The weather apparently can't seem to make up its mind on what it wants to do.
There was a sudden weight on his lap, pulling Reborn back to reality only to make him gasp for air, feeling as if he was drowning. The air was hot and thick with Flames. So much that it made Reborn sweat from the heat and caused him a headache. Is this hell? He briefly wondered, before realising that he was still in the same place he was before falling unconscious. I guess even hell wouldn't accept someone like me, he huffed in slight amusement, before his thoughts slowly turned more serious. Why was the air so thick with Flames? Wasn't it freezing before?
...That's right, he realized, I was bleeding out and freezing from the cold. But he didn't feel any pain anymore from his side.
Reborn was going to check his injury when he remembered that something was on his lap. Looking down he found a child breathing heavily with its eyes screwed shut, gripping its shirt –hospital garb, his groggy mind supplied– tightly near the heart. The child, boy, looked in pain. If Reborn were deaf, he'd say the boy was moaning in pain, but he could only hear the heavy breaths of the boy unaccompanied by a voice.
He needed to help the boy somehow, but he just couldn't think straight. Reborn cursed softly under his breath, there was just too much Flame in the air. It was seriously messing with him.
Reborn reached out to the brunet's shoulder, only for the boy to flinch, even though he had his eyes shut. The Flames in the air jerked at the same time as the boy, which made the hitman finally realise that, as impossible as it sounded, the Flames were coming from the small child on his lap. "Hey, kid..." Reborn said, mind still groggy and refusing to clear up.
The boy finally opened his eyes and turned to look up at him, slight confusion showing through his pained expression. That's when Reborn noticed the barcode on the boy's left cheek, which marked the kid as a victim of human trafficking.
Reborn shook his head. He needed to concentrate on getting the boy to pull in his Flames. "You need to pull in your Flames," he told the boy, "you're expanding them too much." His words came out slower than he liked, but he was just glad he managed to get his thoughts straight enough to instruct the kid.
The boy gave him a confused look, and Reborn cursed his luck. Did the boy even know what Flames were?
"Your Flames," he tried again, gesturing around them trying to make a point, hoping against hope that the boy would somehow understand what he meant, "draw them back in."
The hitman watched for what felt like too long as the boy's eyes widened as realisation slowly dawned on him. The brunet closed his eyes and tried to even out his breathing, before the air around them jerked again and Reborn could feel the Flames in the air lessening slowly at first, but then picking up speed. He closed his eyes and let out a breath he didn't know he was holding, feeling his mind slowly become clearer again.
"Okay kid," Reborn started and looked at the boy again, as he felt the last of the Flames in the air dissipate, only to find the boy still had his eyes screwed shut in deep concentration. "Hey," he was reaching out to tap the brunet on the shoulder, when suddenly, without warning, the air around them abruptly turned ice cold. He was going to shake the boy's shoulder, but the moment he touched him he felt as if all the warmth of his hand was being sucked away as his own Flames drained away from him at a horrifying pace.
"Shit–" Reborn instinctively shoved the boy off of him in shock at the uncomfortable sensation, breaking the boy's concentration and causing him to yelp, or at least what Reborn would have thought would be a yelp, but came out voiceless instead, at suddenly being pushed onto the ground. Reborn felt the air slowly warm up again as the surrounding air mixed with the cold around them and boy's Flames started to slowly leak out. And damn, how strong were the boy's Flames when even Reborn could feel them as if they were the most obvious thing in the world?
The boy attempted to stand up on wobbly –too thin– legs, only to shiver from the cold causing his legs to give out. Reborn quickly reached out to grab the boy before he could fall face first onto the hard ground. The brunet slumped in his arms, unconscious. There was none of the unnerving Flame drain he felt before and he sighed in relief. The boy was still constantly leaking a small stream of Flames though and Reborn frowned at that.
That couldn't be healthy.
But that also wasn't any if his business now, was it? He could leave the boy here and make his escape. The Vanettis couldn't be too far away, could they? He certainly wouldn't expect them to give up so easily.
But that just didn't feel right.
His gaze lingered a moment on the frail boy in his arms, who just looked too thin and was too light, before his bloodied suit caught his attention. Right, he had been injured. Reborn held the boy with one arm and used his free hand to lift his blood stained dress shirt…
… Only to find an ugly scar that looked like it should have been a few weeks old. He turned to look at the kid again, the only one who could have healed him somehow,and made up his mind.
After all, Reborn owed no one a favour. Only others owed him things, never the other way around and he planned to keep it that way, even if that meant temporarily helping out a stray kid. So he lifted the boy up so that his head was leaning on Reborn's shoulder while the hitman held the boy securely in front if him.
They were going to get out of this alley without any unwanted attention. Besides, Reborn was uninjured and there was nothing he couldn't do, even with an unconscious child in his arms leaking Flames for all the world to see.
A/N: Thanks for the reviews! I really appreciate them :D I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! If you have time, let me know what you thought about it!
