Footsteps in the Snow

Reborn glanced around him, feeling suspicion pile up on him when he didn't recognize his whereabouts. Where was he? All around him, quaint homes surrounded by clean-cut walls allotted a certain space to each of them. As many houses as there were, he could find no people in sight. It was strange, he thought to himself as he strode down the path on high alert. Everything was vivid, almost alarmingly so, yet Reborn could not recall just how or when he came here.

Footsteps could be heard, running, desperate, and soon Reborn could hear the rapid breaths of this unknown person overtake his hearing. He couldn't tell where they were coming from, the sounds echoing around him as though he were trapped in some cage, and he gripped his gun tighter, ready to pull the trigger at a moment's notice. The sounds became louder, footsteps closer, breathing fainter even with the growing volume. This person, whoever they were, was running out of steam. He tugged the brim of his fedora over his eyes.

There was a sharp snap of a heel against the concrete, close, right behind him, but before Reborn could react there was another right beside him, and a teen stepped into view as if conjured out of nowhere. Dressed too similar to himself, Reborn could only watch as the teen continued without a glance his way, his expression searching and serious.

He glanced around him, hands buried inside his pockets as he stamped his footprints onto the snow, breath fogging the air. Reborn, after a moment's hesitation, followed him, his own steps mirroring the teen's. He didn't notice how the snow didn't budge underneath his weight, but he did notice how the teen's shoulders hunched and how his expression hardened whenever he stopped to glare down the roads of an intersection or stared at a building with frustration.

Shadowing him, Reborn wasn't dense enough to not notice the similarities between him and the stranger. The resemblance was uncanny, too much so that Reborn could only think of this teen as himself, and the thought made him tense. He didn't recognize this place, not even by wisps or a vague sense of familiarity, and when he observed how his younger self - because that's the only option that made sense - looked around, confusion hidden beneath the irritation of not knowing, he could tell he didn't either.

He blinked when the green object on the teen's fedora shifted and a head turned around to look directly at him, and Reborn realized that it was a chameleon sitting atop of the brim. His fingers brushed the empty spot on his own hat, feeling nothing but the silk material of his own fedora, and clicked his teeth together at the sense of wrong suffocating him. He reached out a hand, unable to comprehend just what he was aiming for, and came closer, walked faster, to the unaware teen who stared up at the cloudy sky -

"Reborn!"

His body contorted and dispersed like mist when the body of another teen plowed right through him. Black eyes went wide, but as quick as it had been disfigured his body pieced itself back together as if nothing had happened. He looked at his hand, his eyes narrowing upon seeing the imperceptible transparency of his solid body, but gazed up to find the new teen crouched before his younger self, hands clamped tight around stiff shoulders, and brown eyes flickering with too many emotions to count.

While Reborn did call him a teen, the new person edged more to young adult than whiny, growing teens. There was a shadow of knowledge in his eyes, backed by fear of something that made his figure all tense and straight lines around the edges, and Reborn, curious, took a step closer to examine the newcomer. He was familiar, and Reborn found relief in that even if he couldn't quite place who he was yet. He turned his eyes to his younger self, wrapped in a comfortable scarf as he regarded the young man with dispassionate eyes.

"Tsuna," he said, and the brunette's shoulders slumped with a mountain of relief. The teen only stared, unable to comprehend. "What are you doing here? I said I'd be back soon."

Reborn took in a sharp breath, recognizing the name. Tsuna... Vongola Decimo. Reborn had known that the other man had ties to him in a time forgotten, but to know that his roots ran this deep, to so far back, made his hands fist. He'd make sure to interrogate the young Boss about this; Reborn wouldn't allow any more information be withheld from him, not when it concerned his obscured past.

Tsuna tightened his hold on the teen and his brown eyes narrowed as he reprimanded him. "That was two hours ago, Reborn! Everyone was worried." He bit his lip and turned his eyes down to the white, trampled snow. "I thought- I thought that something happened."

The teen whacked him upside the head, expression blank. "Idiot," he said, indifferent to how Tsuna clutched his head with a startled yelp. He burrowed further into his scarf, eyes locked on Tsuna. "Nothing's going to happen, how many times do I have to tell you, Dame-Tsuna?"

"But Checker-Face- !"

"Is a lying, iron-hat rascal," the teen finished, looking a tinged exasperated. Reborn, having never heard the name before, felt his eyes narrow. Another person he didn't remember, another thing on the unending list of what he had forgotten. He looked between the two, aware of the fond relationship, built on foundations created through years, they shared. A flash of the Tsuna he knew, smile dim and false, eyes never shaking off the sad gleam that fixed itself onto them, weariness and reluctant acceptance weighing him down by the shoulders like a glorified cape, and couldn't help but wonder why.

Looking at their younger selves, content and comfortable and close, Reborn wanted to know what happened to that sense of companionship, of Family, because something in his chest twisted and churned at the thought of losing that. Yuni took care of him, provided him a place to rest in between his jobs, but never once had she offered him an invitation to join the Giglio Nero family. He had confronted her several times, each revealing little and all of his curiosity and insecurity, but the Boss, each and every time, had just shook her head with a small, sad smile on her lips. "You have somewhere else you belong, Reborn," she would say, voice faint with nostalgia. Reborn would leave feeling more frustrated than when he arrived.

"You know he wouldn't lie, not anymore, Reborn," Tsuna said, voice quiet. "He doesn't have a reason to."

"He does it to cause trouble."

"He was warning us, Reborn!" Tsuna cried out, shaking him by the shoulders. The teen looked unaffected, but the way his eyes grew darker gave away the fact that he was bothered. "You can't keep ignoring what he told us just because you're stubborn and don't like him. We're all on edge; Colonello is losing feeling in one arm and Lal is losing her sight. You should've seen them at practice, Reborn. They- they were so angry at missing what they could've shot without a problem, and they locked themselves in their rooms. Verde is forgetting how to do complex equations, and Skull is losing coordination. Fon is growing tired too quickly no matter how much he tries to rebuild his stamina, and Mammon... I'm not sure what's happening, but Xanxus said it was getting troublesome for jobs." Tsuna looked the teen dead in the eye, expression broken and eyes too bright. "Reborn, tell me the truth. Why are you out here?"

His younger self returned Tsuna's stare, unwavering in its intensity, but didn't say anything. Reborn could feel the pieces click together even if the unfamiliar names clouded his thoughts; something had happened to more people than him, and they - all of them were paying the consequences. For what, Reborn didn't know, but, seeing the way Tsuna lowered his head, shoulders slumped now with grief, and how his younger self only stared at the young man with a flicker of emotions in his eyes...

"Sorry, Tsuna."

Reborn's eyes widened, and he peered at the teen in surprise. Apologies from him were so rare and in between that Reborn might as well not have apologized at all in his life, insignificant and little as they were to him. The teen put a hand on top of the brunette's wild hair, doing nothing more than settling its weight on Tsuna's head, and Reborn felt the breaths become more difficult than before. That shine in those eyes- familiar, but not an expression he thought he'd ever use in his life- Reborn couldn't tear his gaze away.

"You stupid tutor," Tsuna said, full of fondness, and he huffed out a forced laugh even as he gathered his emotions and stuffed them in a box under lock and key.

Annoyance seeped into the teen's expression. He held up a hand to the chameleon, and Reborn watched as it transformed into a green mallet. "I don't want to be called stupid by someone no-good," the teen said, whacking Tsuna away several feet at the force of his hit. The mallet immediately reverted back to the green, unsuspecting chameleon that had looked at him earlier, and it landed perfectly back into position on the teen's fedora. Turning away, the teen glanced back at Tsuna with a small smirk. "Get up, we're going back home."

As the teen walked towards him, Reborn stepping to the side before he could stride right through his body, the hitman could see the smirk turn into something softer for a split second before the teen disappeared as if never there. Reborn watched as Tsuna, calling out for him to wait, did the same, and stared at the marks in the snow where the pair stood before.

Home, he had said. With certainty, too.

Glancing up at the sky, Reborn breathed out a long sigh at the sight of snow falling. The tracks previously created were covered up within seconds, but Reborn remembered each and every mark the two made as easily as he knew every curve and crevice of his weapon. Striding over to where the two were before they disappeared, feeling nostalgia for something he didn't even remember, he glanced back the way he came, feeling the cold crawl into his body.

There were no tracks.