Rarely did any of Vongola Decimo's Guardians wind up in a real hospital. He employed only the finest underworld doctors. They could work magic on what looked to be fatal wounds in little more than a high school nurse's office.
Whatever happened while Yamamoto had gone back to Japan was serious enough to warrant a hospital. Hibari, poison, and some other things Yamamoto only skimmed on his way from the train station. Gokudera had the foresight to bold and enlarge the most important parts of the e-mail: come to the hospital by two in the afternoon to take over guard duty.
Yamamoto slid the Shigure Kintoki up on his shoulder as he strolled through the hospital halls. Security had been replaced with Disciplinary Committee members but there were still civilians around. No need to frighten them with a real weapon.
He flashed his Rain ring at unofficial checkpoints, the murderous intent from Committee members ebbing a bit once security was sure he was the real deal. Just a bit. He didn't blame them though; even as kids, he couldn't help but feel a little on edge whenever Tsuna went off alone. Hibari had been injured before but Yamamoto was sure the committee had never seen him out of commission for more than a day or two.
The familiar scent of lingering cigarette smoke greeted him as he rounded the last corner. Gokudera glared up at Yamamoto, his fingers still moving over the keyboard of his phone.
"You're late."
"I had to pick up this," he held up the Shigure Kintoki. "Couldn't get a real one through security."
Gokudera sighed, quickly scanning the wall of text on the screen before tapping once more and slipping the phone in his pocket.
"He'll be out a few more days and he might actually stay still un-wait, what are you-!"
He ignored Gokudera's protests as he opened the door to Hibari's room.
Yamamoto didn't even make it halfway across the room.
Miraculously, nothing was broken. Most of Hibari's skin was covered in thick layers of bandages. What wasn't covered was bruised to varying degrees.
"How?" he asked, his voice thin. Gokudera stood next to him.
"Boss got a text from him right before he was due back from busting up a gambling ring."
Didn't I get a notice about that job...? Yamamoto thought.
"He said it would take longer than he thought. Two days later, Kusakabe drags him back here half dead. Sasagawa's been by to heal him a few times already. If you'd seen him before..." Gokudera trailed off.
"Doesn't he usually come back early?"
"There were kids involved. That's all Boss would say about it."
Gokudera's phone rang and he answered, irritation overcoming the mild concern for their sometime comrade.
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes," he ground out before hanging up.
"I have to go the cow's school," Gokudera said, squeezing his temples. "He's failing Italian, his first fucking language...
"You're here 'til midnight. Sasagawa is taking over then."
Yamamoto made his leave a few moments after Gokudera did, and stood next to the door rather than sitting.
No wonder Tsuna didn't send me, Yamamoto thought.
Breaking up decades of underworld business alliances took a lot more finesse and planning than maintaining them. When Tsuna assumed the title of Vongola Decimo, he promised to take the family back to its roots. As such, Yamamoto spent most of his time stopping crimes the police refused to touch.
Extortion was his specialty. Only the lowest of the low thought stealing from small family businesses would help them get ahead in the mafia. Their arrogance and ignorance made them easy to read and even easier to fool.
He would feign innocence, the smile that always pissed off Gokudera plastered on his face. Then he would agree to some ridiculous scheme to steal from a restaurant or flower shop. He always showed up as planned, and when the time was right, he took the fake mafiosi out back. He tried to keep things from escalating to violence. If they didn't back off after he showed the Rain ring, he used the edge of his blade, not the back.
At their core, the assignments he and Hibari got weren't all that different. Where Yamamoto used his cheerful disposition to fool people into telling him what he wanted to know, Hibari did the opposite. He didn't wear a mask and he didn't make up stories. He asked about whatever illicit activities the mafiosi were involved in, never actually stating what he intended to do with said information. They always found out in the end though, usually at the end of a bloody tonfa.
Yamamoto rubbed the scar on his chin, a remnant of the first and also last time he was partnered with Hibari. The assignment was to destroy a few brothels and set the workers up with legal jobs if they wanted. But they had to get close first. Gokudera's aliases were airtight; within the week, they were meeting with the syndicate at one of their "establishments" to set boundaries.
"Ten thousand Euros a month, and that's on a slow month. You catch a business conference..."
The man's ugly laugh set Yamamoto off. The more details he heard, the tighter his easy-going smile became, his tongue much sharper than usual. Hibari was supposed to lead the pseudo-negotiations but halfway through, Yamamoto took over. Every answer to a question only made him angrier.
"Pull yourself together, Yamamoto Takeshi," Hibari spoke to him in Japanese for the first time all night, the syndicate members just out of earshot. He didn't like the way the Hibari looked at him-it was the same look he gave Tsuna after a particularly brutal fight.
"Or not, as long as you don't get in my way."
Then they brought in a sample of the "merchandise", a child just on this side of legal.
"I'd like a sample of the goods, if you know what I mean," Hibari said.
More laughter, and it took all Yamamoto's strength to not vomit on the spot. Hibari nodded at him, and he wrapped an arm around the girl.
Yamamoto followed one of the handlers to an empty room, leaving his sword outside. He had two short swords tucked under his suit jacket; they'd work well enough until he could get back to the larger one.
He backed away from the child the moment the door shut.
"I'm sorry," he said, bowing slightly. "Will you wait here for a while? My friend and I will help you and all the others. Just give us an hour."
The girl regarded him with skepticism but that was good. She at least wanted to see what he would do; she wasn't numb yet.
He slipped off his tie and fished in his pocket for a pair of earplugs.
"Put these on. We'll protect you from the police as much as we can but this way, you won't ever have to lie about what you heard or saw." He set them down in front of her and backed away slowly, not wanting to startle her.
Yamamoto pressed an ear to the door. Hibari had calmed down over the years but patience was still far from his strong suit. Not even a minute later, he heard a wail and swore to himself. The fighting had started.
He looked back at the girl, relieved to see that she'd taken the tie and earplugs.
"Remember, one hour," he said before she put the second plug in. She gave him a thumbs up and sat against the wall.
No one was in the hall when he stepped outside, but his sword was gone. Couldn't be too far away though. He slipped out his short swords and moved through the halls, back towards the lobby.
In the lobby, Hibari had really gone to work on the syndicate. He'd wiped out a good number of them with Roll if the deep depressions in the wall were anything to go by. The few that were left he took on up close. They weren't really a match for him and he looked more annoyed than anything else that they just kept coming.
Yamamoto spotted his sword in one of the depressions and made a run for it, ripping it from the still warm hands of a corpse, joining Hibari right afterwards. Another wave of syndicate members rushed through the front door and Yamamoto grimaced as he deliberated on his plan of attack.
That fight wouldn't be the kind of fight he enjoyed, not like those he had with Reborn or Squalo. That fight was the kind that would make Tsuna's eyes water when he heard the details of it and Yamamoto regret ever saying anything.
Yamamoto leaned against the wall outside the brothel when it was over, not caring where he got blood. None of it was his and the cleanup crew would arrive within an hour anyway.
"The Vongola will be taking their business elsewhere," he heard Hibari tell the one man they'd let live.
He stopped in front of Yamamoto, a small cloth in hand.
"Your chin."
Yamamoto reached up and was surprised to see blood on his fingers. He took the cloth and pressed it to the wound, though he still didn't really feel any pain.
"...thank you."
Hibari disappeared back into the house and Yamamoto wondered what for, until he reemerged with the girl in tow. She slipped the makeshift blindfold off and gave it back to him. Then she sat down a few feet away on the front steps of the house.
Hibari called for a ride and the three waited in silence. The cleanup crew arrived earlier, and Yamamoto felt nothing as he watched the body bags get dragged out of the house one by one. He didn't feel bad at all. If it meant keeping kids like the girl on the steps safe, he wouldn't feel bad. Couldn't.
He wasn't on the receiving end of a single insult the whole trip home after that job and Tsuna all but forbade him from partnering with Hibari again.
The heart rate monitor in Hibari's room beeped faster but not enough to alert the nurses.
Yamamoto glanced down at his watch. Only two hours had passed since he'd come to the hospital. What could be wrong?
Inside, he found Hibari on his hands and knees next to the bed, his breaths ragged.
Yamamoto knelt next to him, easily dodging Hibari's punch.
"You're supposed to be sleeping," he said as he wrapped an arm around Hibari's waist.
"Let me go." Hibari strained against him, albeit weakly.
For once Yamamoto got to use his Rain flames for good. He coated his other hand in flames and lay it on Hibari's chest. An ordinary person would have lapsed into cardiac arrest from the strength of flame he was using but it was just enough to get Hibari to settle down.
He lifted Hibari and put him back into bed before calling a nurse to reattach whatever tubes he'd pulled out.
The rest of the night was quiet, Committee members walking by the room every so often. Before he knew it, midnight was approaching.
"Yamamoto?" His hand flew up to his sword hilt before he registered who was speaking to him.
"...Tsuna? Senpai isn't coming?"
"He was but I asked him to look after Lambo instead."
"Look after" probably meant keep Gokudera from drilling the poor kid on Italian verb tenses for hours at a time. Ryohei was the only one who could really match Gokudera's intensity so he was the best choice for the job.
Yamamoto smiled a bit. That was Tsuna. If there was one thing he always made time for it was to see to it that his Guardians were properly taken care of, no matter what that meant.
"I can't ask you to risk your life and not make sure you're okay," he always said.
"Mostly I just wanted to thank him," Tsuna said as they entered Hibari's room.
"Do not be mistaken, Sawada Tsunayoshi," came Hibari's hazy voice. He sat up a bit and was glaring at Tsuna.
"When you die, it'll be by my hands. No one else's."
He turned on his less injured side, his back facing the both of them.
"I can take it from here, Yamamoto. Thank you."
"No problem, Decimo."