Author's notes: This work is a collection of ficlets for KHR Week on Tumblr.

Day 1 || Rain: "It's not about what you should do, it's about what you want to do."

Option A: Favourite character - Sawada Tsunayoshi
Option B: Favourite minor character

I chose option A with Tsuna as my favourite character. This is a crossover with the manga Silver Diamond. If this was a full story then Yamamoto would be Narushige and Gokudera would be Touji. I had to change some details and speech to make it fit into one chapter nicely. I also wrote this in one day (otherwise it feels like cheating!) so it's a bit rushed. Enjoy!

...

It was his last bullet and his weapon was at its limit.

The parched winds lashed at Reborn and billowed his trench coat. He didn't stir. He was a statue of practiced stillness, arms lifted, rifle unwavering. His eyes were piercing to beyond the desert, beyond the dips and falls of ashy sands, beyond to where the moon shone more benevolent. Its pearly light caressed the unblemished cheek of the prince exposed by the castle window. It was miles and miles away from where Reborn stood but he could see with cruel clarity. He always could see beyond what the mindless masses could.

This was treason and a death sentence twisted into one but it was alright, because Reborn was screwed anyway. The poison needed to be culled for the kingdom to heal, if such a greenless wasteland could even recover.

His fingers tightened on the trigger.

The bullet flew.

The prince turned his head. Their gazes connected. Reborn swore as the prince's servant stepped from behind, caging the prince, hands slithering into the motions of spellcasting like pulling strings. A rumble rose louder than a dozen stallions cracking their hooves. A whirlwind of dizziness sucked the gulp from Reborn's throat and the night air began to distort in swirls, swirling, swirling. It chained his wrists and ankles and dragged Reborn in even as his fingertips began to fade.

The prince smiled.

...

Tsuna buried his nose in the bouquet of flowers and smiled. Baby pink roses and freesias, boldened by a splash of snapdragons and humbled by a few feathery brushes of greenbells. The arrangement was a touch too lopsided to be called professional but Tsuna didn't mind, because people liked to call his bouquets 'charming' and 'sweet' and 'brightens my day, it really does' while looking at his face with a dusty blush.

He slid open the staffroom door. His face was still nestled in the bouquets because it was easier than looking over at the girls who were helping with afterschool duties. Where his lips brushed petals, they unfurled to touch closer.

"Tsuna," Mrs Nakamura greeted. She had set aside her Maths class marking as soon as Tsuna had entered. "Today's flowers are as beautiful as usual."

Tsuna shuffled and handed the bouquet over like a newborn child. They had, after all, blossomed under his love, his summer afternoon companions. He asked, "Are you sure you don't mind?"

"Of course not," came the unhesitant answer and Tsuna lifted his gaze to her motherly smile. She was a beauty both in her stunning French looks and her open heart that had won over half of the school delinquents. "I should be the one asking if you mind. Isn't it tough delivering all these flowers to teachers and students every day? You don't even charge us as much as you should!"

Ears were swivelled, listening to the conversation despite themselves. That was Mr Tanaka by the photocopier, a demon in the classroom who doted on his granddaughter like a fool. There was Miss Sato sipping her tea, a petite woman who wore pastel cardigans and had spent one early morning teaching Tsuna the infinite ways to slam a man to the ground. Tsuna didn't think he had ever seen rumoured ex-gangster Mr Takashi so terrified, or with eyes that diluted. Mr Takashi was hovering now near her desk with a wonky stack of papers and a slow-blooming love in his eyes.

Being the school's unofficial flower deliverer had shown sides to people Tsuna would have never dreamed of before. Maybe it was the captivating life in the flowers that loosened their personalities before Tsuna.

"I don't mind," Tsuna smiled, unknowingly charming and sweet and brightening the day of everyone in the staffroom. "I have more flowers in my garden than I know what to do with."

The girls huddled together and giggled, darting shy glances at Tsuna. His cheeks warmed and he ducked his head, mumbling about cooking dinner and needing to head back home before rushing out of the room.

A swell of chatter was muffled just as Tsuna slid the doors back closed. He could hear demands from the girls on his name, which class he was in, why he was giving a woman twice his age flowers. Tsuna hovered in amusement despite himself as Mrs Nakamura whipped them with her tongue for 'inappropriate comments at school' but when the conversation ebbed into whether he had a girlfriend, Tsuna walked away.

Wherever Tsuna walked, heads turned. Girls fiddled with their sleeves. Boys uncrossed their legs and grinned. As Tsuna passed the baseball pitch in front of the school, after school practice grinded to a halt by half of the players tossing Tsuna good natured yells like bye Tsuna and see you Tsuna! and Sawada, wanna bring me some flowers too? Ow, don't hit me Yato! My girlfriend won't mind, you idiot!

He wasn't even carrying flowers at the moment. Tsuna didn't know why they were paying him so much attention.

The truth was, Tsuna reflected as he began walking home in the golden sunshine streets, was that he was perpetually braced on the edge for his classmates to wake up one morning and think hey, Tsuna's pretty pathetic actually isn't he? and for the cold shoulders and hot fists to come back.

The truth was that for too much of Tsuna's childhood he had been bullied as useless Tsuna, as no-good Tsuna, as the crybaby kid with embarrassing grades and not a single coordinated bone in his body. He had been beaten and bruised until his foster grandfather had pulled him out of the last school term for a summer roadtrip, just the two of them and limitless roads and rocky cliffs and learning how to swing a punch like his life depended on it.

Giotto Sawada could have been a mafia boss. He had long passed away but with all the house bills mysteriously paid by shadowy contacts and Tsuna's bank account mysteriously bursting with enough money for an obscure billionaire, Tsuna thought of his grandfather's scarred knuckles and hidden guns and on sleepless nights, wondered.

The point was, Tsuna thought as he knelt at his doorstep and slipped off his school shoes in favour of garden sandals, the point was that after that summer he had returned to school in autumn and suddenly, he was left alone. Whispers snaked in his wake of his hardened muscles and straighter back and how sometimes, when the light hit his eyes a certain way, he looked like another being with molten lead for veins.

Then his grandfather passed away five years ago, then his mother two years ago and Tsuna started to deliver the flowers in his jungle of a garden so he wouldn't have to think about the empty rooms in the house so much. Slowly, surely, the gap between him and his classmates gaped shut and now they flocked to him like hummingbirds to nectar.

Tsuna unhooked the garden hose and swivelled the tap until a miniature rainfall befell his garden plants under his palms. Ferns and fuchsias, lillies and lilacs, daisies and delilahs. Azures, magnetas, merigolds and greens and greens and greens. Vines wrapped around roots that burrowed as deep as the tree trunks spiralled up into the drifting white clouds.

Tsuna's mother had a talent for growing plants. This garden was more like a jungle, overflowing from the brims of the brick walls and never-ending no matter how many flowers Tsuna trimmed with whispered apologies.

A well-told story flashed in Tsuna's mind. Giotto Sawada discovering Tsuna's mother for the first time unconscious in his garden, her then long hair entwined with the grass and daisies, a babe nestled at her side.

Something rustled in the distance and Tsuna spun around with baited breath. It sounded like something had fallen. He took a step, then another, until he was creeping along the cobbles stones leading along the side of his house to the back garden. When he turned the corner, Tsuna froze.

In the embrace of a bed of heathers, a man lay with closed eyes in Tsuna's garden. Black hair curled at his cheeks and framed his eyelashes, a sharp contrast against his deathly white skin. He looked as painfully beautiful as dangerous like a venomous flower.

The hosepipe slid from Tsuna's slack fingers and thumped to the grass.

The man's eyes snapped open and he was moving like an unleashed storm, petals whirling as Tsuna was grabbed by the wrist and slammed to the ground with bruising force. He gasped and coughed and when he opened his eyes again, the butt of a long gnarled stick was digging ruthlessly into his forehead.

"What the hell?" Tsuna squeezed out with fire for lungs. "What is your problem?!"

A series of rapid clicks juttered one after the other and Tsuna saw the man pulling a trigger, realised the stick was some sort of gun, realised the bullets must be empty but this wild eyed stranger was trying to kill him.

"No— " was all Tsuna could think to say, the please and why and Oh God on the cusp of his tongue, and the back of his fingers brushed the man's gun. Something prickled and crackled. The man jerked backwards, letting the gun go. The withered bark began to sprout spring green saplings that reached up, that thickened to branches, that shot down into the soil even as its trunk spiralled higher and higher.

Tsuna was still on the ground, his arms braced to raise him up and the man still straddling his legs. Both of them, though, had their heads turned to stare at the newly grown tree in Tsuna's backyard. Plump fruits hung from its leaves in a shade of purple Tsuna had never seen before.

"What," Tsuna swallowed in one big gulp. "What was that? The tree, did the tree just grow? What's going on?!"

"It can't be," the man whispered, pinning Tsuna with his wide eyes. "You're…the Sanome?"

"Who the hell is that?" Tsuna asked just a shade shy of hysterical. "My name's Tsuna. Who the hell is this Sanome? Hey!" The man wasn't listening, staring at Tsuna like the world had started revolving in a different direction. Tsuna felt the weight of his legs being pressed down and his heart in his ribcage. His grandfather's ghost was in his ear murmuring about groin kicks and iron resolves. Tsuna glared and it was a chilling affair. "Can you get off me? I don't want my flowers getting ruined."

Luckily for the man's privates, he slowly lifted himself up. Tsuna followed suit with all his muscles coiled and thrumming.

"Flowers…?" the man asked and then stared at the crumpled heathers on his shoulders with a baffling amount of bafflement.

Tsuna should put his grandfather's tutelage to good practise. He should call the police. He should watch this intruder be cuffed and shoved in the back of a police car and then cook dinner, so he could go to bed on time and wake up early to deliver Kyoko's free-of-charge daily roses on his way to class. He had homework to do and a perfectly normal high school life mapped out for him.

Tsuna thought of his grandfather adopting a strange unconscious woman in strange clothes with no questions or no conditions for his kindness.

He went inside to the kitchen. When he returned with a glass of water balancing in his hand, the man was cradling a daisy in his palm with raw reverence.

"Here," Tsuna said and pressed the glass into the man's hands before he changed his mind. "I don't know what's going on, but you should calm down first. Drink some water."

"Water," the man said and Tsuna's heart broke at the way the man's shoulders tightened. "You have water, and plants, and the sky is blue here. Is this an enchantment— a dream?"

"No," Tsuna said, and then more firmly. "No. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to drink your water, as much as you'd like, and then we're going to go inside and have a long talk about everything. By the way, what's your name?"

"Reborn," and with that much hope dawning in eyes that weary, Tsuna knew he had made the right decision. "My name is Reborn."