むくろ, したい

A crash, a fall. Broken bones and warm liquid seeping out onto the floor. Stained wooden planks and a woman's sobs.

Sometimes, miracles happened. Or sometimes, creepy antique shop owners passed by houses at the most opportune timings.

-o-

A rug was put at the bottom of the stairs. Whenever anything threatened to remove it, Nana would fly into a fit of desperation-tinged rage. She didn't want to remember but, above all, she didn't want Tsuna to remember. Tsuna wasn't sure how to tell her that he did remember, nor did he want to tell her.

-o-

People stopped calling him Dame-Tsuna. People didn't want to call him anything at all, feeling a sense of wrongness whenever they so much as glanced in his general direction. There was something off, but they couldn't quite put their finger on it, thoughts skittering just out of the range of their conscious thought.

(They wouldn't want to know, anyway. Some things were best left unknown.)

-o-

Tsuna could hear the whispers. He could hear them all the time, words from the furthest ring that no human should hear. At first it freaked him out, but only minisculely. There wasn't much that could elicit emotions from him anymore. It was like he was watching the world through a glass, standing on a plane that was different from everyone else.

His skin felt wrong on him, his body too big yet too small, an unnatural fit, like wearing clothes that used to feel perfect but now didn't.

Tsuna supposed it made sense.

-o-

Tsuna had been a hundred and thirty-two centimeters, 4' 4", for years now. Teachers would have expressed worry for his growth if they could bear to look at him.

-o-

Nana rarely wore jewelry, but recently a necklace had found its way onto her neck. It was a simple necklace, a steel chain with a bright orange teardrop pendant.

She never took it off.

-o-

One time a pickpocket tried to take her necklace away. Nana had shrieked and cried, scratched and screamed. She had been inconsolable, gripping the small orange pendant in her hands tightly, as if it were her lifeline.

As if it were a lifeline.

-o-

Nana hadn't wanted a tutor, but Iemitsu talked her into it. She gripped tightly onto the pendant, a nervous tic she had developed, as she welcomed the little baby-not-baby into the house. As such, she hadn't noticed it glowing faintly in reaction to the yellow pacifier around Reborn's neck.

If Reborn noticed, he didn't say anything.

-o-

Reborn wasn't sure what to make of Tsuna's room. It was totally, utterly, clean and…

The walls were white and barren of posters. The only books on the shelves were textbooks and they were arranged neatly in alphabetical order. The bed was made, and floors devoid of mess, and room lacking of… personality. It felt like no one lived in the room, but that wasn't true, was it? After all, the resident of the room was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out of the window.

(What didn't cross Reborn's mind at that moment was that there was a difference between living and existing.)

-o-

Tsuna's eyes were blank. They were nothing. Reborn couldn't see anything in it and, and—

Reborn didn't like looking at Tsuna. There was no reason for it; he just felt like there was something inherently wrong about the boy.

Still, he went along with his plan, telling Tsuna about his heritage and Reborn's purpose for being here. He carefully observed Tsuna's face, but there was nothing. No shock, no disbelief, no joy, no fear, nothing.

Tsuna blinked slowly once, twice. His lips curled up into an easy smile that would have fooled anyone, but Reborn could see that it didn't reach his eyes.

(Did anything reach his eyes?)

-o-

When Tsuna stared into the barrel of the gun, he did not feel any fear, not even the slightly hint of emotion and he usually could acknowledge from a third person point of view, from behind his glass wall. He had no reason to be a afraid.

After all, how could you kill someone who was already dead?

I've been received sad dead!Tsuna asks in my inbox

Instead of making it sad, I tried to make it creepy.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask both on here and on exocara tumblr