudera had been in the Mafia long enough to be cynical about things that were too good to be true, and god, there was so many horrible explanations as to how a missing body and flames-that-shouldn't-exist could coincide, and Gokudera liked absolutely none of them. It wouldn't be the first time that the Mafia experimented on humans, dead or otherwise.

"Takeshi," he said when he'd calmed down some, not turning towards the other man – no longer another guardian since they no longer have anything to guard – but well aware that he was listening. "The coffin," because, really, what else could it be called? He coughed. "The coffin was emptied earlier. Now this? I need you to go check it out."

I need you to go because I can't step a foot there without breaking down, he didn't say.

I need you to go because I don't trust anyone else to do this, he didn't say.

I'm sorry for doing this to you, he didn't say, but he really wished that he could speak those words around the lump in his throat. Takeshi, blessing that he was, probably heard them all anyway.

Hazel eyes narrowed, and Takeshi's grip on his sword tightened until his knuckles went white. Hana was silent from the front of the car, Mochida quiet and focused on not dying – a task that likely took up all his concentration. The driver was one of Kyoya's people – well, one of the ones that was left, at least. Gokudera was sure that Kyoya would be informed of the development as soon as they got back to base, so at least that saved him having to speak the words out loud more than once, as if saying them again would make it more real, more horrifying.

God, he was going to have to tell Reborn.

– x –

Not all universes ran concurrently. This was both good and bad for Byakuran, since for all that many universes were in the past and useless for providing him with new knowledge, some were in the future and were essential in his rise to power.

One, in particular, was only a few months ahead of his - almost a year, really, and what sort of difference was that in the grand scheme of things? – and was completely and utterly fascinating. The baby Vongola Tenth had arrived from the past, bringing his guardians and those rings of his, bringing a new Reborn who wasn't dead and making a commendable effort to topple Byakuran from his throne. He could probably watch that universe all day, every Byakuran was probably tuned into the spectacle, but he also was looking forward to his own catching up to it.

Alas the regular Reborn was not yet dead, the radiation wasn't killing him as fast as the others – heaven knows why. Sometimes there's an unexplained quirk that causes differences, the result of something so minor it would be impossible to ferret it out.

Byakuran did not have the power of the original that let him look into other universes at will – no the unique circumstances of that timeline were what gave their Byakuran the power in the first place, and sadly if seems to be the only timeline that those events took place. It was disappointing to find out, not to be the special one, but he'd been given a device that would let him tune into the original, and that alone was enough to put him ahead of the game, to be able to follow the other's– no, their plan. He hadn't really been interested in world domination before but, really, who'd pass up the chance?

There's a knock on the door, and Byakuran is brought out of his musings. So many of the small, day to day things are different, he is endlessly amused by anticipating which ones they'll be. Maybe it'll be that spy, Mukuro, or was it too early? Has Shoichi betrayed him yet? Will Shoichi betray him this time? It was all the entertainment he needed.

But no, the memo was even better. Byakuran felt a smile creep over his face at the words staring at him, uncaring at the fear it instilled in the minion bringing him the news.

The Vongola coffin had been opened.

It looked like it was his turn to play after all.