(I)

It's funny—Hana had thought that she'd been pretty good about keeping Kyoko out of this bullshit world that Sawada Tsunayoshi had somehow dragged himself into.

Had he really been the one doing the dragging? Hana didn't remember. She didn't have the time to be observing him. She had her studies and she had her best friend to look after. She hadn't seen anything to be overtly concerned over, considering her situation.

After all, there hadn't been any obvious scars or injuries or anything. No particularly alarming lines of dialogue, no random bouts of crying and no unusual anxiety attacks.

She was wrong.

It wasn't obvious at first. Hana had been slightly concerned when people like Miura Haru and Dokuro Chrome had started hanging out with them so often, but she figured that canon was like a magnet. It could be played with and resisted a bit, but ultimately the force of it was nearly impossible to overcome.

Some things just didn't change, no matter how hard she tried.

So she stopped resisting the newcomers, started talking a bit more about how Kyoko needed to be more careful these days. There were lots of creepy monkeys on the streets now—it's dangerous, especially for someone so sweet and gentle.

Hana always looked into Chrome's lone eye when she said this.

She's sure the girl got the message.

The first indication that things were really going wrong, that things were really going canon was when Kyoko, Haru and Chrome and all the others had disappeared for a few weeks with the flimsy excuse of sumo wrestling camp.

God, it was like Ryohei hadn't even been trying to keep this from her anymore, the asshole. But then again, he hadn't been trying very hard to begin with. The boy wasn't anywhere near as stupid as he acted, he knew a lost cause when he saw one. There's a reason why he was so damn good at that whole boxing-coach gig even though he was only fifteen.

But that was fine, whatever. At least she knew that something was going on. She wasn't a god that could somehow resist the flow of fate, she was just a scared little girl that got reincarnated into the life of a somewhat stronger girl with more things to care about.

She didn't have the courage that all the other heroic self-inserts did to run right into canon and shake things up a bit. And that was fine, honestly.

Katekyo Hitman Reborn had a happy ending, after all.

Or did it?

After all, the audience never gets to see Sawada Tsunayoshi change the mafia, or see anyone graduate middle school. They never get to see what became of the Arcobaleno's aging, if the solution to the Rainbow arc actually worked out.

In short, what the audience saw, what the previous Hana had seen lying in the bed of her hospital room, wasn't actually a happy ending. It wasn't even an ending at all.

It was a set-up. Here are the players and here is their starting point. They each have about fifty to eighty years to get from here to someplace else. What is that someplace else?

Who knows.

The point is, Hana hadn't known that at first. Hana had thought that they were done, that she and Kyoko were done with all this magical mafia bullshit, as peripheral as their involvement had been.

Their happy ending was already here.

So, suffice to say that Hana was a teensy bit surprised when Kyoko had looked her in the eye, laying across Hana's bed, eighteen, her laptop open to her college applications, and said "I'm going to join the mafia," as casually as someone might say the sky is blue.

Hana choked on her bitter cold brew. Kyoko reached over and hit her back and Hana curses the other girl's surprising strength. "God, work on your timing, woman," Hana complains, coughing slightly.

"Sorry," Kyoko says, somewhat sheepish, her hand gentler on her best friend's back now. "It's a bit hard to time that right."

Hana glares at her, but it is more the glare of a woman backed into a corner, afraid, than it is of someone truly angry. "You're not a criminal, Kyoko. You know that."

"I'm not," Kyoko agrees, easily enough. Hana can see the tenseness in her shoulders. "But I could be."

"Why would you even want to be?" Hana demands to know. "If this is about Sawada's little gang, then you're wasting your time. They don't want you to join that life. Just think about what Ryohei would say."

Ryohei would freak out, probably. He wouldn't yell or anything, but he'd be stubborn. Come up with a thousand reasons and excuses for why Kyoko shouldn't do it. Come down here from New York and miss a few exams to glue himself to Kyoko's side like a leach until she changes her mind.

If there is anything that Hana had in common with Sasagawa Ryohei, then it's that they would both do anything to keep Kyoko safe except for hurting her.

They could never hurt her.

Kyoko slumps on the bed, cuddling into a large cat plushie Hana had purchased a few years ago. Ryohei liked this one too, he was always laying on it whenever he came over. Not so much now that he was at university, in another country, but often enough that Hana had went and bought him one so that he'd stop stealing hers.

She liked laying on it too, after all.

"I figured you knew, too."

"It wasn't hard to guess."

"No, it wasn't," Kyoko ponders. "Hana?"

Does she have to sound so sad and vulnerable? Hana already knows where this is going. "Yeah?"

"Why does it matter?" Kyoko asks. Hana has the distinct impression that this question only has one right answer. "Why does what they want for me matter? Why does what you want for me matter? The only thing that should matter is what I want for me."

"That's true," Hana answers warily. "What do you want for you?"

"I don't want to be vulnerable anymore. I don't want to be the damsel in distress. I want to feel like a burden and I don't want to be kept in the dark all the time. I don't want every person I love to leave me, except for you."

"You just told me what you don't want, not what you want."

Everyone leaving, huh? Well, Hana knew that Chrome had tested out of a few classes to get into their grade, but she didn't know what college the girl had been planning on, if she was doing it at all. Chrome was hard to predict. Haru was probably going wherever Sawada was going—the hyperactive genius had the grades to go wherever the hell she wanted, whenever the hell she wanted.

And Sawada and his friends? They were all going to Italy, she thinks. Sawada wanted to stay with some family or whatever (ha), Gokudera was in Haru's boat, Yamamoto got some baseball scholarship to some prestigious university there, even with his awful grades. Stupid athletes.

Ryohei shocked almost everyone in Namimori by getting into an accelerated pediatrics program in America that he'd admired for a while (lots of outreach programs for kids that don't have access to medical care and other things that appealed to your average bleeding heart) and Hibari was a year away from graduating from Tokyo University with a dual degree in politics and business. How the hell someone who barely put any effort into his academics in middle school and high school managed to get away with that was anyone's guess.

Kyoko frowns. "I want to be an engineer. I want to be stronger. I want to live life to the fullest."

Large, doe-brown eyes meet Hana's duller blue-grey. Hana knows she is lost. "I want an adventure, Hana."

And what, exactly, can Hana say to that, really? No? No, stay here and be bored, stay here and be lonely because you'll only have me?

"Do you know what Haru's doing?" Hana asks, abruptly.

Kyoko nods. "She likes the same university I do, right now. She's already applied. She wants to be closer to Tsuna. You know she still has a thing for him."

She was better about that now, at least. "She has a thing for you too," Hana points out.

If it were possible, then Kyoko would've slumped even further into the plushie. "I know," she says, rare exasperation seeping into her normally upbeat voice. "I know, but what am I supposed to do about that? I don't even know if I'm into girls!"

"Ignore it for now and experiment at uni before addressing it," Hana suggests.

Kyoko is an easy person to fall for. If Hana were interested in women, then she would have been face-first in the romantic pavement at Kyoko's feet long ago. That's how she knows she isn't.

Kyoko knows she likes men well enough, but she'd never been very good at deciding how she felt about other girls. Hana thinks she's bisexual with a preference for men, but that's for Kyoko to figure out.

"That's a good idea." It's a good thing that whatever flame Sawada had held for Kyoko had simmered down into a fiercely intimate sort of friendship over the years, or Kyoko would have a very messy life right now. Maybe she should talk to him about it—he's gotten good at differentiating sparks from glimmers, from what Hana has heard about him.

But then again, with all the times he'd been propositioned in high school, Hana also thinks that he might be aromantic. Who knows?

"All of my ideas are good," she says instead.

"Sure," Kyoko says. "The Polytechnic University at Milan has a good engineering program. They do social sciences too. Like, law and stuff."

Kyoko likes to avoid somethings. She avoids them and avoids them until she's backed into her own emotional little corner and then she does something drastic when she can't back away anymore, like applying to school in Milan and joining the mafia.

Hana supposes this is why Kyoko had insisted that Italian be their foreign language back in their freshman year of high school. What a goddamn schemer.

"You don't have to apply. But I will, and I know we've always wanted to room together. And come on, Milan's such a beautiful place. The fashion Hana, the fashion."

Hana always did have a weakness for pretty clothes.

"Can't you be an engineer without breaking the law?" Hana asks, defeated. She is already putting the Polytechnic University at Milan on her application list.

Kyoko flutters her eyelashes, an angelic smile forming on her dainty lips. "But Hana, where's the fun in that?"

Hana will be the first to admit that at seventeen years old, goddamn was Sawada Tsunayoshi a bombshell, objectively speaking.

Future CEO of Vongola Corp., student of business at the European School of Economics in Milan and current boss of the most powerful mafia family in the world, Sawada almost looked like he fit in the too-large chair behind the too-fancy desk in his too-spacious office.

It was odd, how all his features fit on his face now, how obvious the European cast on his otherwise Japanese traits was, how his form was now lithe instead of lanky. If he'd been a bit taller, then Hana may have even considered him her type.

"I had a weird feeling when you guys told me that you'd decided to come to school here in Milan too," Sawada said, rubbing his forehead as though he were fighting an oncoming migraine. He probably was. "I was hoping that you guys just wanted to be closer to everyone, since Onii-san's studying in America and he would have had to split his vacations between here and Japan, otherwise."

Sawada and Kyoko were pretty similar in some ways, beyond their petite statures and deep brown eyes. They were both a bit too good at deluding themselves—a blessing and a curse.

"That's your own fault, Tsuna-kun," Kyoko informs the man cheerfully. "You should've just asked—I would've been honest with you!"

Hana has to wonder if that was really all that honest of her to say.

Sawada is hardly fooled. "He's going to kill me," the young-looking man groans. "Completely pulverize me. Have you ever been punched by that man? It hurts. A lot."

Kyoko laughs. "I kickbox, remember? We've sparred."

"Right," Sawada says. It's easy to forget. Kyoko doesn't look like she's afraid of being weak. "How'd you even do it, anyways? These things are supposed to go through Hayato, he would have told me."

"I asked Reborn-san nicely."

Sawada's forehead hits the hardwood of the desk. "Of course," he mutters. He lifts his head, finally deigning to address Hana. "And you just went along with this?"

Hana sighs and shrugs, somewhat discomforted by the intensity of his gaze. There are orange flecks in his eyes. However Sawada feels about Kyoko, he always wants to protect her. "You know what they say. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Kyoko, newbie mechanical engineering student, has an internship with a very secretive, hardly existent, section of Vongola Corp.'s science division. Hana knows the one, so does Sawada. He likes it about as much as she does.

"Is that why you're here? To join us?"

Kyoko's gaze is on her now too. "I'm here to watch out for Kyoko," Hana says instead. "Try to keep her out of trouble. And…"

Hana pauses. She hates how they've gotten under her skin over the past five years, the lot of them. Too much proximity because of the resident sunshine siblings. She cares, now, and she hates how hard that makes it to protect her selfish self. "You guys are a bunch of idiots. You need a good lawyer."

Kyoko beams like the noonday sun and Sawada lets his head fall into his hands again like the failure of a protector that he is, like a man who's about to get burned so hard that there'll be nothing left come sundown.

"Guys…" Sawada trails off. "You don't know how hard I've been trying to keep you both out of this, to keep you guys safe. This life isn't about fun and games, it's dangerous and you could—"

"Tsuna-kun," Kyoko interrupts softly. Hana knows that Sawada is all kinds of weak for that voice. "Did we ever ask you to do that?"

Sawada has nothing left to say to that.

It's fall break and Sasagawa Ryohei is here. Hana doesn't know how she feels about him, not really.

She knows that in canon, they're together. She is his happy ending, his fiancée, his sunshine on the Main Street.

But that was canon—why did she have to follow that? Why couldn't she be her own damn person?

Hibari was attractive. She could have him instead. Hell, she could have anyone. Yamamoto. Cavallone. Someone whose name she doesn't even know!

But Hibari and Yamamoto are probably psychopaths and she's had maybe three conversations with the pretty older blonde. She's not good at forming deep emotional bonds with new people anymore. She hasn't been since she started remembering things, which was after she met Kyoko and Ryohei.

And it's not that Ryohei's a bad choice or anything. He didn't treat her like some sensitive little girl that couldn't handle the truth and he was so loud—his voice, his breaths, even in his sleep.

Hana didn't like the quiet anymore.

Worse yet, he's very attractive, in a rugged sort of way. His face is all angles and scars, his body decorated by strong muscles. He was tall too.

He was warm and he was caring and he made Hana feel like the sun was shining whenever he was there.

In truth, Hana liked him a bit too much, and that scared her.

After all, Hana hadn't been able to keep Kyoko safe, hadn't been able to keep her close. Too scared, too lost, too confused. Hana had said that she wouldn't be involved, that she wouldn't be a lawyer, that she'd do things her way.

But Hana likes looking through political articles, likes watching court cases, feels strongly about criminal justice. Being a lawyer feels right and Hana would be a fool not to pursue what makes her happy.

However, that leaves her with the following questions—how much agency does she really have? In canon, she is a lawyer that is best friends with Sasagawa Kyoko, is going to marry Sasagawa Ryohei and is clearly, in some way, intrinsically tied to the Vongola.

In reality, she is a pre-law student who is best friends with Kyoko, is probably falling for Ryohei and soon enough, she will be the Vongola family's defense lawyer.

It was all too similar. Is she really even making her own decisions? Or are these just the only paths that fate has deigned to leave her with?

Maybe it's that she and her canon self are just that similar. Canon!Hana had never really stood out to her back then and her memory is imperfect. She doesn't know.

"You guys don't know what you're getting into," Ryohei is pleading. "It's extremely dangerous, you haven't seen—"

"I've already gotten this talk from Tsuna-kun, Chrome and Hana," Kyoko says, soothingly. "You can't change my mind. You know how stubborn I am."

Ryohei shakes his head. "I'll have to transfer to a school in Italy, or drop out. I can't take a risk as extreme as this one."

"Oh my god, shut up," Hana says, flat as can be. "Idiot. You left for a reason, didn't you? You've wanted that program ever since you found out about it at that tournament all those years ago. Don't you dare abandon your dreams because you don't trust us."

Ryohei, for all that he loves the thrill of the fight, is a healer at heart. He will be a mafia doctor, the way that Kyoko will be a mafia engineer and Hana will be a mafia lawyer.

"I trust you," Ryohei protested hotly. "I extremely do! But all the trust in the world doesn't change the fact that I have five more years of experience in this than you do and you know that."

"I haven't been completely blind," Kyoko argues, her eyes narrowed. "You give me too little credit. I can take care of us."

"You can fight hand-to-hand against normal people," Ryohei corrects. "The people in this world aren't normal."

"Neither am I."

If Hana hadn't seen this particular trick before, then she would have cried witchcraft. As it is, Hana can hardly be surprised by the terrifyingly real butterfly that appeared in the palm of Kyoko's hand. If she touched it, she would feel soft dusty wings and tickling antennae.

Ryohei leans back and for a moment, Hana has to pity him, this poor older brother whose baby sister grew up too fast. "Chrome taught you, didn't she?"

"Mukuro-san helped, after I bothered him enough," Kyoko agreed. "Chrome doesn't have much teaching experience. I'm pretty good."

Hana snorted. She bets Rokudou regrets ever letting their pretty little menace get his phone number.

Ryohei shakes his head. "I don't even want to know how that went. What about you, Hana?"

In truth, Hana hadn't taken learning any combat skills very seriously. Her pre-law curriculum was rigorous and she didn't know what she wanted to do yet. "Can you shoot a gun?"

Ryohei's eyes narrow and Hana knows he's pissed. "It's not my thing. I can show you how to throw knives."

Hana nods. "That works."

This is going to be a long week.

A/N:

Should I be starting another fic right now? Nope. Am I going to anyways? Yup. This fandom doesn't have enough post-canon content, or enough Hana, so I decided to fix that.

Please let me know what you think about this!