Title: Wingless Winter
Rating: PG
Pairing: MukuHiba
Warnings: AU, OOC
Length: ~2,773
A/N: Even though it's been so long since I've written for them, 6918 is still my OTP ;A;. George Orwell's 1984 themed (even though I was rereading Animal Farm instead =_=). I know that this isn't up to scratch, but for now, it satisfies me…and as usual, hasn't been proofread~
Disclaimer: KHR belongs to Amano Akira, 1984 belongs to George Orwell.
Hibari heaved his bed sheets, bed covers and pillow covers into the washing machine. He frowned when he realised that it was fuller than usual. Sniffling, he pushed at the pile, shuffling through them to see why it was so full. He ends up pulling out his doona and pillow. Hibari blinks at his own stupidity? Forgetfulness? Carelessness. He adds the usual amount of detergent and lets the washing machine do its job. Stretching a little, with his doona over his shoulder and pillow in one hand, he walks out of his laundry room, grumbling about hating the winter weather.
And then his eyes land on something that doesn't belong in his house. A human. With purple hair. Sitting at his kotatsu, peeling his mandarins.
"What?" Hibari whispers to himself. And that is all that's needed before the purple haired man turns around and gives him a smile.
"Hey, I need a place to stay", he speaks, he peels another piece of mandarin and pops it in his mouth, "let me stay here."
Hibari's doona and pillow falls to the ground.
.
.
.
He knows that he should report the suspicious figure to the police. But when Hibari remembers that he himself is a part of the police, he sighs.
The man introduces himself as Rokudo Mukuro. He has a flashy smile.
Hibari flinches at the other's voice. He knows he should arrest the other and interrogate him, perhaps rewrite the other's memory too. But he doesn't. He just stands and stares at the other man who has snuggled up quite comfortably under his kotatsu.
"So, you suddenly turned mute or something?" Mukuro scrunches his nose, he turns around so that his back is facing Hibari once again, his hands reach out to grab another mandarin.
Picking up his doona and pillow, Hibari walks out of the room. It's a figment of his imagination. Not a part of reality.
And so this delusion continues to stay.
.
.
.
"What are you doing?" Mukuro asks looking at a simple looking machine sitting on top of the kotatsu.
Hibari doesn't look up when he answers, "my job."
"Hm? You can do you jobs inside the house these days?" Mukuro clicked his tongue.
Raising an eyebrow, the raven haired man glanced at the other.
"Back in my days…", Mukuro smiled, leaving the sentence hanging as he looked up at the ceiling with nostalgia.
"Back in your days?" Hibari's interest perked. So now his delusion was from a while back. The thought made him scoff.
Mukuro clicked his tongue again, "you young ones don't know anything."
From the looks of it, Mukuro looked just as old as him, Hibari shook his head. The other was just a delusion. Nothing he says should get to him. He's not even real.
.
.
.
It has been a week since his delusion had popped up and started talking animatedly at him. Hibari had quickly adjusted and learnt how to ignore the other, and he praised himself for it, not anyone could do as well as him and ignore what was most likely a part of his consciousness, his imagination's sick joke.
So when something brushes up against his leg under the kotatsu, Hibari's eyes narrow, he looks across and sees his delusion – Rokudo Mukuro smiling at him, still peeling mandarins.
"You…", Hibari glares at the other.
"What?" Mukuro is still all smiles.
Hibari feels something brushing up against his leg again. In an instant, he had grabbed whatever it was that was brushing up against him, and he pulls it towards himself. His eyes do not waver when Mukuro chuckles and falls on his back. Mukuro wriggles his toes as Hibari pulled his leg out from the kotatsu.
"You're real", Hibari states, not knowing how horrified he should be at the thought.
"What do you mean?" Mukuro yanks his leg back and makes himself comfortable under the kotatsu again.
"You're real", Hibari states again, his eyes are on Mukuro, scrutinizing the other.
"Of course I'm real, Kyoya", Mukuro rolls his eyes at the other.
"I never told you my name", Hibari raises an eyebrow suspiciously, "and don't call me that", as soon as those words left Hibari's lips, he knew that Mukuro would continue to address him by his first name if he continued staying.
"Your name is written on a small placard stuck in front of your house", Mukuro sighed, wondering if the person opposite him could be any dumber, "I mean, how could you now know that I'm real? I've been cleaning out your mandarins since a week ago!"
"Get out", Hibari seethes, his hands are wrapped in fists and he glares at the other, "if not by yourself, I will force you to."
It's been three months. And the parasite that was once thought to be a delusion is still sitting at Hibari's kotatsu, peeling mandarins.
When Mukuro does not leave, the only thing Hibari has to say is – "the colours of your eyes are mismatched."
And Mukuro gleams mischievously.
.
.
.
Hibari wakes up and finds his house decorated in yellow and green things.
"What is all this?" Hibari questions, his hands on his hips, his glare on the slightly taller man, and now forced roommate.
"Deco~ Oya, oya, don't you know what that is?" Mukuro clicks his tongue.
Hibari scrunches his nose. He hates it when the other does that. He hates it when the other does anything.
"They're pineapples, just letting you know since you're so uninformed", Mukuro sighs as he places another pineapple onto the pile of pineapples that were stacked on top of the kotatsu.
"That's my workspace", Hibari kicks off all the pineapples from the kotatsu, "I already have to deal with your nonstop chatter and your heap of mandarin peels. If you place a single pineapple on the kotatsu, I'll cut off all your hair."
Mukuro sighs, he trudges over to the kotatsu, he brings out a knife and starts cutting up pineapples to eat, "so, what do you do for a job anyway?" He waves the knife around loosely.
Hibari glances and Mukuro starts waving the knife in front of Hibari's face.
"I spy on people", Hibari said tiredly as though talking to the other took more effort than he can muster, "everything they do, they say, I can see and hear it all."
"What? Isn't that illegal?" Mukuro choked out as he hit his chest lightly.
"Of course not", Hibari looks at Mukuro strangely, "how else can you keep justice?"
"What?" Mukuro shakes his head, "how can you keep justice by doing such shady things!"
"If you don't monitor everyone, they're all going to run wild and you'll have a society that's full of idiots running around messily and committing crimes", Hibari explained, defending himself.
"What you're doing now is a crime!" Mukuro pointed at Hibari, knife in his hand
"Your concept of what is right is screwed up", Hibari is now standing up, staring down at Mukuro who was still sitting under the kotatsu, "your ideas, were they what your days claimed as justice? Because I pity the people of your era who most definitely lacked a great leader."
Mukuro stands up and flings his knife to the side, the pineapple drops and rolls a little before it stops. Forgotten. His eyes flash dangerously at Hibari, "whoever set those thoughts as rules for this nation needs to be maimed. There's no way the whole community would have agreed to be spied on, to be monitored as though they were all lab rats!"
Hibari steps heavily up to the other and grabs Mukuro's collar, the taller one doesn't even flinch, "don't insult the one who created this nation for us."
"Why not? He's the one who created this tyranny, and here I thought that people's freedom will only continue to grow, but this nation has taken extreme steps and cut off any freedom!"
"You should be happy that I haven't turned you over so that the justice system can deal with you and flush all your disgusting thoughts out of you", Hibari snarls, "I'm giving you the chance to redeem yourself." He lets go of the other's collar.
And Hibari doesn't even know why he's doing something so troublesome and risky.
He sighs, before sitting back down at the kotatsu, intending to ignore the other for as long as he can.
"This is ridiculous", Mukuro mutters as he picks up his fallen pineapple and unhappily sits down at the kotatsu again, "even a caged bird is better than you."
.
.
.
Mukuro flipped through the volumes of the history of how the current nation he's residing in came about. Sighing, Mukuro flipped through the last chapter, it was as though he were reading a fiction novel. Everything in the book seemed so surreal, but it's the reality he found himself living in. The world that Hibari Kyoya lives in. Led by one man, no name, no face, nothing but the gender and the rules set out. The ridiculous rules. Rules that state that you're not allowed to have, speak or act out thoughts that are outside of thoughts that are given to you by the nation from the start.
So ridiculous it felt impossible. It was like the whole nation was a cult. Is a cult.
"Hold on", Mukuro looks up from the last page and stares at Hibari who's busy monitoring the people assigned to him, "should you not be arrested for always speaking out your own thoughts? I've read these books", he gestured to the stack of volumes he's been flipping through, "and keeping a suspicious person refuge is definitely not legal."
"So?" Hibari did not even glance at Mukuro and answered the other, "shall I go hand you to the justice system now?"
"No", Mukuro kicked Hibari from under the kotatsu, "I just want to know why you're not caught yet, for acting on individualism all the time." For all he knew, the raven haired one before him should be the one who the nation should see to need a desperate remodelling.
"I don't get monitored in my house", Hibari muttered, resting his chin on his palm.
"Hm?" Mukuro nodded, "you took down all the spying devices or what?"
"No, of course not, that would get me caught immediately you airhead", Hibari frowned, "I direct the surveillance to my own monitoring system, so no one else sees it."
Mukuro bites back an insult, swallowing the words that were teetering on his teeth. Instead, he asks something else, "it's been more than four months since I've been here, why is the season still winter?"
Hibari raised an eyebrow, he looks towards the bookshelf and then points towards the only book left on the bookshelf, a thin book with a wine red spine, "the reason is in that book." Taking a deep breath, Hibari goes back to his monitoring, he grimaces and takes down number into an electronic device. A number that identifies a citizen.
"You, caught another?" Mukuro asks, already knowing the answer, "how pitiful."
It turns out, that winter is kept constant in the nation, when necessarily, done artificially. It was a fact that made Mukuro grimace in distaste.
"I don't leave this place anyway, so I can speak my mind right?" Mukuro suddenly grinned.
Hibari continues to ignore the other's insults and gibberish.
.
.
.
"In this time, freedom is everything, is it not?" Mukuro mutters, throwing pineapples and mandarins in the air and then catching them again, "I'd have killed myself already if I lived where there's no freedom."
"The only freedom there is here, retains in your heart", Hibari scowled, annoyed at the other who had constantly been preaching about how important the meaning of 'freedom' is, "there is no freedom elsewhere in this nation", Hibari turned around and attended his tea cups, "even with wings you won't be able to soar to freedom. Wherever that is."
Mukuro clicked his tongue, "didn't you just say it?" He points towards the chest of the black haired, "in the heart right?"
It wasn't like Mukuro didn't agree with Hibari. And it wasn't like Hibari didn't agree with Mukuro. But they both know that the meaning of freedom where they are now, is restraint.
.
.
.
Hibari knows, perhaps, no, most certainly, he wanted to break away from the totalitarian rule, the endless winter days and find something with colour in his life. In the form of a man with purple hair.
So when he opens his eyes next and finds himself in a square room with bleak white walls, he is confused, "this is…", he recognises the room. It's where they throw suspects in. Ones that may have committed any sense of individualism. Where memories are rewritten and discipline is taught. It was where he threw numbers in for them to reflect.
"Too familiar?"
Hibari directs his eyes towards the voice that had completed his sentence. When his eyes land on a man with mismatched eyes and long purple hair, he is not surprised.
"What?" Hibari blinks, he hops off the metal chair he was sitting in looks Mukuro in the eye.
"Don't you remember me?" Mukuro asks, his smile reaching his eyes, "oh, of course you wouldn't." Mukuro turns around and opens the only door in the room. The door creaks and resounds creepily, "I'll come see you tomorrow", Mukuro looks back at Hibari and still has that thin smile plastered on his face, "Kyoya."
Hibari sits back on the metal chair calmly. He knows what has happened. He thought he was safe and had voiced out his thoughts. He had committed a sin against the nation. He was caught. And now, he was in this room. For criminals. Hibari stares at the metal door and continues to stare. The only light source in the room is a cracked light bulb. It flickers softly.
.
.
.
The metal door creaks open again and Mukuro walks in. Hibari lifts his eyes and looks at the other.
"You're not going to ask me anything?" Mukuro raises an eyebrow, he leans against the wall, arms crossed, "judging by your reaction, you can't remember me either." He walks towards the other and then stares down at him, "do you know why you're here?"
Hibari glares, keeping his mouth shut.
"I know you know what this room is for", Mukuro smiles lightly, "the number of times you've been into this room, you don't remember, right?"
Hibari continues glaring. He really doesn't remember.
"You weren't even five, the first time you came here", Mukuro chuckled, "do you really not know who I am? Can you guess?"
When Hibari's eyes narrow for a second, Mukuro was prepared for the punch that came connecting to his jaw. It was always the same pattern. Smiling wider, Mukuro pushed the other to the floor with immense force before stepping on top of him.
"I'm the only one with freedom in this nation", Mukuro sneered, "in any sense."
Hibari rasped, his hands clawed at Mukuro's boot, trying to push it off of himself.
"That's right", Mukuro looked down at Hibari arrogantly, "I'm the immortal leader of this nation you reside in."
Hibari bit his lips and glared defiantly up at Mukuro.
"We've been playing this game for a long, long time, have we not?" Mukuro added more pressure to his foot that was squeezing Hibari's stomach, "for almost all your life, Hibari Kyoya."
Mukuro took a breath in, "I'll rewrite your memories cleanly for you again", he then bent down and wrapped a hand around Hibari's neck and squeezed tightly. Mukuro's lips brushed over Hibari's lips softly before whispering, "I'll meet you again when you wake up next."
Hibari's eyes widened, he didn't even have time to react any differently.
.
.
.
Hibari groaned as he took in his bed sheets from the washing line. He loathed the unchanging winter weather. He looked up into the sky, stared at the dark clouds for a couple of seconds before directing his gaze to a place where he could reach. Grunting, he carried his laundry back into his house.
And then his eyes land on something that doesn't belong in his house. A human. With purple hair. Sitting at his kotatsu, peeling his mandarins.
"What?" Hibari whispers to himself. And that is all that's needed before the purple haired man turns around and gives him a smile.
"What?" the unknown man shoots back, his smile no longer very friendly, "oya, oya, seems like you'll have to wash those sheets of yours again."
Hibari looks down and noticed that he had dropped his sheets to the floor. He grinds his teeth and glares at the man that was making himself too comfortable, "I'm going to bite you dead."