➡ [ fic: katekyo hitman reborn! ] TYL5927, Reborn; The Art and Absolute Pitch of Healing
PLEASE HAVE YOUR SPEAKERS ON FOR THIS.
Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!; TYL5927, Reborn
Rated: G
Summary: Relax. Let go. I want you to breathe this in. (For dosage)
Disclaimer: Gokudera Hayato, Reborn, Sawada Tsunayoshi © Akira Amano
River Flows In You, The Sunbeams... They Scatter © Yiruma
Title: The Art and Absolute Pitch of Healing
Picture a wide, vast room. White, touched golden by the sun. Imagine tall windows; floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor. They're framed by transparent curtains moved by the wind. By a summer breeze coming in from the nearby sea. Sparkling, you think. Crystal blue as it reflects the sky. As you listen to the gentle tune of the piano moving through you like waves.
There is only one item in this whole room and it is the piano, and it is playing. You are playing. You're letting the sound travel through you like the sea. You're drinking down salt water to cleanse your throat and help you breathe.
This is the very same picture Gokudera keeps between the folds of his closed eyes as he sits in the very same room, at a brand new piano, but plunged underground.
His hands are shaking.
Tsuna wraps thin arms around Gokudera's waist, rests his head against his back. In his mind's eye, he remembers a woman by his side. Beautiful. Everything. Laugh like the crisp, refreshing sound of ice.
He can feel Tsuna's heartbeat, steady and slow.
"I've got you," Tsuna whispers, unwavering voice filled with faith.
Place your hands onto the smooth surface of the keys, the notes that will ring true. That have never stopped ringing true. Take a deep breath.
Now play.
♬
"I got them to build this room for you," Tsuna says, standing at the door leading from hallway to room.
Gokudera runs a finger along the surface of the piano. It's so new that there isn't even a speck of dust on it yet. Smoke trails from his mouth idly, wispily. Wistfully. He keeps his expression carefully neutral. Unnecessarily blank. "Thank you, Tenth. But I don't play the piano."
"You did, didn't you?"
He smiles, small and sad. His back is to the door. "I gave it up a long time ago."
Despite himself, Gokudera finds his feet leading him to the piano room at odd moments of the day. The G Room, he calls it, for the note that is a high middle on the scale. For the middle of his insistences. For the first letter of the name his mother left him, along with the scattered music sheets that he never finished playing. For the last thing he expects to need again.
The piano is the only thing in the room. A stark contrast of black in a room that is too bright, too much, too powerful. It's blinding. So he closes his eyes and looks away.
It's not the room that blinds him.
He jumps when he hears another set of footsteps approaching the room.
"Tenth," he murmurs, eyes downcast as he pretends he wasn't fiddling with the insides of the piano. Like he wasn't trying to see if he could learn the workings of the strings -- again. He's polite, quiet. Everything Gokudera shouldn't be.
But this room changes people. Tsuna understands this. It's unfamiliarly familiar in ways that pull the strings of his heart taut. Too tight. They feel like snapping. Gokudera's long, pianist fingers are covered in callouses now, but here, they can relearn to be free. He runs them skittishly across the keyboard, but doesn't play a note.
"Why did you quit?"
Gokudera shrugs. A million days of stomach aches run through his mind. A thousand notes he tried to perfect through muscle memory. A hundred concerts that laid his practice all to waste. A single loss that shattered his world.
"It seemed right at the time."
"I'd like to hear you play sometime," Tsuna remarks one day as he's filing away more paperwork. As Gokudera stands on his right, like he always does. "The piano, I mean. I wish I heard you play when you were little."
"I was nothing special, Tenth," Gokudera replies, fingers sliding over Tsuna's as he helps his boss place the documents in their proper places. Like a piano in a stifling, too bright room underground. His fingers tingle where they touch.
"I'm sure you were." Tsuna smiles, lets the rings on their fingers clink together softly before pulling away.
Gokudera shakes his head. His fingers still feel the vibration of the collision of their rings. A note, a melody trying to last. He's about to say something, but Tsuna continues.
"Even so, I still would've liked to. I know you made the people who listened to you proud." He laughs, like the tinkling of bells. "I know I'm proud of you."
It takes Gokudera a constant week of visits before he digs out the music sheets that he kept for keeping's sake. They're yellowing, thin and frail underneath his fingertips as he smooths them out, as they bring back memories that makes the tempo of his beating heart painful to hear. Concerto for the Lonely and Left Behind.
His laugh is bitter. He could write a song about this.
There's a bang of piano keys as Gokudera's fist slams down on top of them. As he curses everything to hell and back a hundred times, gritting his teeth in frustration. It's lined all over his face, along the downward curve of his eyebrows and the stubborn features of his eyes. On his mouth, where anger rests like a growling thing waiting to be freed. He urges a few more notes out before he swears again and halts.
"I thought I'd find you here." Tsuna's by his side in an instant, in his world where the breeze is supposed to be blowing and the sea is supposed to be whispering and the curtains are supposed to be waving. Where his hands are supposed to be playing. His expression is worried, troubled. Gokudera curses himself again for the way he makes the Tenth worry needlessly about his Storm Guardian, who should know better when Tsuna has so much more he should set his attention upon. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." My voice. My hands. My mind. Everything. "I just can't seem to play properly." It lacks feeling. It lacks a soul. It hurts too much to play.
Tsuna lifts Gokudera's hands and presses them to his lips. "You've just forgotten for a brief moment. That's how things like this usually work, right?"
He places the fingers gently on each key. Not the correct ones, and Tsuna knows this. Laughs it off like something precious. The tinkling of bells, Gokudera thinks. Crisp and refreshing, like ice. "It's hard, sometimes. Remembering things. Letting go of others." Tsuna hasn't seen the fireworks since they finished building the base. "But I know you can do it, Gokudera-kun."
When Tsuna leaves, Gokudera looks down and finds his fingers start from the G key.
He's been practicing for ages. It still doesn't sound right.
"I'm sorry, Tenth," he apologizes after he finishes playing. "You said you wanted to hear me play, so I. I thought that this time --"
Gokudera stiffens when he feels hands covering his eyes. He brings his hands up to grasp at smaller ones covered in metal and leather. X-Gloves. Tsuna hasn't stopped wearing them since he was named Vongola's Tenth.
"Close your eyes. Relax." Gokudera does. "How did it used to feel to play? Try to remember, Gokudera-kun." In Italy by a seaside. In a brightly lit golden room where melody and laughter filled his ears. Tsuna slowly pries his hands away and slips them around a too thin waist.
"I've got you."
Gokudera listens to Tsuna's heartbeat. Remembers the sound of bells. Swallows against the memory of a beautiful woman whose tragic end brought down his life before his eyes. Lets go.
Plays.
In the days that follow, Reborn dies.
His funeral is not something worthy of the greatest hitman Italy has ever known. It's quiet, solemn, but lacks the tears and heartbreak. No one murmurs a word. This is how Reborn probably would've wanted it to go.
Tsuna lays down some flowers on the coffin, eyes dry as he gazes upon the face of his home tutor. He could convince himself that Reborn was only sleeping if he wanted to. But he stands up straight, proud, and doesn't.
"Tenth --" Gokudera is hesitant. He reaches out a hand before he stops himself. Before Tsuna waves it off. He's useless in situations like this.
"I'm fine, Gokudera-kun." Tsuna smiles. It's watery. "I knew this might happen, anyway. There was nothing -- No. I should've been able to stop this." He turns his face away.
"No! Tenth, you did everything you could. If anything, I should've --"
"Don't blame yourself." There are tears in his voice now. "I knew -- Reborn said as much, anyway. 'I won't be here forever, Tsuna.'" His voice breaks. Salt water to help you breathe, Gokudera thinks. He wraps his arms around Tsuna like Tsuna had done for him. "-- So I. I have to. Go on. I have to go on. For everyone's sake. I won't let their efforts be wasted."
Gokudera thinks of the time he lost his mother. The way he ran for what felt like forever from his problems. "You're the bravest person I know, Tenth."
Tsuna dies soon after. It was only a matter of time.
Parts of Gokudera die with him with thoughts of I should have and if only. He spends days afterwards locked up in The G Room watching smoke fill the empty spaces that used to contain the sound of bells. He lets cancer fill his lungs until he can't breathe anymore, stiffens up and fights for breath in a room where he can't see the sky.
But if Tsuna taught him anything, it was about the imprints of a dying will.
I've got you, Gokudera hears, listens to the melody that is his heart still beating. I won't let their efforts be wasted.
"For you," Gokudera says, presses pianist hands to ivory keys. Where they've always belonged.
And plays.
♬
Series: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!; TYL5927, Reborn
Rated: G
Summary: Relax. Let go. I want you to breathe this in. (For dosage)
Disclaimer: Gokudera Hayato, Reborn, Sawada Tsunayoshi © Akira Amano
River Flows In You, The Sunbeams... They Scatter © Yiruma
Title: The Art and Absolute Pitch of Healing
Picture a wide, vast room. White, touched golden by the sun. Imagine tall windows; floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor. They're framed by transparent curtains moved by the wind. By a summer breeze coming in from the nearby sea. Sparkling, you think. Crystal blue as it reflects the sky. As you listen to the gentle tune of the piano moving through you like waves.
There is only one item in this whole room and it is the piano, and it is playing. You are playing. You're letting the sound travel through you like the sea. You're drinking down salt water to cleanse your throat and help you breathe.
This is the very same picture Gokudera keeps between the folds of his closed eyes as he sits in the very same room, at a brand new piano, but plunged underground.
His hands are shaking.
Tsuna wraps thin arms around Gokudera's waist, rests his head against his back. In his mind's eye, he remembers a woman by his side. Beautiful. Everything. Laugh like the crisp, refreshing sound of ice.
He can feel Tsuna's heartbeat, steady and slow.
"I've got you," Tsuna whispers, unwavering voice filled with faith.
Place your hands onto the smooth surface of the keys, the notes that will ring true. That have never stopped ringing true. Take a deep breath.
Now play.
♬
"I got them to build this room for you," Tsuna says, standing at the door leading from hallway to room.
Gokudera runs a finger along the surface of the piano. It's so new that there isn't even a speck of dust on it yet. Smoke trails from his mouth idly, wispily. Wistfully. He keeps his expression carefully neutral. Unnecessarily blank. "Thank you, Tenth. But I don't play the piano."
"You did, didn't you?"
He smiles, small and sad. His back is to the door. "I gave it up a long time ago."
Despite himself, Gokudera finds his feet leading him to the piano room at odd moments of the day. The G Room, he calls it, for the note that is a high middle on the scale. For the middle of his insistences. For the first letter of the name his mother left him, along with the scattered music sheets that he never finished playing. For the last thing he expects to need again.
The piano is the only thing in the room. A stark contrast of black in a room that is too bright, too much, too powerful. It's blinding. So he closes his eyes and looks away.
It's not the room that blinds him.
He jumps when he hears another set of footsteps approaching the room.
"Tenth," he murmurs, eyes downcast as he pretends he wasn't fiddling with the insides of the piano. Like he wasn't trying to see if he could learn the workings of the strings -- again. He's polite, quiet. Everything Gokudera shouldn't be.
But this room changes people. Tsuna understands this. It's unfamiliarly familiar in ways that pull the strings of his heart taut. Too tight. They feel like snapping. Gokudera's long, pianist fingers are covered in callouses now, but here, they can relearn to be free. He runs them skittishly across the keyboard, but doesn't play a note.
"Why did you quit?"
Gokudera shrugs. A million days of stomach aches run through his mind. A thousand notes he tried to perfect through muscle memory. A hundred concerts that laid his practice all to waste. A single loss that shattered his world.
"It seemed right at the time."
"I'd like to hear you play sometime," Tsuna remarks one day as he's filing away more paperwork. As Gokudera stands on his right, like he always does. "The piano, I mean. I wish I heard you play when you were little."
"I was nothing special, Tenth," Gokudera replies, fingers sliding over Tsuna's as he helps his boss place the documents in their proper places. Like a piano in a stifling, too bright room underground. His fingers tingle where they touch.
"I'm sure you were." Tsuna smiles, lets the rings on their fingers clink together softly before pulling away.
Gokudera shakes his head. His fingers still feel the vibration of the collision of their rings. A note, a melody trying to last. He's about to say something, but Tsuna continues.
"Even so, I still would've liked to. I know you made the people who listened to you proud." He laughs, like the tinkling of bells. "I know I'm proud of you."
It takes Gokudera a constant week of visits before he digs out the music sheets that he kept for keeping's sake. They're yellowing, thin and frail underneath his fingertips as he smooths them out, as they bring back memories that makes the tempo of his beating heart painful to hear. Concerto for the Lonely and Left Behind.
His laugh is bitter. He could write a song about this.
There's a bang of piano keys as Gokudera's fist slams down on top of them. As he curses everything to hell and back a hundred times, gritting his teeth in frustration. It's lined all over his face, along the downward curve of his eyebrows and the stubborn features of his eyes. On his mouth, where anger rests like a growling thing waiting to be freed. He urges a few more notes out before he swears again and halts.
"I thought I'd find you here." Tsuna's by his side in an instant, in his world where the breeze is supposed to be blowing and the sea is supposed to be whispering and the curtains are supposed to be waving. Where his hands are supposed to be playing. His expression is worried, troubled. Gokudera curses himself again for the way he makes the Tenth worry needlessly about his Storm Guardian, who should know better when Tsuna has so much more he should set his attention upon. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." My voice. My hands. My mind. Everything. "I just can't seem to play properly." It lacks feeling. It lacks a soul. It hurts too much to play.
Tsuna lifts Gokudera's hands and presses them to his lips. "You've just forgotten for a brief moment. That's how things like this usually work, right?"
He places the fingers gently on each key. Not the correct ones, and Tsuna knows this. Laughs it off like something precious. The tinkling of bells, Gokudera thinks. Crisp and refreshing, like ice. "It's hard, sometimes. Remembering things. Letting go of others." Tsuna hasn't seen the fireworks since they finished building the base. "But I know you can do it, Gokudera-kun."
When Tsuna leaves, Gokudera looks down and finds his fingers start from the G key.
He's been practicing for ages. It still doesn't sound right.
"I'm sorry, Tenth," he apologizes after he finishes playing. "You said you wanted to hear me play, so I. I thought that this time --"
Gokudera stiffens when he feels hands covering his eyes. He brings his hands up to grasp at smaller ones covered in metal and leather. X-Gloves. Tsuna hasn't stopped wearing them since he was named Vongola's Tenth.
"Close your eyes. Relax." Gokudera does. "How did it used to feel to play? Try to remember, Gokudera-kun." In Italy by a seaside. In a brightly lit golden room where melody and laughter filled his ears. Tsuna slowly pries his hands away and slips them around a too thin waist.
"I've got you."
Gokudera listens to Tsuna's heartbeat. Remembers the sound of bells. Swallows against the memory of a beautiful woman whose tragic end brought down his life before his eyes. Lets go.
Plays.
In the days that follow, Reborn dies.
His funeral is not something worthy of the greatest hitman Italy has ever known. It's quiet, solemn, but lacks the tears and heartbreak. No one murmurs a word. This is how Reborn probably would've wanted it to go.
Tsuna lays down some flowers on the coffin, eyes dry as he gazes upon the face of his home tutor. He could convince himself that Reborn was only sleeping if he wanted to. But he stands up straight, proud, and doesn't.
"Tenth --" Gokudera is hesitant. He reaches out a hand before he stops himself. Before Tsuna waves it off. He's useless in situations like this.
"I'm fine, Gokudera-kun." Tsuna smiles. It's watery. "I knew this might happen, anyway. There was nothing -- No. I should've been able to stop this." He turns his face away.
"No! Tenth, you did everything you could. If anything, I should've --"
"Don't blame yourself." There are tears in his voice now. "I knew -- Reborn said as much, anyway. 'I won't be here forever, Tsuna.'" His voice breaks. Salt water to help you breathe, Gokudera thinks. He wraps his arms around Tsuna like Tsuna had done for him. "-- So I. I have to. Go on. I have to go on. For everyone's sake. I won't let their efforts be wasted."
Gokudera thinks of the time he lost his mother. The way he ran for what felt like forever from his problems. "You're the bravest person I know, Tenth."
Tsuna dies soon after. It was only a matter of time.
Parts of Gokudera die with him with thoughts of I should have and if only. He spends days afterwards locked up in The G Room watching smoke fill the empty spaces that used to contain the sound of bells. He lets cancer fill his lungs until he can't breathe anymore, stiffens up and fights for breath in a room where he can't see the sky.
But if Tsuna taught him anything, it was about the imprints of a dying will.
I've got you, Gokudera hears, listens to the melody that is his heart still beating. I won't let their efforts be wasted.
"For you," Gokudera says, presses pianist hands to ivory keys. Where they've always belonged.
And plays.
♬