disclaimer: nope, definitely not mine. also, lyrics belong to ben folds five.
story notes: I am not Japanese, nor have I lived in Japan, so my knowledge of their funerals and cemeteries is limited to what the internet tells me. that said, if you are knowledgable and what's in this fic is completely, totally wrong, please tell me so I can bang my head against a wall and edit.
more notes: Ryouhei arrives in the future later, but for this fic Kyouko arrives at the same time as her canon counterpart.
other notes: told in snapshots, purposefully vague (too vague, maybe?), and hitting only the highlights. also...there's a point I was trying (key word: trying) to make with this, but I think it got lost. character study again, because what would kyouko be without her brother? I went for the weird and unconsciously imitating angle (also, angst), buuut it may not come across that way. anyway. hope you (kind of?) enjoy. :D
Staring Out To Sea
-x-
And if you're paralyzed by a voice in your head
It's the standing still that should be scaring you instead
-x-
The baby comes up to her after practice.
She remembers the day mainly as the day quiet, bullied Tsuna ran to school in his underwear. The baby is secondary; he, after all, only tapped her on a sore shoulder, smiled a vague, adult smile, and told her that she was the sun.
Kyouko remembers smiling back. Bright, naive. She doesn't remember regret.
-x-
Kyouko's parents only ever mention her brother in hushed, hurried whispers, so her memories of him start to dwindle as the years go on. She has fragmented images of a grinning, rough-faced boy that tugged on her arms and pushed her high on the swing. Not much else, and not enough to know what he would think of her boxing like him.
She likes to hope, though, that he would laugh at her oversized gloves, and admonish her when she doesn't tape up properly. Maybe pull her aside and say that a mafia game isn't for little girls like her and that he would carry all the weight on his narrow shoulders.
Kyouko's parents, as much as they now coddle her, have taught her to stand on her own two feet, so she doesn't think too long about her dead brother. Just dreams, here and there, of a future that could have been.
-x-
"You look worse every time I see you," Hana says. Her tone doesn't go one way or the other, but her eyes linger on the purple bruises lining Kyouko's knuckles.
Kyouko laughs. "I think that's a good thing."
Hana sighs loudly and settles into her chair. "Fine," she says, fumbling with her pen. "But I swear, if those boys" —her nose wrinkles and a strangely demented look crosses her face— "make you do anything you don't want to, I'm calling the cops."
Another laugh. Kyouko wonders how much Hana knows, and whether the truth is worse.
-x-
Once upon a time, Kyouko thinks she might have been the school's idol. That girl with the nice hair, the nice smile, the nice family. Nice fingers, too, but Kyouko's ruined those among other things, so the idol is a long-haired second year that everyone admires.
Tsuna is the exception. Tsuna blushes when Kyouko looks at him, Tsuna's voice gets higher when she talks to him, and Tsuna loves to run the other way when she even slightly suggests they train together. The baby, Reborn, might be rolling his eyes at the two of them, but his eyes are demon-big and demon-black, so Kyouko never knows. She settles for kicking Yamamoto in the shins during their spars and dancing around Gokudera's watered down explosives.
She does like it, though. There's something very intangible about Tsuna—something that screams special in a way that Kyouko never thought she would experience in her life, so she follows him.
It's natural, she thinks. Yamamoto and Gokudera and Chrome and Hibari and Lambo—they're the same way. It's just Tsuna who manages to be the exception again.
-x-
There's a fight in a lit-up ring with a simpering man that would prefer her limp and lifeless. And then there's another fight with poison that hums in tune with her heartbeat. And after that another, and another.
Soon, they're in a future she can't understand. Haru and Hana, Lambo and I-Pin—everyone's here, and Kyouko's starting to realize that the game is more real than she wants it to be.
Reborn takes her aside after the first night.
"You're the sun," he says. His fedora dips most of his face into the shadows; Kyouko thinks it's the most real him she's seen. "What is the sun, Kyouko?"
She falters. And then she thinks of her brother.
"Light," she says, the word tumbling out of her mouth.
A smile twitches its way to Reborn's face.
-x-
They're all pushed into training, told get faster and stronger because this enemy threatens every world. Kyouko is paired with a taller Hibari, who eyes her with disinterest and shoves her into the ground more times than she cares to count.
"Those aren't your teeth," he says on the third day.
Kyouko is sprawled on the cool floor of the training room, blood mixing with saliva in her mouth. She picks up her head in time to see him walk away, hands steady at his sides.
Her hand grabs a piece of gravel created from the crater in the wall and she chucks it at him, smiling viscously when it connects with a soft, echoing thunk. In the corner of the room, Kusakabe chokes on his stalk, and Reborn laughs.
Hibari's tonfas are out before she has a chance to blink, and then all she can do is scramble to her feet and throw up a hasty guard as he rushes her.
He's—grinning, though, in a way that reminds her of the younger Hibari, and Kyouko starts to understand.
-x-
She has her first conversation with Tsuna that doesn't involve too much running away not long after. It's in the basement, Haru is crying upstairs, and Kyouko doesn't stop to gather her words or her thoughts before bopping Tsuna over the head.
He flinches more from shock than pain and turns confused eyes to her. Kyouko lowers her raised fist and sits on the last step of the stairs, gathering her knees in her arms.
"You shouldn't have done that," she says, watching as he glances at the door. "Haru's doing more for us than you know."
Tsuna looks away from her, and Kyouko tries not to sigh.
"We're all fighting for the same thing, Tsuna," she says. "We want to go home. You have to take us there."
He swallows, fingering the hem of his shirt. He's her size, more or less, and has been for every day of the two years she's known him. So it begs the question—did future Tsuna grow, or did he stay like this, pale and shivering, already bent under centuries' old weight?
"I…" Tsuna closes his eyes. Kyouko makes sure to keep hers wide open. "I don't know how," he says at last, mouth twisting. "I don't know, and everyone keeps looking at me like I should, and I just…I don't know what to do."
I'm scared is what he wants to say, but can't.
So Kyouko does it for him.
"I'm scared too," she says, smiling when he opens his eyes to stare at her. "It's okay to be scared, Tsuna."
He doesn't do anything for a while, just stands and maybe counts the cracks in the ceiling. Then he sits next to her on the step, not close enough to be touching, but close enough that her warmth seeps through to him.
-x-
They get home to find strangers and more battles, more rivals, and Kyouko is left marveling at the insanity of it all. There are injuries on every side, smiles once the dark has lifted, and the watchmen in their dark hats and cloaks slowly retreat. In the end, they're left with a surprisingly intact family and uncursed babies that dread growing up again.
There's also the matter of Tsuna, who, in the resulting calm, has reverted into a loud-voiced, weak-willed boy. Kyouko has plans to take care of it when Reborn returns and punts Tsuna out the window.
She laughs and laughs when he tells her. Hana just rolls her eyes, and Haru has to take a deep breath to quell her screams.
-x-
They go to high school, and not everything changes. Hibari will graduate with them, apparently wanting to make sure that they don't blow up the school in his absence (to which Gokudera had yelled "It was only once"), and Reborn is forced to enroll in primary school. Tsuna's mother, Kyouko learns, is more deadly with a spatula than she ever will be with her fists. Lambo and I-Pin hit a growth spurt and can catch her around the waist instead of the knees now, and Irie has nudged his way into their circle.
It's during high school that Kyouko starts to visit her brother's grave. Her parents had rarely taken her as a child, preferring to pay their respects to the shrine at home, so she goes alone. Hana comes sometimes, usually on rainy days and with an umbrella because Kyouko always forgets hers, and they sit and watch the water sink into the dirt, into the inscribed letters on the stone. Kyouko's name, and her parents', is beside her brother's—written in red for the living, her grandmother had explained.
She never did get around to saying why the red didn't come off in the rain. Kyouko doesn't think she cares to know, anymore.
-x-
Somewhere along the way, Tsuna falls out of love with her and into respect with her, and they spar.
It's more painful than she wants to admit—she's a boxer, one of the best in the country, and she's been beating up bullies since before Tsuna learned how to run from them—but she dusts off her hands anyway and asks for another go. Then another.
Reborn watches, sometimes calling out instructions or tossing out scenarios for them to enact. Her skin splits and Garyuu laughs, and the grass blurs in front of her eyes, and she remembers a time when her brother would chase her around the lawn. She'd always laughed then, easy and free, and she'd been lit up with happiness and contentment.
She doesn't realize how long it's been since she's felt like that until Tsuna crouches down beside her, hands hesitantly wiping away her tears.
Reborn's still watching, and when she looks his way he nods.
-x-
"You remind me of him," her mother says over dinner one night. Kyouko looks up from her fingernails—dirty and red, the skin around them peeling—and her father quietly leaves the room. Her mother just smiles, nostalgic, staring both through Kyouko and right at her. "Your brother, I mean. I forgot how alike you two were as children."
Kyouko isn't sure what to say, so she says nothing.
Her mother plays with her fork. In the unflattering kitchen light, her wrinkles look deeper, her crows feet harsher.
"I think," she says eventually, "he would be very proud of you." She hesitates, and then adds softly, "Like we are."
Kyouko can't say anything, because her throat is suddenly very stuffy and clogged, and her mother goes quiet for the rest of their meal.
-x-
"Education is important," Reborn intones. Tsuna groans. Yamamoto might have joined him if Gokudera hadn't shoved a pen into his ribs. "Fortunately for you, your education is going to be more hands-on than most."
Graduation is months away. Colleges are waiting on their decisions, and Kyouko feels like the red string tying them all together is starting to rip away, strand by strand.
Tsuna rubs his head, his elbow ending up near Chrome's face. His room really is too small for these gatherings, which is why Hibari never comes.
"I don't get it," he says, instinctively leaning away from Reborn.
Leon twitches on Reborn's fedora, but doesn't change. Reborn says, "You will be going to Italy. The Ninth is going to oversee your schooling." He turns to the five Guardians tucked away into various corners and spaces. "And his guardians will be doing the same for you all. You can," he adds, almost carelessly, "pursue higher education there, but your first duty is to the family."
Gokudera says of course, Yamamoto nods, and the others murmur some kind of agreement. Tsuna looks like someone asked him to jump off a pier, but considering his usual shrieks, Kyouko thinks this is an improvement.
-x-
"I'm going to call you every day," Hana warns the night before Kyouko's flight. "I don't care if it's three in the morning and you're covered in some guy's brain matter, you will pick up."
Sometimes, Kyouko thinks Hana would have made the better Sun. But she laughs and agrees, and hugs Hana carefully.
"Be safe," Hana says to Kyouko's shoulder. "And, like…" She trails off, and Kyouko knows she is thinking of days spent in the rain. "Be safe," she says again. "Don't do anything stupid."
"I won't," Kyouko says. She doesn't promise, and Hana doesn't mention it.
-x-
Italy manages to be everything Kyouko expects—different and louder and familiar—and before she is whisked away to training lessons and etiquette lessons, she taps Reborn on the shoulder. He's only a little taller now, still round-faced, but his eyes are just as she remembers.
"Thank you," she says.
He tilts his fedora, but she catches his smile all the same.