Title: Sky = Sin

Author: Ri-Ryn

Genre: Horror?/Family

Word Count: 1,910

Rating: M* (Content suitable for Mature Teens) / +T

Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn belongs to Akira Amano.

Summary: "Are you a philosopher, too? Alright, here's a question. Do you know what kindness is, Reborn? It's a euphemism for greed."

Warnings: Kinda' creepy? Sort of OOC? Dark, really, really dark. And my first story without cursing I think? :D

A/N: I HAVE A POLL ON MY PROFILE SO PLEASE DO VOTE! Don't worry; I'm working on my other stories. This is just to take my mind off of things and a little treat for the lone wait. This takes place a month before the Shimon Arc, but Tsuna has all his guardians. Reborn's going to regret this probably. I've always thought, "Huh, so the Varia was originally the personification of the Seven Sins? Hm, nah, that would be Tsuna and his friends!"

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Reborn was frustrated, something that he hardly ever reaches the point of, with his student. Still, after everything that had happened, his dame-student refused to acknowledge being the tenth Don of the Vongola.

The hitman eyed his lazy excuse for a protégée in one of his brief moments of reprieve, languidly playing one of his video games that hadn't been touched in over a year.

"Dame-Tsuna." The brunette made a non-committal noise in return but didn't give his tutor his full attention. Reborn's hand itched to shoot the TV, the system, and the controller out of the boy's hands. He refrained from it again. "Do you even understand the situation you're in? Even if somehow you don't become Decimo, you and your family will still be involved and you'll end up losing your guardians."

Black orbs watched in satisfaction the frown marring the young boy's face now. "I will be Decimo, though not for the Vongola's sake."

Reborn snorted in amusement. "Singing a different tune already, No-good Tsuna?"

Tsuna stood, letting the controller fall and walked toward his game system while letting a hand ghost over the power button. On the screen, an animated scream fell on their ears along with the words "GAME OVER," animated to look like blood dripping against a black background. "Same song."

The hitman clicked his tongue in annoyance at his student's attempt at playing coy. He forgot who he was tangling with. "You, a no good fourteen year old with abysmal grades, deplorable athletic ability, and weak comprehension for the most simplistic of concepts, are saying you've been playing me?"

"All of this disgusting character you display on a daily basis, you're calling foul on it now?"

With his back still turned, the middle-schooler's voice reached the baby's ears. "I can lie."

"Really? So tell me then, what is the meaning of this lie dame-student of mine?"

Tsuna crouched, half his face shown to Reborn. He took one delicate finger to the TV screen, "Protection," and crossed an X through 'Game Over' on the dusty screen before pressing the off button.

Reborn narrowed his eyes. Protection? An unprecedented yet predictable answer.

Tsuna cashed in on his hyper-intuition to catch the assassin's confusion. "Reborn, what is kindness? Wherever I've gone, it seems to follow me like a disease. People are always calling me kind-hearted, benevolent, naïve. So, what is kindness?"

"Good intention," the hitman stated slowly, "selflessness, able to hold compassion for others. Usually, it's used to define a saint and a trait I hoped you would spread to the Mafia world to recreate Vongola Primo's intended group."

"Remember that lesson you gave me on the Seven Sins?" Tsuna's eyes were half-lidded, as if in a trance. The brunette's attention never wavered from Reborn's face, as if he could see something fascinating.

Not looking to be off put by a boy a third of his age, Reborn nodded. That had been a part of his philosophical lessons to Tsuna originally. "Of course."

"And that word, Reborn, the one used to describe something unsavory in a more pleasant tone."

The baby tilted his hat up to get a better look at Tsuna's face. "A euphemism."

"That's it." The brunette grinned, flashing his teeth. "Kindness is only a euphemism for greed."

Reborn would deny it later, but he had been duped. "…What?"

"In fact, all of my darling friends or guardians are the same, too, as the Seven Sins. Starting at the beginning. Gokudera-kun," a small pink tongue exited the boy's mouth, swiping itself over his lips to moisten them before retreating, "is Gluttony."

Black eyes watched Tsuna's every movement as he made his way to the room's desk chair, displaying for once the elegance Reborn had mercilessly taken to beating into him.

"It's so obvious. The thing he wants most is attention, attention that he thinks only I should give to him. Since he was so starved of it as a child, he desperately wants it from the one who accepts him whole heartedly. And that's true; I do accept him and his faults. He is so very needy though, not like he'll die when my focus is elsewhere, right? 'Juudaime, Juudaime!' He would do anything for me so he doesn't lose what I provide him, he lies when he says it's only because I'm worthy to be the next boss. The truth? One taste and he is addicted; he's simple to understand like that."

The side of Reborn's mouth twitched. These words were inconceivable from Tsuna. Yet, here was the boy, warm with blood running through his veins. And his mouth, his words, unbelievable. Reborn was watching his student defile other human beings.

"Yamamoto-kun," Tsuna mimicked throwing a baseball, "is Envy." Tsuna's honey eyes moved from where the imaginary baseball had landed in the far distance to Reborn. "Makes sense, ne? Popular, the star of our baseball team with an easy going personality and he's envious of me. He wanted this," Tsuna spread his arms, gesturing to the house and room, "before you came. Contentment. That is what Yamamoto-kun wants. I, who was bullied, never felt the need to change because I was fine with it. It didn't bother me, and why should it have?" The brunette chuckled at the silliness he saw in it, "People say those who are bullied should be saved; I didn't need saving. Those who 'tortured' me mean nothing to me. They could have continued, stopped, had their organs squeezed from them like tooth paste by a train and they would still hold no meaning in my world."

Tsuna reached for the red expo marker on his desk, popping the cap and drawing a line over his throat. "The reason Yamamoto-kun truly despises his attempt at suicide was because he couldn't let what people did and thought mean nothing to him too, until he met me, the object of his envy. I like that emotion, so I kept him, letting him indulge himself in my secrets. Unfortunately, he only sees me at face value now."

"Then there is Lambo." Tsuna made his hand mimic a gun, taking aim at Reborn, cocking the weapon and firing, his hand moving upwards at the recoil the fire arm gave. "And he is Sloth. The most productive thing he did-"

Reborn felt sick at how this boy, only fourteen years old, made him feel like a newborn who didn't understand how the world works. He is a hitman. So this-

"-was attempting to kill you."

Really shouldn't have been this disturbing.

"Five years of age, granted, but so selfish. He make demands left," a flick of the left hand, "and right," a flourish of the right hand, "but he doesn't deserve any of what we give him, does he? What Lambo is, is inconvenient. The little boy who will never learn to put forth the effort, even ten years later. Well, when he's twenty-five I think he made progress. But I'm rather confident to say I've got him pegged for the next twenty years or so. Still, I like that he doesn't make an attempt to change himself for awhile. That means we really are like brothers with our 'You are nothing' attitude."

"Nii-san was easy. I'm surprised you haven't seen it yet, Reborn."

No, no I haven't Dame-…No, I haven't Tsunayoshi Sawada. I'm starting to think I never knew you to begin with. "That is…?"

"His Wrath. It's in his eyes every time he boxes while fighting. The story, you know, of how he learned to box for Kyoko's sake didn't end there, oh no."

Tsuna's delicate hands came up to cover up his own honey eyes. "Every time he hurts someone," the pale hands sprung open, "he sees the boys who hurt his little sister and they will suffer for it. Nii-san is capable of a lot of things, except getting rid of this hatred he embraces in his heart of making the 'enemy' suffer a thousand times over. I'm just another one of those goals. I only entice his thirst for vengeance every so often like, I don't know, that one time in the future."

Tsuna lightly tapped the back of his hand against the cheek where Ryohei's fist had connected with and sent the thin boy crashing to the ground.

Reborn bit his tongue. That was when Tsuna had 'cracked' and told the girls everything and he thought it was Tsuna finally making good judgment by no longer lying to them? How absurd.

"Hibari-san is easily pinned as Pride. Stubborn, unforgiving, and wouldn't even take help if he was dying. I'll admit, I don't think he tries to stay around me, but I do want to chain him to me. But, he is also rather arrogant. I love the face he makes any time I can see the moment."

Tsuna grabbed the glass figurine his father had given him as a present and crushed in his grasp, the glass embedding itself into his palm. "I really live for the moments his pride is utterly shattered. When he lost to Mukuro, in the future, his helplessness against Byakuran. I want to see it again and again."

Tsuna stood from the chair, paying no attention to the glass nestled with in his flesh, and wandered to his bedroom window. "And Mukuro would be charming Lust. But, I found your lesson to me inaccurate. Lust doesn't have to be arousal. Mukuro's is an all-consuming desire; he craves for the demise of the Mafia. And this insatiable appetite of his won't be fulfilled unless a million or so people die horribly. He started with his own Estraneo family, for all the inhumane things he and his group suffered, he did to Lancia's family who was part of the same underworld even though they treated him well. I like this drive, this passion of his, and use it to lure him in. He knows it and indulges in me too because I'll let him use me for his revenge."

Tsuna scraped his hand on the window, letting the sharp glass in it scratch and ruin the pane. Reborn winced at the sound.

"And?" Reborn's coal black eyes glittered, "I don't see how that makes you the last sin." Reborn had felt it emanating from his student. He didn't need confirmation, but he had to see the last of Tsuna's image wither away in his mind or he would be swallowed whole.

Tsuna turned to Reborn, blinking owlishly at Reborn's own play at ignorance before a sickening smile made itself at home on the sky's face with innocent eyes. "Because Reborn," he whispered softly, "I am greed. I wanted them all and have them. They're," a flash of orange and flames, "mine."

Reborn watch warily as Tsuna approached the open back bar stool he was sitting on and walked around him, stiffening when Tsuna uncharacteristically hugged him from the back, something he normally would never allow.

Reborn could honestly say, though not aloud, that his students breath on the nape of his neck unnerved him. He shivered as Tsuna put his lips to the side of his jugular in what would've been and endearing gesture.

He knew better now if that burning, suffocating, possessive, orange gaze of his student was anything to go by. Tsuna would only become Decimo because his family, "friends," strangers, the world would belong to him.

"You're mine too, you know?"

And Reborn would have no choice but to surrender to him.

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FIN