Title: Vivere nel Peccato

Author: Serpentine Wisdom
Status: 1/?
Theme: When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults. -Brian Aldiss
Characters: Tsuna, Gokudera
Pairings: None (in this chapter, at least)

Word Count: 2478
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn! or any of it's characters and I'm not making any profit out of this.
Summary: Considering what his father had done, why did Gokudera want to be a mafioso so badly?

Author notes: Originally this was supposed to be a series of short drabbles centring on this theme but it seems I am incapable of writing anything shorter than two pages… It's just every time a read through what I've written I find something I can improve a little or a sentence that would be really cool but that I need to write a paragraph or two to build up to it and maybe there needs to be more dialogue and perhaps a bit more descriptive… that's basically how it goes… Anyway, I decided to post these as individual chapters in a short story collection instead. Figured it would be easier to read that way instead of cramming all of the stories together in a single chapter.

By the way, I found the title on an online english-italian dictionary and supposedly it means 'walk in darkness'. Considering how dark my stories tend to be (even when I don't consciously try to make them like that…) I thought it was rather fitting.

--

For a moment, Gokudera was stunned. The half-smoked cigarette that had been dangling precariously from his lips fell from his aping mouth to the wooden floor of Tsuna's room. For a few seconds the action didn't register in his mind, then he hurriedly stomped his foot down putting of the still glowing embers of the tip of the cigarette, smearing ashes into his pale grey socks.

"I'm sorry, Tenth!" He burst out, eyes shut as he kneeled and bowed his head in apology. It was a gesture he had only learned a few days after he first arrived in Japan through a textbook but had taken to using. Since the Tenth was Japanese he had felt it was only appropriate even if it had been strange and a bit disconcerting in the beginning.

"Don't worry about it, Gokudera-kun" the Tenth said exasperatedly, waving his hand in a dismissive fashion. "Could you please stop bowing now."

Even though he had known from the start that the Tenth would forgive him for such a small transgression, relief still flooded through him. In some ways, that feeling of relief terrified Gokudera. Since early childhood, he had only ever relied on himself and soon learned how not to care what others thought about him. He had been alone, but he had been independent and that self-sufficiency had become a source of pride to him, a small comfort in a cold world. But there was nothing independent about his connection to the Tenth, nothing at all. For the first time in who knew how many years, someone else's opinion mattered. Now, Gokudera had something to lose and it scared him senseless.

"So," the Tenth said, shifting uncomfortably on his spot sitting cross-legged on the floor, his fingers tapping an even rhythm against the small table that separated the two of them.

"Oh!" Gokudera exclaimed softly, and embarrassed blush spreading across his cheeks. "The question, right."

"Um, you don't have to answer," the Tenth said quickly. "I was just curious. It's not like it's important. I mean, it is important, but it isn't important that you answer."

"I don't mind if it's the Tenth," Gokudera replied earnestly before the Tenth could say anything more.

Gokudera was silent for a little while, trying to find the right words. "I was just a kid who knew shit about real life back then," he said casually. "I didn't really think all that much about what really went on in the beginning, I just thought my father's men looked so cool in their suits and with their guns that I wanted to be like them. It's not like a kid knows anything about the Mafia."

Glancing at the Tenth, Gokudera saw the beginnings of a worried frown that made him realise his forced cheeriness wasn't fooling anyone. Gokudera didn't want to weigh the Tenth down with his problems but his blasé attitude felt as fake and plastic to him as it probably did for the Tenth. It was such a thin rouse that even that fucking baseball moron wouldn't have been able to laugh it off and such a futile gesture that Gokudera wondered why he even bothered. "It wasn't until later that I…" he hesitated, searching for a gentler way of expressing himself, "became aware of what cosa nostra was all about."

"Then why did you still want to be a mafioso?" The Tenth asked, raising an eyebrow curiously. His large doe brown eyes were staring intently straight into Gokudera's green ones in that particular way that made Gokudera feel willing to do anything at all just to keep that shine fixated on him. Even if he had to tear his own beating heart out and lay it down by his feet as an offering. That was just the way things were. It was impossible for Gokudera to deny that stare anything. Because the Tenth was important, and Gokudera was not – not in comparison.

Some would have protested, crying out that all men are equal. But the world had never been equal and never would be. Since birth, everyone was different and, as a consequence, unequal. True equality could never be reached when everything didn't only depend on your own inborn abilities but also on where and to whom you were born. There would be great people, and there would be those that followed them. Of course, as society had proven numerous times, great men were often bad men. And Gokudera had learned early on that those with power could do whatever they wanted to those weaker than them and no amount of soft-minded drivel about equality would ever change that truth. The Tenth was one of the few exceptions from that rule about great men, but Gokudera didn't need any of that 'we're all equal' shit anyway. Not because he knew it wasn't true, which he did, but because he wasn't presumptuous enough to place himself on the same level as the Tenth.

"Gokudera-kun?"

"I don't know," he said finally, straightening his back. "I guess I didn't have anywhere else to go, I suppose. Not after my mother."

As always when his thoughts turned to his mother, Gokudera found his mouth clamping shut, his teeth grinding against one another. The silence between him and the Tenth was like a thick wall and with considerable effort he forced his eyelids shut to stop the tears from brimming over. He didn't want to cry in front of his boss, not only because it was shameful but because the Tenth would misunderstand the meaning of the tears born out of rage for tears of grief. Silently he began to count down; his hands fisted so tight his knuckles shone white against his tanned skin. The only sound in the room, besides the constant ticking of the clock was the telltale creaking of well-worn wood as the Tenth squirmed uneasily ahead of him. As he slowly opened his eyes again, his vision at first blurry, his breathing had calmed down and the tenth's eyes were downcast and darting from side to side.

Soon, Gokudera predicted, the Tenth would attempt to change the subject to spare his subordinates feelings. Before the Tenth said anything he opened his mouth, struggling to find the right words, only to close it again – silently cursing his lack of eloquence. It was only a few sentences, why was it so difficult to voice them?

"You don't have to do this Gokudera-kun," the Tenth said, voice heavy with sympathy that almost bordered on pity.

"I know," he said. "But I will anyway."

He looked around the room as he considered what to say. Taking note of the bright cheery colours, the simple but somehow inviting desk and the soothing, warm feeling the room inspired. Their lives were so different, perhaps that was why he couldn't find the right words. From his childhood of lavish, luxurious rooms in his father's castle to the room he was currently renting in the worst part of town he had gone from one extreme to another. His room, third-rate at best with no furniture other than a small bed and nightstand table, had various plans and mathematical calculations plastered all over the walls and looked more like a terrorist hideout in a third world country than anything else.

"My world fell apart when I heard my father had been responsible for my mother's death," he began tonelessly, reciting it as if he was reading out loud from a textbook. "They say trauma can change your perspective. My perspective changed so much you could say I belong there, in cosa nostra." His lips quirked humourlessly. " I don't have anywhere else to go."

"Gokudera-kun…" The Tenth said, the worried crinkle between his brows deepening. "You'll always be welcome here if you want to. Even if you're not in the mafia."

His small, humourless smirk bloomed into a genuine smile for a short moment as he felt oddly touched at his boss' words. There was a time when those words wouldn't have been true, no matter how hard Gokudera had wished for it. It was moments like these that he was reminded exactly why he had given this man his life and soul, swearing an oath only death could take back. Then the smile faded when his mind returned to the discussion at hand. "I appreciate it," he said as warmly as he could muster," but I think you misunderstood."

"What do you mean?" And the Tenth frowned in the way he did when attempting to solve a particularly difficult homework question.

"I'm a mafioso," Gokudera said calmly, speaking as if it were an unchangeable, determined fact. "It isn't just what I am. It's who I am down to the core of my heart." At this he lifted his left hand and patted his chest right over his heart. "I could probably live a decent life anywhere if I wanted to. But wherever I go, there is only one world where I belong."

"Gokudera-kun… " The Tenth's voice interrupted softly, his face scrunching up almost as if he were in pain. "How can you be so sure? How can you be so committed to them, the Mafia?"

Gokudera looked away from the Tenth, focusing instead on the grey fabric of his socks. He wondered what the Tenth would say if he told him something that he had never admitted to anyone else. It wasn't much of a secret as secrets went, but it was private and intensely personal but at the same time he felt a nagging need to say it.

"Because I understood it," he settled for after a while, still staring at his socks.

"Understood what?" There was nothing judging or condemning in the Tenth's features but he couldn't count on it to last.

"You have to understand," Gokudera said, his voice turning frosty by old memories replaying themselves in his mind like a broken record – as fresh to him as the day they had occurred. "I hate my father more than anything else. That will never change. But when I heard what he had done… I understood it."

The Tenth was silent but Gokudera's throat tightened as he imagined the shocked look on his boss' face, picturing the shock slowly morphing into a mixture of stunned horror and disgust. Gokudera didn't know if he could survive without the Tenth, without a place to belong to, anymore. It was vaguely ironic that he was the one tearing apart the relationship he needed so badly. Clenching and unclenching his fists, feeling his palms sticky with perspiration, he continued, straining to keep his voice from shaking. "He used to be madly in love with her, not enough to give up his life as a mafia boss, but enough to promise her everything else between Heaven and Earth. He didn't live up to his words and when the passion faded she became little more then a nuisance to him. As the mother of his child he made certain allowances for her but later when she involved herself in the Famiglia to fight for the right to raise me, she became a problem and he got rid of her."

Got rid of her. It sounded like a clean, easy solution –almost like taking out the garbage– and it probably had been for his father but it didn't take into account any of the pain and despair that had followed in its wake. Gokudera let his head loll down toward his chest, the painful thudding of his heart making it hard to look the Tenth in the face, and smiled wryly. "It was simple really. Very rational, even if it pisses me off. But the worst part is that I don't know if I wouldn't have made the same fucking decision."

The Tenth still hadn't said a word and Gokudera couldn't bear to lift his head and face the inevitable shock and disappointment of the person most important to him. The ticking of the Tenth's bedroom clock was suddenly loud and intrusive, each tick like a stab in his heart. Perspiration was making his clothes stick to him uncomfortably and he shifted nervously, feeling the weight of the Tenth's stare. Then a warm hand touched his right shoulder comfortingly and Gokudera's head shot up, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging half-open. He stared at the hand on his shoulder; it looked too small and fragile for a man of his standing. Then his eyes traveled along the blue-sleeved arm up to the Tenth's sympathetic face. The light streaming through the window created a soft halo around his head and Gokudera wondered, dizzy with awe, if this was what religious people felt in the face of God.

"I don't think you would," he said hesitantly while he rubbed Gokudera's shoulder, almost as if consoling a small child. But despite the slight uncertainty staining his tone, he spoke with deep conviction. It was the kind of conviction that only someone that had never been broken apart to his most basic components, as Gokudera once had been, could have.

The muscles that had unconsciously tensed in Gokudera's body relaxed and had he been standing up he his jelly-like legs wouldn't have been able to bear his weight. Even if it wasn't true, it was nice to hear those words and for a second be able to pretend they were fact but Gokudera knew himself too well. He knew the darkness that lurked in the depths of broken men's souls more intimately then the Tenth did, having felt the harsh cruelty of reality when he was only a small child. And even though he had painstakingly rebuilt himself from scratch since that day he could never go back to the life of the innocent child he had once been and his soul was in truth nothing more than a twisted sort of mosaic. He had sworn to himself the moment he chose to become the Tenth's subordinate that he would never let the Tenth know that kind of heartbreak. To his dying breath and beyond Gokudera would do anything within his power to protect him.

That was why in the end he couldn't trust himself not to be like his father. The Tenth would never even have to issue an order, as Gokudera knew his kind nature would never have allowed him to do. If a woman in Gokudera's life ever became a problem for the Vongola Famiglia he would silently and efficiently remove her from this world without ever bothering the Tenth with such trivial details. That was the kind of man Gokudera Hayato was growing into, because all that was still good and whole within him belonged to the Tenth, and by extension the Vongola.

"Maybe," he said, hating himself for the lie that slid over his tongue too easily.

Gokudera Hayato was a mafioso.

--

Author notes: I'm not sure about this one. Somehow it feels like it isn't my best work… But the next chapter (Yamamoto) will be much better.

By the way, cosa nostra is the real name of the Italian Mafia. As far as I know it roughly means 'our thing' and was used between mafioso, and because there was no need for 'men of honour' to name it, cosa nostra is only capitalised into Cosa Nostra by outsiders.