In Which Series

Kirishima Ryohei & Iida Lambo (Resident Sad Bois)

Ryohei's first real, tangible taste of death is halfway through Tsuna's reformation of the Vongola. He'd seen plenty of injuries, and had heard of people's death. Yet that was the first time he himself had come so close to it.

He had been getting complacent, anxious to get back to Namimori for Kyoko's birthday. A bullet had found its way into his body and, were he not a sun, he would have died before he could even set foot on Japanese soil again.

His second taste of death is when he's standing over Lambo, newly turned sixteen, and frantically healing him after some idiot had sent him on a solo mission. He isn't paying attention to his surroundings, and a sniper very nearly puts a bullet through his head. If it hadn't been for Lambo's quick reflexes, Ryohei would've been six feet under decades early.

His third taste is when he jumps in front of a blow that was going to hit Chrome, saving her from certain death and earning immunity from Mukuro for a full month. He remembers slowly and methodically healing his wounds on the battlefield, wondering whether or not that day would be his last.

It didn't seem like a bad way to go out, all things considered.

So when his fourth taste happens, he's prepared. He calls upon his flames quickly and efficiently, sealing up his wounds and becoming momentarily distracted.

It's the one time that he wishes he hadn't been using his sun flames.

The gasps reach his ears first, and then the choked off "Get Ryohei, Reborn, someone - " and the manhandling makes him finally understand.

His breath stops at the sight of Tsuna laying so vulnerable on the ground, Reborn already attending to him. He drops to his knees immediately, and begins to work.

It doesn't help.

When the bullet pierces Hayato's skull, he's the first to respond.

It doesn't help.

When Takeshi jumps, he only finds out about it three days afterwards.

When Kyoya goes up in flames, it's the closest he gets to saving any of them.

It's not enough.

(He is never enough.)

When Chrome and Mukuro fall at the same moment, victims of the newly made flame suppressing bullets, he isn't even close to being able to save either of them.

He crashes. It's just him and Lambo, then. The Vongola Manor is so empty without them. Kyoko moves to Italy, bringing both herself and her husband and her children. He spends weeks in a daze, mimicking the movements of life.

Everything seems so pointless.

Lambo is the one who keeps him up. He begins to run the Vongola, keeping them from falling. He checks on Ryohei and tries to cheer him up, to take him away from burning himself to the ground.

It happens anyway.

A knife pierces his abdomen and he incapacitates the assailant, before reaching for his sun flames. Before he calls them forth, however, a voice in his head wonders what would happen if he just. Didn't.

But then he thinks about Kyoko and her children; about Lambo, and how is he gonna be able to run the Vongola without him? So he takes a breath and reaches within him and -

The flames don't come. The pain by then is unbearable, adrenaline leaving him with only the taste of blood on his lips and the feeling of immense guilt.

He stays in that alley, pretending to himself that he's waiting for someone to find him. Before he knows it, he's closing his eyes, lies swirling through his brain.