Title: Wisdom From Flower Tongues
Author: La-Devil-Lancer () / legare_virtuoso (LJ)
Pairings/Characters: Haru, Haru/Tsuna, Haru/Bel, Chrome, Mukuro, Chrome/Mukuro/Haru if you squint and think of 69s
Rating: PG at most
Warnings: Alluded torture, noncon
Summery: Ten things Miura Haru learned from flowers and one she didn't mean to.
Author Note: Written in part for Sinneh (sinny_chan), part to delurk on the KHR community on LJ, part because I ship the good ship BelHaru, and part because there isn't enough drama in Haru's life. Feedback would be nice, flaming will be used to fuel Xanxus's guns. Thank Sinneh for making me write this much detail.
Wisdom from Flower Tongues
~:.o.:~
-L-
First Lesson: Creeping Willow
-1-
Miura Haru is in love with Sawada Tsunayoshi. She has been since before ten years passed and will be when she is ten years older. At least, that's what she thought when her world vanished in a cloud of pink smoke, when she faced her death at the hands of the power-mad mafia, and right up until Tsuna screamed at Lambo and told them all they didn't understand. He was right really, frank in that manly sort of way Haru loves so very much it makes her heart hurt and the usual 'hahi' come bubbling out of her throat in a little scream. Haru didn't understand what was going on, tried to keep up with Kyoko and keep on smiling, did the laundry and tried not to blow up the washer with too much detergent, even sliced up her fingers to keep them all fed.
It was Kyoko that Tsuna turned to for inspiration, Haru's best friend in the whole universe who unwittingly steals away the love of Haru's life.
When they're all bloody and battered, back from one battle and all preparing to fight another, it's Haru who promises Kyoko that they will wait. She means that, down in the depths of her ever decaying heart, makes sure Tsuna knows it even as she starts lying and her resolve starts dissolving. It's kind of fun, hanging around the Vongola's future Namimori base, and an odd sort of contest to see which side would be bested in the end. Of course she bets on Tsuna and the rest, patiently and cheerfully serving dutifully as best as she can. Haru can't fight, can only serve to the best of her capacity as a permanent supporter.
It all goes wrong and Tsuna begins to forget Haru is there, an afterthought of the mix-matched jumble that is the general opinion of Kyoko-and-Haru.
There are other things to worry about and Haru understands that, watches Tsuna soar off to fight and lose. And when he loses her heart breaks a little more, shocked beyond words that Tsuna could have to think before saving someone else. She's not sure if she likes this side of her one true love and doesn't stop to consider it as they run to as much safety as they can find. There's no time anymore for a little girl with her little girl dreams, no prince to come and make the fighting stop. Haru can't be weak any more, bites and scratches in terror when Ryohei-sempai misses just one Millefiore, has to do her own share of the fighting. She wishes it would end, can't bear to watch the forest around her light up with the rainbow display of all of her friends' strength.
Tsuna told her that everyone was Famiglia, and this was what they did… and it makes Haru sick.
The first thing Tsuna does when they're all safe and sound under the familiar Namimori sky is kiss Kyoko. And as he spins her around, Haru stands off to the side and comes to her own dramatic finale, shoves it to the back of her mind until later that night when she's safe in her own bed and her father stands watch at her door. She rolls a single little branch in her fingers, stolen from the potted plant Hibari-sempai kept in the reception room, idly stuffs it between the pages of that girly book stuffed to the brim with wedding plans and girlish ambitions. It's a bookmark now, a physical reminder of when her childhood died and Haru grew up. But to be honest, Haru isn't sure if she grew up amidst the bullets and battle or if she came into her own at the conclusion of her greatest deception.
Miura Haru doesn't love Sawada Tsunayoshi anymore.
-L-
Second Lesson: Kennedia
-2-
There are a lot of things people get wrong about Haru, from the man she loves (no one now, she whispers in the dusky gloom) to the cake she buys for Haru Appreciation Day (a different one than last time please, is what her smile tells the patisserie). Common opinion is that she's useless and weak, stupid and inferior when compared to everyone else. She's the outsider looking in, that geeky little costume maker with far too wide a smile and nothing to back up her cheer. Haru can tell that the Vongola view her as one of Tsuna's odd whims, knew that nine years gone and ten years back. She doesn't mind it so much as she should, just keeps smiling with her secret clutched to her chest like Chrome does her trident.
People forget that Haru attends Midori Middle, don't notice her brilliance any more than she wants them to.
Miura Haru isn't like Gokudera Hayato, doesn't plot the universe in an unending symphony of explosive mathematics. She isn't like the Varia either, hasn't turned her razor honed mind towards the art of skillfully and ruthlessly crushing the Vongola's opposition. Haru couldn't be like Irie Shoichi of nine years ahead and ten years regret, move the world with the force of her intellect and shatter the flow of time just to save one reality. She isn't like any of the Vongola Famiglia's genius and is quite proud of it. And when Reborn turns his eye to her she laughs and prances about in her latest creation, draws a layer of pierrot over the glittering wonder of her own mind.
Eight years forward, ten years denial, ever so quietly Miura Haru drops the ball.
It hadn't been anything special, at least to Haru it wasn't, just a few lines of quick design sketched out in the borders of a notebook. She had hashed them out over ten entire pages, broken it down with a sort of whimsical cheer that was all her own, color coded and analyzed with all the precision of a surgeon. Haru had been doing it all her life (do you like it Mama, was all her efforts tried to say), and one bright night everything came tumbling down around her ears. It had started out just like every other meal at Takesushi, albeit one with Dino and Squalo sitting in attendance with Belphegor to scare the fear out of them all. And Haru had offered to help Tsuna with some strange bit of science he didn't understand and Gokudera wasn't around to help properly with.
Haru had her pride even then, right up until Belphegor had gotten bored and Tsuna had gotten confused so Haru had broken it down even further.
The phone call came a week later, made Tsuna go pale and Reborn sip tea all the quieter. Haru hadn't been there for the conversation, only knew that when she came to visit they were all waiting for her. And she was so scared when Reborn carefully tried to ask her if she knew who had done something so complicated with her school notebook, or if it had been her father and it was ok for her to tell them because they were all Famiglia. Haru couldn't even manage to hahi, sank to her knees and cried because they thought she was lying when she said it was all hers. It had been so easy to write it all, to string together the numbers and letters until she had a pretty pattern to hide behind. Because a good designer doesn't want their works stolen, and she can't Tsuna's Famiglia understand that until it's far too late. The Varia send her flowers for their thanks, something that made Tsuna stammer and try to explain that Lussuria thought it would be better to give a girl a gift like that. But Haru doesn't mind, tucks one of the red flowers into the pages past a branch and her hopes, and Haru knows that everything is changing.
There are a lot of things about Miura Haru that no one knows, but one thing that they understand is that when Haru wants to hide something (you did it beautifully is all Haru wishes someone would say) it stays hidden.
-L-
Third Lesson: Viscaria Oculata
-3-
Belphegor of the Varia scares Haru so much that her heart stops beating and she resembles a deer in headlights a second before the wreck. The fact that he was the one to rat her out has nothing to do with her primal fear; instead it's her reflections on homicidal sociopaths and the general name 'the Ripper' that make her knees quiver and her internal organs threaten to void all bodily functions and just take a permanent vacation to the Caribbean. It's her first winter break from her prestigious college (the entrance exam alone made Haru have dreadful flashbacks to her middle school cram sessions) and she's spending it in Italy at the behest of both Reborn and Tsuna. Yet it begs the question as to why she's in the corner of a ballroom, dressed to dance about as prettily as Kyoko and Bianchi could make her with a little bit of assistance from Chrome's bag of mental tricks, alone but for the psychopath by her side.
The wine tastes like something heavenly and the music sounds like something ethereal, and Haru can't stop shivering in her pretty little dress because Belphegor can't stop flipping those knives out of boredom.
He can be a prince all he likes and she'll be a happy little peasant, so long as he does it on the other side of the spacious room and leaves her in relative peace. But they can't leave it like that, not with the buzz in her veins and Tsuna's whispered request to play nicely with the big bad mafia. Haru knows she's actually safer here with a member of her own famiglia (questionably lethal and razor sharp as that connection may be) than out on the floor with the foreign masses whose tongues slide in a language she doesn't quite understand. Kyoko is over with her brother and Dino, safe as the sunny men can make her, having lost Haru to the crushing horde over an hour ago. So she hides herself behind marble and shadow and unwittingly gains a lethal guard dog that would sooner gobble her up than anything else in the room, content to simply vanish until the evening is done. But Belphegor won't let her, persists and pesters with that stalker laugh until she and he begin a rousing argument that culminates in a bet neither one intends to back down from and neither one intends to lose.
Dancing with Belphegor is like walking into a fairy tale and being hit in the face with a slasher novel.
Sure, he knows what he's doing and manages to make even Haru look like she too knows what she's doing. But Haru won't deny that every second she's pressed to his wiry frame is a second closer to the most painful death she can imagine, a morbid thought that makes her eyes wide with fear and her mind whirl with potential escape plans. But there's a space around the awkward couple, formed half out of awkward curiosity and half desperation, and Haru rather appreciates the break. And he laughs over her head, so sure in that spine-tingling way of his that he has won the bet and it'll be Haru serving him in a ridiculous maid costume for the rest of the year. Belphegor is many things to Haru, but right now all she can think of him as is an unholy terror who just so happened to be the one to ask the only girl on the wall to dance.
When it's all over and Gokudera is holding her by the shoulders as Belphegor laughs his way to the proverbial bank, all Haru can think to say won't come out in the wake of her own shock. But later that night she smiles to herself and tucks the rose hued flowers into her book of dreams, strokes the pressed edges of now blood red blooms and wonders. In another time and a different place, who would ask Haru to dance?
Belphegor will always scare Haru out of her mind, but at the same time all she can do is let him take the lead.
-L-
Fourth Lesson: Convolvulus Major
-4-
The whole situation was really all Haru's fault, no ifs ands or buts about it. It started with a pretty little code memorized from ten years forward brought back nine years and still functioning five years to the day, a code so convoluted and revolving that the Varia use it as the key to their servers. But it ended with jealousy and a violent plan, a rival famiglia that gobbled Haru up in the midnight quiet. They want her to sing for them, to let all the secrets of the Vongola drip from her lips like pearls of sage wisdom. Because in the knowing of one code, Miura Haru knows them all, scribbled them down from memory of a mink and a shark, a frog and a peacock who blathered on in her willing ear during a time that would never happen if Tsuna could help it. They snatched her away from Takesushi's doorstep, a convoluted and despicable group of rats carrying off the sparrow in the night.
Haru lost track of how many ten counts she's been in the gloom, blood dribbling down her face to dry in the cracks and bends of her skin.
It's all her fault and she tells them so, sometime between the punch to the nose and the kick at her waist, chokes up on the words and can't quite roll them out as cheerfully as she used to. She misses Kyoko and her smile, her old college and the mental anguish. But most of all Haru misses her famiglia, her friends who took up arms and not so quietly turned organized crime into something wonderful. Haru rather wonders how she could be so far embroiled into something so dangerous, would muse over it as long as she could if they would let her. They grip at her hair and her body, scream at her until the tears just won't come from eyes so dry. And when that doesn't work they turn her to ruin, break at her bones and through her howls they say it will stop when she tells them.
Haru won't say anything after that, not for a long while.
They beat her like clockwork, turn the gears and let her sink slowly into oblivion before yanking her back into consciousness. Everything she is and was has been destroyed, turned to ruins by the greed and wants of men. When this whole mess started Haru had faith in her famiglia, trusted that they would come for her and she would be safe again. But now she has nothing but the sound of water dripping off the weeds in her little corner of hell, broken fingernails and blood painted in long scratches over hard packed dirt. She can't even scream because her throat has closed up, mind painting over everything she sees with so many formulas and codes in a cryptographer's paradise. When they come for her she laughs, a broken sound that is three feet into the grave and ready to die.
Haru is a genius, and takes great pleasure in telling the rabble of exactly how Tsuna will boil them alive.
When the sound of the screaming and gunfire finally dies out, Miura Haru can only stare out and tangle her fingers in the pretty weeds. And when Lussuria has to tell Belphegor to leave the little room she can only stare at the pretty feathers and the blue edged white weed flowers, so far gone in despair she doesn't notice anything for a very long time. They took her to Namimori General, psychopathic laughter and maternal mannerisms keeping Haru company through the long night. Kyoko brought Haru her usual overnight bag, complete with the book of random bits that make no sense to anyone other than Haru. And into the pages of despair and broken dreams Haru consigns the pretty flowers that will ever haunt her dreams.
Miura Haru has lost all hope of being anything other than a deadweight cryptographer to the biggest mafia famiglia in the world.
-L-
Fifth Lesson: Bluebell
-5-
The presents started small, a ring here and a scrap of fabric there, and worked their way up to gilt branded boxes and silk scarves. Haru doesn't know what to do with any of them, tries on rings and watches them all slip off to land on sterile sheets. The presents are pretty, arranged in patterns that Haru dreams up in her traumatized silence, a rainbow of colors and shapes that make her head whirl with designs and ideas. There's no cipher for this pattern, just a mad woman and her strict schedule broken by random visits from everyone she loves. Slowly, piece by piece, Haru's mind begins to unravel the mystery of who and why, fragments of genius helpfully supplying the factual glue to stick the puzzle together. She starts at the beginning and spirals out to the end, starts muttering to herself and making Gokudera start taking notes on her downfall.
It started with a broken ring of dazzling topaz, strange scratches marring the silver surface.
There's a message in the presents that don't stop coming, an awkward missive that can't be put into proper words for Haru to understand. The first thing she wants from anyone other than herself is a pen and paper, quickly covered in scribbled hypotheses and half-dreamt hopes. Haru knows the answer to the riddle deep in her heart of hearts, lines up the rings to form the flame spectrum and squints her eyes to match up the memory. This ring cut open her face with a fierce backhand, now the engravings have been carved smooth. That sleeve gagged her when they broke her fingers, now it is nothing more than slivers of cloth even a child could free themselves from. This box let loose a leopard that clawed open her back and let her spine see daylight, now the cat is stuck in a cage at her discretion. That scarf was wrapped around chains in a gesture of awkward kindness, now it lies limp across her knees and waits for its turn. Anyone else would have had nothing to do with the odd message from a noble to his errant servant, but Haru makes it her very meaning of existence to find out what it means.
When Haru smiles again and leaves the white washed walls behind, she starts sending off her own presents.
And a present precedes a return gift, no address or postmark on a single bit of packaging. Haru has been sending hers through Gokudera, horrifyingly amused at how neither one of them can just say things to each other's face. But Haru just dances off to Haru Appreciation Day, eats her cake and smiles at the rainbow dancing on her necklace. If she tries hard enough, remembers what the first present felt like, Haru can make the sun shine in fragmented parts of a stained glass window. It's the presents that make Haru realize that she can be everything she wants and more, that she doesn't have to be deadweight as long as she can still get up and smile. So Haru eats her cake and plays with her little hawk, plots up her best designs to send off in boxes to her not-so-much-mystery penpal, and Haru laughs her hahi like she used to. When she gets pretty violet bell flowers instead of rings, Haru doesn't flinch at the memory of potential agony and betrayal, tucks them away after blood blossoms and blue haloed blooms and thinks she can live to see the ten years through. She has far too much to learn and so little time to do it, pesters at her beloved friends until she's not an afterthought of Kyoko-and-Haru and stands alone as Haru in her own right.
The enigma of her failure is that she never really failed in the first place.
-L-
Sixth Lesson: Fuchsia
-6-
Miura Haru is in love with Belphegor of the Varia. It took her four years and three embarrassing Christmas parties to like him, and three years to the possible end of the world she knows she loves him. She's told Kyoko and Bianchi, gotten the obligatory speech on how despite the fact that love conquers all it doesn't conquer homicidal freaks, told Gokudera only to get a laugh because he already knew and she was a stupid woman for taking so long. Haru doesn't think it's fair that everyone around her looks at her like a woman going to her death as a martyr. So she creates the most outrageous costumes, prances about in Tsuna's home and pretends to be an awkward Cthulu spawn crossbred with Satan himself. Haru's revenge is creative and horrifying; makes Mukuro politely head for the proverbial hills when she offers to make him one just like it. For a few weeks no one can get anything useful out of Haru, ring glowing as she subconsciously reverts back to exactly how she was when she was fifteen.
It takes a long chat with Reborn and a pointed showing of exactly how Belphegor fought Gokudera for Haru to get the point.
She's too weak to mean anything to her dear Prince the Ripper, hasn't done a single thing to change it. Sure, Haru has learned how to at least open the last box Bel sent her during that horrible stint in the hospital. But she can't turn it on someone else, watches her bird flop to the ground if it even tries to leave her shoulder. Haru is nothing more or less than a noncombat part of the Vongola, integral and part of a skewed timeline that has left her knowing things she has no business knowing, but a noncombatant nonetheless. If it wasn't for her own moments of failure and Belphegor's probable fascination with the way Haru looks when she's a broken wreck (every time she sees him she has lost just a bit more of her childhood joy), Miura Haru probably wouldn't know the Belphegor the rest of the world does. But Haru remembers the kindness of a friend, a girl (even if it was Belphegor, Haru still can't see how people confused Hime and Bel) who did nothing but devote her time and princess's grace into being there when she was needed.
So Haru decides to follow the common sense of the Vongola Guardians, sets out to find a tutor and throw her life away with the intent of making a Prince love her.
Mukuro is more than happy to teach her, paid for his services with the adamant pledge that Haru will never again bring another cosplay for him to wear into his presence. And Haru wears her hair like a pineapple for awhile, learns how to dodge and weave in the field of drooping red flowers, counts her sensei's eye and learns how to turn the numbers in her mind into pure movement. Haru is only a cryptographer, builds her strength with the complexity of an Enigma machine and locks her techniques down with ciphers that make Gokudera's mind crawl. She knows she's not perfect, not as she snags an illusion and snaps it up into her book of mysteries, is perfectly aware she'll never be good enough to fight on the Vongola's level. But she's tired of being useless and tired of the men she loves ignoring her. So this time she'll chase after him with all the determination of her sunny disposition, will corner the storm and steal away a prince. It's almost too bad Haru hasn't realized that was his goal the entire time.
Miura Haru is in love with Belphegor of the Varia, and she's never going to be allowed to love anyone else.
-L-
Seventh Lesson: Cinquefoil
-7-
When ten years have nearly passed and the Vongola famiglia has settled into a breakneck pace of preparing for the potential end of the world, codes written and rewritten as weapons are fine tuned and battle plans memorized. Tsuna sent them all back to Japan, hides away Haru and Kyoko and I-Pin and Fuuta in the comfort of Namimori's familiar spread. Haru is prepared for the worst, grips at Kyoko's hands and wonders when she'll tell Tsuna the good news, feet all ready to flee into the wild suburbia sprawl. They've done all they can, those who vanished into the future and came out with just a little bit extra in places it didn't belong.
When Byakuran died, Haru thought it would be over.
One evil replaced the next, trounced down by the Vongola and just as quickly replaced with something even worse. Haru couldn't keep up with the ciphers that flowed by, coded distress calls that came from all the cruelest places and spoke of unspeakable atrocities. She stopped thinking at one point, when the words said a name that broke her heart and trounced everything into tiny shatter glass shards of rage and misery. Haru is supposed to be a sun, shine brightly so that everyone else is happy, but now she feels like anything but. Even Kyoko can tell, holds her hands and whispers that everything will end as it should, that her prince won't die and everyone will live to see Haru walk down an aisle even if Tsuna has to hold a gun to a psychopath's head to make it happen.
Haru's father was overjoyed to see her again, crushed her to his chest and demanded stories of all the wonderful things she had seen in Italy. And she obliged him, told him of all the things she had done with her old friends, glazed over names and breezed over strange phrases with a glib tongue. She's happy here, in Namimori, here where she is wanted and loved and doesn't have to try so hard at things she's not suited for. Haru makes costumes by the bolt, fills up the ache in her heart with denial and wonders how long before she falls. It takes half a month for Haru to remember how to smile properly, there in that halcyon town with her dear father at her side. She's rather missed the simple wonder of normal living, takes a quiet breath in the safety of her own room and smiles.
Somewhere between the first year back and the ninth year and eleventh month forward, Miura Haru had grown up.
She realizes this one morning while having breakfast with Kyoko and Maman, sometime before the bacon and after the fluffy omelet during the laughter filled conversation about how odd the boys have become. And in the middle of the awkward silence, Haru can only play with the table ornaments with a rueful sort of smile painted across her face. When they ask her what's wrong she'll only smile like the sun, matches Kyoko for a moment with the brilliance of her love, lies and says nothing. But there is nothing really wrong with growing up without realizing it, nothing to be said against a friendship that surpasses sense and leads to someone like Haru giving up everything just for once chance of being helpful. She draws the flower from memory, bright yellow crayons scratching waxy lines on the aged cream paper, and smiles. Sometimes all you really need to grow up is to remember that you are nothing more than a child.
When they come for Haru, she will be ready.
-L-
Eighth Lesson: Lemon Blossom
-8-
Love hurts. Haru had learned that lesson when she was still a teenager, ripe with heartbreak caused by something unobtainable, still has the plant bookmark to prove it. What Haru didn't realize was how much love hurt, why it was that fairy tales flat out never happened, and why everyone around her warned her away. Love isn't like sunshine and rainbows, not like anything she ever dreamed of when she was a child. It isn't anything she's ever heard of, colored red like the dying trails of bloody fingerprints on glass. Love is biting and submission, knives that soothe more than the aching pains that slice across her body from the sheer magnitude of emotion. It burns at her heart, a sensation akin to lemon juice rubbed into an open cut, and all she can do is let it happen. He calls this love, the man holding her to a wall and forcing his depravity upon her with every wicked laugh.
Haru should call for someone, anyone really, just to make it all stop.
But she loves and so she stays even when his rage burns her hair and licks at her ear. Haru stays even when he bats her away like a ragdoll, silent as the grave when she kisses him and feels his teeth nip at her lip. It's a game to him, a drunken rendezvous where no alcohol so much as crossed his lips but for the blood of his own veins, a dance old as time that clearly the prince can lead better. Haru will cry later, bandage up the cuts and the teeth marks that pepper her skin like the rose petals he'll never give her. But for now she is in love and this is the paradise she wanted, here in the den of the devil himself. If she had loved anyone else, this moment would have been her happy ending.
He calms down after the first time, wakes up from his insanity to feel her and see the remains of what he has done.
It is because she is the one who loves that his first instinct is to kill her, pulls a slender blade from god knows where and draws a scarlet line from her heart to her navel. She does nothing to stop him, eyes half-lidded from exhaustion and acceptance, lips parting only to breathe out nothing but a whisper of supplication. Haru's prince sits on a throne of bones and decay, drinks blood from a skull cup and regards the world with the satisfaction of cat with cream. She knew that from the beginning, a childhood moment of wires and spinning knives that fueled her nightmares for months, but still can't bring herself to care. And when he laps up the blood, slow and gentle like the apology her prince will never say, all she can do is grip at his shoulders and beg.
Haru loves, and Haru will never be allowed to love anyone else.
He buries her in flowers, waits for her to wake up and wraps her in silk for his own pleasure. Belphegor is not patient or kind, takes what he wants and coincidentally happens to give Haru something close to what she yearns for. He lets her thread her fingers through his hair, permits her person to scratch his back in the throes of passion. Haru doesn't know why and he'll never tell her, but she takes what she can get with all the dignity of a lovesick puppy. He'll leave her when he's called for work, rakes his teeth over her neck and makes a horrifying bruise that won't go away no matter how much she heals herself, and Haru knows he'll be back. So she kisses a flower before she tucks it away, hides her wince and does her best to not let Bianchi see her.
Love is something wonderful for Haru, because she belongs to a prince.
-L-
Ninth Lesson: Pink Verbena
-9-
The Vongola Famiglia is the most powerful mafia family in the entire world, beat out the Fausts of Germany and the O'Malleys of Ireland black and blue before quietly taking their place on the top of the illegal food chain. Haru doesn't apologize for her famiglia's actions, holds her head high and simply smiles as she stalks off into the world, not even when there's a knife at her throat and a snarling thug behind her. She can feel the blood trickle down from her neck, a swift thump and tiny exhalation before she's buried in the smell of copper and steel. Haru doesn't worry about her boys anymore, doesn't have to sit with Kyoko and commiserate over their fears of loss. Because Haru is never going to lose anyone again, not with Byakuran dead and everyone she loves sitting pretty as top dog. One more meeting and she's free into her own personal legend, the weight of the future closing in on her with all the severity of the guillotine. Her prince knows it, held cruel fingers to her pulse as he whispered in her ear, made her tell him everything she could before she became who she is now.
Haru wasn't afraid of the ten year end, because Tsuna is still alive.
The world is different ten years back, horrified eyes that latch onto the blood and a frenzy of action sends them running for the first aid kit. And when Haru 'hahi's and starts scribbling a note to herself on the back of a math worksheet, it's Gokudera who reads it over her shoulder. There's not much she can say in five minutes to a ten year younger self, only tries to leave something that makes sense. It's all in the flowers, she scribbles as fast as possible, the flowers that tell us how to live and who to love because even if it's hell then it's a fairy tale later. Haru wants to tell them it's all right and they don't need to worry, but her time is fading so fast all she can manage is a smile before she's right back where she's supposed to be. Bel's laughing himself sick, leaning against a bloody wall and practically coating himself with the sticky liquid, not even bothering to hide his mirth. And Haru's up the fire escape, clinging for dear life to the flimsy iron wrought bars, cold in the knowledge that she's the reason why Gokudera knew and everything ended up as it did, is the start of her own adventure.
Haru remembers a note scribbled after another note, fluid writing in a language she didn't know succeeded by a quick translation into Gokudera's familiar kanji.
She kisses her prince like she's going to die, clings to his hand and starts the whole thing back up again. He stops laughing and starts feeling, strokes in all the right places and would've caused a right scene if her watch hadn't beeped. And they're late for a meeting, all frantic speed and awkward tangles in the back of a car they had no business being in. But Tsuna will wait, all smiles and laughter for his errant famiglia, won't start without them no matter how much Gokudera pesters. And for now she's happy, horrifyingly content with her belly that makes her look like a whale and her prince who married her because of a gun to her head. Haru put her faith in the power of her famiglia, in the weight of flames and the might of her dearest friends. And she sews the story of her life into a blanket, feels Bel snuggle his face into her hair and breathe in her smell even as she finishes off just one more little pink petal.
Haru will name her child after her famiglia, Princess Verbena Miura.
-L-
Tenth Lesson: Black Mulberry
-10-
Belphegor won't cry, not as he holds Haru's bloody hand and waits with as much patience as he can manage for her to take her next breath. A prince must be strong, if not for himself than for his subjects. Haru taught him that, recited Machiavelli during sex until he bit her and growled that he had gotten the point. So now he can't show his own grief at a loss he never saw coming and would have done everything to prevent. He's losing his princess and Lussuria can't keep up with her exhaustion, watches quietly as her hair drips off the bed and pools at his feet along with all that glorious crimson she never let him see. But Haru smiles through the machines and the shrapnel buried in her still beautiful pale face, mouths her apologies as often as she asks to see her baby.
It had happened ten years and eleven months after Byakuran died the first time, when Haru realized that she didn't love Tsuna anymore.
Haru had been having tea in a café, waiting for her prince to come and take her away to the very heart of Varia territory. She wanted her daughter to be born somewhere safe, nestled in the one place no one in their right mind would attack. Bel couldn't say no, not when she started quoting ancient scholars and reminding her dear prince of his duty to someone who was both his child (and thus a princess of his making) and his only real blood servant. But he had been late and someone had cracked Haru's impossible code, met her at the door and laughed even as they opened fire. The mafia had rules about that sort of thing, guaranteed that pregnant women and babies would be safe for as long as they did nothing but grow. And Haru had put her trust in that code, decided that Haru Appreciation Day would be held one last time before Haru started living for someone else.
Giving birth was like nothing Haru had ever felt, worse pain than torture and greatest joy since she landed a hit on Mukuro.
Belphegor can't decide if he wants to kill Lussuria for the slow failure or if he wants to spring on Haru one last time and love her like she's always wanted him to, covered in her body's last functions as she is. And as she blinks, a labor of intense pain though it may be, Haru decides right there that Belphegor is the most beautiful man she has ever had the pleasure of knowing. When she tells him so, he laughs sharp and crazed, feels her fingers slowly slipping away from his grip. When the light at the end of the tunnel makes its famed appearance she lives through it all over again, wonders when she'll be going to that particular hell Mukuro once told her over tea she'd be visiting. But her prince won't let her go, not quite yet, and places her darling little princess in her bloody and bandaged arms.
Haru can't decide if she wants to hang on for one more moment or slip into oblivion. So she lingers, half there and half gone, watches the light with one eye even as she lazily smiles over her baby girl's waving arm. When the beeping in the background starts going slower Belphegor starts laughing, buries his fingers in Haru's matted hair and orders his wife (his Queen really if he dared to think that far ahead) to never leave him. But she can't help it really, not now when her old tutor has stripped her of the light and thrown her into a field of flowers. A long time ago she made them promise to never go out of their way for her, a promise Rokudo Mukuro doesn't keep well.
Miura Haru does have to bury her husband or her daughter, they bury her instead.
-L-
Extra Credit: Lotus
-EC-
Chrome lives because of Mukuro-sama, and because of Chrome Mukuro-sama is allowed to exist. She isn't the first Chrome or the last one, just one in a line of many who serve Mukuro-sama without failure. This Chrome doesn't look like the last one, has plain brown hair instead of glorious purple and doesn't need an eye patch because she still has both eyes. But that last Chrome is now Nagi and this Chrome will be Chrome for the rest of her life. She wields her trident with grace and precision, calculates things in a way that makes Mukuro-sama stroke her hair and smile. Chrome doesn't walk around the Vongola by herself, not like the last Chrome can. She doesn't like the way they won't look at her, like she's some sort of ghost that doesn't belong.
Chrome dreams of a tiara and a crazy laugh, wakes up screaming and crying at the same time.
Mukuro-sama says she'll remember in time, here in the dream world of lotuses and so many pretty flowers, takes over her body and lets her sleep so he can have his moment in the real world. But Chrome doesn't mind, because she smiles like the sun and runs her fingers down the careful embroidery in her ever present scarf. This flower means she loved and lost, and that flower means she gave everything to love. That bit of yellow means she was a good child, and that bit of pink means she was asked to dance. Her life is stitched in flowers and silk, the one thing that she somehow won't let Mukuro-sama take away from her. And when the old Chrome dreams with the new Chrome, the new Chrome is called a word that means 'spring' and the old Chrome is back to being just plain Chrome. Together they create, there in that world that Mukuro-sama left them, and when Mukuro-sama comes back he folds it together and presses at the edges because they both know that the dream is where the new Chrome belongs.
Chrome dreams of a life she didn't have, one with a prince at her side and a baby in her arms… and fades away into the dreaming.
The Meaning
First – Love forsaken
Second – Intellectual beauty
Third – Will you dance with me?
Fourth – Dead hope
Fifth – Kindness
Sixth – The ambition of my love thus plagues itself
Seventh – Beloved child
Eighth – Fidelity in love
Ninth – Family union
Tenth – I shall not survive you
Extra Credit – Forgetful of the past