Chapter 6 : A Good Friend


With everything that's going on, it's only a matter of time before the fact that Tsunayoshi has some kind of kickboxing skills get out. After all, the Disciplinary Committee is noticeable, regardless of how far their duties take them from school grounds after classes let out. And well - now that Hibari has gotten it into his head that the kind of discipline that Tsunayoshi needs should be sprung at him from every available angle when he's least expecting it-

Well, it's something that probably will happen, but not as long as Tsunayoshi can help it, since even thinking about it threatens hives from the stress. The fact is: Tsunayoshi doesn't fight Hibari. He doesn't fight Hibari at all. Hibari springs his lessons on Tsunayoshi when Tsunayoshi least expects it, and Tsunayoshi shrieks and runs away as best he can.

He asked for this in the first place, after all. No part of that invites fighting back. Besides, fighting Hibari would be like trying to fight off a tsunami with a baseball bat. That's something to set aside for people like Yamamoto Takeshi to attempt and perhaps even succeed at. Tsunayoshi wouldn't put it past him.

Although sooner or later, he's going to need to repay the favor that Yamamoto has paid him a few times already, somehow managing to arrive back to the classroom a few times to warn Tsunayoshi of Hibari's impending arrival. At least once already, he's been carrying papers for another teacher and spilled them all over the hallway in his rush. Even if he'd just laughed off the teacher's irritation, Tsunayoshi can't leave it at that.

Even if it hasn't done Tsunayoshi any good. Hibari has some kind of awful chasing instinct that seems to trigger the moment someone tries to run away. Or as soon as Tsunayoshi tries to run away, anyway, since for the most part, it only seems to please him when he sends 'crowding herbivores' scattering.

Something like: the men in police uniforms scatter the Committee, and so the Committee scatters students and scum-not-worthy-of-being-stepped-on in return. It's some kind of cycle of life, or the Namimori Pecking Order in miniature.

Now that he's gotten it into his head, there's no stopping him from disrupting the entire order of the school in his pursuit of teaching Tsunayoshi some kind of lesson - it can't seriously be discipline, the only thing Tsunayoshi is learning at this rate is to hate his life even more than usual, and that without Haru there to help shoulder the punishment, it's even worse than before.

Maybe that's the lesson here: small animals like Tsunayoshi should take their safety in numbers, and do everything in their power to never be caught out alone.

It's a cruel lesson if that's so. Tsunayoshi isn't alone by choice, after all. Maybe he didn't do everything in his power to prevent it, but it's not like he can change other people's minds so easily.

'Ah, it's Dame-Tsuna' they say, only now with everything, the whispers are starting to sound a bit like: oh, that guy's a delinquent, after all.

Ahhh. That's not fair. It isn't fair. None of this has been by his choice.

(Hasn't it, though? Who was the useless one depending on their own mother, to the point where she was struck down with blood and tears? Who is the one that pointlessly depended on someone else until that burden became too heavy to carry? If they had anywhere else they could go, they wouldn't be with him, after all. Ahh. He's a pretty useless kid. The only thing he's good for is numb hands that are slick, that grow cold as it cools.

You did well, Tsuna.

Hibari most of all can't be expected to hang around if he keeps being useless. Ahh. What should he do?)

Now that Tsunayoshi has realized it, it's so clear that Hibari is angry that he can't understand how he's been missing that all along. Whether or not Hibari's face frowns or his fists clench, it radiates off him, doesn't it? Something in the corners of his mouth and the particular slant of his lashes. There's nothing tight or harassed in his shoulders, his feet set just so in confidence, but not over confidence.

It's not like something is hunting him, Tsunayoshi thinks: but more like a tiger with a sore tooth.

If that's all it is, he reasons, then running away or taking a beating, even during the middle of class, is something that he can handle. He thinks the weird things he sees around the corners of Hibari's face might be something like relief. Not as much as to be called 'happiness' or even really 'relief' in that his burden has been lightened or anything like that, but - calmness, maybe. And that's enough, he thinks.

Tsunayoshi can be good for at least this much.

-0-

Haru doesn't come the next day, either.

-0-

(It's just that if he's left alone, he'll die.)

-0-

His classmates look at him, but it's not so easy to change his spots. As far as they can see, he's still Dame-Tsuna and running away from Hibari isn't going to change that. If anything, they seem to think that Hibari is trying to clean the place up a bit- you know- taking out the trash. Ahh. Is that really alright? No, that's probably right, if his hands are anything to judge by.

There's absolutely no way that Tsunayoshi of all people could be a delinquent, but - ah, well. Maybe his grades are bad and he struggles to pay attention in class, and it's also true that he hangs out with the Committee, which everyone knows is most populated by social disruptors that Kusakabe and Hibari have beaten into a thinly disguised band of delinquents more interested in making things easier for Hibari than actually making the student body behave, and running some kind of protection racket Tsunayoshi thinks, and it's true that Tsunayoshi can often be found with them getting into street fights with groups of rowdy kids from other schools but-

Tsunayoshi is absolutely a delinquent! How could this possibly have happened?! He has spent so much of his life just trying to get along with the world that it seems absolutely absurd that things would turn out this way! All this time, he thought that maybe - that maybe things would be okay. The dreams of his deeds haven't left him, but they've gotten more manageable, anyway, since he started working with Hibari.

In any case, realizing that he's somehow managed to become a delinquent against his will baffles Tsunayoshi just as much - if not more - than his classmates.

Tsunayoshi just wants to live a quiet life and survive into happy adulthood without killing anyone else! Is that too much to ask?

"Sawada Tsunayoshi! Join the boxing club!"

It's apparently entirely too much to ask.

-0-

Tsunayoshi finds himself hovering anxiously in the kitchen as Nana clips a lid onto the pretty floral container she's packed full of something spicy, filled with tomatoes and cheese. He wonders at it. While Nana favors the heavy flavors of western food - and those across Europe - she usually keeps their meals light and less complex. In Namimori, the ingredients for more local dishes are much easier to find.

"You seem excited, Tsu-kun," Nana observes, smiling down at him, even as she begins to fold the container into a thick cloth to keep it from losing much of its heat.

"Me," he says. He's not excited, he's tense. Nana is excited - she's been glowing and humming to herself all day. He's not familiar with the dish that she's packing up, but he's fairly certain that it's the kind that takes all day to cook. Tsunayoshi can't really see the dinner going well, but he kind of hopes it does, for her sake if nothing else.

Well, he hopes it for his own sake, too. Ahh, he feels like he might be capable of anything if it'll only bring Haru back around.

(It's not fine, being 'capable of anything' - but, ahh, it is a part of him anyway, like being no good for anything, and ignition, and burn. What should he do?)

"You shouldn't be nervous," Nana says, correcting herself effortlessly as she ties the cloth into a neat handle at the top. "Haru-chan is a good friend of yours, you know! I'm sure if you don't understand what you did wrong, then it's nothing that the two of you can't work through."

Tsunayoshi hopes so. He's pretty sure he's figured out what he did wrong, anyway. He's not sure there's anything he can really do about it after the fact, usually it's no good, but-

They don't take a bus or anything, given that the most popular mode of transportation in Namimori is just walking. The town itself is large enough, but there are plenty of shopping districts that few residents feel pressured to have a car of some sort. Haru lives a decent walking distance from the Sawada household, but nothing that makes Tsunayoshi feel guilty in retrospect for the times she's joined him after school, spent afternoons in his room trying to get his school work to make sense to him. It's not even enough to put an ache in Tsunayoshi's legs and if anything, Nana looks a bit refreshed by the whole thing.

It makes Tsunayoshi remember not protesting about her calling in the first place. It's not like Nana has ever seemed faded or diminished, but ever since (three days, we slipped in the blood) then, something about her has - increased? Like oaths and self-defense classes might be good for Nana in some weird, twisted way.

Tsunayoshi thinks about all the bruises and scrapes he's covered with, and his rapidly ratcheting paranoia, and wishes he could say the same.

He takes up a position just a half-step behind Nana while she pushes the buzzer to the Miura residence. It feels a bit fancy. Although it's not like they want for anything, Tsunayoshi's own house certainly isn't protected like this is - there's no buzzer to get in. Pretty much anyone off the streets can easily make it to the front door if they try. Usually they don't, but salesmen come by from time to time.

In short order, Haru is rushing them in the door, smiling at Nana brightly and giving Tsunayoshi sharp edged unfriendly looks. It feels a bit like being back at school, and Tsunayoshi feels himself slouching, shoulders rounding and head ducking the way he usually does there. It's probably a good thing that Tsunayoshi never developed a nervous stomach, but maybe that's just because he's been constantly scared his entire life - first by dogs, which plenty of people in the neighborhood keep, or used to and then politely never got another, and then strangers, especially ones that smile at him, and then the other children. Then even the adults that don't smile.

"You must be the Sawadas," a woman says, or Tsunayoshi thinks she says; it takes him a few confused moments to figure it out as he slowly registers that she's speaking English.

Like pretty much every kid, Tsunayoshi has English language classes. It's actually one of his better subjects... in a manner of speaking, anyway. He's better at understanding it than speaking it. As for reading, it's better to just forget about it, and writing it will never happen.

"Sweetheart," the man with her says, gently, with a much more familiar endearment.

"It's no problem," Nana says brightly to him, and turns back to the woman. "Yes," she says, in English, and Tsunayoshi gets the gist that she's introducing him and herself and saying that they must be Haru's parents.

"Yes," the woman says with her lips pressed thin. "I am Yekaterina."

Yekaterina is an intimidatingly tall woman with a severe expression from whom Haru gets the reddish cast to her hair that Tsunayoshi has spent this entire time thinking was some kind of dye. Her Japanese is a little stilted, but Tsunayoshi thinks that has more to do with how infrequently she uses it rather than a lack of fluency.

To say that when she looks at him, it's like a cat looking at a mouse would be incorrect. Tsunayoshi would find that favorable. He would even prefer to face Hibari in the midst of a temper tantrum.

The way Yekaterina looks at Tsunayoshi is a lot more like the way a kid does before stepping on a bug.

"And I'm Miura Hideki," her husband says pleasantly.

Tsunayoshi kind of wants to latch onto his arm in relief of some normalcy around here. It should figure that anyone like Haru couldn't possibly have been raised by normal parents, but at least her dad seems normal. He's polite and mild and he looks like a middle aged dad should.

Or at least what Tsunayoshi thinks they should look like, anyway. He's not exactly an expert in the father department.

Then despite his looks, Haru's father says, brightly, "it's actually a relief to meet you, Sawada-san. We've been worried about Haru-chan making friends, but it looks like we can relax about it."

"Hmph. Sawada," Yekaterina says darkly under her breath while giving Tsunayoshi another one of those squashed bug looks. Tsunayoshi can't quite help making a thin, alarmed noise and trying to duck back behind his mother. It seems like Yekaterina might not be happy about Haru and Tsunayoshi being friends. Honestly, Tsunayoshi can't even blame her, regardless of whether she's heard about Haru's decision that he's her boyfriend.

"No, it's a relief for me, too," Nana says happily, not seeming to take notice of anything other than Hideki's pleasant expression. "Tsu-kun sucks at making friends himself."

Why had he thought for even one second that his mother would shield him from this, he doesn't know. Somehow he and Haru manage to share a look of tortured understanding, despite how their relationship stands at the moment.

(Three days of lullabies, and 'leave him out of this!' and a split lip and steely determination to find something that works for him.)

Nearly immediately, Hideki and Nana begin to bond over their useless children who can't figure out how to make friends on their own, and Tsunayoshi feels the urge to say but I've got Hibari-senpai, too - although he's not sure how he thinks he can say that. He really doesn't, but Hibari broke into his room and didn't kill him or even really do more than squish his throat a bit in a way that didn't even leave bruises, and somehow that means something, he's sure of that.

Tsunayoshi doesn't know what, though, and furthermore isn't sure how to explain it in a way that doesn't sound totally insane.

Hideki and Nana work on getting the food on the table while Yekaterina stalks around like an angry lioness. It leaves both Haru and Tsunayoshi at loose ends, but when he tentatively makes eye contact with her and offers a wobbly smile, she makes the exact same noise her mom did over 'Sawada' and turns her back.

Dinner ends up being incredibly awkward, not that you'd know it from Nana and Hideki.

-0-

"Sawada-kun," Yekaterina says at one point. "You come help with dessert."

Of everyone, Haru is the one that notices that exchange the most. Her father and Tsunayoshi's mother are too busy exchanging happy notes over the local shopping district's financial future, of all weird things.

"I'll help instead, матушка," Haru says, moving to get to her feet. Her mother gives her such a look that she immediately drops back down into it, blinking like she's startled herself with her own immediate obedience.

Tsunayoshi swallows nervously and allows himself to be glared into the kitchen.

There really is dessert, though - a kind of creamy cake that Yekaterina selects a pie spatula for, and picks out five small plates.

Then she turns and jams the spatula up under Tsunayoshi's chin. Not hard enough to hurt, and Tsunayoshi only barely manages to strangle back a terrorized squeal thanks to the fact that after Hibari, he had more or less expected something like this, and the fact that as scary as Yekaterina is, he doesn't think she'll kill him.

Ahh, it would be bad if she tried. Tsunayoshi doesn't want his mother to see his dead body, is all. He'd go to some lengths to prevent that from happening. He'd go to any lengths necessary, if the only other option is him dying anyway.

"My daughter," Yekaterina says, her eyes dark, not even bothering to go so far as to bare her teeth when she has metal dug into the soft part of Tsunayoshi, right between the ridge of his chin and his throat, "is not for playing with. You understand?"

Tsunayoshi doesn't dare to swallow, staring up at her, not quite frightened for all that she has a hundred pounds on him of pure muscle and vicious intent.

"I - I know that," Tsunayoshi says, and despite the stutter doesn't even sound scared to his own ears. "I'm not playing with Haru- I- I didn't know she was unhappy. I'm still trying to understand her, I think, is all."

None of those excuses seem to mean anything at all to Yekaterina. Her mouth slants, one sharp tooth showing. "I know your type, Sawada," she says, dropping the -kun with contempt. "You will chew her up and spit her out without even realizing it. As if you are owed it."

Tsunayoshi has no idea what she means. He doesn't feel like Haru owes him anything at all - the opposite, in fact. And he has no intent to or any interest in hurting her, but he doesn't know how to put it into words that Haru's mother will understand or accept.

And she might be right, he thinks, only it's a bit backwards. He wouldn't have chewed up Haru without realizing it, but: he thinks that Haru might have been chopping herself into pieces and feeding them to him without him noticing, just because she's so good at wearing one face while doing something scary or awful. Her personality is twisted. And more than that, she has zero self-preservation instincts.

"Um," Tsunayoshi says, blinking once, painfully. "It's not like I can tell her what to do, Yekaterina-san, but - if it comes to that, I don't want Haru-san to be sad so- I just have to do everything there is to keep that from happening."

After a long moment, Yekaterina's mouth closes over the sharp point of her tooth, and then she straightens to her full height, and she pulls the pie spatula away from the fragile skin of his chin. "You are a child," she says flatly. It's not quite contempt. Maybe disgust. It doesn't seem to really be aimed at him, exactly.

She cuts into the dessert and serves it onto the plates and shoves two into his hands. "Serve your mother and Haru," she says sharply, and stacks up the other three in her own hands.

It makes Tsunayoshi a little nervous to think of eating from a plate she's serves him, but he does anyway.

-0-

"Come over again, sometime," Yekaterina tells them at the gate, facing Nana but looking at Tsunayoshi with a flat gaze that weighs him.

"Yes! We'll be in touch," Nana says, either unaware or willing to overlook that weirdness. Tsunayoshi just awkwardly bends a bit, a bit more than just inclining his head. But well, Yekaterina is the kind of person that Tsunayoshi kind of feels he has to bow to, at least a little bit.

"I think that went well," Nana adds, even as she collects him and turns away from the Miura residence. The empty container swings from her fingertips by the cloth she's tied back around it. Like a young girl swinging a basket of flowers.

Tsunayoshi mumbles something agreeable, wondering if she's as happy as she looks. He's getting the idea that unlike him, people don't always wear their hearts on their sleeves. He thought that Hibari did, but the shapes that lurk there are strange and elusive. Hibari doesn't lie with his face, but showing one truth so another won't be is like a lie.

Nana fumbling at normalcy in the wake of the kidnapping was a lie. Flinching back when he'd stooped close to brush up the broken cup. Tsunayoshi looks at Nana and thinks that part hasn't gone away, exactly, but she's hiding it behind the fact that she loves him.

He wonders what she and Iemitsu talked about those nights, after Iemitsu put his heavy hand on Tsunayoshi's head, teeth too sharp and eyes flicking orange like an animal's, and said: you did well. Iemitsu had just finished hugging her, his arm still around her, his hand at her back. She must have heard. What had she thought of that?

What does she think of Haru, and Haru's mother, who is bad at making friends in the way that thugs try to kidnap her, like thugs had kidnapped them? He's going to have to know. It's not like Hibari is any better, not with money changing hands and the bruises he puts on Tsunayoshi's skin, and - and Hibari hates crowding anyway. He's not going to stand beside Tsunayoshi and believe in Tsunayoshi's goals and want to help him achieve them. Just because he held Tsunayoshi down and promised to teach him discipline, it's not the same thing.

And Tsunayoshi will die if he's left alone, he realizes that now. Ahh. Ahh. He's got to do everything there is to stop that from happening.

"You must have felt it start to happen," the boy with misty eyes and milk-spill hair says pleasantly, a little too young and too high to be silk-smooth. He blinks misty eyes at Tsunayoshi; little mothwing flutters over cheeks as childhood plump as Tsunayoshi's own.

"They stuffed you into a little box and thought it would all turn out fine. But people like us - well, if you keep us from fulfilling our purposes, then it all eventually turns inwards, and then it begins to twist. It twists and then it ties itself all up into a knot. It twists and knots until it turns upside-down and inside-out.

That thing's called 'inversion,' you know."

'Inversion' sounds like an ugly, desperate, sad thing, Tsunayoshi thinks, blinking back at him. People aren't like little bonsai trees that hold no grudge for being shoved into tight little spaces and being forced to grow in a certain way.

Of course a person would hold some serious kind of grudge over that, but the boy's expression is complicated when he says it. A little bitter. Almost yearning. "If I at least inverted," he says, "I could have taken my revenge for what she's done."

But what kind of thing would he have become in doing that, Tsunayoshi wonders. He's so pale and distorted as it is that if this isn't inversion, then the real thing must be terrifying. He wants to say that he's glad he hasn't, but then the boy looks at him.

"Even without anyone helping you, you managed to save yourself anyway. Tsu-kun, your instincts are quite terrifying, you know?" He smiles, thin and sharp. Like clippers, wet with sap. "Isn't that great? The worlds were you don't - well. Everything considered, I guess having to live in this world isn't too bad, if it has this you in it, too."

He looks at Tsunayoshi with that twisted little whimsical smile, with pale eyes that are sharp enough to slice a person open on them, and a long spill of hair like it's been endlessly growing for years, and years, and years without care. Far from the attentive over trimming of a bonsai tree, Tsunayoshi thinks, and yet-

After a moment, Tsunayoshi wonders what he's doing, standing in the middle of the street and staring at a whole lot of nothing while Nana is walking away, headed back home. He hurries to catch up.

-0-

The weekend passes the way it does, and Tsunayoshi tries his best not to worry so much about the fact that there's no sign of Haru still. He doesn't think that her mom has warned her off or anything given that she invited them back and everything, but - well, he'll give it until next Friday, and then he'll try to meet with her again. In the meantime, Tsunayoshi soaks himself in hot water in the bath, trying to break up the nasty bruises that speckle his body - as if he won't have brand new ones come Monday when Hibari catches up to him again.

He gets more why Haru's expressions are sharp at weird moment. With a mother like Yekaterina, Tsunayoshi thinks even he would make those kinds of faces, sometimes. If she's bad at making friends, in various ways - if she isn't home all that often, and Haru's dad had his work cut out for him being a professor.

Of wanting to make friends to the point of committing herself to after school clubs - of still not managing to do that, and being so desperate she'll side with a useless kid like Tsunayoshi and do dangerous things.

Well, no. That isn't giving Haru the kind of credit she deserves. Even without him, she was being kidnapped already by adults. She already met Hibari and invited his wrath.

Her personality and way of doing things was already twisted before he met her, so he can't really credit himself with that. Even though he doesn't really get it, he thinks that's fine. He's used to it already. Regardless of why she's like that, he thinks there's nothing wrong with it, exactly. He can't leave her alone any more than he can leave Hibari alone, and he-

Tsunayoshi really doesn't want to be left alone, either. Won't someone look at him and feel like they can't leave him alone no matter what? Haru has come closest, he thinks, but in the end - that's for her own sake, rather than his.

Ahh. Isn't it bad? Isn't it greedy? He should be satisfied having a friend at all, since he's been without his entire life.

What a useless, selfish kid. He should hurry up and become someone no one would mind being associated with, or no matter what he does, at the end of the day: they'll all run away from him like Haru did.

-0-

Haru blows her cheeks out at him like an angry frog, her brows buckled and her eyes sharp enough that Tsunayoshi might cut himself on them if he steps too close. "Well?" she demands, "go ahead and say it!"

"U- um," Tsunayoshi stutters, staring with bewilderment. He thinks not so long ago, he would flinch back from the ambush, unexpectedly happening right outside the school gates. Maybe try running away. But the part of him that's figured out that Hibari is always angry thinks that Haru isn't actually attacking him now, either. This kind of proactive bristling is-

If Tsunayoshi had to describe it in a certain way, he'd think of a stray cat cornered by some kids with sticks and rocks. For a person who hates to hurt others, being forced into that kind of role is more than a little upsetting.

"Um," he says again, "I- what kind of thing- sorry, I don't know what you want me to say, but- I don't think I want to? M-more importantly, Haru, I'm sorry for taking you for granted in the first place. That's what I wanted to say. I didn't realize I was being that selfish. S-so. That was why - dinner at your place. I- I want to do it again, sometime. Ah!" He snaps upright, flailing a bit when Haru just continues to stare at him. "Your mom invited us back, too, so it's not a problem? I think? A-and Mama seemed to get along with your dad, s-so-"

All at once, the fight seems to go out of Haru. She clasps her hands to her face, her eyes shut. "Haru forgot - Tsunayoshi-san is like Mama that way," she says, more to herself than to Tsunayoshi.

He laughs, anxious and uncertain. He'd more or less been thinking the same thing, after all. It's not entirely a bad thing, he thinks - if adults stop picking on one another eventually. No one dislikes Nana, so if he turns out like that, it might be okay.

"No one wants to be Haru's friend," she says, lowering her hands and not looking at him, "because of Haru's mom."

Tsunayoshi stares a bit, and then blinks. "Because she's scary?" he wonders.

Haru cuts a look at him. "Because she's not Japanese," she says, with a certain kind of edge to her words that Tsunayoshi mostly recognizes coming from teachers who don't yet understand what an idiot he is.

"Oh," Tsunayoshi says, startled. "Because you're mixed?" When Haru flinches and turns her face away, he realizes that might have been a little blunt for someone sensitive to it, but at the same time- "Haru," he says, and nearly startles himself with the gentle tone his voice has taken. "You- you realize, Iemitsu - my father - he's a lot more than half foreigner himself, right? My mom, too."

When Haru faces him again, she looks a bit startled, like she's spent all this time calling the sky blue-green without even thinking about it until someone pointed it out.

"My grandmother, on Iemitsu's side," he continues, "she was from Italy, you know? I don't think she ever even learned Japanese in the first place. Ah - not that I met her, but that's what I was told. And, um, don't ask me to say Mama's last name, from before, because I'm no good at it. We came by our appearance naturally."

Tension seems to ease out of her, and she blows out a breath. "I knew that," she says, but like she's scolding herself. "It's just - in school, it's different. Pretty much everyone at school is- well, they don't marry foreigners."

Midori Middle sucks, the way Haru tells it. Tsunayoshi isn't sure that getting into a prestigious school is worth what it's doing to Haru. He thinks he wants to visit it a little bit, just briefly, to - ahhh, but what would he be doing, really? He can't think that way.

"Nami middle isn't like that at all," Tsunayoshi says. "It's the ones that don't that are rare." It's part of why Yamamoto is so popular, he thinks, although it's not like Yamamoto's personality is bad or anything. It's definitely why Mochida is popular, aside from being the kendo captain, because he does have a bad personality even if people act like he's owed it. It's why the Hibari family is treated like ancient royalty, too, even though they're definitely not related or descended from any gods.

On an island town like Namimori, where foreigners of all types come to have families and have been for generations, it's not at all weird to be mixed, but there are repercussions for that.

"I guess having a parent who is a newcomer is rough, though," Tsunayoshi allows, even though Nana herself is a newcomer. The way people keep saying 'Sawada' - he'd never thought of it much, but he thinks Nana doesn't get troubled mostly because of that.

"I love her," Haru snaps defiantly, balling her fists and setting her jaw like he might be Hibari and she's ready to take whatever hits necessary.

It must be hard to love the parent that keeps leaving you alone a lot, Tsunayoshi thinks, blinking at her. He wouldn't know what that's like.

"I think I was right," he says, while ghost impressions of a pie spatula caress the skin just behind his chin, where it's all soft and tender and indefensible. "I think she loves you a lot, too, even if she's not there all the time."

Haru scowls, but her shoulders sink again even though her fists stay clenched. "I'd rather she'd be at home sometimes," she says. "Even though she makes most of the money and it's why we can live so comfortably. I- I think I'd rather have it be like your home."

That's not possible, though. Haru is only looking at the parts she likes. Tsunayoshi thinks that's probably what she was doing with him, too - and then trying to change the parts of him that she doesn't.

(Maybe it'll be worth it, though. Tsunayoshi has to be someone people are willing to stick around for. Isn't it better if they show him who that person is?)

"You should come over more often, then," Tsunayoshi says, "and not just to tutor me in my classes. For dinner, like I said. Your mom and dad, too, if they'd like. An-and since Yekaterina-san offered, maybe we can spend time there, too."

Haru just looks at him for a moment, not like she's refusing, or like she can't believe him, but a bit like she doesn't know what to say in response to that.

"I meant it," Tsunayoshi says, uncomfortable. "Even if I didn't ask for it, you've done a lot for my sake, so - um. I'm - not very reliable, and I'm not good for anything, but. I'll try harder from now on. Okay?"

If anything, Haru looks a bit overwhelmed. Tsunayoshi hopes that's okay. He's never had a friend before, but from the way it sounds, neither has Haru, so maybe it's okay to sometimes be clumsy or say something weird and mess up every now and then. She probably doesn't know how to do this either.

"Okay," she says uncertainly, and then she straightens and firms as she gathers her normal, brazen, unshaken confidence. "Okay," she repeats, more firmly, "Haru was also to blame for not bringing it up before then. And - sorry for shouting at you, too. And saying things that weren't nice. Or true."

There's nothing to say to that, so Tsunayoshi laughs, though not out of humor or happiness. Then Haru latches onto his arm with both hands, eyes bright and smile wide, if tentative at the corners, and she says, "Now, we have a shaggy beast to hunt!"

And, not being able to help it, Tsunayoshi yelps: "No way!"

-0-

But the words that Haru said that day weren't exactly false either, he thinks. No one picks Tsunayoshi. He's come to peace with that years ago. He's not good for anything, not even as a punching bag or the butt of a joke. Haru's parents might have chosen her, given the pie spatula the other night, but ah - if that's not good enough for Haru, then Tsunayoshi has no problem choosing her, if that's what she really wants.

He knows what it's like when no one does. People shouldn't have to feel that way, is what he thinks, and maybe he's not good for anything, and maybe it won't mean anything, but he can do that much.

Tsunayoshi used to be a kid who wanted to help others, to connect with them and make them happy. He only stopped when he realized that it's impossible for someone like him. If he's only going to fail when he tries, then he should reject them immediately so they can find someone better and more suited for the issue at hand.

But Haru has refused to accept his rejections, so - in that case - his fumbling attempts will just have to be good enough, until he can figure out how to appropriately be someone that people don't want to leave.

-0-


Notes:

A moment of silence for Yamamoto, who is doing the whole body equivalent of 'hover hand.' 頑張って! 武くん!

a pie spatula is also called a cake server, if that clears anything up. I like 'pie spatula' better, though.

While not dark!Tsuna, Tsunayoshi and Co get a bit yandere about it, Tsunayoshi most of all. He does his best.

re: inversion - when one's Will turns on itself and begins to 'consume' one's spirit, thus corrupting it. While it's bad no matter who it is, it's exponentially worse when a Sky inverts. Inversion can actually be rehabilitated.

Canon examples of inverts are FutureArc!Byakuran, Xanxas, Bianchi, and Verde. Just because you don't behave in a stereotypical way for your flame alignment doesn't make you an invert, of course. Different Skies have different needs and respond to different stimulus differently.