a home tutor's résumé in twenty bullet points [Reborn, character study kinda thing]

[fromastudio]

a home tutor's résumé in twenty bullet points
Word count: 760
Character(s)): Reborn
Notes: Okay, I admit; it's another one of those twenty facts things. I AM SORRY FOR BEING PREDICTABLE AND REPETITIVE. I wrote this fic starting at like 1.15 on a Sunday morning, straight after I'd managed to cough up my submission for hng_deathmatch and I was fully aware that there was NO WAY the vampire fic was going to materialise in time for the khr_undercover deadline and I needed a Plan B. This was Plan B, except that I'd always intended to do a fic like this for Reborn anyway, so. Who knows. XD

I like to shoot a lot.

In the past invariably my students have been earnest, foolish and passionate and prone to having too many regrets when they die. This is a great advantage because it means that I can safely shoot them as much as I like.

Only twice have I ever used a Dying Will Bullet on myself. The third time someone else used it on me.

I was a little unhappy that I survived.

My advice to tutors everywhere: remember when training your protégés that the path of least suffering is also the least entertaining.

Also: classes held on a tightrope above a volcano of boiling lava are surprisingly ineffective. Have realistic expectations of your pupil's ability to retain information in the presence of mind-shattering fear.

Costumes are never a waste of time.

the most important lessons are the ones your student does not know you are teaching him.

for example, how not to treat women.

(if it were pity, if it were foolish infatuation, if it was the mirage and false love conjured by a sad sicilian girl from a mafia home, then perhaps I would know how to how to speak to Bianchi.

She is not stupid and I am not a man and in fact we are old enough to recognise dead ends when we see them. The difference is that she is young enough to want to smash a path.)

Teaching is a pleasure. There are days when it is my only pleasure; but most other times I find great enjoyment in sunbathing, Maman's cooking, volatile situations and explosive objects, watching Tsuna run around in circles, and the judicious application of pain to children in cowprint jumpsuits.

A skill acquired from years of hitmanship: I never forget a name, a face, or a good story.

Ah, we should have exchanged more stories while we had time! I loved all of you more than you ever knew.

We expected the end decades before it happened; but can death ever truly fail to surprise? I, at least, hoped for enough time to write a a shocking memoir.

(Of course I planned to burn the manuscript. Silence and silence and silence beyond the tomb; our testimony as promised.)

Family is more than family; duty is greater than romance; my life is not my own. My values will be my students' values. I am more than home tutor, I am a mafia home tutor.

And what do you want me to say? It is death, it is the darkness that veils your soul day and night, it is the path that chokes your feet, the lover who chains your heart. It is what I was born for. But I knew all that and did it anyway.

I am a pet dog who trains his own masters, the slave who seeks and finds other slaves. It is slavery to be in love. (The moral quality is different, the effect is the same.)

Oh yes, Ninth, I love you. But why do you ask when you know and you know that I know you know and we both stake our lives on that knowledge? Words are nothing. Death has the advantage of being permanent.

I will allow you your whims if you allow me mine. If I am begging – yes, I am begging, but do not force me to admit this. Is it not enough that you own the breath in my lungs?

Freely I admit that I am a hypocrite. The death of a stranger – that is nothing to me. The death of a friend, everything. But this, too, is cosa nostra.

I have always been predisposed to playing favourites. For example these days my favourite is indisputably Tsuna.

a kind of ideological conflict arises when I consider my reasons for this; Tsuna would like to do away with mafia altogether, while Dino is merely resigned. Iemitsu, Colonello, does this not make the Tenth a lynchpin for all our hopes?

But I am myself before I am noble or revolutionary; I love Tsuna more than Dino not because he believes in life, but because he is Vongola.

The Family, I guarantee, is strong. Did you expect less from me? You yourselves admit that I have always been able to see everything. I tell you what I see – the children like we were, growing into the adults that we were, who will become the monsters we are. But overall I expect better things from Tsuna.

I forsee a future for everyone except ourselves.