Warnings: Slight derealization/depersonalization, detailed vomiting scene, gore, underage drinking, stress-drinking, symptoms of PTSD (emotional/partial flashbacks), implied child abuse

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Recovery Of Mind

Kyouko wakes up in a cold sweat, jumping up so fast that the large, firm arm trying to hold her back feels like a hammer to her chest.

"Onii-san," she gasps, then, "oh, he's fine."

She straightens and tries to take in her surroundings now that she isn't completely ruled by worry. She's in the school infirmary, and the sky is steadily darkening. There's no one else around, except for sports teams and the steady figure of Kusakabe at her bedside.

"Senpai," she says distractedly. "Hello."

"You passed out in class earlier," Kusakabe says, full of stern concern.

"I'm fine, I just…" She touches the side of her forehead gently. It's only a little sore. "Someone hurt my brother."

His brows furrow. "Your brother?"

"He's on vacation. I was so scared, I could feel it." She sags slightly. "He's okay now, but I don't know what happened. Do you think he was hit by a car?"

"You passed out in class…because…you felt that your brother, who isn't in school, was injured?"

"I can usually just tell. But I never get the reasons right, he's always doing the weirdest things." She shakes her head. "Sorry, I must have missed our meeting."

Kusakabe is looking at her. He's anticipating something.

"Ah…I shouldn't be talking about my brother like that," she realizes. "Oh, I'm sorry, it must be bad enough for you, when Hibari-san is—"

Kusakabe's reaction is abrupt and visceral. His eyes widen, narrow, and he grabs her wrist and squeezes, so sudden and so tight she cries out and falls back on the bed.

"How do you know about that?" His voice is hot, furious, and grim in a way Kyouko's never heard from him, and the stress and fear comes back with a vengeance.

"That's what…that's what you're worried about, isn't it?" Kyouko whispers.

"How do you know?"

"I-I don't…" Kyouko tries to backtrack to where she got the information, but she can't. It just is. A fact sitting in her head like it's always been there. 'Kusakabe is worried about Hibari's safety'. The deeper she looks, the more she realizes other things just are. Hibari's anxiety, a horrible aura that's choking the town, and fear, fear, fear. It crawls at the back of her head, an entrenching horror somewhere where neither of them are. The deeper she plunges into Namimori, the more she comes out feeling, as if it's oozing secrets. "I just do."

Kusakabe stares at her. Slowly, he releases her hand, and he sags too, looking awful. He wipes his hands over his face and lets out a long, slow breath. Finally, he looks up at her with strained eyes.

"…Sasagawa, I'm going ask you a question, and I want you to answer honestly."

She curls up a little. "…O…Okay?"

"Are you psychic?"

Suddenly, everything makes quite a bit more sense.

~x~

"Here we go," Hana declares, stuffing their weapons into a little crook on the roof.

"You sure they won't find it there?"

"Well they'll definitely find it in our rooms, soooo," Hana says leadingly. Takeshi just shrugs.

After their impromptu movie night, Takeshi was losing saliency and Tsuna was clocking out at a steadily increasing rate, so Hana and Gokudera decided to collect their own, Gokudera leading Tsuna by the hand to their bedroom and Hana throwing a cup of water over Takeshi's head so he wouldn't pass out on her. She can't carry a 180-centimetre teenage boy with a broken arm onto and over a hotel roof.

She took the package, but Takeshi had brought up an important issue earlier with the concern of having their prizes found.

So, hidey-holes.

Takeshi isn't really paying attention, though. He's staring off into space in the direction they came from, with a frown fixed on his face. "…You think Tsuna's okay?"

"He's fine. He's always fine."

"I know, but I mean…he seemed kinda…" Takeshi scratches his head. "Worried."

"He's fine," Hana says, if only so she doesn't have to hear it. She doesn't have the energy to pick apart either Tsuna or Takeshi's psyche right now, and there's a whole lot to pick apart, even in regards to something as simple as Takeshi's concern for the little sloth creep.

If Hana had to describe how Takeshi feels about Tsuna, it would be an endless thirst.

Hunger, hunger is usual Takeshi's game. He's hungry for a lot. For information, tangible relationships, and always for approval. He craves it, seeks it out in every situation, and feels happy and full on it when he gets his way. Takeshi's hunger is really uncomfortably familiar to Hana. They don't have the same overall tastes, really; Hana doesn't bother with validation, beyond that of her friends, for one. But in little ways, the two of them pretty similar. Canny little information sponges who want someone to be tangled up in.

It's the thirst that's different.

Yamamoto Takeshi spent the entire first few months of knowing Tsuna being pants-shittingly terrified of him, maybe even more than his peers, because he spent most of his time in class with Tsuna staring at the back of his head and he couldn't quite wrestle himself into a position where he could absorb the opinion 'Tsuna is a huge loser baby'. It was almost funny.

But now Tsuna has given him something, fed him, at some point Hana can't quite place, and now there's this thirst. A dependency. This weird…half-desperation, all-consuming need, the kind of shit Hana reads in sappy romance novels where it's heart-throbbing in the confines of the pages, but kind of weird and unhealthy in real life.

He's in loooooooooove.

But in a really, really weird way. There's no way Tsuna would understand — on account of him being a huge weenie and a perpetrator of this creepy behaviour himself — how unsettling Takeshi is being. Like someone who found an oasis and decided to set up camp forever, to hell with the world outside that one glimpse of water. It's not the kind of feeling dictated by actual logic.

Hana doesn't want to tease him, because it makes her skin crawl, the deliberateness and patience in how he regards Tsuna. It makes her skin crawl in ways Gokudera's absurd screaming obsession with Tsuna doesn't, because that's all 100% one-sided responsibility.

It makes her skin crawl in the same way seeing Takeshi get up in that ruin did, his eyes clear and cold under the languid stream of the blue flame on his forehead, taking in everything he needed to and then going right on with the most important task that struck him in that moment, no interest in the details.

It makes her skin crawl in the same way Tsuna going Dark does.

It's like when she was seeing Tsuna, Dark as Hana has ever seen him, silhouetted in the doorway of the closet, covered in visible blood splatters on what few edges the glowstick could illuminate. Smudges along his arms, looking like true black, something that sucks up light, trailing down his arms from a cut on his arm that didn't exist.

It's the kind of immediate, laser-like focus you get when a pulse of adrenalin eats up your fear.

Do I have to kill you?

And then, for others,

Do I have to kill for you?

It's not something Hana really noticed in Takeshi at all beforehand, but the entire time they were in that suite, his eyes tracked Tsuna and repeated that question endlessly.

Do I have to kill for you?

Intellectually, Hana knows it's because earlier this morning someone nearly killed half his friends and Takeshi is just the type of guy to pick out his favourite person and go alright, how do I stop that from happening to you in particular. It's not like Takeshi means to be weird about it. It's perfectly sensible. The intensity is chalked up to his huge, embarrassing crush.

It's just that Hana has spent so, so long seeing Tsuna give that look to Kyouko, and god does it ever make her shiver.

Not that she's worried about Kyouko. She's just worried about what would make Tsuna think that sort of obsessive focus is appropriate. All of Takeshi's friends nearly died. He got chucked through a floor. Tsuna showed up soaked in blood with a stab wound. What the hell is Tsuna's damage, where he automatically defaults to a look like that?

Well, besides the fact Tsuna is in looooooooove.

Which is another thing Hana isn't comfortable teasing him about. Everyone around her is incapable of having crushes like normal people, Tsuna especially. He has a specific Weird Skin-Crawly look for Hibari too, which reads less like I'll kill for you and more like kill me god please destroy me. Tsuna is horrific to keep track of. Hana has four journals on him. Not pages. Journals. Every facet of him is a new level of unsettling and/or embarrassing, and she feels a terrible urge to always learn more, regardless of relevancy, like watching a trainwreck.

Hana needs better friends.

When they get to their suite, Takeshi passes out the moment he hits the bed. He's still exhausted from his fight or whatever, and wasn't running on all cylinders the whole time anyway. Hana feels restless, and doesn't go to sleep herself. There's something weighing down her shoulders, crawling along the back of her mind.

Instead, she heads back out the balcony, and starts dropping floors.

Each floor has an expanse of open air before the next, a constant barrage of heart-stopping moments. She makes it to the fifth floor, where the building abruptly stops having balconies. The sliding door is open, and she doesn't bother checking for tenants, just dives across the room and barges out the door.

No one stops her on her way to the elevator. She hops on the balls of her feet anxiously as she waits for it to rise, and then abruptly changes her mind and goes down the side stairs.

It plunges into the basement level, which is locked, at the moment. She pokes her head out of the ground floor doorway, examining her surroundings. The place is absolutely filthy with dark-suited men. Almost all of them are too old for her, which is pitiful, because it's a really good look.

She walks again like she owns the place, behind the light cover of potted plants and couches. No one pays her much mind; she assumes they just want to make sure no one leaves, which means she isn't getting the night-time stroll she desperately needs right now. She enters the restaurant instead.

There's a lot of them dining in here, and a few students huddled in small little packets, dressed the same as she is. Hana takes a seat by herself, and buries her head in her arms so her hair spills over them.

She sits like that for a while, until the sound of someone sliding in next to her hits her ears. She glances up to see Shouichi, looking ill and nervous.

"I wasn't sure what happened to you," he admits quietly. "They won't tell us anything."

"We're all in the penthouses," Hana says, just as quiet.

"Oh." Shouichi mimics her posture, with his face half-obscured by the folded wall of his arms. He's not wearing the ring anymore, and Hana doesn't see any chain around the back of his neck.

"…Gokudera said something about you. Your rings."

Shouichi curls up tighter. After a moment, he pulls out a large, circular device that looks like a mix between a seashell and a dial. Then he pulls out a smaller version. He takes the smaller one and gives it a few turns — there's a feeling of static along Hana's skin, and she can feel a sort of burning sensation coming from Shouichi's pocket.

"…It's using the same stuff, you know?" Shouichi says quietly, looking at the small dial. "…The energy from the ruins, I mean. That fire. Gokudera's teacher said I could see it. I felt…I wanted to do what he said, because it made me feel important, I guess. But now that it's over, I just feel…" He picks up the other dial, the big one. "…This is just a bigger replica. All it's supposed to do is increase the range and strength. It works, usually. Made me light-headed when I tried it. I thought it would help somehow. But there was so much power."

There's a silence between them. Shouichi's eyes are misty. "I don't understand. Why would Umi-san have something like this?"

Shouichi has a crush like a normal person.

Warm, gooey feelings, and hope, and clinging to gestures of affection, wanting to return them every time. He has a penpal and he's in love with her and she makes him feel a normal, completely average gooey feeling, and because he's normal, because he doesn't open her letters and think do I have to kill for you? He's miserable.

It's not really the sort of behaviour you feel safe with, she realizes.

He head sinks back into her arms.

It's not the sort of behaviour that makes her safe to be with either.

"…I left him."

"Huh?"

"In the ruins. I froze up. I couldn't do it. I couldn't confront someone going after me in the dark." Hana curls up even tighter. "I don't know how to use a sword. I just couldn't do it. And he just went out all by himself, to fight this stranger who can destroy rock walls, and I let him go."

Shouichi is quiet, for a moment. "But…but we're normal."

"I know! I shouldn't have to feel guilty for not wanting to duel a trained professional blind," Hana says wetly, lifting her head to palm the dampness from her eyes, "but everyone was getting hurt, and I was supposed to take care of him. They shot this guy, right? For all I knew, Tsuna was going to get shot too. But I didn't go. I was so scared. He could have died and I hid in a closet. I didn't do anything."

Shouichi is quiet, because he knows he technically saved Gokudera's life, even if it was mostly an accident.

"What am I going to tell Kyouko?" She asks, her voice thin and strained. "How am I going to look her in the eyes anymore?"

Those looks those boys have makes her skin crawl, sure, but when you're in that kind of danger, all she wants is to be able to look at someone else like that too. All she wants is someone to look at her like that.

Because sure, it means you're hyper-focused on someone and it's unhealthy, maybe but when people actually need killing, it's safe. Safer than anything.

Hana doesn't feel very safe.

She doesn't feel very anything.

"…I'm so worried about him," Hana wails. "I'm so worried that this is going to keep happening, and I won't be able to help."

Shouichi finally finds his words. "I…when Umi sent me the rings, she told me that she was trapped in her house."

Hana looks up at him and bites her lip to keep it from wobbling.

"I think…it mostly feels like she has abusive parents, I guess. But she said she has a lot of friends all over Europe conspiring to get her out, and she needed me to keep her things safe." Shouichi nudges the little dial with a finger. "I felt important. I felt so important."

Hana half-buries her face in her arms too.

"…And then, I…I was doing things that would make me more useful. I agreed to do a design request for Miura-san, and then I kept working with her. And I studied people, like, like a secret agent, I guess?" His speech starts coming out faster. "And I thought I was doing all these things to make me more useful but then I come here and the yakuza is talking about international politics and some murderous bastard named Zeni and all the extremes they have to go to just to make sure they don't start a war or something, and all this time I'm thinking, with these people trying to manage all this mass underworld politics stuff and then trying to kill me, that uh…that this is, this is probably what Umi-san's life is like, and she never actually needed me to be a secret agent," Shouichi's breath halts, "that maybe the entire reason I got the rings was because my job was to be boring and useless."

He takes a moment to catch his breath, sucking in deep through his nose. Hana feels melancholy seep over the rawness of her heart.

Shouichi rubs his eyes, and his lip quivers in ways Hana wouldn't let hers.

"…Everything seems so big," he says in a tremulous voice. "And I was so small this whole time."

Hana slides her chin so she's resting her head on one side. Her eyes feel sore.

"…Hey, Shouichi-kun?"

"H-Huh?" Shouichi jerks.

"We wrote some notes on all the magic stuff we saw. You want to talk about that?"

"Oh," he says, a little startled. "Uhm, okay."

"You got a room?"

"Yeah, they gave me…yeah." Shouichi slowly stands and mops his eyes a little more properly.

Hana follows him back out into the lobby, where no one notices them, and into the first floor hallways, where people peek at the sound of their footsteps but don't dare poke their faces out. They go to Shouichi's room, a dinky little thing with two beds with nice blankets and a TV.

Hana curls up on one of the beds.

"Is it alright if I stay here for the night?" She asks. "They put guards on my room, and I don't think I can climb up."

"Oh, uhm, okay," Shouichi frets.

Hana falls back down and stares at the ceiling.

She doesn't want to be in that room, where she feels small, and has to reach out constantly just to feel normal and in control again.

She doesn't feel strong anymore. She feels cowardly and broken and aimless, and the jittery sensation settling into her makes she wish she had her rifle, and it's exhausting to pretend none of it affects her. It's exhausting to blow off Tsuna's resentment and the way Takeshi and Gokudera orbit around Tsuna like he's going to keel over and die any minute, because he came that close.

"Okay," she says, after she takes some time to collect herself. "We covered six types of magic, so far."

~x~

Benedetto doesn't have a lot of experience with hyper-vigilance, but after a few hours of dealing with it, he's decided he doesn't like it.

Every second is either a threat or a crisis of identity, fighting for dominance in the hellscape that is his emotional state. He's jumping at shadows and then wondering if he's jumping at shadows because he was made to do that. He feels like a core part of him has been ripped out and toyed with outside his vision and now he's got something that's mostly like him inside, but different in ways he can't discern.

Mind control is fucked.

Someone gave him a shirt at some point. As he walks through the hall, he sees a lot of kids poking their heads out of rooms, and it's tweaking him out; the concern about their safety in the hands of the mafia is offset by the conviction that the thought is fake, fake, spun to make him more useful. Nothing feels real to him. He doesn't feel real to him.

Blond man drops him off at the door. Ben blinks at him, and then the steadily darkening street.

"I…I don't understand?"

"You can go. You've done enough."

"No, I…" Ben looks at him desperately. "You don't understand, I wasn't helping. You…do you know? I was being controlled, y'know? I didn't…I didn't do any of that because I wanted to."

The man gives him a profoundly tired look. "Are you familiar with the Guiding Eyes?"

"N…Huh?"

"The Guiding Eyes. It's a special trait Kouyou heirs have. Makes them very convincing debate partners, given enough eye contact," the man explains.

Ben frowns. "The…the boy, he used his eyes to make me—"

"They're not called Controlling Eyes," The man continues, with less patience. "They're called Guiding Eyes. Believe me, if there was a group capable of mind-controlling everyone they make eye contact with, they would be dead, and no one would be hearing about them."

Ben feels more helpless the more the man talks, but it's making his sense of self feel more tangible, so he tentatively allows the conversation to continue. "…What are you saying?"

"I'm saying you did help those kids. That boy looked you in the eyes, found something you wanted to do, and made it more important to you. It's like…" He scratches his stubble and gives Ben a dry look. "…Wanting your tea to be really sweet, so they make you put twenty scoops instead of four. He can't make you do anything you don't really want to."

"I…I tortured a man," Ben says distantly. "I killed people because he told me to."

"You killed people because that was something you were willing to do to make sure he got out safely. This power…it comes in degrees, and his ability isn't strong. He barely has a handle on it. Trust me, I'm willing to believe in your character enough to let you walk out of town."

"What…What about information? On our boss? The job?" Ben feels frantic in his desperation to be held responsible for something.

"We have a lot of prisoners," the man says dryly.

What now?

"Why are you telling me this?" Ben rasps. He grasps the doorframe.

"We're sending a car out. I thought it might be a nice idea to let a political asset come out of this feeling at least a little better about himself and our handling of the situation."

"Oh."

There's a car sitting in front of the hotel, he sees now, illuminated from the inside. He's not being let loose. It's a deliberate decision, here.

Do us a favour, and you'll get out of jail free.

It makes him feel better, oddly enough.

He walks slowly to the car. There's nothing for the hyper-vigilance, no matter how many rousing explanations shady bossmen can give him. Ben just hopes it's something he can sleep off. For now, he flinches away from even the barest of movements and his eyes latch onto the back seat of the car with laser-like focus.

Get out of jail free.

It wasn't mind control, it was him. He's the kind of person to rip off fingernails and shoot men in the head.

What a fucking absurd personal revelation to make while orbiting a middle-schooler.

He bows down to look into the car. A small figure is curled up into a ball, hands folded over his spiky bleached-blond hair.

"Hey. You holding up okay?"

The boy looks up. Ben can see the upturned brows and the dampness on his cheeks, but that's pretty much it.

Oogawa Miki picks at the poorly-tied bandages over his eyes and says, very weakly, "not really."

"Let me on. I'll walk you home."

Ben is the type of person who buckles under pressure and runs away from stress and is willing to let people to get away with a whole lot of everything if it means if he can keep his head down.

But fuck is this kid scared, so he's willing to be the kind of guy to torture people and shoot men through the eye socket if it means he gets home safe.

Mind manipulation is pretty fucked too, actually.

He gets in the car.

~x~

The blade makes a damp, sucking noise each time it's torn away, pulling at pockets of air and crushing the bones the shredded pieces of flesh still clinging on. The repetition is soothing, almost, a reassurance where the struggling had caused fear.

There's no struggling now, only a knife and a hollow, smooth sort of sensation over Tsuna's mind, suffocating the harsh edges of his feelings, making it hard to think. He fixates on the repetition, hands running back and forth over the comforter. His vision is swimming.

"Hey, come take a look at this," a woman says, and wherever she is, it isn't any place Tsuna can see. The bed faces the open door. Back. Forth. Back.

"That doesn't match the count," a man says, and this one Tsuna sees.

He's looking right at him.

There's a sucking noise, wet, and damp, and spilling out across his hands.

The man with cherry red hair and a suit and wide, wide eyes, staring, staring staring, back and forth back and forth. His hands leave red stains over the duvet.

"Oh god," he whispers. "Oh, god."

"What?"

"Nana's…"

Takeshi's body is laying cold and unseeing beside him, surrounded by the blood spray from the exit wound. Back, forth, back, forth.

It's so dark.

"Sick," says the woman.

"No," says the man. "I can fix this."

His eyes are dark, rich, like blood orange.

"I can fix this."

Tsuna's hands are wet and all he can taste is jasmine.

~x~

Tsuna wakes up covered in sweat and more nauseous than he's ever felt in his entire life.

He can't pin down why; fear, disgust, horror, actual illness, or maybe a blur of all of them. His heart is hammering, and his vision is spinning. He stumbles out of bed — nearly colliding with Gokudera's — and shivers against the chill, or maybe the terror— he can't tell what it is but it's eating him.

He makes his way out, barely able to see in the shadows of pre-dawn. It takes a second for him to process where the bathroom is, and when he gets there, he doesn't bother turning on the light, just falls to his knees in front of the toilet and heaves.

The effort feels like his entire body is trying to squeeze out the emotions and the contents of his stomach are just an unfortunate casualty. After the fourth run of retching, it starts being actively painful, and the only thing coming out is drool. His face is wet with the tears from the physical strain, and he mops them with a sweaty hand. He tries to gather in a few desperate gasps of air, before his body roils again and another helping of thick, viscous, and sour-tasting spittle comes drooling out of his mouth.

And then, in that moment, he doesn't taste sour, or acid, just jasmine tea.

Tsuna spits a few times for good measure and tries to get up. It's hard; he's completely wrung out from the physical stress, and his legs are shaky. He has to get the taste out, though. So he soldiers on to the kitchen, cracks open the minibar, and throws back a tiny bottle of vodka.

It goes down easy, easy enough that Tsuna is conscious of the fact that he probably shouldn't let anyone see him do this. Heat explodes in his chest, dispelling the chill, and the jasmine taste is burnt out with the harsh flavour. He finishes and grabs another, this time to drink slower until his hands stop shaking.

There's not a lot of vodka left, which is concerning. It's his poison of choice, in the same way sake is his father's. He's never had access to it this easily before, not like back at home, where getting something to drink is close to impossible and he has to ration out what little alcohol his dad left behind.

He's never had to drink before. He's never had a reaction this bad. The worst he ever got was lonely. The worst it's ever been was never drink to forget, it was drink to reminisce; of being tucked in his father's arm and stealing sips from the bottle until his face was on fire and disorientation fell into sleep. All it ever was was loneliness.

Something's wrong with him. Something's wrong with him, something's wrong.

Tsuna hides the bottles under the sink and goes back to the bathroom. He switches on the light, wincing at the sudden exposure. He peels the sweat-sticky clothes off and climbs into the shower and runs it as hot as he can tolerate for as long as he can tolerate. Anything to get warm.

When his face feels a little too flushed, he turns it off, puts on replacement clothes, and furiously dries his hair with a towel.

He feels better.

Well, no he doesn't, but he feels stable, which is good enough.

He stands in front of the bedroom, feeling like it would be a truly champion effort to actually climb back into his damp, sweat-soaked bed and go back to sleep. He entertains the thought of climbing into Hayato's instead, of just wrapping his arms around him and pressing his head against his spine, a faint imitation of how it used to be with his mom, before.

Before, in that faint space between one event and the other, between normality and the false promise that he didn't even remember being given. Before, a period in his life he had at this point thought just wasn't worth caring about anymore, some obscure unpleasant sequence of events that happened in his past. Before, when waking up alone in a bed to big for him made him feel…

Tsuna adjusts his jaw and turns away from the door.

He pads to the balcony, out into cool air. It's pre-dawn, the sun only casting a halo beyond the horizon, making the sky just the barest bit brighter around the edges. It's still something you could call night. The air flutters his hair and his clothes, and he's filled with the power to run, but not with the willingness to take that extra step.

Slowly, he sits down and presses his forehead against the cool metal railing, sucking in breath after breath, until the cold starts seeping in past the heat, leaving him with his usual empty chill. He doesn't go back into the suite; it would shatter the illusion.

With his feet dangling over the edge, he feels an odd craving for someone else to catch him here, alone and contemplating the ground. It's only to trace routes he could follow, but he wants to hear it anyway.

Are you going to jump?

Something's wrong.

AN: Hahahahaha surprise, narrative cohesion

Tsuna's origin story is a complex web of Absolutely Horrible, and I've actually been picking at it since the first arc; I hope it's starting to come together more clearly, both in regards to what happened to him and why the Kouyou are relevant.

(For reference, Tsuna's had other flashbacks/dream sequences before, in Introduction:Fantasy and Willpower:Underfoot.)