I just want to say thank you to k0ush4fukuj1 and Callistael for fav/alerting and reviewing this story. You guys are awesome! This chapter is a tad bit rushed but I hope you people like it anyway...

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2. Reprise: Eleventh-Hour

"You have to be willing to sacrifice in order to protect."

Watching Hitomi grow up was painful for the Decimo's Sun Guardian; her voice, her innocence, her denseness, her everythingreminded him of his dead sister. Heck, she even looked like a three year old Kyoko!

And he hated it.

But he couldn't get himself to hate the young girl. It was strange, he never really cared for her sons; sure they were extremely awesome and had a lot of potential but none had the connection he felt with Hitomi. Maybe because they had the same face as their father- but that wouldn't be right because he could see remnants of his dead sister in them; from her hair to their nose, from her delicate fingers to their stubby toes, he just couldn't figure out what made Hitomi all the more special to him.

So he decides not to dwell long on it because from the moment the doctors gave him the thumbs up and allowed him to bring the baby out the incubator, he promised himself that he'll give her the best possible childhood a young girl like her could have. A childhood her mother would've wanted her to have. A childhood that the two of them didn't get.

By the time she turns three and a half, he finds out that Hitomi is like the sharper version of Kyoko. She catches on to the fact that she was born into a criminal organization quicker than his sister realized that their injuries weren't from sumo competitions, she trains and trains with her brothers until they collapse due to exhaustion, and he fears that she's becoming a bit too mature for a kid her age. He fears that he isn't doing enough to grant his sister's unspoken will.

It comes as a relief to him when she shows up in the garden after a long day; he's reminded that she's still a kid when she lays down on the bench beside him, a kid who's trying to please her parent, a good kid who's trying hard not to let anything bother her. She's a good kid, and that's all it comes to in the end when she opens her dry chapped lips and asks in his sister's voice,

"Uncle Ryohei, can you read me story of Snow White? The one you always read to me when I was little?"

You're still little, he wants to retort inside his mind, he wants to scold her for being too mature for her age, he wants to take her to the nearest park and let her play with the other kids her age. But he knows it's not his place to do these things, that it wouldn't do her any good anyways. She's different from all the rest after all; she's supposed to be bred into a lady, into a strong woman that would lead a semi-criminal-justice organization that her father created. She doesn't have time for the things other kids do, she's a good girl but in everyone eyes, she isn't good enough.

He doesn't need the storybook to tell the tale of Snow White; he's read it so many times to her that he memorized it word for word. It's possibly the only thing that's been able to stay in his head despite all the punches to the face he's taken.

The version she wants to hear however was a story first written as a joke by Bianchi; it tells of a beautiful young maiden banished from her kingdom until she finds her prince and a golden apple. The young maiden leaves with seven handsome knights, all with his own different personality; they travel around the world for her prince and the legendary golden apple. They endure bandits, thieves, cold winters and hot summers until they all decide to settle down in a small cottage in the middle of a forest they found on their journeys. One day, while the knights are out in search for food and clues to the whereabouts of the golden apple, there's a knock on the door to which the young maiden obviously answers to. Outside, she sees one of the village's elders, an old widow with a cane the shape of a wolf's head. She tells her that she caught wind of her mission and that she's willing to give the maiden her golden apple if she cured her grandson of his illness. She accepts the old woman's offer and the two head off to the old woman's house. When they finally get there, she finds a handsome young fellow laying in the bed, his breaths erratic. She leans down to kiss him when the widow swiftly swings her cane at the maiden, injecting a poison into her body the moment her cane touches her skin. When her knights found out of their maiden's misfortunes, they came to collect her body in sorrow, laying her down in a bed in the middle of a blossoming meadow and returned to their kingdom, heads down knowing that they failed their mission- except for one. Unbeknownst to everyone, it was one of the knights who the old woman was asking the maiden to save. Having been caught off guard, the woman poisoned him and dragged her off to her home before going after the young maiden- Snow White. Months later, that very same knight returned to the meadow where they laid Snow White to rest and gently kissed her. The poison seeped out from her wounds and the power of his true love's kiss was enough to wake the beautiful maiden. While explaining his identity to the young maiden, they kissed once again. Their love bore a golden fruit and they returned to their kingdom happily in love and lived happily ever after.

He doesn't really understand how in the world anyone would like this kind of a fairy tale but apparently his niece does and he tells it to her until she falls asleep in his lap. He tells it in a voice that could rival his own sister's storytelling and when it's all done, he finds himself thinking that Kyoko would've liked the same story too if she was still alive.

When he brings Hitomi to his apartment in Namimori, Hana immediately understands why her fiancé comes home late every time he's in town. It's like watching a piece of yourself fly off the walls in the form of a young curious child. Hitomi is so much like Kyoko that the two find it hard to distinguish the two until she starts talking. The dark haired woman understands the reason behind her fiancé's stress and decides to work on that in the form of dolls and kiddy shows. By the time Gokudera comes to pick up the tenth's daughter, the two feel like he's taking their own daughter away from them and it hurts oh so much until he brings her again the next morning, holding the very same doll she gave her the day before. It makes her smile at the very thought of having a piece of Kyoko with them on those days.

By the time she's six, Hitomi is the spitting image of Kyoko in flames. She dances around the stage, flips and does cartwheels in a circus act of pure orange inferno. Ryohei feels his heart drop as he watches the young girl he helped raise run to her father when it's all over, her short orange-brown hair dances behind her as she runs into his boss' embrace. He can't hate him either, because he knows he's trying to do what's best of what remains of Kyoko.

Then it all shatters and the tent falls down like a dirty rag, bullets piercing though the blue white cloth and the guardians are quick to form a protective circle around the tenth and his family.

The battle is long, he feels so tired, so beaten after unleashing his Maximum Sunshine Counter a hundred times over, he feels like a sack of skin and fat- most of his bones are broken and he knows that he doesn't have enough energy to heal that. When it's all over and they're standing midst a bloody sea of bodies, he turns around to see his niece breathing heavily in the arms of her father, who's already in Hyper Dying Will Mode, angry tears in his eyes as he disfigures the body of the leader with one gloved hand.

His whole world shatters at the sight of that and he realizes that he can't keep the promise anymore because her childhood was already messed up.

Several weeks after that, he sees her off on a plane heading into a foreign country, her tutor beside her. They have a long meaningful conversation before the two embrace and he apologizes for her father not being there but she's a good kid and claims that she already saw it coming. He doesn't miss her big doe like eyes watering up after saying that though and he wonders who taught her how to lie.

They say their goodbyes and she enters the plane for however long their little trip was going to take.

A few hours after that, while Ryohei is driving back to the mansion, he hears that there was a terrorist attack leading to several planes in the Italian airspace to explode while on route. He turns a blind eye as he shakes his head, knowing that Hitomi was on the international airspace on her way to whatever lay across the ocean.

The next day, they lose contact with the tenth's daughter and he doesn't know what to think.

He can't hate Tsuna, even though he hasn't been there for most of her childhood, he knows he loved her like a father should; if he hadn't realize that earlier then it definitely showed during the next few years of solitude following his daughter's disappearance because to him, she was alive. Whatever his hyper intuition was telling him, Tsuna knew she was just lost was desperately trying to search for her through his many business partners after the long hours of work.

He couldn't hate Kyoko either; it wasn't her fault that she was so bloody daft half- no, all the time.

Maybe it was all his fault, maybe he sheltered her too much, maybe he spoiled her too much. Maybe, just maybe had he jumped onto the plane with them, this whole mess wouldn't have happened. Hana tells him otherwise.

The years pass by just like that… Since the disappearance of Hitomi, Reborn helped tutor Xanxus' son who was decided by an anonymous party to be the heir to the sins of the family if Hitomi was still missing by the time of her eighteenth birthday. Despite the small betrayal on the Arcobaleno's party, Tsuna never stopped searching for his daughter and neither did Ryohei or the rest of the family.

By the time of her twelfth birthday, they thought about giving up their search for her. She wasn't anywhere to be found, too many reports were flooding into their systems about how new bodies of the Italian Terrorist Attacks were being discovered every second and pressure within the families and allies grew as the time of the Vongola Trials drew closer. Steffan was improving at an amazing rate after all. They gave up on Christmas on that year, accepting the fact that she'll never be found.

Two years later, CEDEF reported seeing a teen with the likeliness of the tenth's long dead wife roaming down the streets of Mexico.