Finally Breaking Down

I don't own KHR.

Hayato scowled as he looked at the black gates in the distance. He had only been at the orphanage for about a day now and already he desperately wanted to leave. The other kids were loud and annoying, and all the adults were selfish and untrustworthy. Sure, the orphanage offered him a place to sleep as well as free food but the cons heavily outweighed those pros. He would much rather sleep behind a pungent dumpster again than to sleep here another night.

Luckily, the orphanage had little to no security, so breaking out of here shouldn't be hard. Not to mention, the caretakers didn't seem to care about their charges at all. Hayato wished that had been the case for the stupid stall that he had stolen bread from. Not only were the stallkeeper's eyes too much like a hawk, his stupid son didn't stop chasing him until he caught him.

Despite the son and the stallkeeper's wishes, the police didn't send him to jail for stealing a single piece of bread. Instead, they realized that he was an orphan living on the streets and sent him here to this blasted place. Hayato knew he should be thankful that they hadn't realized that the surname he had been born with was actually Ricci, and not Gokudera. But that just reminded him that he had been forced to toss his wallet away when he almost got caught by Martina's men because they had traced his credit card.

While Hayato had managed to survive on the streets without it for months now, he still wished that there had been another way. That wallet had been the second-to-last thing his sister had ever given him.

Though thanks to Bianchi falsely assuring him that she was going to be okay despite helping him escape, Hayato had thought the wallet was his last gift from Bianchi for about two weeks. Then he-

Shaking his head to stop himself from going down that path, Hayato looked around and saw that there were a lot of kids outside, running around while laughing like the world wasn't a horrible place. They weren't paying any attention to him though, and he hadn't seen any adults either. He had been thinking of escaping tonight, but maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to escape right no-

Something then lightly bounced off his foot. Hayato looked down and saw that the perpetrator was none other than a regular red ball.

"Um...e-excuse me?" Hayato looked over to see a small brown-haired boy standing only a few feet away from him. "Uh...me and my siblings were playing with that...can we please have it back?"

Narrowing his eyes at the mention of siblings, Hayato looked back down at the ball before bending over and picking it up.

"Oh thank you!" the smaller boy practically beamed as he reached his hands out. Hayato was about to throw the ball back to him when he saw them. A bit behind the boy, there were a group of kids looking at them expectantly. And while most of them were Asian like the boy in front of him, one clearly was not. And the other Asian kids didn't look anything like the brown-haired boy either.

"Are they the siblings that you were talking about?" Hayato asked, his voice more or less even as he kept his hands on the red ball. Looking a bit taken aback, the brown-haired boy turned around and did something that set Hayato's teeth on edge.

He smiled.

Just like the one Bianchi used to direct at him.

"Yep!" the boy declared proudly before he turned back to face Hayato.

"But...they don't look anything like you!" Hayato protested as his grip on the rubber ball grew tighter.

"I know," the boy said simply said. "Just because we're not blood related doesn't mean we can't be family!"

Hayato's green eyes then grew wide as he subconsciously gripped the ball even tighter. Did this kid just...admit to making a completely new family? Sure, Hayato was at a place where kids hoped to be a part of a family again but the adults chose the kids, not the other way around! Orphans also didn't get to choose who would be their new sibling or not!

What in the world made this brat think that this was a good idea?! What...what about the siblings that were actually blood-related to him, if he had any?! Wouldn't picking new siblings be the equivalent of spitting on their graves?!

Especially if...someone left their sibling behind to die?

"Uh..." the boy then continued, looking at Hayato with a sort of nervous expression.

"What? Do you want your precious ball back or something?" Hayato spat out as an ugly mixture of emotions gave birth to a dark storm inside of him.

"Y-Yes-"

"Well too bad! Because it's mine now!" Hayato declared as he wrapped his arms around the ball and clutched the toy close to his chest.

"W-What? But...we were playing with it," the boy nervously pleaded as he glanced back at his siblings.

"Does it look like I care?" Hayato nearly growled as he glared right into the other boy's fearful brown eyes. "Just go back crying to your family already!"

Hayato then turned around, still clutching the ball to his chest. If he was honest with himself, he really didn't want the ball. It was just a toy, and he had bigger things to worry about, like making sure he escaped without anyone seeing him. But something in him wanted to keep the ball away from the boy, the one who thought it was okay to just make a new family, out of pure spite. Maybe it was wrong, but Hayato was a streetrat who had been stealing from unexpecting people for a while now.

One more item wasn't going to hurt.

"Hey! Extremely stop!" Growling a bit at the very loud voice, Hayato turned back around to see that the siblings were now near the boy. One of them, the white-haired Asian, then took a step forward. "We were playing with that first! Please wait your turn to the extreme! We will give it to you once we're done playing with it! I extremely promise!"

Hayato instantly recalled his promise to Bianchi that he would live, which was the main reason why he hadn't gone back to help her fight that gardener.

"You should be careful with promises, you know," Hayato advised him, his voice cold as his frown turned to a scowl. "It might bite you in the butt later."

Hayato then started to turn around again, wanting to get away from the so-called family and the unpleasant reminders of his situation as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, to his growing irritation, he didn't even get as far as to turn his back on them.

"Herbivore," one of the dark-haired Asians called out, his voice low and even as his fingers twitched at his sides. "Give back the ball or I will bite you to death."

Herbivore? Bite him to death? Where had he heard that threat and term before?

"Ah, Kyoya! It's...it's okay, it's just a ball. He can have it if he really wants it," the first boy assured his brother, clearly panicking if the way he kept waving his hands was anything to go by.

Hayato didn't know why the boy was suddenly trying to keep the peace when he was the one who started this in the first place but he didn't really care. He had finally placed where he had heard the strange threat and term before.

"You're the one who everyone here calls a monster, aren't you?" Hayato asked him.

"K-Kyoya isn't a monster!" the only girl in the group cried out, the purple hair in front of one of her eyes waving a bit as she slightly bowed her head.

"It's okay Chrome," Kyoya assured her, his voice actually sounding pretty sincere as he patted her head. "I'm the strongest carnivore here, so it's no wonder that I seem like a monster in their weak herbivorous eyes. It's a compliment really."

"You're pretty full of yourself, aren't you?" Hayato asked as he felt an urge to wipe the conceited grin off the supposed monster's face.

"Kufufu, I actually have to agree with him, my dear skylark," the only Italian-looking boy said before suddenly bringing a trident out of nowhere. "The strongest carnivore, really? Looks like we need to correct your beliefs with another friendly spar."

"Oh please no," the first boy moaned as he hung his head. Meanwhile, Hayato just blinked his eyes in confusion.

Where did that trident come from? One moment there was nothing in his hand, and in the next one there was a trident. Did that trident really just come out of thin air? Was the blue-haired boy a magician? Or an UMA? He did have both a blue and a red eye after all...

Hayato decided to keep an eye on him for the time being, just in case.

"Is that so pineapple?" Kyoya asked the blue-haired boy with a smirk that practically screamed how much he wanted a good fight. "Because I'm very willing to show you exactly how correct I really am."

"Yep, here we go again!" cried the tall Asian boy with an annoying, carefree laugh.

"Ah...are you two sure you want to do this? The last time you sparred, Mukuro-sama almost stabbed his trident through Kyoya's leg," Chrome pointed out nervously.

"That was an accident, I tripped," Mukuro defended himself vehemently.

"And I won't let my guard down at all this time," Kyoya promised as he reached for his sides before bringing out a pair of strange weapons.

"And I will be an even more extreme referee, so there won't be anything to worry about!" the white-haired boy declared all too loudly. As Mukuro and Kyoya faced each other, clearly seconds away from fighting, Hayato really felt like an outsider. Just a random person who had stumbled into a family's daily routine, someone who would easily be forgotten by the same family the very next day.

After all, why remember some lonely angry kid when they got each other?

Hayato was suddenly truly and utterly pissed.

"Aren't you guys forgetting something?" Hayato asked as he switched the ball to his left arm in order to free up the other one. The family then turned their attention back to him, some of them even daring to look surprised like they had expected to be gone already. This just pissed Hayato off even more as he without hesitation dug his free hand into his pocket.

"Oh yeah, I guess we still have this to deal with," Mukuro said as he turned so that he was facing Hayato fully.

"C'mon, must we fight? It really is just a ball," the brown-haired boy tried to reasoned with him.

"It's the principle Tsuna," Kyoya replied as he also turned his body so that he was fully facing Hayato. "We can't just let this herbivore think that he can get away from overstepping his boundaries."

"Overstepping my boundaries huh?" Hayato joylessly chuckled as he tightened his grip on the item in his pocket. "If taking a stupid ball is crossing the line with you guys, then I might as well go all the way right?"

Hayato then brought out his stick of dynamite and quickly lit it.

"Hie!" Tsuna screeched as he took a few scared steps backwards.

"Oh, this is gonna be interesting," Mukuro observed, looking more surprised than startled as Kyoya braced himself, looking like he was about to charge at Hayato at any second.

"Haha, wow, how did you manage to sneak in fireworks without the caretakers noticing?" the tall Asian asked.

"This isn't a firework you idiot! It's dynamite!" Hayato corrected him angrily, not feeling the need to say that he luckily had the mind to hide his dynamite in a secret pocket before he got caught (the only reason he didn't use them on the stallkeeper's son was because they were too many civilians around). "And I made it-"

That was when Hayato actually got a good look at the dynamite in his hand. His green eyes grew wide with an impending horror as he realized that this dynamite stick wasn't one of his more recent works. It was one of the very first ones that he had ever made.

And all of his very early works had very short wicks.

When he realized that the dynamite had a mere second at most before it exploded, Hayato's mind told him to squish the fire out or at the very least throw the dynamite safely away. He had made a promise to his sister, and after what she had done for him, he couldn't just break it now.

But his body didn't move. Instead, Hayato just stared as the flame grew even closer from completely devouring the wick. As time seemed to slow down and the noises around him became blurred and distant, he had the clear thought that while he didn't want to die, he was also tired.

Tired of fighting every day just to survive, tired of always looking over his shoulder for Martina's men, tired of all the guilt and anger, but most of all...

Hayato was tired of missing his sister.

"Bianchi," Hayato muttered softly with emotion as he closed his eyes in defeat.

Only for the expected pain to never come. Confused and wondering if he had somehow managed to die a painless death, Hayato creaked open his eyes. What he saw made them go wide open however.

He wasn't in front of the pearly gates or in some beautiful, white paradise. He wasn't even in a deep, dark pit with fire all around him. Instead, he was still standing in the front yard of the orphanage, with kids playing and running around in the distance.

But Hayato only had eyes for Tsuna, who was standing right in front of him with his hand closed tightly around the stick of dynamite.

"Whew, that was close," Tsuna sighed in relief as he let go of the explosive, revealing a small burn mark in the palm of his hand.

He...Tsuna saved him...

"Tsuna!" cried most, if not all, of his siblings as they all rushed forward to him. Kyoya reached him first as he quickly pulled Tsuna behind him where the white-haired boy quickly grabbed him.

"How bad is it, let me see," the white-haired boy half-requested, half-demanded, as he took Tsuna's hand into his own and gently pried his little brother's fingers open. Meanwhile, Kyoya and Mukuro walked right up to Hayato and pointed their weapons at him with pure anger in their eyes. But Hayato hardly paid any attention to them.

Hayato had been mean to him...

"Oh my gosh, Tsuna, are you alright?" Chrome asked worriedly as she hovered over Tsuna's injured hand.

"You scared me Tsuna," the tall boy admitted with an obvious fake laugh as he stood right by Tsuna's side. "You just ran right up to him...I wasn't expecting that at all..."

"Sorry Takeshi, but don't worry guys, I'm fine, really!" Tsuna tried to reassure them as the white-haired boy looked at the burn.

He got hurt because of him...

"Is he really Ryohei?" Mukuro asked with his trident still in Hayato's face.

"Yeah, the burn doesn't look extremely bad at all," Ryohei assured him, looking relieved himself.

"Good, take him and the others inside while we...deal with this idiot who doesn't understand the words, 'put the fire out!'" Kyoya ordered with his weapon a mere millimeter away from Hayato's neck.

"Guys, don't! I think he was in shock or too scared or something!" Tsuna protested vehemently as he turned his head to look at them.

He was still worried about him...

"Tsuna..." Mukuro started to say before Tsuna interrupted him.

"Look, he didn't tell me to save him, that was all me! I was the one who wanted him to live!"

'Father wanted you to live, I...I want you to live. So swear to me that you will live alright? Please?'

"I'm sorry," Hayato said softly as he felt his body tremble slightly. He was dimly aware of the family looking straight at him as his breaths became a bit haggered and uneven. "I'm...I'm sorry!"

And then Hayato did the one thing he hadn't done since the night he ran away from the Ricci mansion.

He cried.

His knees buckling beneath him, Hayato crumpled to the ground with a ugly sob while dropping both the ball and the dynamite. His hands now free, Hayato covered his eyes as he finally let himself truly mourn for his sister.

Why? Why did Martina want him to die so badly? Why did he have to run away from the only home he ever had? Why did his older sister have to tell him that the only punishment waiting for her was house arrest? Why did he have to leave his sister behind? Why did he leave the wallet, his only memento of her, behind? Why...why did she have to die?

He...he wanted his sister back. He wanted to go back to that moment when Bianchi was stalling the gardener and instead of running away, go back to help her fight. Then they could have run away...together. But he didn't, he left his sister to die by the hands of their own mafia family, and he was all alone even though he didn't want to be, even though he deserved it-

"No you don't." Confused, Hayato's sob got cut off halfway through as he took his hands off of his eyes to find that Tsuna was now kneeling right in front of him with watery brown eyes. Even more confused, Hayato looked around him and saw that the others were looking at him in pure empathy. Even Kyoya and Mukuro didn't have their weapons out anymore as they looked at him with sympathetic glints in their eyes.

Did...did he just say all of that out loud?

"No one deserves to be alone," Tsuna continued, his voice wavering. "It wasn't your fault what happened."

"That's right, it's the mafia's fault," Mukuro chimed in vehemently as a digusted yet angry expression overtook his face. "They are digusting vermin who will use anything or anyone that they can get their greedy hands on. And if they can't find a use for them, then they will just throw them away like a piece of garbage. Even if they're kids."

Chrome then walked over to him and placed a hand on his arm, which seemed to calm him down somewhat. It was then that Hayato finally noticed the kanji in Mukuro's red eye. Before he could let that sink in, the wind blew some of Chrome's purple hair out of her face.

She only had one eye...were she and Mukuro hurt by the mafia too?

"But...but I didn't go back...I could have...but I didn't," Hayato pointed out as a few tears continued to fall down his cheeks.

"Yes, but you were just extremely doing what your older sister wanted you to do," Ryohei replied as he walked forward before kneeling down beside him and placing a hand on his shoulder. "It's the older sibling's job to look after and take care of their younger siblings to the extreme."

"And...I hate to say this, but you even if you had gone back to help her, you might not have been able to do anything anyway," Takeshi stated with a solemn expression and brown eyes that seemed to be staring at something that wasn't there.

"Then it would have all been for nothing," Chrome said softly, her hand still on Mukuro's arm.

"She may have died too soon, but at the very least she died protecting her family," Kyoya added sincerely. "And there isn't a much more honorable death than that."

Hayato took all of this silently as the guilt and the anger that he had been carrying for so long began to slowly but surely dissipate. With his cheeks still wet with tears and his chest heaving slightly, he looked at each and every one of the siblings. Not only did he find no signs of dishonesty or condescension, he got the feeling that they truly understood what he was going through.

It was then that Hayato recalled that this place was an orphanage.

"You really did do well to survive this long all by yourself," Tsuna praised him quietly as he wiped the tears away from his eyes. "I know that if I was in your place, I probably would have starved myself to death a long time ago."

Hayato opened his mouth to say something only to find that he didn't have the words as he looked into Tsuna's brown eyes, which were full of empathy and also a little bit of awe. Tsuna really did believe what he had just said.

As the guilt and anger disappeared even further, Hayato felt a warm feeling start to take its place.

"Hey guys, look at him!" Turning his head at the unfamiliar voice, he saw some of the other orphan boys and girls standing a good feet away, snickering as a blond boy with freckles pointed at him. "He's crying like a little baby! What a wuss!"

Before those words could have any chance to sting him, Hayato saw Kyoya take his tonfas out.

"For loitering and for not knowing your place, I will bite you to death," Kyoya simply stated before he raced towards the group. All of the mocking smiles instantly flew off their faces as the group of unfamiliar orphans tried to run away.

"Kufufu, when will these idiots ever learn? Oh wait, I just answered my own question, they're idiots," Mukuro said with a shake of his head right as Kyoya caught up to them. Then he suddenly took out his trident before taking off. "Hey save some for me! I want to have fun too!"

"W-Why?" Hayato asked, feeling both stunned and bewildered as the previously savage beatdown quickly became something akin to a massacre once Mukuro joined in.

"Because we got you now." Hayato tore his attention away from the now bloody scene just in time to see Tsuna reach forward and wrap his arms around him.

"You...you can join our family," Tsuna continued as he tightened his secure hold on Hayato. "I promise that we will do our best to make you feel wanted, safe, and not lonely anymore. That is...if you want to."

Whether it was because of the warm feeling that seemed to be overtaking his chest or because he was still reeling from his earlier unintentional confession, Hayato made his decision instantly.

"I do," Hayato confessed, his voice thick with emotion. "I do!"

Fresh new tears then fell out of Hayato's eyes as he returned Tsuna's hug. A small part of Hayato wondered if he had made his decision too quickly. He hardly knew these kids after all, what if Tsuna and the others weren't what they seemed to be?

But then Takeshi, Chrome, and Ryohei joined in on the hug and Hayato found that he enjoyed the feeling of sweet relief and the promise of new love too much to care.

And that is how Hayato joined the family, as well as how Tsuna (and by extension, the others) saved him literally and figuratively. Not the smoothest of entrances (that will probably go to Ryohei) but definitely not the most tumultuous (Mukuro definitely).

So how was it? How were the characters? Did the story flow well? Please tell me your thoughts on the chapter in a review and I will probably update after the New Year (Christmas is coming man).

Until then, have a good/safe day or night and see ya!