Title: Last Days of October

Rating: T

Pairing: 598059 (unrequited), 6980

Summary: Eight things that Gokudera never wants to see but saw in the end.

Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn does not belong to me.

A.N.: Happy Halloween everyone

1. Mother

He only sees his mother once a year on his birthday but he loves her and he knows that she must love him too.

This is a secret; his mother is a secret, his birth a secret.

His creation is the result of his father's raging libido and the inability to keep his hands off of beautiful things.

His mother is beautiful.

He loves her; he waits for her return on his birthday. He doesn't remember the details, he doesn't care about the 'how's or 'why's, he just knows that something good happens on his birthday. His mother returns on his birthday. It will be the first one he remembers, it is a shame she returns as no more than strips of bloodied sundress.

2. Sex

There was a reason why his sister's face elicited such extreme reactions within him. Poison cooking was a major factor but it wasn't the only one. He didn't hate his sister, not really. She was the only one who paid any attention to him that wasn't bought with money. She was the only one who didn't stare at him like sordid one night stand. She was the only one who thought that it was okay if he was only her half brother.

So one night, glass of water, a case of stairs, a bathroom with thin walls.

He was an assassin, was going to be an assassin. When he heard the pounding through the tiles and the muffled screams seep through the walls, he did the only thing a brother or a family member might do.

He burst into the room, the fuses of his dynamites lit. The red and white sparklers illuminated everything in the room in vivid shades of pink and orange. His sister had her back against the wall, her legs spread open as her current and surviving boyfriend crouched over her. For one moment he thought she was being attacked and the man was trying to cover it up. Then he saw her face, flushed and glowing with a look he would only learn much later.

It dawned on him then, all the things maids whispered about through the walls. How they should lie above a man or under, how they kissed, with tongues or no. How amazing to have one touched there. The young couple looked at him in dazed shock. He stared back in horror. He slammed the door behind himself and ran back into his room.

The next day he was on a flight to Japan to search for the tenth head to the Vongola family.

During the flight, Bianchi left many calls about how she was sorry and please come home.

He vowed there and then he would never see a naked man and a woman tangled up in sheets until a libido fairy visited him at the tender age of 16.

And even then, as he flushed his batteries down the toilet, he thought that no man should have to sit through his sister's explanations at 'naked wrestling'.

3. Snakes

He has always hated snakes, loathed them and their slimy (scaly) skin. They seemed like they were always watching with their dead cold eyes. Their dead cold eyes looked like camera lens and in turn it reminded him of the home he had back in Italy, back when he was young and naïve enough to believe everything that they spoon fed him. Back when he was forced to live with Bianchi and her cooking experiments, his father and his overbearing presence, the maids and their incessant chatter. But he hates the snakes not because they're venomous and reminds him of Bianchi's cooking but mostly because they are Bianchi's cooking.

So when an article comes up announcing Tsuchinoko's discovery, it's only natural that he faints in front of his entire family.

4. Family

When he turns 19, right after his birthday bash with Sasagawa Ryohei losing spectacularly to a not-even-tipsy Yamamoto, he is called upon, he is to come home. He doesn't want to go home, never wants to see his father again ever but has to because Bianchi threatened to come back and root him out and feed him all sorts of concoctions she has created since he has been away. He hates setting foot in that palace with no one but he, Bianchi, their father and the nosy servants but he knows that is the easier way, the less fatalistic, safer way.

So he goes home.

He arrives in Italy, immaculate as always with a personal butler bending his back trying to curry favor from the young master. He pays little attention to the man other than that he carries his suitcase of dynamites the right way. The man pales and squeaks when he mentions lightly in passing that some of them might go off if soaked in water. He smirks, trying to draw this out as long as possible, trying to draw out the drive as long as possible by insisting that he wants to see the country side, trying to linger in the gardens, by the fountain before he has to set foot upon the crimson carpet of his childhood home.

It hasn't changed much, the nosy maids have grown up and gone, there are nosier girls now giggling at his entrance. A matron comes up to him and curtsies solemnly announcing that his father wants to see him immediately. He knows it to be inevitable but he finds his feet dragging as he climbs up the stairs. He wants nothing more than to blow this place up, burn and raze the palace to the ground until it is nothing more than few images on few glossy photographs.

Bianchi meet him halfway, considerate enough to wear goggles. She's wearing a delicate slip of a dress, her graceful form clearly outlined in the pale silk. It reminds him of someone but he quickly clears his head of thought. There are more imperative things at hand and at best, it is prudent to get it over with quickly.

When he enters the room it is nothing like he expected. The door closes behind him with a soft click. He can hear the ancient locks grind as they lock together. The air smells of aseptic and sickly sweet odor. He sees the Mediterranean sun flooding the room. He sees a bedside table flooded with pills and liquid. He sees the IV, the transparent line and the man connected to it. He sees his father breathing hoarsely through an oxygen mask. He stares at him with squinty and watery eyes. The man looks pitiful. He finds himself taking a step back suddenly afraid.

Later he learns that he has been brought back for one last reunion. His father is dying, last stages of a terminal cancer.

His father is dying.

It's not a fact he has never considered before, all things die (except for Jyuudaime, whom god preserves) and he knows that he himself has come close to it on more than occasion. But it's his father, the man who should have died 16 years ago instead of his innocent mother. There is no reason for him to die, no reason for Gokudera to want him to die. Because dying means complications, paperwork, pain, sorrow, grief of having a taciturn constant wither away into the earth.

He hates the man because he had once wanted to love him when his mother was gone. He had wanted to love him and was rejected in turn until his loved boiled over into dislike then hatred then nothing but frosty respect men have for each other.

Then he realizes...

...the thing he hates more than his father...

...is to watch him die.

5. Confession

Back when he was 17, during their junior year in high school, Yamamoto asks him out.

He predictably rejects him.

It's not he hates the boy, he likes him more than he lets on, given time he might have even loved him. But love is an unnecessary emotion in their line of work, lovers and partners may become a liability with time. His life belongs to the tenth; he cannot afford to compromise that.

Yamamoto, predictably laughs, smiles, shakes his head and shuffles off.

He feels a strange pang watching his backside receded down the road. He wonders what might have happened had he said yes right there and then. Would they be sharing an ice cream cone in the park, would they be holding hands, would they be slowly trading kisses in the moonlight? But he will never know because like an idiot, he has rejected him and Yamamoto, like an idiot, has accepted with the patience he has never learned to master.

And they parted their ways there and then, they would continue to be friends, they would trust each other to watch their backs, they would work as well they had in the past like well oiled machines, but never again will the special light alight in the other boy's honey colored eyes when they shared skin to skin contact, when they were left alone unsupervised in their room to solve their stack of homework.

When Yamamoto is 21, the once upon a boy is finished with his lifelong ambition of becoming a baseball player. The man's assets already rival his family's substantial amount; the man is a legend among the baseball community. But in two years of stardom he disappears from the public forever. Headlines include him for weeks conspiring about his whereabouts, offering reward for any authentic photo of his current status. The rumors bleed away after the first month and that is when he returns, laughing, a sword in hand, blue flames jumping from his fingers.

Yamamoto returns to the Vongola headquarters, he receives his first missions with languid grace of a predator even Hibari is impressed by. His assignment goes well; he looks immaculate other than the few speckles of blood on his knuckles. He smiles at the congratulatory remarks, ruffles Rambo's hair and greets the now grown Reborn. He seems untouchable and perfect and he aches knowing that he will never again see the laughing boy who asked him out that one day in fall when they were both 17, still young, still hopeful, still proud.

And it breaks him knowing that he should have said yes when he sees him and Mukuro hold hands eating ice cream, slowly trading sugary kisses back and forth.

6. Helpless

To him killing is not complicated, murder is not complicated because anyone can become used to it, anyone can become accustomed to the violence he wreaks when one of his dynamites go off. He is long past the point of flinching when a stray limb, a thumb or a toe flies by his face. He is a Mafioso, a professional, an assassin; he is 'Smoking-boom Hayato', the Vongola's right hand. Killing is not supposed to be complicated; it's just another job, mission, a chore.

Tsuna shivers beneath his hands, fingers still tightly wrapped around the edge of the toilet seat as he wretches steadily and pants, spent.

He draws circles against the spine, between the ribs and the stretches of custom suit.

For Sawada Tsunayoshi, killing is rarely a simple thing.

He hits, he feels the bone break beneath his hand, the flesh pierced with splinters and forced apart. He can feel the ribs fracture, puncture lungs and other soft organs inside. He feels the skull collapse, the brain turned pulp, teeth as they fly out of his victim's mouths, the almost satisfying crack of the nasal cartilage. He is close enough to hear the wet pop of the spine when he slams his fists against his opponent's jaws, he can smell the flesh sizzle and burn when his flames grow too hot, or they blister, pop and burst when it grows too cold.

He doesn't think murder is easy, can't and not because he is soft or doesn't think his family is worth it despite many protests from his childhood thrown back in his face every day. Simply he sees too much, feels too much, hears too much, tastes, smells too much for it to become a game, for it to be simple, a chore, a profession, a life.

And because of this, Tsuna will never let his guardians to kill senselessly. If it is enough he will take on the sacrifice, and it is this martyr-like mindset Gokudera is afraid, is overawed and frightened by. Because it shouldn't be this way, he should be the one killing for him, guarding him, comforting him as he holds the tawny locks in his hands, in the bathroom with the Vongola's tenth.

7. Love

They meet one day at the end of September, beginning of October, when the leaves fall and branches become bare, the middle of fall, start of winter. He is out wandering the streets out of the memories still embedded in the chilled air, Yamamoto being a dutiful son.

Yamamoto doesn't break down like the people do in the movies. It is almost silent save for the crunch of glass underfoot. He kneels down, a soft smile still curving his lips. The fragments slice through his pants and pierce his skin but he doesn't seem to notice, only intent on rearranging his father's limbs so they looked less skewed, more natural. His hand comes up bloody but he doesn't seem to care, too intent on trying to lift his father's body on his lap. The rain guardian holds his father's corpse in his arms, rocking back and forth as with each sway the glass scrapes off the skin off of his legs.

He doesn't know how long they stay there, him standing and Yamamoto kneeling. He should go call someone, call for help and reinforcements. But he doesn't dare, he doesn't dare leave Yamamoto behind, he doesn't dare disturb him, he doesn't dare lift the man from the rose-tinted glass.

Inevitably, the quiet is stolen away when people trickle into the room one by one. They see the ruins of the kitchen, the broken glass and the cuts on the walls. They see the blood, fish guts still lying on the table with salt and pepper out and ready for use. He notices with startling clarity, the sour odor of blood and the sea. He notices that Mukuro doesn't even pretend to put a guise to this as he kneels down before his beloved, the oddly painted eyes full of sorrow and inexplicable emotions that should have been his.

When his father's weight is lifted from his arms it is as though a dam breaks inside of Yamamoto's eyes. The honey-colored eyes begin to water and overflow. His cheeks flush, they grow wet. He begins to shudder slightly as the illusionist embraces him and gently murmurs soothing condolences into his hair. Yamamoto finally lets out a wet sob, his long fingers griping the back of Mukuro's jacket as he cries into his shirt, all inhibitions and pretences forgotten.

He realizes that he has never loved Yamamoto as he had in that moment.

And he realizes with regret, that one day in fall, when they were young, proud and seventeen, he should have said 'yes' under the dappled yellow leaves on the ginkgo tree.

8. End

Sawada Tsunayoshi dies.