And I Wished for the Sky to be Clear Again
Disclaimer: I do not own KHR nor any of the characters except my own.
"Italics" indicates a foreign language. Italian, in this particular case.
"Speech" indicates the usual speak. Japanese.
Tsuna instinctively flinched as he felt his petite frame slumped over a man's shoulder and grimaced at the treatment that had him feeling like a sack of potatoes. The brunet tensed and the man tightened the grip on his waist. With the blaring headache at the forefront of his mind, coupled with the invasive flare of lights, Tsuna was about ready to bare his teeth crying murder; but his body refused to move, he dumbly registered.
Fingers twitching, a flood of memories invaded the murky expanse of his mind. Bitterness, indigo flames, and troubletroubleyoubloodyjinxedit. Questions popped into existence one by one, Tsuna didn't expect any answers but a panicked disappointment filled his heart against his will.
Weakly, he hit the back of the man that slugged him through a corridor decorated with naught a bland, pasty white. "H-hey… Let go of...!"
The man clicked his tongue in displeasure, but remained utterly silent otherwise. Continuing his clicking footsteps on the concrete floor. Tsuna wracked his brain from one end of a compass to the other. His mouth felt dry, like sandpaper against the roof of his mouth. He hasn't eaten nor drunk ever since the news of his mother's death. The headache wasn't helping either; trouble was here and Tsuna was helpless to stop it.
His frustration grew.
Tsuna was soon shoved into a spacious room that looked an approximate size relative to his apartment. The walls and floored were tiled with a sickening shade of bleached white. A metallic table stood in its midst, and Tsuna forced whatever inch of fear that threatened to exit his throat down through sheer willpower.
The smell of actual bleach wasn't helpful by any means. His gut told him many terrible things had taken place here. He wouldn't be the first, nor last person to step inside this room and wished for any kind of deity to exist so that they could whisk him away from this hellhole.
Imagination gone awry, the brunet refused to curse. He couldn't allow any more control to slip through his fingers to the monsters that existed beyond the soundproofed walls. He assumed so because he heard nothing save the quickening squeeze in his heart. The young boy made his way groggily towards a corner of the cubic room.
Leaning against the wall, he slid down as he did similarly after his mother's funeral. Fear of the unknown aside, Tsuna was morbidly curious of what happened to Nana's ashes after he was taken away. Did the Estraneo Famiglia simply let the dead lie? Probably. And if so, will Namimori allow his mother some semblance of peace as she leaves the Earth to join with a table of Gods and Goddesses?
Kami, Tsuna really hoped so.
(Hope, huh.)
As the brunet tucked his chin within the knobbly confines of his knees, the door opened with little more than the subtle sound of a shifting doorknob. Tsuna's head whipped upwards faster than a startled rat's sprint to safety- because that's what he was now, added a cruel entity born from his fear. Nothing more than a confined animal.
The voice sounded a lot like his.
A broad shouldered man appeared at the door after he closed it with an intimidating click. Tsuna screamed as his intuition screamed; in seconds, the boy scrambled to his feet. Voice hoarse as he nimbly avoided the pair of turquoise-gloved hands that chased him while he reached for the door after running one too many panicked rounds. The man slammed his body against the metal as he turned the doorknob. It was locked- of course it was locked- and a hand roughly pulled him away by the collar of his newly changed hospital gown.
Tsuna refused to screech or let any tears fall as he is hanging- literally- by the thread of his clothes. A shot of ice made its way down the deep crevices of his brain as something inside him shattered into a million pieces like abused glass. A warmth was pulled from within, Tsuna's eyes unknowingly glowed with power.
Faster than his mouth could shut with a resounding 'clack' at the back of his teeth, the masked man burst into a symphony of orange flames. The singing of a thousand sorrowful choirs howled in the crevices of Tsuna's skull.
(Freefreefreefreefree)
Three, four, five people entered the room dressed in heavy duty gear. Their identities were hidden with the presence of a dark mask that looked straight out of a horror movie. Tsuna was struggling against his new captors with the passion of a sun he knew he wouldn't see for a while. A blow was aimed at his head and it didn't miss.
The momentary chaos that ensued in the room was quickly made right when a needle was shoved into Tsuna's neck. They manhandled the boy into a position whereupon his arms were shoved behind his back, face pressed against the cool surface of the metallic table. Right then- the sharp prick of a tag-like earring for his right ear was carelessly pinned and Tsuna's body betrayed itself by falling into unconsciousness once more.
The monsters, he noted before a heady sleep took him, were speaking in a language he didn't understand.
Tsuna growled; strangely enough, for the first time since his arrival here, the mere notice of the foreign language had Tsuna feeling a raging anger in ways he couldn't understand why.
Was this even Japan anymore? He wanted to vomit.
/
Ashamed, Tsuna found himself mocked awake by the cold, unfeeling world for the second time that day. Or was it even the same day? He wondered idly. The pounding in his head had reduced into a slight throb; the brunet had an inkling of a feeling that it wasn't because he was out of danger, but for the fact that he wouldn't be able to do a thing about it even if he tried.
Grunting, the boy was strapped by his legs and wrists with a leather strap on a metal armchair without any the comfort despite the intended use of the device. The brunet's newest accessory by his ear swung idly from the drift in the air-conditioned room, Tsuna felt like one of those cows he saw on TV once, a dark swell of red-orange throbbed in his chest again.
His breath hitched.
Clicking his tongue, Tsuna didn't miss the show of humanoid figures wrapped by white coats on the opposite side of the glass panel from where he sat. There was even a panel of colourful, some even blinking, buttons before them. Their delicate hands that probably haven't had to work manual labour even once in their pathetic lives caressed the panel softly.
Tsuna glared at them the best he could. Face imitating the ones he saw the Yakuza nii-sans make when a deal went wrong. ("A fucking traitor within or midsts?!" He remembered hearing. The wisp of memory easily coming, people tended to not notice the young boy as he laid battered black and blue at the corners of their office; hands clutched at a wad of cash they tossed at him in misplaced pity.)
The brunet was unbothered to find out if they felt even a drop of fear that he felt when he saw the expression of unbridled hatred for the first time. Nobody fidgeted as far as he could tell, Tsuna wanted to see their accursed masks burn.
Two somebodies stepped in, Déjà vu coming in too soon. Why did his world turn like this? Tsuna mentally groaned. They started attaching him to foreign wires, pricking his skin as they embedded his veins with foreign fluid. The boy screeched, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" But instead of listening, Tsuna received a swell in his cheek for the effort. Neck snapped to the side as a callous-less palm met his face.
Tsuna flinched with every wire that met his skin, with every tube that continued to've hung in him like some puppeteer's masterpiece. 'No tears,' he mentally reminded himself. Not a peep of weakness. 'You've gone through the Yakuza and Hibari's, you will do it again with these heartless bastards.'
A collar, thin and sleek and grey, was locked on Tsuna's neck as his eyes widened from seeing a new bag of transparent liquid that traveled agonizingly slow from the tubes they attached into him. In what seemed like forever, all Tsuna knew was hurtnopleasestopstopstop for what felt like a million needles running through his veins.
He screamed, every pretense of false bravery dropped. And so the Sky wept.
Tsuna was considered underweight compared to a baseline of standards in Namimori. His size sometimes helped in keeping him unnoticeable and quick to run whenever he bothered to take attendance in Namimori Primary School. Once upon a time, the brunet was even proud to say that he'd outrun Hibari Kyouya when it mattered thanks to his smaller, nimbler frame.
The point was, he thought he was skinny and it hardly mattered because Tsuna wasn't weak, wasn't Dame. He could pack a mean punch if he so desired. Some low leveled Yakuza, dresses as gaudily as hosts, would vouch for him even. Yet, his confidence seemed to hold little more than a tiny candled flamed compared to the world that was of its own in this mildly crowded holding cell.
He'd stumbled in, trembling like some newborn fawn after the torture the Estraneo put him through. Dull pair of eyes, all ringed with each its own: the colour of the rainbow- they appeared to glow as Tsuna trudged unsteadily to an unoccupied corner at the back of the cell. Curling up as his tucked himself into a ball of pain and hunger. The children that ranged between the ages of his own and half a decade more unsettled Tsuna.
More than half of them were literally on the borderline of skin and bones. Not a millimeter of fat to keep warmth underneath their skin. More than just half of the children had scars too large to be accidental. The imprint of leather restraints on their wrists and ankles. Multiple needle marks on their necks and arms. Messily done stiches, deliberate disfigurement. A girl in particular had no eyes; a bloodied bandage wrapped around her head where the sockets bled black through the cloth. His pain was but the beginning of it all.
Tsuna wanted to gasp when he walked through the lot of them, concern welling up despite his own sorry state that was nothing compared to so many of his newest cell-mates. Would that be him in a week or so?
The children seemed to shrug off their state like it was something minor. At a section of the cell, some kids were playing a game with pre-arranged hand signs. Another walked about restlessly, as if they couldn't just drop dead anytime. Tsuna thought he was skinny but strong, once. Yet, his resolution felt inadequate compared to the forest-fire of untainted survival the kids excluded.
His intuition blared, some of his compassion felt too personal for people he hardly knew. Unnatural? Its childlike voice mumbled. Mine? Mineminemineminemineplease?
What had they injected him with? Why was his soul crying for at least 2 of the residents within this prison?
('Sky,' a voice whispered at the back of his consciousness. 'My Sky, my home. Save us, let us fear no more. Make the pain stop. Please. I-It hurts, my Sky. Help us, and my Mist will belong in your sky until the ends of time. Until the earth collapses and the night mourns for those lost.')
Scarlet pain bloomed by his side as Tsuna's gaze flickered to whoever attacked him. A young boy stood before the newest resident of their personal hell; despite his dull blue eyes and greasy brown hair, Tsuna noticed the familiar smirk on his face. It was the expression of the oppressed weak that tried so very hard to regain any resemblance of control after their lives have gone to shit. Tsuna would know. Most of his bruises and wounds came from the Yakuza lackeys that deemed it appropriate to hit a child for their own well-being looked so.
"New kid," the boy sneered. Although Tsuna hadn't a clue of what he was talking about. Understanding the second of confusion on Tsuna's face at his mother-tongue, the boy's sneer only grew wider.
"Fucking bastard, bet yer another half-breed huh? Welcome to the family, I hope you like feeling hungry, cuz new bloods never get food- shitty freaks like you don't deserve it."
Intuition blaring, Tsuna didn't need to understand his words to guess from the mocking tone of his attacker's tone that the boy just insulted Tsuna and implied that something bad would happen soon. And he was speaking in that language. The bloody language that he didn't know scrap about. The one reminding him with every syllable on another's tongue that he didn't belong here in a place that wasn't Japan, in clothes that wasn't his alongside a brain that kept telling him things he couldn't understand!
What in Kami's name was a Sky? A Mist? Why was it that the terms had never felt so right in his twice damned life?!
Why couldn't people like the ones in front of him just die? What would one possibly gain from picking on the weak than another reminder of their own powerlessness in the first place?
The boy could kick hard at least, the brunet admitted. And Tsuna estimated him to be at least a quarter lighter than himself. Two lackeys backed the boy up, eyes practically soaked in jeer; smiles uglier from their emaciated appearances.
"Shutup." Tsuna looked directly in their eyes and said in Japanese. His childish voice echoed against the walls. More kids started starring at the foreign tongue, Tsuna felt some of their interests rising. Like a breath of fresh air after another day of pain and fear and the acrid smell of urine. Others felt disinterested but unsurprised. The boy was a bully, not a new one at that and nobody cared.
"What the fuck did you say?" The boy remarked testily.
Tsuna didn't respond, allowing his flaring temper to build. Soon, he got up wobbling and socked the boy directly in the face. Punch made with his fists- clenched tightly, fueled with determined anger and frustration all the way down to his tiny, calloused, trembling fingers.
"I said. Shut. Up." The boy spat.
Someone laughed, Tsuna turned his head sharply at the sound. "Kufufufu. This is awfully cute and all. Language barrier and such, but let's get some Italian in you, shall we?"
Nearby, what sounded like a whiny protest followed right after. Almost immediately after the Tsuna's initial bully fell to his bony knees crying in pain, the ringing of a school bell sounded. The brunet dubbed, 'caretaker' (the man that carried him over his shoulder. Like a sack of potatoes; he would kill to eat right now) stepped in; balanced on both his hands were stacked trays of food that shouldn't be able to pass for food at all.
The monstrosity was semi-liquid, looking like oatmeal but not. It smelled bland and Tsuna frowned as a bitter sigh escaped his lips. The heterochromatic eyed child laughed his funny laugh once more, giving a cheeky look towards the brunet. It was as though he was susceptible to Tsuna's strengthening resolve regarding his opinion on the potatoes.
The owner of the pineapple hairstyle glanced at Tsuna coyly. "Lunch. I hope you enjoy your stay here, Sawada Tsunayoshi."