No copyrights were harmed in the making of this fic.

Thanks to Zeriku for betaing.

Despite Tsuna's misgivings, exhaustion forced the brunette into slumber mere seconds after his fluffy head met the pillow.

He fell into the dark depths of sleep quickly. Eyes closing in a slow blink Tsuna smiled amiably into the darkness and then he was surrounded by blue and floating, riding a tender breeze that carried him through pale clouds. Tsuna let his head fall back. Had he been more aware he would have been madly grateful for the change of scenery from death and destruction, but as it was he only accepted his situation with a soft Hmm of content and continued to float aimlessly.

"Oya oya, here's someone I did not expect to see."

It was as though someone had flicked a switch. The deep sky turned to packed earth, and the loose, dry soil made Tsuna's sneakers crunch when he found himself suddenly grounded. If there was one voice that could force Tsuna into alertness even while asleep (especially while asleep), it was Mukuro's.

The landscape changed as his thoughts sharpened. The once blue sky was now an unassuming white tainted with the threat of storm clouds, and Tsuna found himself surrounded on all sides, as far as he could see, by flat, cracked moorland – grassless, odourless, and absolutely featureless, except for a thin covering of gritty black dust that was reminiscent of iron filings. He and Mukuro were so out of place here that they didn't even cast shadows.

Then Tsuna's brain caught up with the fact that Mukuro was standing before him. Tsuna panicked, and scuttled back as Mukuro took a confident step forward, the brunette's eyes becoming liquid with fear as he realised that, for whatever reason, Mukuro was here, the trident wielding bat-shit insane Mist Guardian was here and grinning and drawing steadily closer…

Mukuro cocked an amused eyebrow at the quivering brunette, but did show some mercy by halting his advance and instead lowering himself to the ground, his long legs folding gracefully as he made himself comfortable on the packed earth. Heterochromatic eyes flickered pointedly from Tsuna, to the ground, back to Tsuna.

The brunette hesitated, but did lower his hands from where they clutched the hair at his temples to peer nervously up at the pineapple-haired man. He felt less cornered now that Mukuro was sitting down, despite the fact that he knew that his Mist Guardian could kill him in thirty-seven different ways from where he was, and maim him in about a hundred ways more. He knew something was up, Mukuro was being accommodating and nice, Mukuro was never nice, and he wanted to run away screaming but that would mean turning his back on Mukuro, and Kami-sama what if that made the illusionist angry and prompted him to magic up a big, poisonous monster with millipede legs and icky drool and what do you know he was panicking again.

Tsuna squirmed in place, agonising with his decision while Mukuro made a show of enjoying the comforts of siting on the nice, comfy ground.

Well, he doesn't look like he wants to hurt me.

And that was probably the best he could hope for when it came to his Mist Guardian.

Tsuna seated himself beside Mukuro. But he did make sure to leave a metre of space between them.

There was honest humour in Mukuro's grin. "So frightened! What sort of boss is terrified speechless of his lowly subordinate, hm? Kufufu…"

"I've never deluded myself, Mukuro," said Tsuna dryly. He dared to ease some of the tautness from his shoulders. "I know you're never going to be a beck-and-call servant of Vongola… And I'm not a mafia boss!"

Mukuro's grin suddenly gained more teeth, and Tsuna wisely backed down with a muted 'Hiii'.

"But this is not what I imagined your dreams to be like, Tsunayoshi-kun." Mukuro idly trailed his fingers through the scattering of black filings on the ground. If it weren't so severely flat, the place would look as though it had undergone heavy shelling. "I was expecting more… children skipping through daisies, and gummy-bear trees. What could possibly be bothering poor Tsunayoshi-kun to such an extent?"

"Wha?" Tsuna stared wide-eyed at his Mist Guardian before averting his eyes. His caramel gaze turned distant and he began to gnaw on his lip. The clouds purpled like a bruise on the sky and though there was no breeze the air turned cold.

"It's nothing you need to worry about, Mukuro." Tsuna's smile didn't meet his eyes. The black filings flavoured the air with iron. "I'm just tired, I suppose."

"I'm not worried. I am only passing through, after all. But now that I'm here, I'm curious." Mukuro's gaze turned shrewd and his red eye was probing when he looked down at the smaller brunette. "Still worried about that future?"

Tsuna flinched, and Mukuro sighed as his guess was confirmed.

Mukuro knew that Tsuna had seen the anguish that death caused. Being a mafia boss he probably saw it often, even though Reborn and his Guardians largely shielded him from the reality of blood and pain and stifled breath. And death wasn't something anyone could simply 'get over', like hopping over a stone wall – not for anyone. But it was worse for the kind-hearted Tsuna, for whom every death was personal and every life was precious. But it wasn't just Tsuna now, because Mukuro and the other Guardians had dared to open their lives to someone else, to change what had been fundamental, and step into a strange world of love and family and absolute devotion. Tsuna hadn't been the only one to suffer when the bullet had hit home.

If the day Tsuna died was a sort of… roadblock, perhaps, or barrier… it was a tight barbed-wire tangle of poisonous roses and long black thorns. An immovable barricade between the Princes and the eternally Sleeping Beauty which no one could bound over but had to thrash through, leaving themselves in flayed pieces and on the other side of something only in a temporal sense.

Mukuro's red eye traced the scars on Tsuna's slight, spare, calloused hands, hands that should not belong to a fourteen, fifteen year old. Whether because they were too young or too old Mukuro wasn't sure. Here he was. Little Tsuna, with breath in his lungs and a pulse keeping time in his wrist. Alive, despite it all.

Mukuro blinked. That had been a good line. Who had said it? He must have read it somewhere.

He smiled.

Oh well.

"…I've been meaning to ask you this, but… Why are you here, anyway? And why do you want to know what I'm thinking?"

Tsuna's vaguely suspicious query pulled Mukuro from his thoughts, and he adjusted his smile into something friendlier. "Kufufu, of course I was curious when I saw you. It benefits me to know all there is about you – all the better for possessing you, Tsunayoshi-kun."

"You still want to possess me?!"

"Indeed. Your body would be very…convenient for my purposes," Mukuro purred.

Tsuna just pouted, relaxing at last. He had spent enough time around Mukuro by now to realise that the mist user had no plans to possess him, at least not right at this moment. Mukuro was not an impromptu person after all, not with things like this, and he was only passing through. But the next time they met would be a different story… Tsuna vaguely wondered if he would have to go through this every time he met with the mist user. It couldn't be good for his heart. "Mou, and here I was wondering why were being so nice all of a sudden."

"Simply for my own selfish benefit, I assure you. But you are changing the subject." Mukuro leant close. "Surely you realise that that future is over now. When you defeated Byakuran–"

"I know," Tsuna interrupted. The atmosphere had changed again. His fingers began to twist the fabric of his pyjama shirt. His tongue felt thick and heavy, it was hard to talk, but it was harder to stop. He gestured helplessly. "It's just… I died."

Mukuro blinked owlishly. "So must we all? From dust we came and to dust we shall return?"

"It's just… I never wanted to be a mafia boss. I still think now that someone, somewhere made a mistake. It's just not… me, being a mafia thug. Someone died today, right in front of me, and everything felt so wrong. I… didn't react right. I'm so different now to how I used to be, and I still don't know whether that's a good thing. But it is that other life, that other self, that people are dying for, that I died for…" Tsuna drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I died, Mukuro…"

Mukuro could understand.

And it left him cold.

Something in his blue eye flashed, and he sank away behind his eyes.

Yes, he understood all too well what it meant to have associates, friends, family – he had chosen to let all of that go, and kept his distance even now, precisely because he understood other people's expectations and what they entailed. They laid out a life for you like clothes, tailored to their own desires and anticipations, and their hate or their love seeped through and changed you. Was Mukuro really a witch, a demon? What did it matter? Reality was nothing but the collective experience, and if they believed it, it was so.

Tsuna, Mukuro, the countless other victims – they played at make-believe. It was all they were allowed, games, and even then only as long as that was all they were. Mukuro, most often when with Chrome, played at being generous and genuine, and Tsuna could play all he liked at being foolish and clumsy. But then it was always time to go home. And then there were only more long hours of parroting the approximate life they had been prescribed.

Prescribed…

Mukuro mouthed the word to himself, tonguing the dry syllables.

It was a good word. People like himself, like Tsuna, were prescribed a life like others were prescribed medicine. The selfish weight of all that love (or hate, but weren't they close enough to the same thing anyway?) compelled them to smile and down the bitter pill and feel the effects of the drug slowly eat away their minds until there was nothing left but love, love, love.

And that lie (lie?) was what Tsuna had died for.

"I see your predicament," Mukuro muttered. He wiped his damp palms on his trousers. "In the future, you die for something you're not even sure you believe in. Was it indoctrination? Force of habit? Was it even worth it in the end, making friends at last only to lose them to a lie? And now other people in the here and now are dying, and not even Reborn can keep at bay the madness of dead arms and legs pushing in your eyes, your mouth…"

Mukuro caught Tsuna's tear on his finger.

"I love my friends," Tsuna choked. His voice wavered and his eyes were tormented. The sky swelled with rain. "I love Reborn. I love you. I love you all so, so much. What right do I have to drag you all into this when all my efforts can only ever be half-hearted? You don't deserve me. I don't deserve you. People are dead. I died for the mafia, I died, and we suffered so much…"

The small boy began to sob into his hands while Mukuro looked on, his expression unreadable. After a moment Mukuro held out a tentative hand and opened his mouth, only to give a small start and scowl into the roiling clouds.

"Time to wake up, Tsuna," the mist user sighed. He withdrew his hand and gave the grieving boy a half-hearted smile. "I will talk to you again. It seems there is more to you than I thought."

Tsuna's pained eyes, wet with tears, only met with Mukuro's for a split second before the brunette was yanked into the land of conscious, his eyes flying open to meet twin pools of flat black.

"Hiiiiii!!!"

"Tsuna," Reborn grumbled, and fwapped his student soundly across the head. If it weren't so un-mafia-like, the older man would be clutching his head in pain. Distress him enough, and Tsuna's screams could make dogs howl.

Then Reborn remembered why he had woken the brunette three hours early, and the hit man's frown drew the skin tight across his face, sealing his gaze.

"What were you dreaming about?"

"Huh?"

Tsuna raised a trembling hand to his cheek, and his fingers came back damp.

"…Eh?"

The two men looked at each other, onyx boring into caramel. Long seconds of silence passed, long enough for Tsuna's breathing to return to normal.

Reborn sighed and lowered himself back onto the narrow hospital bed (when had Reborn arrived at the hospital?), closing his eyes.

"Go back to sleep, idiot student."

Tsuna was hurt more deeply by those closed eyes than he was prepared for, and breathing became difficult again.

The bed was too small for the two of them, but even with Reborn mashed against his side, so close it hurt, he had never felt more removed from the hitman.

He murmured a quiet 'sorry', his voice thick with suppressed tears. "One day…"

But still Reborn didn't open his eyes, so Tsuna, exhausted and miserable, curled up at his tutor's side and slept fitfully until morning.

A.N. Tell me what you thought of my Mukuro. He's a bastard to write, but great fun for psych nerds like me ^^