Category: Mild Romantic Fluff

Characters: Tsunayoshi Sawada, Kyoko Sasagawa

Requested By: kiralushia (Tumblr)

Alternatum to Our Scars

"Hello, Mrs. Sawada!" Kyoko announced cheerfully from the landing as she removed her shoes and placed them neatly beside Tsunayoshi's sneakers. She was surprised to find the entryway unusually empty; neither Haru, Hayato, nor Takeshi had come calling today. The recently waxed wooden floor squeaked slightly as the cotton fabric of Kyoko's socks rubbed against the boards. Tsunayoshi's mother's merry response floated out of the kitchen to greet the young girl as she strolled down the hall toward the stairs.

"Good afternoon, Kyoko! I'm preparing dinner now. Tsuna is upstairs; go say hello to him and keep him company until the food's ready!"

Kyoko had half a mind to refuse the meal as social etiquette would dictate, but she knew well enough that Mrs. Sawada would keep insisting until she finally caved.

"Thank you, ma'am!" she called back before skipping up the stairs. "Tsunaaaaa! Good afternoon!" she shouted to announce her presence. The boy's bedroom door was slightly ajar, spilling the waning daylight into the comparatively gloomy hallway. Kyoko knitted her eyebrows when she heard Tsunayoshi make as if to respond, only for his greeting to veer off into pained yelps and shouts. "Tsuna? Are you all right?" she asked as she walked forward and pushed the door open.

The budding mafioso sat in the middle of his floor, wearing only a pair of boxers as he tended to the myriad of bruises, scratches, and scrapes marring his thin but toned body. Kyoko only blinked, more concerned about his injuries than the fact he was nearly naked. In the infancy of his blooming Dying Will powers, he'd run around in his underwear all the time, so it honestly didn't faze her.

Tsunayoshi flashed her a disconcerted frown when she entered the room, then realized it was her and jumped.

"Ah! Kyoko! I thought you were my mom!" he yelped and snatched the comforter off his bed to wrap it around his person. Kyoko laughed good-naturedly and sat on her knees beside him, brushing a few bandage wrappers aside. The boy exhaled heavily, wincing as he stretched out one of his legs to display a nasty scrape adorning his knee. "That Reborn… He's killing me with all this training!"

It was a sad fact that Kyoko was quite used to seeing Tsunayoshi— and many of the others, for that matter— beaten black and blue. Though Tsunayoshi had explained all the Vongola family's eccentricities and his involvement when they'd been spirited ten years into the future, there was still much of his life that Kyoko had yet to understand. All she knew that she needed to support him.

"Well," Kyoko hummed as she grabbed the first-aid kit and pulled it closer to herself, "I'm sure Reborn is just doing what he believes is best for you."

"Kyoko! I'm not becoming a mafia leader! I'm not !" he retorted in a nasally whine. Kyoko released another light-hearted giggle as she rifled through the first-aid kit for bandages, antiseptic, and antibiotic creams. Tsunayoshi watched her with an angry pout, clearly displeased that she too reacted so casually to his relationship with the prominent Italian criminals. Smiling serenely, Kyoko shuffled on her knees to face him again.

"Well, I doubt that will get Reborn to lighten up anytime soon," she chuckled amiably. Tsunayoshi grimaced as he hunched his slim shoulders up to his ears. While he sulked, Kyoko pulled the comforter away from his body. Tsunayoshi squeaked and immediately scrabbled for it, but Kyoko pulled it quickly away from his frantic grasp.

"K-Kyoko! What are you doing?"

"Silly!" she snickered and scooched a little closer to him. "I'm going to tend to your wounds! It's the least I can do after you've protected me so many times, right?"

"Bah… If you say so, Kyoko," he consented with a bright pink blush blossoming in his cheeks. He splayed out his legs on either side of her so she could shuffle forward on her knees and plant herself right in front of him. She picked up a cotton ball and doused it in antiseptic, then prepared to begin dabbing it on his wounds.

She could do this. She had to do her best to help Tsunayoshi, in the only way she knew how.

As she drank in the myriad of scratches and bruises littering his toned body, Kyoko's eyes grew lidded. There's so many… Scattered among the fresh injuries were thin white scars, phantoms of arduous training and conflicts past. With a sad smile and even sadder eyes, Kyoko reached out to trace the patchwork of tiny blemishes interspersed between the bleeding cuts and blue-black bruises.

Tsunayoshi flinched and gasped as her slightly cold fingers met his skin. However, he allowed her to journey across his chest, up his arms, and across his legs. She followed the chronicle of his danger-fraught life until her fingers began to quiver and stutter. There was a seemingly endless amount of lesions disfiguring Tsunayoshi's person.

"Kyoko…?" Tsunayoshi asked in a small voice.

Kyoko hadn't realized, but tears had sprung to the corners of her eyes. Her fingers faltered over an incredibly long scar slashing across his chest. She wondered, did they sometimes ache, these scars of his? Did he awake in the dead of night in a cold sweat with phantom pain, tendrils of agony blooming from those scars like spider lilies rooted in pale earth?

The sobering thought sent the tears spilling down her cheeks, which had reddened with misery on Tsunayoshi's behalf.

"Tsuna," she choked. She splayed her fingers over his chest, and they trembled against his wound-littered skin. Slowly, Tsunayoshi reached up to envelop her hand in his, gently pulling it away from his scarred body to tightly wrap his fingers around her shuddering ones. " Tsuna ," she repeated in a woeful whine.

What could she say ? What could she say to make his scars hurt less? Kyoko didn't know .

" Kyoko ," Tsunayoshi sighed wearily. Still holding her hand aloft and giving it intermittent, reassuring squeezes, he used his other to help push his battered body closer to her. "Please don't cry, Kyoko. This is why I didn't want you to see me like this," he frowned.

As she hung her head, pitifully wiping at her teary eyes with the heel of her free hand, Tsunayoshi reached up to push a swathe of her caramel-colored hair from her face.

"Ahhhh," he whined with a self-deprecating smile on his face. "I'm just no good, am I? Kyoko was kind enough to come and patch me up after Reborn put me through Hell, and now I made her cry. I really am No-Good Tsuna, huh?"

Kyoko released a little giggle at the playful lilt in his voice. It was just so hard to be depressed with Tsunayoshi smiling so kindly as he held her hand and petted her hair oh-so-softly. As she smiled shakily, Tsunayoshi hummed approvingly.

"Ah, that's better. Please don't cry anymore, okay? I promise they don't hurt anymore."

Kyoko twitched as he all but pinpointed the source of her anxieties like he'd read her mind. She shuffled in between his legs as his hand dropped down to his thigh, while his other continued to hold her hand and rub small circles into her skin with his thumb. Her eyes swept over his form once more, over the wounds, both fresh and faded.

"They don't hurt?" she echoed hollowly.

"Nah," he reassured her with a lopsided smile. "Sure, Reborn puts me through the wringer and sometimes the hurt for a while, but they heal in time." He then broke out in a big, cheesy smile. "Because I have your lucky charm, Kyoko, and when that's not enough, I have the goddess of good luck herself to nurse me back to health, yeah?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, they both burst into insanely bright head-to-toe bright red blushes.

"Gah! I-I-I'm sorry!" he stammered, dropping her hand to wave his wildly about. "Th-that was so embarrassing— K-Kyoko, just forget I said that, okay?"

Though Tsunayoshi's mind was muddled by panic, Kyoko was as lucid as could be.

"No," she refused. Tsunayoshi squawked and then choked on air, freezing as Kyoko stared intensely at him with burning eyes. She firmly grasped his hand again with both of hers, squeezing it tightly. "No," she repeated, softer. "I'll do it. Be your goddess of good luck, and be there to nurse you back to health."

I don't have powers like you all do. My only power… is supporting you.

Tsunayoshi blinked at her. Silence descended over them like a veil, even blocking out the sounds of the street outside, muting the birdsong and car engines and friendly conversation of the neighbors on the porch across the street. Slowly, Tsunayoshi melted into her touch and her reassurance, a sweet smile rising on his face.

"Kyoko…"

"Now!" she cried, clapping her hands together. "Let's get to work!" She retrieved the medical supplies once more, adjusting herself more comfortably before taking the antiseptic-soaked cotton ball and dabbing at a cut. Tsunayoshi hissed as the alcohol-based solution stung the thin slice in his skin. When he pouted at her, she laughed amiably. "What? I said I would nurse you back to health. I didn't say it would be painless !"

"Bahhhhh," Tsunayoshi whined and tilted back his head. He banged his heels against the wooden floor as Kyoko continued to daub antiseptic over his many wounds. "Kyokooooo! Is this payback for getting beat up and making you cry?"

"Mayyyyybe," she grinned, pinching the tip of her tongue between her teeth. "You'll have to suffer more of Reborn's training so that you get tough enough not to get beat up at all!"

" Orrrrrr Reborn can go back to Italy and pick another Vongola 10th!" Tsunayoshi countered hotly. He continued to whine and whimper at Kyoko's ministrations, even as Reborn strolled casually into the room while nibbling on a bowl of hearty beef stew.

"Tsuna, you are a disgrace," the hitman toddler tutted disapprovingly. Tsunayoshi immediately began to sputter indignantly. The refined hitman ignored him and tottered over to a bean bag chair, plopping down and indulging in the delicious beef dish. "You should take your role as a mafioso more seriously. It is unbecoming to complain as much as you do."

"I only complain because you give me hell , Reborn!"

"Yoooo, Tsuna~! Here you are!"

They both turned as the familiar, good-natured voice of Takeshi Yamamoto floated through the doorway. Both the baseball player and a scowling Hayato hovered in the threshold, each holding two bowls of steaming beef stew. "Your mom told us you were both up here. We brought you some food!"

"Shame on you, Tsuna, making your mother eat dinner all by herself," Reborn tsked disapprovingly from his bean bag chair. Tsunayoshi whipped his head around so fast that Kyoko swore she heard his vertebrae crack.

"Oh, yeah? What are you doing up here, then, Reborn?"

"Giving you hell."

"Ahhhhh! Why did my life turn out this way?" Tsunayoshi howled in lament and flopped backward against his floor. Kyoko had finished applying antiseptic, so she figured she could take a break before slapping bandages on Tsunayoshi's cuts. She thanked Takeshi as he handed her a bowl and settled in to enjoy Maman's excellent cooking.

She paused before starting, drinking in the scene around her. The air hummed with animated, positive energy; laughter and smiles illuminated the room, joining the dying rays of the sunset streaming in through the window. Kyoko smiled, watching warmly as Tsunayoshi bantered with Takeshi, Hayato, and Reborn.

Tsuna has scars… But he has them so we can have afternoons like this, doesn't he? He got those scars protecting a future where we can all sit around, joking and eating Maman's delicious cooking.

Smiling, she spooned up a bit of the stew and rice and brought it to her lips.

Tsunayoshi and the others would have to keep fighting for that future. Kyoko couldn't fight as they could, but she could fight in her own way- with healing hands and comforting smiles and unyielding support. She would fight her own battle so that someday, Tsunayoshi's scars would all fade away into forgotten memory.