Decadence
Fact: You are alone.
It starts slow, builds up into something that Kyouko wants to go away, and by the time everyone is asking her areyouokayareyouokay she's not and her world is falling apart.
She is strong. She knows it, it's deep within her bones, but this isn't her dream. Her dream is to be a teacher, to be a scientist, to be a doctor, not to sit around in an empty mansion with her hands folded in her lap doing nothing. Her legs are able and she ran with her brother as a young girl — she isn't made for sitting around, she isn't made to be a simple wife.
(and truth be told, she doesn't want to be anyone's wife, not even Tsuna's)
Fact: He hates you.
When she says no her voice echoes in the grand room that is filled with the portraits of bosses past. There is a man who looks just like Tsuna save for his hair and Kyouko thinks — hopes — that his eyes look approving instead of devastated like the boy before her.
Gokudera is screaming, like he doesn't care that she's a demure girl that doesn't like to hear such profanities. Tsuna had told him that, but now Tsuna doesn't care either and his hands are trembling but he doesn't ask why. He's thought it all his life, she's sure, that she is too good for him and her being with him had only been a dream.
Kyouko isn't so arrogant as to agree, but she's not so modest that she'd disagree. She is Kyouko, he is Tsuna, and maybe they were never meant to be. And if he hates her like his eyes tell her, then she is okay with that because her hands aren't shaking when she closes the door behind her.
Fact: Your friends aren't yours.
The thing is, all of Kyouko's friends are Tsuna's, but not all of Tsuna's friends are Kyouko's. The day she sets foot into the airport with a one-way ticket and only her brother and Haru to see her off, she feels dreadfully…alone. But she plasters a smile onto her face that doesn't feel as fake as all the ones that had been given to her during her stay in Italy — and more than anything, she's glad it was only a stay.
Her brother is smiling a not-smile that isn't sad or happy, but he doesn't look relieved either. He's thinking that she's leaving the man best-suited for her and that she'll fall in love with some idiot from some college and live a meaningless life. He's thinking that she's making the safest choice possible and he wants to be happy about that but he's not.
Kyouko hugs him once, tightly, promises him that she loves him and everyone else too, and that he doesn't need to worry about her getting married to an idiot because she can take care of herself now. Haru's muffled laugh only makes her smile, and Kyouko takes the other girl's hands in her own.
Thank you, she says, thank you for doing this for me.
(Haru will hate her, will resent her, but she is strong in ways Kyouko is not, and right now she is smiling so Kyouko can put off the guilt)
Fact: You fall in love but you're not in love.
His name is long-winded and pompous and befits his high-standing. His mother looks down at Kyouko, sniffs to her old husband that she's just a street urchin when Kyouko shows up in jeans, and Kyouko loves her at first-sight. She's a rich, spoiled version of Lal Mirch, and if it takes three months' pay of sweets to win her over, it's all right. The way Kyouko sees it, it's not healthy to shut everything of her old life away and she's only twenty years old. She can live and fall in love—
And when he, with his pompous name and sincere eyes, asks her to marry him, Kyouko brushes his cheek with her lips and tells him no.
(she's a witch, she's such a witch, she'll toy with them and drop them and move onto another)
Fact: You are twenty-one years old and terribly drunk.
Kyouko hates alcohol with a passion. It's the thing that ruined half her family and her brother just can't seem to understand that, so he sends her a bottle of something fine and expensive for her birthday that she wants to throw away. Hana has an ear-to-ear grin on her face and drags her to some bar, declares that today is a special day and that they need to drink and get drunk. The bartender eyes the two girls with their own bottle but doesn't say a word: they're young, they're pretty, and they'll be begging for more in an hour.
He's right — Kyouko is laughing, giggling, her face is flushed and she can't really remember her name or the plane ticket she'd spotted in Hana's purse that read Italy. Hana is better, but her eyes are sad and she hates that this is everything and nothing.
Fact: It's a dream job but you're not in a dream.
Kyouko isn't as smart as Haru but she has brains and manages to become a teacher soon enough. She loves it, loves that there are children screaming and having a tug-of-war over a limited edition crayon and that little Ayame said that Joji just peed on her—
That…that she doesn't love, and she doesn't love how she has to explain to the girl's parents why she is covered in something that certainly doesn't smell like orange juice, but at other times it feels just like a dream.
(so when Hibari pulls up in front of her school in a small black car, Kyouko knows this is a nightmare)
Fact: Haru is dead.
The funeral is a somber affair filled with not-grieving mafia wives and men who proclaim she was a breath of fresh air to the black-tie events. Kyouko says nothing at all and stays by her brother's side because there is a look on Tsuna's face that makes him look ten years older.
But she hasn't seen him in four, so it might just be time doing its job. Time must have cured his resentment of her, too; all he does is nod when they cross paths and that's that.
Somehow, though, Kyouko doesn't think it's over and done with because Haru is dead and Lambo is crying and something is terribly, dreadfully wrong.
(she thought she was free of it, free from these chains, but Mukuro is in a far better place than her)
Fact: You are back in that empty mansion, and you hate every second of it.
Kyouko left the first time because Haru was here and Haru still loved Tsuna and Tsuna learned how to love her. They weren't yet engaged when she died, so everyone thought it wasn't too bad a loss and everyone threw their daughters to the suddenly available Vongola Decimo.
Reborn is the one who speaks to Kyouko in the dead of night. He is as small as ever and his eyes aren't a child's and he tells her that there isn't any other choice. There are, of course: there are plenty of auburn-haired Italian girls who are smart and can learn to speak Japanese and they just so happen to be the heirs of large mafia empires. They know the ins and outs of being a mafia wife, and she doesn't know a thing except how to teach a seven year old to write in kanji.
There is a cup of coffee between her hands. Kyouko stares into the dregs — it's fortune telling, isn't it?
Kyouko sees nothing at all and says no.
Fact: You are lost.
At twenty-six years old, Sasagawa Kyouko is unmarried, a well-known teacher, and living in a small flat not too far from her parents. Her kids are wonderful when they aren't peeing on each other, her life is twirling around to some unknown place, and most days it's noon in the middle of class before she remembers that Haru is dead.
She hasn't cried, yet. Hasn't cried like Yamamoto and Gokudera did that night after the funeral, hasn't cried like Tsuna was inside. It's been three, four years, and Kyouko is strolling down the streets with a heavy bag slung over her shoulder while a childhood classmate tugs along a baby.
The thing is…Kyouko is happy, and this life is fine.
Fact: Curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought it back.
Hibari Kyouya still runs Namimori with an iron fist even when he spends most of his time in Italy these days.
It takes a trip to the hospital and a short meeting with the director before Kyouko is before the shrine with her heavy bag of books left at home. She's wearing jeans again, and Hibari scowls at her over his tea but doesn't really say or do anything when she sits across him. There had been a time, so long ago that the memory is grayed and dream-like, that Kyouko had been this close to him without it being related to the mafia and more her brother instead, but those days are gone and all she wants to know is how Tsuna's little boy is.
There are doctor's notes and other scraps of paper, some colorings of a fiery man who can only be Tsuna, and a few pictures scattered on the table and Kyouko pores over them like a doting aunt. Tsuna's boy looks a little more like his mother with his reddish hair, but his face is all his father, and Kyouko smiles at the boy she will never meet — (and who could have been hers).
Kyouko leaves just as Hibari is finishing his tea (but not before setting some of those green tea packs he never manages to find on the counter) and wonders if that cloud in the sky looks a little like Namehage.
Fact: Everything happens for a reason.
Sasagawa Kyouko is the sun — she rises in the east and sets in the west. But the west is cold and unforgiving, and she rather prefers her cramped flat in Japan and screaming children instead of an empty mansion and a subdued little boy.
(and if she's sad, she's sad, but there's a lifetime ahead of her to live)
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AN: I KILLED HARU. D; I didn't want to, honest… T__T So anyway…this was so not supposed to be anti-Tsuna/Kyouko (it was supposed to be Tsuna/Kyouko) but it turned out that way… It's definitely not Hibari/Kyouko either, in case anyone's wondering xD
So yeah. Hoped you enjoyed ^^;
Disclaimer: Katekyo Hitman Reborn! is not mine. Kinda…happy it's not. That girl tried to kick out Hibari. -.-;;