Title: And ready for another kind of fix

Characters: Hibari Fumito (Original Character)

Relationships: Hibari Family

Summary: Fumito watches Kyoya as he breaks out of his egg at last.

Warnings: Hibari Fumito is an OC – half-brother of Kyoya. He was mentioned in Interlude III. He's not very important, but this part was originally supposed to be in Interlude III before being cut out for being too OC-centric and was partially absorbed into Hibari's part, so it might seem familiar.

Song of the chapter: Runnin' – Adam Lambert


Kyoya was his younger brother.

That was a fact. It didn't matter that they had different mothers, by blood. Mother was Mother, she had made that all-too clear for him when he was but a child, and Fumito was a man now, old enough to know how special her acceptance of him as her child despite the lack of blood relations was in this cruel, traitorous world, when even shared blood wasn't enough to stop blades turned on family.

Kyoya was his younger brother, and he was different, but that didn't matter. He was Fumito's younger brother. They got along, not in the conventional sense of brothers, but they did. Fumito thought it was a little like how two animals feeding from different sources didn't have any need to clash with each other. Their differences meant that they had no reason to fight and could coexist peacefully.

Fumito's interests were in inheriting the Hibari Clan, and in having a hand over everything owned by the clan. He also quite enjoyed diplomacy, and battles of brilliant brains. He preferred a diet heavy with vegetarian dishes.

Kyoya couldn't have been more different in personal preferences if they actively tried. He was interested – dare Fumito say, obsessed – with Namimori, and especially the junior high he attended, though he was no ordinary student in any definition of the word. Unlike Fumito, he didn't attend Yumei, and Fumito suspected it was precisely because Yumei students wouldn't have been able to offer Kyoya the things Namimori Middle did. The liveliness. The resistance. The idiots that didn't recognize a top predator immediately unless a demonstration was given.

To put it simply it was Namimori Middle's wildness that let Kyoya establish himself there, claim it as the heart of his territory. He might have just died of boredom if he attended Yumei. Or, well, more likely, Kyoya would have destroyed Yumei and wandered around until he found Namimori Middle and was satisfied after bringing it under his heel. He loved meat, and he loved to fight.

Their similarities ran in their need for control, but that was about as far as it went. Fumito preferred having a string to pull in everything, regardless of whether the subject was of interest to him. Kyoya didn't need the details unless it was a part of what he focused on.

A puppeteer, and a king of beasts. Two very different brothers.

They were different, but their differences let them just work the way they did. It was comfortable. Fumito knew all about Kyoya's preferences and made sure things went smoothly for his Disciplinary Committee, sending appropriate information and notices to Kusakabe – Tetsuya, not Yukino. Kyoya sometimes came in and, instead of swinging his tonfa like he might have towards non-family, told him verbally to stop interfering in his business, and Fumito respected his wishes.

It was an unusual relationship. But serendipitously, everything about and around them let it all work out. He didn't have to worry about Kyoya as a potential foe in a power game like he might have with anyone else because Kyoya could not do cloak and daggers by nature of who he was and did not towards family, and Kyoya tolerated him as a human being and acknowledged him as family. It was an honor not granted by mere blood connection, and it meant a lot to Fumito because he knew just how valuable that was.

Whatever happened in life, he was content with being the older brother of Hibari Kyoya, because it was something beyond his control, but granted to him. Anything else of worth he desired he could fight for control of himself.

And then one day, Kyoya returned with injuries so severe he had to be hospitalized.

Though it grated at Fumito's pride for his younger brother to say so, Kyoya was a big fish in a small pond. Namimori was a small town, the small pond that Fumito and his parents knew was too small for Kyoya.

Truth be told, there was always something greater, something stronger – something more dangerous. Fumito knew that his mother had fled something, knew of things deeper and darker than what she liked to pretend. She had never pretended to be the Yamato Nadeshiko, but neither did she flaunt the dangerous part of her, the part Kyoya inherited in full and then in surplus and was brazen about, the sledgehammer to her stiletto.

Until now, Kyoya had, with his borderline obsession, kept his focus on Namimori. Territorial soul that he was, there was nothing that would have made Kyoya budge from Namimori, and therefore the safety of the Hibari Clan.

Fumito knew Mother had been quite happy with that arrangement and could understand why. Kyoya wasn't the type meant to interact with others 'normally', to say the least. In Namimori, he didn't have to. The town would cater to his ways and needs, and he would not have to change his methods. Their parents – and later Fumito as well – had made sure of that. In that sense Fumito was more like Mother – they were both subtle about their methods, and preferred manipulation to outright confrontation. Kyoya allowed the small world to be maintained by them, and they continued to do so.

Until someone had come to shatter the egg and give Kyoya the rude awakening that there was a greater world out there, beyond his boundaries. That someone had done it in the worst possible way, and now Kyoya would never be the same.

Fumito celebrated his brother's chance for growth, and quietly mourned the passing of his younger brother's 'naïveté'. Unfitting as the word might have been for Hibari Kyoya, it truly was the best word Fumito could use.

He always was too big for Namimori, but in his hyper-focus had not noticed this, was limiting his own growth. Kyoya would realize that now and take the world by storm.