We Are Vongola

Unmasked

Summary: To cry out to the world is an obvious sign of pain. To be silent is the worst scream of all. What better to hide your pain than behind a mask? Tsuna believed that his pain wouldn't be found, at least not so soon. However, some secrets can't stay hidden for long.

Dedicated to AkaneShiro for being the first person to request me something; it makes me feel important. Thank you.

A/N: I've never thought of this idea before, but my mind was able to come up with a summary, so I hope it turned out okay. 

Additionally, today will be the first day of three where I will be posting. Coincidentally, as today is Christmas Eve, it is also the twenty-fourth part of this "story". Be expecting one update on Christmas and on Boxing Day, as my gift to my readers.

Thank you for staying with me this far.

Warning: This one-shot contains suicidal thoughts. Please read with caution.

⏤ - ⏤

He used to think that all stories started with the words, "Once upon a time," including his. The way the brunet figured, everybody's story started out with the four words, and everybody's story ended with "happily ever after." Tsuna was four-years-old. Two years later, the ideology would fall apart.

Whenever he looked up, he was confronted with jeering faces and whispers. He was mistreated because of his short stature and his failing grades. He didn't always fail, he wanted to say, but the words could never leave his mouth.

Every day, he used to come home, tears trailing hot down his cheeks and his nose congested in spite of his attempts not to cry. But how could he possibly control that? Every time he wanted to blink away tears, they would instead betray him, and fall down his face.

By the time he turned seven-years-old, Tsuna discovered that if he hid his obvious pain, his obvious scream for help, they wouldn't bother him as much. All they would do was sneer down at him, at the failure of every subject. He was the boy that was on the bottom. He was the idea of failure. Other children used him so they wouldn't become him.

That was fine, he told himself. It was fine. It would be very bad if there other children that was mistreated like him. He still had his mother. He could still continue.

It was much easier thought of than done.

Everyone kept pushing him down, as if they were drowning and he was used to help them breathe, only for him to drown in return. He was their dummy, their play toy they had as a child before they threw it away. Instead of throwing him away, he stayed around, and they continued their merciless games on him.

People would be surprise if he wasn't suicidal at this point. Thinking about a way out. Discovering that there was no way out but death. Tsuna tried to see the light in his world that was winking out right in front of him.

Nana needed him. If he was gone, then she would break down crying. If he was gone, then she would certainly shatter like glass.

. . . and that was it. It was only him and his mother. His mother was the one person he wouldn't leave, even to get out of this world that seemed to want him gone for good.

So, he stayed. He stayed, withstanding the jeering. The continuous failures. But it didn't mean that he felt nothing. Even if he was numb from pain, it didn't mean that the pain was gone. It just meant that he had lived with it.

As he grew older, he found himself constantly looking at knives. He could cut his way out. It was so easy. It could be so easy. The knife could speak words that humans could never heal. The knife was a way out.