Disclaimer: KHR doesn't belong to me, unfortunately.

Hi guys, sorry for this being so late - it was supposed to be out yesterday but it was being a pain. I still am not too happy with how it turned out, so if you spot any errors, or how to improve it, drop me a PM and I'll happily add things~

On to related news, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE POSITIVE RECEPTION! I didn't expect to get so many reviews, faves or follows so early on. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up with a PM or in the review section, I read them all, and I reply to all reviews in a PM, unless you explicitly say to not do it.

Anyway, hope you enjoy Chapter 2 - it is slow, but these fics take a little bit to get to the good bits, and DAvid is still getting used to being a baby girl.

Italics: Thoughts

There is a reason why babies don't remember their early months.

It's hard, crushingly hard, and all too embarrassing – I absolutely hated it. There is a reason why kids are called 'poop monsters', and I fit that particular stereotype far too well for it to sit right with me. It's a particularly embarrassing moment when a woman who you aren't all too comfortable with coos nonsense at you whilst they change your nappy, staring at you as if you are a particularly delicious meal waiting to devour.

Bizarrely enough, I suppose a positive of the situation was that my parents, as loathe as I am to call them that – my mother had very rarely come to see me, only once over the year of my existence as Nagi, and whilst my father did all he could he very rarely was able to stay around and just talk to me.

Depressingly enough, I knew my nanny a lot better than I did either of my so-called parents.

I couldn't help but to pity the life Nagi would have lived, for she would have been unaware, unable to change the life that she was born into. She would have most likely grown up, weak and demure and lacking in social skills. She would have lived her life, a shell of a being, unable to do the things that she was supposed to do, until inevitably dying in an accident.

But I'm not Nagi, not completely – but where does David end and Nagi begin – and I refused to stand for it.

I had a purpose now. For some bizarre, unknown reason, I had to live. I had to grow up, flourish, and be strong enough to face the world. I had to have the will to move past everything.

Sophia, in some strange and altogether roundabout way, had chosen me.

And I was going to live as hard as a dead person could.

"Well aren't you a haughty baby, exactly like your Kaa-san," my nanny, Setsuna, cooed from above, her old yet beautiful face smiling at me in a way that was far too accepting for anyone to wear.

Ever since I had been able to crawl, she had taken to placing me in this play pen of sorts – a miniature fortress decked out with teddy bear sentinels. Crawling in and of itself was one of the happiest moments so far, it was one step closer from escaping powerlessness.

In my honest opinion, Setsuna would have made a brilliant grandmother – she reminded me of my own. Sterling silver hair wrapped in a taut bun, liquid caramel eyes and a perpetually smiling face – she was the very image of grandmother.

You could almost imagine her waiting for you as you went over to her home, the faint scent of warm cookies and milk escaping from an open window, and when she would open the door to let you in it would be with a wide smile and happiness glowing like a bonfire in her eyes.

"When you grow up, I hope you look just like your mother, but with your father's temperament. The features of an Empress tempered by the compassion that swayed the lady," here, her smile grew pained, as if saddened, "I hope you don't forget your dear old Setsuna-baa when you grow up, I can tell right now that you are going to be great."

Even if it had been a year, I still had yet to truly grasp any substantial knowledge of the language. For all I know, she could be cursing me, but for all it was worth I really hoped she wasn't.

What, I had grown to like Setsuna.

She took the time to read me stories, telling me fantastical adventures of a teen that was on his way to adulthood, going from useless to the centre of the world. She tried to teach me to speak, murmuring old songs in a bid to tell me the colours of the rainbow, and she even showed me here family.

She had kids of her own, but they were far too old now and didn't need her, but she wished her dear old daughter would visit her more – Meioh Nana had eloped with some upstart named Sawada Iemitsu, from what I've gathered of her stories.

"Your father is coming home soon. He really wants to see you, and he misses you dearly," Setsuna seemed sad, as if her next words were something that would pain her, "He also said that I'm no longer needed, that he and your mother will be able to look after you now that you're passed that stage."

I stilled, pausing momentarily in a particularly riveting game of building blocks, words registering. I didn't know the full gist of it, just that she was going somewhere and that my tou-san (the word still seemed alien to me) was coming back.

I didn't want her to go. I didn't like being alone.

When I was alone I was left in the dark.

"…Tsuna?" I forced myself to speak, the unfamiliar language putting a large strain on my vocal chords.

The shock on her face made it more than worth it, and the stunning smile on her face only sealed the deal.

"Did you just say my name?" Setsuna forced out, still staring at me with shock.

I just repeated her name, over and over and over, until my throat could no longer handle the strain, voice turning rougher and coarser as time went on.

Damn straight I said your name, granny.

We spent the rest of the day together, playing nonsensical games that I didn't understand but damn were they fun to play, and the two of us working on slowly building up my rather pitiful knowledge of the Japanese language.

Day turned to night, and when she tucked me into my cot, whispering a meaningful goodnight, I paid very little notice to the softly spoken 'goodbye', my young body lulled to sleep from a bizarre combination of childish fatigue and adult weariness.

"The sun may fall, but that doesn't mean it's gone for good."

With a soft click of a lock, Meioh Setsuna walked out of the room, and unknowingly out of my life for good.

I never did see her again, and it was only years later that I deciphered the old woman's parting message.

When I was two, my parents thought that it would be a good idea to move onto potty training.

I agreed, anything to get away from nappies – the disgusting things that they were.

I just didn't anticipate just how hard such a thing would be. The hot pink facsimile of the porcelain throne sat innocuously in the corner of the room, my bedroom (a sterile expanse with little customization other than one small, barely noticeable picture of tou-san),tempting me to use it, to abandon the, quite frankly, itchy training pants that I'm forced into wearing.

It was taunting me, looking for the entire world smug, and I hated its existence.

I wanted to set fire to the thing.

Okay, deep breaths, you can do this.

Hesitant, I slowly meandered towards the terrifying object, cautious. The closer I got, the more terrifying it became, and the more I wanted desperately to turn back, to go back to the safety and security of nappies, no matter how much I hated their existence.

I'm a strong, confident man-baby-girl who shouldn't be afraid of anything. Especially not small, pink menaces who will soon be acquainted with my ass.

Determined, I slowly approached the death trap, looking for all the world that I'm about to enter a warzone, feet treading plush carpet as I approached.

Let's do this.

Tugging the tight elastic around my pants, I let them drop.

Abort mission abort mission may day may day how do I even use this thing?

Quickly pulling the infernal things back up, I ran back to safety. Away from the false toilet.

How do girls even use these things anyway? Do they lean backwards to aim it properly? Or do they sit down?

With nappies all you really did was sit down, or, well, stand up and it just sort of happened. You didn't really have to think about it, and I had made it a point to stay as far away as possible from that train of thought. Granted, you were then left marinating in the turd, but damn if I hadn't appreciated the fact that I didn't have to think.

With all the finesse my toddler self could muster, I turned back to the horrible being in the corner, eying it pensively.

I was half tempted to just retreat, come back to it another day. I was half tempted to stay as far away as possible from any and all potties and live the rest of the life in adult nappies. I was half tempted to just pretend.

Pretend that I'm still male, hmm. But how long does one have to pretend for it to become blindingly obvious that it's all make believe?

That wasn't an idea that I couldn't, even for a few moments, entertain.

My tou-san sat nearby, hovering like a mother hen, gazing at me with concern.

I ignored him. This was something that I had to do myself.

Over the year since Setsuna's disappearance, I had grown close to him. He just had that sort of an effect - a bit like a chocolate bar. No matter how much you know you shouldn't have it, that it's bad for you and one is more than enough, you have it anyway. He was all brown eyes and black hair and handsome features, and I liked him.

"You can do it," he smiled encouragingly, gesturing madly with the cheesiest grin he could muster. I couldn't help the short bark of a laugh that escaped me, despite the situation.

Damn straight I can do it.

Invigorated despite myself, the trek back seemed much easier than before, words of encouragement from the peanut gallery making the difficulty die.

And then I let go, even if I myself don't know what I had let escape.

The beaming smile hid the fact that I felt something inside me wither and die. But my father's happiness made it all better.

"Look how happy you made your tou-san," Tou-san looked like an excited puppy, ecstatic about something that was so trivial.

"Puppy-tou is very happy," I cried, reaching up to him.

"Puppy?" Tou-san's confusion only made him look more like a puppy than he did before.

"Yup. Puppy is papa." For all that I hated the way I speak; I made it my mission to keep him smiling. And if I had to speak for him than I'll do just that.

Ever since, I have never worn nappies.

I was three when I learnt the name of my mother.

I was three when my father died, and my mother took full control over my upbringing.

My world shattered, and I fell.

He was everything to me; the only one who managed to fill the void after Setsuna was forced out. He sat with me, played with me, asked endlessly to call him 'papa' and to let him shelter me from the world. He was the only person who I felt I could love here, who I felt loved me, and when he died I felt a little piece of me melt with him, erupt into flames, the ashes lost forever.

He died in a car accident.

I didn't want him to go.

I wanted him to stay with me forever.

That was when the hallucinations started.

I started to see him everywhere. I saw him beside me whilst I ate, smiling that little smile of his as he urged me on. I saw him as I played, he building glass castles that would crack more and more the higher he built them. I saw him as I tried to sleep, the same stories on repeat over and over and over, day after day.

Indigo flames glowing in his eyes each and every time.

Soon after they started, I started to lose sleep, my sanity, and even myself. I was haunted, and for the first time I knew what it was like to lose someone close to me – I had already known that my future was death, during my time as David, so losing someone close to myself…

I didn't have any way of coping.

I wondered to myself if this was what my family felt when I was diagnosed with cancer. The presence of death was a promise of goodbye.

As my mother said to me before I passed away, a husk of my former self, I said to my tou-san.

Goodbye.

The hallucinations stopped, and I felt like I could smile again.

And I smiled, and smiled, until the smile looked less like a broken shard and more like a beaming sun.

I wonder, does my smile reach my eyes?

When, a mere month later, Nadeshiko Sakura (my kaa-san) re-married, instead becoming Kirijo Sakura, I smiled the broken smile that I practiced all by myself and said that I was happy to get a new papa.

And when she showered praises on her beautiful little daughter, and this stranger complimented me on how pretty his little princess was, I ignored the guilt festering in my chest, the overwhelming sense that I was betraying his memory, and wondered just where I fit.

It only took a few weeks for Nadeshiko Hidetoshi to be forgotten by the residents of the house, and sometimes I'm left wondering if he even existed at all, if kaa-san had ever loved him at all.

Only the gossip of the maids kept his memory fresh, my toddler brain trying desperately to banish the memories even as my adult mind tried to hold on to them.

I wonder if he's found himself at that place?

Maybe, one day, if I'm lucky enough, I'll get to see him again.

Maybe I'll get to tell him goodbye properly.

I was four now, and it had been a year since my tou-san's death.

Ever since then, I had taken to collecting teddies. Dog teddies. Sakura-san didn't understand, couldn't understand, why I always wanted little doggies as gifts each and every time, but she didn't care why. For all it was to her was another one of her daughter's eccentricities – and it made the whole gift giving thing a lot easier if she always wanted the same thing, and all Kirijo-san could do was try and tide over his new child.

Kirijo Natsu was a good man, or as good a man that he could be, considering the circumstances. He always tried to befriend me, even if his particular brand of making friends wasn't the greatest in the world. The man had taken to showering me with gifts, ranging from inexpensive to bank-breaking, and my room looked more like a dog shelter than an actual little girl's room.

The once dry room had bloomed, blossomed out of that sterile bud into a vivid flower.

The white walls still remained, though they looked warmer now, more of a vanilla than the blinding white of before - it looked less like the dead now. My cot had long since been replaced, a comfortable single covered in a doggy duvet, and as far as the eye could see were dog teddies. On the desk was a Labrador. A sheepdog on the windowsill. A puppy in the closet.

It looked a lot less like a cell, and instead more of a bedroom.

A few sparse picture frames, rather empty photo frames, were interspersed throughout the room – eyes of a stranger constantly lingering. A similarly empty photo album sat on the mahogany coffee table, waiting for me to fill it with images, with memories, filled only with what little pictures I could find of my tou-san.

I never wanted to forget the rather profound effect he had on my life, nor the man himself. After Setsuna, he was the only one who I truly knew around here.

Kirijo Sakura was a stranger posing as a mother, her work deemed much more important than her family. The only contact I had with her was to oversee my education – I was supposed to take over the family business, make the Kirijo Corporation great, and for that I needed to know all the skills. Ever since I had been left in her care, I was grilled in politics: on how to act, on who to know, how to scout out the competition.

The only reason that I could even cope was the fact that I was, mentally, over twenty.

She straightened out my speech, and whilst it was still iffy, I could hold a conversation without my voice failing me. Speaking still hurt, a dull ache in my throat, and I tried to avoid speaking more than I had to, but I could cope.

The doctors said that it would pass with age, and I believed them. Speaking used to be much harder than it was now, and I could faintly recall the garbled rubbish I spouted to Setsuna – a bastardization of her name that I was damn proud to be able to say, after my previous inability to speak.

"Nagi," blinking, I couldn't help but find it odd that the woman would actively search me out outside of the forced lessons.

"Yes, kaa-san?" Sakura's imperious stare was starting to get on my nerves.

"Your tou-san and I believe that it is time for you to go to school," dry, voice concealing her real emotions, the matriarch of the family continued on, "and despite my best efforts, my husband has decided to allow you the choice of where to go."

Oh lord, school. How did I forget about that? I refuse to set foot into a place where kids posher than my mother go to. I'd rather not spend my youth surrounded by brats who could make the Queen green with envy.

It only registered that I had a choice after my miniature breakdown.

"I have a choice?" I echoed, ignoring the glare Sakura threw at me in response.

"Kirijos don't repeat themselves, so make your choice. It could be any, but Midori has a particularly scintillating set of recreational courses for people like us, so we don't have to mingle with the commoners," the caustic disgust in her voice would have been enough to melt diamonds.

"Any choice, huh?"

I wonder, what's the most common place I can think of….

"Where did my tou-san go?" I hurriedly continued before she could interrupt, "My real father, not Kirijo-san."

"Kirijo-san was as much your father as Hidetoshi-san was, and if you must know," her expression suddenly turned grave, as if she knew that she would regret her next words, "my late husband went to a despicably common institute, known as Namimori Primary, nothing like the completely respectable Midori Institute for the Young and Gifted."

I held back on the scathing remarks, if only to make things easier.

"I don't suppose that this Namimori Primary is an option, is it?" I restrained the urge to cackle madly, whilst stroking a cat in a swivel chair. My so-called mother's pretty features looked scrunched up, as if she was constipated.

"If you must, then I won't stop you."

Nailed it.

"No."

The handmaid glared.

I glared back.

"What d'ya mean no? Kirijo-sama paid good money for this dress, and he expects you to wear it."

"Yes, well, Kirijo-san should pick out better dresses. If I wanted to go out there on my first day looking like I've been thrown up by Barney, then I'd wear the dress. But quite frankly, I find it disturbing that he even managed to find a pair of matching heels."

Why did it always come back to pink?

"You're wearing it. It brings out your pretty sapphire eyes."

I'll yank yours out if you don't show me a decent pair of pants, and preferably a T-shirt that wasn't asking me to torn apart out there.

"I'm sorry; do you want me to be ripped to shreds out there? Those kids are vicious. Monsters. They prey on you, waiting for the right moment to strike, and then they shred you to small, itty-bitty pieces."

"And your parents will rip me to shreds if you don't wear it. So put the thing on."

"And I'll tear you to shreds if you make me wear it."

Five minutes later I was decked out in a rather casual set of clothes, looking like the cat that caught the canary.

It didn't take me long to regret all my life choices leading up to this event.

"Hi, my name is Yamamoto Takeshi and I want to be a baseball player what's your name?"

I grunted, not even looking at the brat.

"Hi, my name is Yamamoto Takeshi and I want to be a baseball player what's your name?"

I grunted again, louder this time.

"Hi, my name is Yamamoto Takeshi and I want to be a baseball player what's your name?"

Contemplating murder, I finally turned to the midget, eager to tell him to bog off. With a (hopefully) threatening glare, I wasn't about to put up with him being his annoying self, and I wasn't going to sit around and just listen to the same thing in a loop.

"Hi, my name is Yamamoto Takeshi and I want to be a base-"

"I gathered that."

How on Earth are you supposed to get rid of little brats? Do you just sort of acknowledge them until they go away?

Still glaring, I was prepared for him to run away.

I wasn't prepared for him to just sit there, staring at me with that dopey look on his face.

If I wasn't so annoyed, I would have called him cute. He was certainly a sunny boy, all smiles and laughter, and I had to kill the urge to squee at his cute features. Yamamoto looked absolutely adorable, and loathe as I was to admit it I was jealous of him.

"Who are you?"

"If I tell you will you leave me alone, preferably for the rest of your life?"

"What does preferably mean?"

"…Why are you still here?"

"You looked lonely, and tou-san said to never leave a pretty girl looking lonely."

A sigh, "I'm hardly pretty,"

And I wasn't, not in the sense that I judged prettiness. I tried to stay away from all that – I kept my hair short, I refused to touch anything with bows and there was no way in Hell that I would even think about wearing pink.

I may be a little girl but I was still a man!

Yamamoto-san must be blind.

"Yes you are. See, you have pink shoes," he nodded, a proud expression on his face, and if I was an onlooker I would have thought that he cracked the Divinci Code, "Papa says that pink equals pretty things, so you must be pretty."

Oh right. Them.

I may have been able to escape the dress, but the pink shoe were another thing entirely. The maid was far too adamant about those cursed things.

"Nadeshiko Nagi," maybe if I was lucky he would go away now, now that I've indulged him.

"Huh," if it was possible he became even cuter. It was disgusting.

"My name. You wanted it, didn't you?" four year olds aren't meant to be this stubborn, there supposed to get bored and return to whatever swamp spawned them after a while.

"Wanna play baseball?"

"…you aren't gonna leave me alone, are you? You'll just end up annoying me until I say yes." Takeshi just smiled again, that cheesy grin, and it painfully reminded me of someone else. With a roll of my eyes, I stood, staring down dispassionately at the vibrant face below. "You're going to have to teach me how to play, never played a game before in my life."

With an ecstatic cry, he dragged me off to the makeshift pitch him and his friends had set up, crowing something about batting averages and spouting gospel about some random American who'd made it big there.

I didn't really care. All I got out of that particular game was quite a few scrapes when a rather pathetic gremlin threw the ball a bit too hard, and just a tad off, knocking me off my feet.

I got my revenge though. The bat somehow manage to slip out of my hand as I swung, smacking the brat in the head.

It isn't called being vindictive.

It's called being 'selectively forgiving'.

And I was very good at that.

Chapter 2, Fin~

Oh wow, this chapter feels incomplete. For some reason I just don't feel happy with this chapter. If you have any suggestions on what to add, send me a PM and I'll get to work.

If you want to see the argument that I was planning to have the two have, just mention it in either a PM or the review and I'll tack it on in an omake to the next chapter.

And a question has been asked that I felt is necessary for everyone to know. Chrome/DAvid will have the Mist flame, not the Sun flame. Just thought I would toss that out there.

And OMG 4 Reviews/13 Favs/11 Follows thank you so much~ And I hope you all enjoy this chapter.

Until Next Time,

Signed, HalcyonNight~