A/N: No I have no excuses... Just a lost of muse, I haven't even been following ANY KHR for the past... six months? No, zip, nada.
Thanks to: SamaSamaOfDooM, LadyPsychopath, XienRue (I could do that... depends. Thanks for the suggestion), Genmyonai Hikaru (Aish, sorry for the fail at emotions, it's really hard...), Inu no youkai, and iAmACupOfJello for the reviews! I don't know why you guys bother to stay so long on this story... _
Anyway, hope you like it! The title of the story is from "Lose Your Mind", a song by the Wanted ^^
Chapter 11: Lose Your Mind
Chrome jerked awake from her nightmare as the bed she was leaning on suddenly moved. Disoriented from having just woken up, she failed to recognize her surroundings until she noticed the hospital bed.
The empty hospital bed.
She gasped in horror, thinking that the charge that Mukuro had left her had disappeared right under her nose. Wide-awake, she was about to run out of the room to tell Tsuna when she noticed the thin silhouette of the Cloud guardian by the closed window.
"Oh, goodness…" Chrome let out a breath of relief as she walked towards the unmoving figure, "Hibari-san, it's best if you go back to bed…" Moving closer, she tentatively tapped his limp arm by his side.
Hibari flinched at the touch, and she drew back in concern. Chrome shivered inwardly as she noticed how his bangs-covered eyes seemed to eye her warily, like an animal in a cage.
After a few minutes of staring, Chrome worriedly asked, "Hibari-san, are you alright?"
The taller male did not respond, and Chrome was beginning to suspect something was wrong. Unconsciously leaning closer, she stared carefully at his pale complexion, peering past his bangs to glimpse his one purple and one grey pair of eyes…
Wait; was that one purple and one grey?
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
"What the hell is with the tapping?" Gokudera cursed as the annoying tapping roused him from his sleep. Tsunayoshi rubbed at his honey-brown eyes tiredly, muttering, "Gokudera-kun, why are you so noisy even at night…"
"Sorry, Tenth!" The silver haired male promptly sat up from his bed, knocking his head against the ceiling as he attempted to bow to his boss. Tsuna let out a disgruntled noise, as Yamamoto simply mumbled, "Even if you wake up, you could have tried to be softer," before falling back to a deep sleep.
"What, you baseball—"
Tsuna held up a tired hand to cease Gokudera's cursing, and quickly changed the subject. "What tapping was it you heard?"
Tap.
Tap.
The duo glanced at the direction of the incessant tapping, to the closed window. Warily, Gokudera stalked closer to the window, while grabbing the nearest thing as a weapon (Yamamoto's baseball bat). Tsuna slowly reached forward and opened it, letting a gust of cold air, and the intruding source of the noise to blow and fall in respectively.
"Is that... Hibird?" Gokudera muttered in confusion as the ball of yellow fluff landed at their feet. The small animal had disappeared just as they returned from Choice, and no one knew where it had gone… until now, that is.
"Where has he been all those days," Tsuna muttered, closing the window. He picked up the small bird, and abruptly froze.
"…Um, what is it Tenth?" Gokudera was increasingly puzzled by the peculiar behavior from his boss and sudden appearance of the bird.
Tsuna gently pried the item from the bird's mouth and stared at it in shock.
"I-It's…. impossible… the Cloud Vongola ring…"
Chrome opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out as the seemingly weak male pinned her against the wall, pressing his tonfas against her fragile throat. She stared fearfully at him, as Hibari leaned in and whispered, "Don't you dare make a sound, Mist Guardian."
She gasped for air as the pressure on her windpipe increased, confused and afraid of the frightening behavior of the Cloud Guardian. He was not supposed to be able to move, but here he was, looking at her emotionlessly with his dual-colored eyes that alone frightened her.
"H-Hibari… san…" She whispered, "H-how…"
The raven-haired male's emotionless face smoldered into a glare for barely a second before fading, and he breathed in her ear, "You don't need to know how..."
She could not think straight; all she could see was the dual-colored orbs that seemed to make her forget her surroundings. Desperately, she searched her mind for the link between herself and Mukuro.
Mukuro-sama, please help!
Hibari let out a surprised sound as the figure he was pinning began to change shape, from a petite girl into a taller male whose hair was definitely longer.
"You're supposed to be too weak to come here…"
"Kufufu, you know, Nagi, Kyoya. She's really relenting when it comes to control," Mukuro smirked as the raven-haired male glared at him.
Mukuro did a double take as he noticed the purple eye glaring heatedly at him. Immediately, he knew who it was.
"Byakuran, what do you want?"
The glare twisted into a smirk that looked foreign on the Cloud guardian's features, as the possessor made himself known, "So you did notice. Hah."
"Why is you possessing Kyoya's body, you bastard!" Mukuro snapped in irritation, a trident forming in his hand, as his mind raced for ideas on how to chase the conniving bastard out of his Kyoya's body (He certainly thought Kyoya as his after years of trying to woo him, after all. No way was he going to lose out to some rapist!).
"I'm only partially possessing him, Mukuro-chan—" –Mukuro gagged inwardly at the demeaning title— "You can be sure most of this is Kyoya's own thinking."
"Y-You're lying," spluttered the blue-haired male.
"Whatever. You'll see." The smirk faded, to be replaced by the familiar expression of boredom mingled with disgust on the Cloud guardian's face.
"Sa, Kyoya, what is it you want then?'
"Hand over the Mist ring, Rokudo Mukuro, if you value your life," Hibari deadpanned at the question.
Mukuro laughed, "No way, Kyoya. Anyway, you don't have the guts to do it."
A flicker of uncertainty flitted across his face. The pressure of the tonfa on his throat increased, his knuckles turning white as he gripped them tightly. Mukuro knew that the Cloud guardian valued nothing more than his already shattered pride, and with careful jibes, he might be able coax the real Hibari out of the shell.
It was a really big "might", though.
"If you take the ring, where would you go anyway? We will easily hunt you down, since you are nothing to what you were before." Mukuro felt guilty that he had to say this to Hibari, but he knew it was the only way for the Cloud guardian to come back to his senses.
Hibari's resolve to his "master" faded, and inside, he felt his real self waking up from somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Glaring at the red and blue-eyed male, he tried to fight back against the jumble of feelings that suddenly seemed to crash on him.
"S-Shut up," Hibari snarled quietly, his frame trembling as Mukuro chuckled at his weak reply.
"What can you do to stop me, Kyoya? Kufufu, you will try to disappear to Byakuran's side, but once he's done with you he will just throw you aside like all his other toys." Mukuro tried to coax Hibari to wake up, with just his eyes, trying not to resort to the worst possible line to wake him up…
"I said, shut up, you bastard!"
"You will never be able to beat me anymore, Kyoya. The Vongola will find you after you have betrayed them, and find no more use for you as Cloud guardian,"
Please, Kyoya, don't make me say it…
"Even now, you are pretty useless to them…"
Please…
"I don't understand why they don't just throw you away now…"
I'm sorry…
"You have no pride left. You are nothing but a broken soul."
Mukuro's guilt increased tenfold by the shocked expression on Kyoya's face, the real consciousness back. The crystalline tears fell out of the normal grey colored eyes, the total impact of the words crushing him.
The Cloud guardian dropped his weary head, not letting his most hated enemy see his tears. With the onslaught of emotions, he felt his other self trying to regain control of his body…
"…Kyoya…?" Mukuro's guilt made his concern all the more palpable as he tried to get the attention of his colleague.
Hibari lifted his head, bloodshot eyes framed by his tousled and messy hair, the pupils flickering back to purple and grey repetitively. Hibari knew he was going to lose control very soon… reaching up, he grabbed the tie of the taller male he was pinning and brought it down to his level, whispering…
"Kill me."