Chapter 19 : bone and blood


"A few months ago," Kyoya had said, "you were willing to die for it."

And he was, he has been, he is, but what no one - not even Tsunayoshi himself - has cared to acknowledge is the fact that Tsunayoshi is even more prepared to kill for it.

No.

Kill for the sake of the people he can't live without. Say, Kyoya-kun. You should know that I like you. Won't you treat yourself well with that in mind and be more considerate of my feelings, too? Look at this color that's become painted on for your sake.

But - ahh, no, Tsunayoshi knows the only one responsible for putting that shade on his hands is himself. The one who is scum is him, after all. But wouldn't he be even worst scum if he held back? Or is he just making excuses for himself and making himself out to be better than he is for the sake of his own weak, pathetic heart?

-0-

Despite going aside with Takeshi and trying to find a solution with him and Haru, the time still manages to get away from Tsunayoshi. There's still Fon to look after - or be looked after by - and somehow he manages to keep Tsunayoshi occupied until dinner. By then, it's too late to interfere with the Test of Courage with any kind of plan - the council members who have come along, as well as the teachers who are involved, have already done their part in setting it up.

The rest of the third years have all grouped up in a clearing not far from the cabins, before a path that leads deeper in the the woods. It's notably in an area they were told to avoid when they first got here, so - that Nerina has been planning this for some time. Of course someone like her would have people she could talk to and depend on in times like this.

Obviously calling Haru wasn't enough. Tsunayoshi really has to reach out and make full use of everything he has at his fingertips to further the goal of protecting the people who have come to his side.

Even though it's easier to give a halfhearted effort and then say he did his best and 'oh well'... whether people know they're depending on him or not, he hates the idea that he's let them down so easily. Isn't that why he started to reject others in the first place? If he can't even help them to begin with, then he should let them know quickly so they won't waste their time and be disappointed with him.

"There's no reason to be anxious," Fon says at his side. "It's just students and the staff in the woods, after all."

"Ah - that's not… thanks, Fon," Tsunayoshi mutters, because while it's true that there are eerie noises like screams and hoots and howls going on in the woods, both of the strange sort and the kinds of shrill cries that girls and less composed boys would give when startled… that's not what has his stomach hurting and his palms sweaty.

Tsunayoshi really has been skating by easily this entire time - thinking that he has time, that so far he's managed to more or less protect his friends and shield them, that he can figure out what he means to do in life to become worthy of someone they want to stand besides. The idea that they'll some day look at him and think that he didn't do his best… that he failed them somehow… that fills him with an icy terror.

… wait, no. That icy terror … that's his gut instinct acting up again. Tsunayoshi blinks, and realizes that while he was sulking, Fon has left for - what purpose? He thinks he vaguely remembers Fon saying something after Tsunayoshi had weakly accepted his attempt to reassure him, but -

"Tsuna!"

He looks around at the familiar voice of Takeshi using that name. He looks anxious, too - more than can be explained by the fact that neither of them had been able to do anything about the Test of Courage. Somehow, Takeshi has managed to escape his underclassmen from the baseball club, who would normally be the ones to accompany him and Mochida into the walk.

"Takeshi, what's the matter?" he asks, hoping somehow that Takeshi will be able to dispel the anxiety trembling through his limbs as usual.

"Me? You mean that's not you?" Takeshi asks in disbelief, his amber eyes wide and eerie in the odd lighting.

Before Tsunayoshi can adequately address that weird question, past the weird howls and screams and moans coming from the test in the woods, Tsunayoshi hears a popping, barking noise that suddenly hushes the uneasy winds that have been stirring the pine forest inside his chest. There are needles on the ground, sodden but disturbed, under which something smoldering lays.

And for whatever reason, Tsunayoshi turns toward the noise that still haunts his uneasy sleep, and then he runs toward it. Ahh. Of course it would be something like this that makes him feel so awful. How had he not realized that something like this would happen?

"Ah! Tsuna!"

Of course Takeshi is quick enough to catch up with him - he has longer legs and he's fitter for running to boot, given his homerun streaks. Of course he'll catch up to Tsunayoshi, even though Tsunayoshi is running with terror in his heart and smoke in his lungs that can't even choke him.

"Tsuna sure is interesting," Takeshi says between breaths, "running towards gunshots instead of away from them!"

He'd like to wait for a moment and demand to know how Takeshi knows what a gunshot through a silencer sounds like, given that his family seems to deal mostly in swords and even when the men in police uniforms corner thugs on the streets, there aren't a lot of gunshots, but reaching his destination is the more important problem. That and the icy terror.

It's pretty obvious when they're coming upon the scene of the crime, as Takeshi and Tsunayoshi are running through a dark forest at night, away from where the trees had been lit up. Thankfully, the moon was bright and the skies were clear enough that even Tsunayoshi doesn't trip badly enough to topple him. Those troublemakers had managed to corner their quarry more than far enough away from the noisy students that the flashlights wouldn't be noticed, or the shots, really, but - ah.

Tsunayoshi has experienced something like this once before. The world sharpens, the shadows of the nights pale, and then-

It's a handful of men - one, two, three, specifically for Kyoya who stands between them and Nerina and Di Tella who lays on the forest floor, bleeding. Kyoya only has one tonfa, his left arm hanging uselessly. There's blood - on his hand, dripping from limp fingertips, glistening almost black where it flows down the side of his face thanks to the poor lighting, his teeth bared. Another man to hold onto Naito, a fifth to keep beating the man that follows that kid. Six, seven, eight with his back to where Tsunayoshi stands, and the gun held laxly, confidently, in his hand beside his thigh.

The smell. It's definitely that smell. That bitter note of a fired gun, and iron, and salt. Nerina in tears. Di Tella unmoving. Naito too scared to struggle while something cracks. And Kyoya, who even shot, tries to shield that useless person.

The ember that's been threatening to burn this whole world tells Tsunayoshi now: harm has befallen the family.

Take your retribution.

If the only thing standing against a fire and the world it wants to ravage is bone and blood, then it, too, is consumed.

-0-

It's awful what has happened to Nerina. It's awful what has happened to Di Tella and the man that follows Naito. "We knew you'd come to his aid," the man with the gun on Kyoya is saying, and then: "We knew that your safety would be that man's first priority." How awful to be attacked like this, to have friends and family hurt for their sake.

Ahh. But as much as Tsunayoshi feels sorry for them, he only cares about one thing: that family member of his that has put himself in danger's way simply because it's his desire to ride herd over the herbivores in his territory.

"This is a Hibari brat, isn't he?" the other says about that family member of Tsunayoshi's that has caused him to get involved.

"That thing? He's a rotten, unsightly branch sticking off the main tree," another says, smirking. "We're practically doing them a favor."

And well? Well? Well? What should Tsunayoshi do about that? Ahh. It's bad. Everything is bad. It's so bad that Tsunayoshi's badness is just such a small, pathetic thing, barely noticeable beside it. What he should do… well, that's obvious, isn't it.

Kyoya is a wild, feral thing, injured, its leg stuck in a trap that has crush the bone, without even the chance to chew it off and escape of his own accord. Back in a corner. Blood, blood, blood. He resists looking beyond those men for a long moment, but the hateful violet gleam of his eye when his resolve wavers is obviously meant to tell Tsunayoshi to get himself out of here, but - ahh. Tsunayoshi is awful, hateful scum. If that guy wanted him not to get involved, then he should have kept his nose out of it first.

He takes the hands that Shioya taught to guide and misdirect force and strikes, and he seizes the man's hand around that weapon and turns it against its wielder. It's different when it's a weapon and not a fist, but ahhhhh, this is a kind of weapon that Tsunayoshi has handled before. He already knows how it works. He would have fumbled and failed doing this the first time, but with Shioya's training, it's a simple thing to aim that weapon upwards and force the trigger to pull.

All of this, he's already done it before. It's a familiar feeling, the recoil, the crack of the gun, loud despite the silencer. The dead body's muscles spasming and then relaxing all at once. Foul, foul, foul.

(People who attack the tender, vulnerable members of a person's family to get to them are less than scum that isn't even worthy of being stepped on.)

Just like the ones that forfeit their lives before, these scum are too stunned by the source of the danger to react quickly when Tsunayoshi twists that gun free and then without hesitation lifts it again. The mess of bone and hair and skull that erupts from that man who has Kyoya at the wrong end of his gun - it's too easy of a passing for scum like him. Everything is happening so slow, and yet - there are a lot of them. His awareness stretches. Tsunayoshi stretches. The sudden explosion of a raging forest fire in his head and in his heart has blanketed the world in a heavy coat of gray ash, and against that the targets of his retribution are bright and hot. His eyes throb. His stomach churns.

Tsunayoshi casts his body to the side and mostly evades the gun aimed at him, although something bright sparks across his face. There's Kyoya to consider, too, who has thrown himself back into the thick of it the moment that man's head exploded into gore.

But surprise or not, there are six more men with guns, and Tsunayoshi has to choose between saving his own life and Kyoya, and falling prey. And so he dodges one way to avoid a gun aimed toward him, and gets pistol whipped for his efforts. It feels like the world explodes in hot white shards, shattering. His already throbbing head cracks. His neck gets worse, when his head snaps back, already in too much agony to really register the strike that knocks it back.

His brain feels like something liquid and loose to slosh out of his skull as he struggles back up onto his hands and knees. There's shouting, but it comes at a distance. A body hits the ground next to him, and it's one of the men, although even if Tsunayoshi had seen their faces, he wouldn't be able to tell which this was with only a bloody ruin to show for it.

Tsunayoshi's hand goes out for the gun when the clearing explodes - or something does. There's no force to the sudden blossom of hot fire that bursts in, licking hot and hungry through the fight and making the skin on Tsunayoshi's face feel as though it's cracking and peeling. Or no, though it seems like it should be hot, but there's no smell of smoke or burning though the flames consume all the same.

Although his body feels as though it's barely holding together, as if all that makes Tsunayoshi himself will slip and pour out of him like an upturned glass, he forces him to rise and meet this new threat. It doesn't matter who he has to kill, or even if he has to die himself so long as Kyoya has no guns aimed at him and Takeshi isn't noticed in the confusion.

But for a split second, when he sees from where the flames originated, he almost mistakes that person as Kyoya. The man's expression is utterly impassive, and almost entirely serene for all that he has his hand gripped tight around the throat of one of the thugs. Many times have people called Kyoya some kind of Demon, as if he's some oni or spirit, although Tsunayoshi himself has never really believed it. This man, however; the feeling that he gives off is definitely that of a higher existence. He could easily be a kami.

Even if he is a kami, if he is a threat then Tsunayoshi will also kill him or die trying.

He says something soft in a sing-songing language, and though his hand, which holds the man by the throat, does not so much as tremble, though he does not scowl or snarl, there is the sense of an undeniable towering rage barely held at bay. Almost immediately, he follows up with, "These are people who are under my protection. The ends of the earth will not shelter you should another attempt be made on them. Please. Go back to your leader and inform him. Doubtlessly, he will not recognize my name. Think deeply as to why my enemies do not speak of it."

At that, he lets go of the man, who stumbles and falls ot the ground and immediately flails and struggles to escape. There are only two false starts before he gets his feet under him and charges blindly into the forest, in the opposite direction of the campsite that the chinese man came from.

"Oh? That's lenient, isn't it?" Kyoya asks, tense and sharp enough to slice open any number of throats on the edges of his words. "You gave such a grand statement for a flashy bit of doing nothing."

The man so full of devouring fury that blossomed such a deep, beautiful red glances at Kyoya, and the same light glimmers deep in his eyes for a long moment before smoldering to charred black. He smiles, and says, "but Kyoya and his friends only left the one, so settling for a message will have to do. If that leader of theirs gets no information whatsoever, then they'll grow curious and send someone else." He glances around the clearing, and then goes to Nerina's side. She still clings to the fallen form of Di Tella. There's a growing black patch on his white shirt.

It seems as though that man isn't an enemy after all, and what little flagging strength that Tsunayoshi had managed to gather collapses. Not far from his side, Kyoya stands, ragged and injured and wild and feral under the moonlight, his eyes burning bright violet. No longer with a gun aimed at his face, he doesn't look nearly as dire, and so Tsunayoshi looks onward. Beyond him is Takeshi, chest heaving and a branch from a tree clutched in his hand. It's nothing at all like the way he would hold a baseball bad. It looks freshly torn, and there's something matted on the thick end where it connected to a trunk. He's still standing over the fallen form of a man, but his eyes are clear and bright. Nearby, Naito is checking on the unconscious form of his fallen bodyguard.

"You guys," Naito says, but only that, lapsing back into silence.

"This one will survive if he's seen to immediately," the Chinese man says, even as he rips open Di Tella's shirt and knots it over the place where all the blood seems to be coming from. The moan that Di Tella gives is sick and hurt and Tsunayoshi's breath catches in his throat, remembering- "Hold this down tightly," he instructs Nerina, who hiccups, and then does as she's told.

He turns and meets Tsunayoshi's eyes directly. The resemblance between Kyoya and this man who is only a few years older than Tsunayoshi's senpai is truly uncanny, except that Tsunayoshi can't ignore that this man's eyes once shone a red far more hungry than the fire that burns in his own chest.

"Your phone," he says. "Take your friend Yamamoto with you and call someone. Even your mother will do. If this man doesn't get an ambulance quickly, he will die."

Nerina sobs at that, and Di Tella makes another small hurt noise under the force with which she presses.

"Tsuna," Takeshi says, and when Tsunayoshi looks at him, he's reaching out with his free hand. The branch is still clenched tightly in the other, as if at any moment more enemies will show themselves and Takeshi will have to kill again. Tsunayoshi is one big awful mess, but he reaches out and lets Takeshi haul him to his feet.

"I guess it would be bad if that guy died," Takeshi says as they quickly leave back toward the camp site. That place they found that had good cell reception is closer to the campsite than the secluded area that those thugs had managed to corner Nerina and Naito in.

Ahh. She really is the worst. Tsunayoshi keeps seeing it: that moment he came upon them, those guns aimed at Kyoya but specifically that one level directly at his face. Kyoya's moves had been ragged compared to how he usually was in a fight. Why had he been alone in the first place to put himself in between a student of Nami Middle and a threat to their life?

Maybe it wouldn't have been so awful if his first time seeing a gun pointed at someone he cares about hadn't come long after he'd used them himself on another human being.

Kyouya is capable and strong and independent and self-sufficient, but he's not 'immortal' or a kami, after all. Or no, even a kami has things that they'll struggle with and get defeated. No matter how strong a person is, there can be times and places where they'll be overcome. That's why small animals have to band together so they can pool their strengths and watch each other's back. That's why wolves hunt in packs.

Even bears and tigers, who are able to hunt alone, often die at the hands of humans.

-0-

Thank goodness Nana is home to pick up the phone when he calls. Thank goodness that she keeps her head and instructs him firmly. Thank goodness Takeshi is there so that in the aftermath, when Tsunayoshi's aching, throbbing body and loose and sloshy insides give out on him, he doesn't topple from atop those shoulders and break his neck hitting the dirt. Thank goodness he's caught and Takeshi doesn't drop him when he vomits everything he's ate out onto the ground.

"Ah," Takeshi says only, moving his foot a bit to make sure it doesn't splash on him. "Jeez. Dad said some people would react like this. It's okay, Tsuna. Those guys were definitely bad. We'll have to do something about you recklessly running in like that - I mean, my own temper didn't hold when that guy hit you, so-"

Tsunayoshi gags on bitter bile and excess saliva. "Sorry," he says, thinking now of how Takeshi must have felt. Even if he'd moved against Mochida in such a way because Mochida insulted his honor regarding his feelings toward Tsunayoshi… "Sorry. I didn't mean to worry you, it was just-" he gags, seeing it again. It feels like something is hammering away at his flesh and bone and skull and self. The kind of inferno that churns inside his heart and inside his head was never meant to be contained by bone and blood, he knows this now. It's going to kill him.

"It's just," Tsunayoshi says, feeling his heart hammer through him and shake the whole world with it, "if they'd killed Kyoya, I don't think I would have ever stopped."

Takeshi's hands, which are holding him up, don't flinch or even twitch or tighten.

"Is it really okay," he says, sniffling, leaking tears and mucus and bitter, burning bile, "for me to be this way?"

If someone takes the people close to him away from him, then there isn't anything in the whole entire world that Tsunayoshi would hold himself back from destroying. Isn't it true that the heart that beats inside his chest is twisted and sick and dark? It certainly seems that way to him. But he can't help it. It has to stay being there if he is to survive, and he has to survive because otherwise-

"Well," Takeshi says after a moment, "whether it's okay or not, that's how you are? So if you're aware of it, let's work hard together to not let things come to that, okay? That's what you said when it came to me, so it's only natural…"

His knees knock and then give out from under him, and a fresh flood of tears pour out as he is pathetically clutched close. Ahh. He's bad.

But the people who are close to him are bad, too, and after all: they deserve a home to return to as well. So then. That's just how it is.

-0-

At some point in time, Tsunayoshi seems to come back to himself. It's not like he actually went anywhere, but… the entire time, all he did was cling to Takeshi's shirt like a little kid while Takeshi did all the hard work of letting the teachers know that something had happened and the authorities were coming. He managed to even talk to Hoshino and get the Disciplinary Committee on the case, going out into the woods to catch up to their taichou.

And after that, he took Tsunayoshi back to his cabin and left him on the bed while he runs interference. That's where Tsunayoshi has been all this time: sitting alone in the dark. Or not alone, he realizes suddenly. At some point in time, although Tsunayoshi isn't sure when or from where, Fon has shown up. He wasn't in the cabin to begin with, and Tsunayoshi barely even noticed Takeshi himself leaving, but - ah. That's good. Tsunayoshi had forgotten all about Fon. Thank goodness that kid hadn't found his way into the woods where he might have seen something that can't be forgotten.

He's fiddling with something in his hands, Tsunayoshi realizes, and then with eerie precision, Fon seems to sense the weight of his attention and looks up at him with those dark eyes, like cold coals. Like charcoal and soot.

The cherubic face of Kyoya in miniature sends tremors through his charred bones, and for a moment all of Tsunayoshi rings with the echoes of take your retribution. But he has, it's done and gone and there's nothing left for him to bother with.

"They're saying there was a hunting accident in the woods and someone got hurt," Fon says.

"A hunting accident," Tsunayoshi echoes, and yes, he supposes so. Thinking back on the thinks he'd heard but hadn't paid attention to, those people… they'd baited Nerina out by going after Naito. That's certainly a kind of hunting, hut, ahhh, Nerina isn't the type that should be getting hunted. "More like poaching," he says.

Fon looks at him for a moment, and then he smiles, soft and secretive. "Yes," he agrees, "a poaching accident. I'm sure the appropriate authorities will follow up on that." Then he holds out his hands and says: "here. For you."

What Fon hands him is a bracelet clearly made from a crafts kit for children, but it gives the impression if having a lot of skill put into it, with an unexpected eye for color composition and tight, neat little knots. It's just plastic and elastic, but somehow it's beautiful.

"Prayer beads have some connection with religion, but you might find it more helpful to count them one by one in times when you are fearful or under pressure so that you can easily find your center again," Fon says, smiling. "It's only a crutch, or a training wheel, so don't become too reliant on something that will come to hold you back."

This would be the time that he would normally admit that he's never managed to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels, but instead he just stares at the bracelet clutched in his shaking fingers. His hands are clean and pale despite the color he knows is there. The flesh still throbs from the kick back of the gun, and the bone trembles from the awful beat of his heart.

This had not been a matter of Tsunayoshi being too weak to stop someone from doing something terrible without going to such lengths. He had simply thought: they pulled a gun on Kyoya and so they don't deserve to live.

And because of that thought, it had been an easy thing for him to do. It had been easy. It's always been so easy, he thinks, and that's what shocks him so badly about it. Just like before, the fact that those men have bled out and died - or no, at least two of them didn't have to bother with 'bleeding out.' That third one might have. And he doesn't care, because they'd made their own bed, but he's startled himself quite badly over being able to do this kind of thing without hesitation. It needed to be done, or rather he'd wanted it done, and then this dame kid had done it.

He's no good for anything, not even as the butt of a joke, but when it comes to this? Ahhh. His hands shake and he even threw up about it, and if he were to be allowed somehow to make that decision again, not a single thing he did would be different.

Regrets are pointless for something like him.

Shakily, Tsunayoshi smiles back. "Thanks, Fon-kun," he says. "I'll treasure it." The band is elastic and it stretches over his hand to fit his wrist neatly. Even if he were to manage to grow huge, he'll be able to wear it.

Fon blinks twice, like he's been taken aback. "It's merely a trinket," he points out.

"Ah - even so," Tsunayoshi says, his heart and bones and blood wobbling, like nitroglycerin ready to pop at the slightest disturbance, "it's the first time a friend has ever given me a gift, and you worked hard on it, and thought about me and helped, so… a small thing or not, it's something important."

That kid's expression is strangely blank, even as he stares up at Tsunayoshi as if seeing him anew. And then Fon rapidly begins to resemble a tomato. Reaching up to grasp his red cheeks in both hands, he seems put out over his own reaction. "I forgot how soft a child's heart is," he says, peeved.

There's no way that Tsunayoshi can laugh so soon after what he's done, but a single hiccup shakes him like he'd tried. Fon's scowling, pouting face really is a lot like Kyoya's. It's cute. "The people you spend your time with should learn better manners," he says, shutting his exhausted eyes, "if they've been neglecting to say 'thanks for your hard work.'"

Soon enough after that, the authorities arrive, and Takeshi tattles on him so that Tsunayoshi is taken along on the ride - not the emergency vehicle that takes Di Tella, who might be dead, but the one with Kyoya himself, and Naito, and Naito's bodyguard ride back in.

It's only at that time that Tsunayoshi realized that before being smashed in the head with a gun, a bullet had grazed his face. They stick plasters on his face and where his lip has split and swollen, and give him a cold compress for the way he has a black eye. They try to do the same for Kyoya, but he's still feeling cornered and harrassed and more feral than usual, so he keeps making frightening faces at them. Apparently the bullet is still in his arm, and he'll need surgery at the hospital to have it taken out.

Naito sits too quiet and too still, looking at not much of anything.

At the hospital itself, they shine lights in Tsunayoshi's eyes some more, and then stick him through a machine. Nana is waiting when he gets turned loose in the waiting room, and the awful, drawn look on her face is quickly erased when she sees him. The hug she wraps him in is crushing, but if anything… it seems to sooth the way his body has continued to shake in the aftermath. It feels like Nana's hug smothers it until it's bury deep inside him and no threat to anyone anymore.

What a foolish thing to believe in. Even after months of silence, it only takes a split second for it to flare back up, and there's nothing growing inside his chest to hide it from the wind again. It won't take much to send it into a towering blaze again.

"I had a feeling you could handle anything that you had to face since then," she says, "but seeing you… I'm glad. I'm glad you're okay, Tsu-kun."

Tsunayoshi thinks about what Takeshi said after that phone call he made to her, and relaxes. "I'm okay," he says.

-0-

Since it seems to be convenient, the men in police uniforms take his statement at the hospital. Mindful of what Fon said about the situation, Tsunayoshi gives some kind if confused story about hearing something strange in the woods and maybe scaring off the poachers. None of it makes any sense, probably, and he's not even sure if it matches anyone else's story, but it's the one he gives and the one he sticks with. The men in police uniforms eventually get tired of listening to his pathetic story and leave it at that.

It's only been a few hours since it happened, so it's probably too soon to know if Di Tella will be alright, but Tsunayoshi finds himself wandering around the hallways all the same, looking for any sign at all that such high ranking individuals are here.

He finds Naito first.

"Ah, Naito-kun," Tsunayoshi says, seeing him in a hallway with his back to the wall. It looks as though he's been stuck in a corner, although certainly no one would have told him to stay there in the hallway where he might cause blockage if someone needed to come through.

The boy startles, looking around at him. "Ah, Dame-Tsuna," he says reflexively, and then seems to hear what he's say and throws his head back and begins to cackle. The noise crashes and shatters and breaks in that echoing hallway, empty for the time being except for the two of them. Tsunayoshi should feel more disturbed by the scene except that he recognizes it. This could have been him if Nana hadn't been there for him. There's no one here for Naito.

"What the hell is that," Naito says, covering his face with his hands and sinking down the wall. His knuckles are white. "Tsuna wasn't useless or good for nothing… that was me."

"In the first place," Tsunayoshi says, "I was only able to do something because they were surprised." He stares down at Naito's long form, hunched into a crumpled ball of misery at the bottom of the wall. "Secondly, I've already done this before, anyway." Looking around the hallway, he recognizes that they're in the hall where long-term patients are kept. They really had been beating that adult servant of Naito's when Tsunayoshi had come upon the scene. He hadn't really taken note of it, honestly. He can't guess at how severe the beating was. This location certainly doesn't seem promising, though.

The crumpled form of Naito shivers and shakes. His breath is harsh and jagged. There's no mother to come and hug and reassure him, and thinking about the Tomaso family in general, Tsunayoshi is sure that goes for the rest of them regardless of if they appeared. If anyone were going to come to Naito's rescue, it would be Nerina, but Nerina is undoubtedly more concerned with the fate of her bodyguard - or no, she probably needs soothing herself. There's no way anyone can expect her to soothe someone else with the situation being what it is

Honestly, he's in no shape for it himself, but Tsunayoshi steps over and bends down and awkwardly pats the wild, twisted style that Naito keeps his hair in.

"It's not that you weren't capable of doing anything," he says, thinking back to that moment when he'd first done That Thing. "But that no one should expect you to do anything, Naito-kun. Those were adults. They were meaning to kill someone. It's the fault of the selfish adults who are supposed to be looking out for us that it happened at all. 'Doing something' isn't supposed to be the responsibility of kids like us."

"But isn't that how it is," Naito says, hiccupping into his curled arms and knees. "Aren't we always the ones who have to do something? Even Hiba-chan…"

It takes Tsunayoshi a moment to recognize that as Naito probably talking about 'Hibari.' How far below bottom feeders does Kyoya consider Naito to allow that kind of nickname to go unchallenged? That's more or less calling him a tree for things to roost in.

But Naito is right, after all. Tsunayoshi has seen it up close. There's some reason why the adults in Namimori stand back and watch the children the way they do. Ahh. Something like that can't be allowed to continue. He's not sure what kind of pressures that it is that keeps them sitting on their hands, but that, too, is probably something he needs to crush, like a bug under his shoe. It's not fair when systems put undue weight on certain individuals for the sake of the community.

Harm befalls the family that way, after all.

"Well," Tsunayoshi says, standing straight again. "That's true, but then… if they're going to sit back and watch, then they have no right to complain about whatever we end up making of the situation." His head feels strange, and stuffy. Rubbing at it, tugging his hair, Tsunayoshi vaguely thinks about how his heart has become sick and twisted. He's a bit stressed out - anxious. It's fine if they want to sit back, but people who sit back and let others do the hard work… well, they've forfeited the right to complain about what's made of it.

He vaguely registures that Naito has uncurled a bit, and is staring up at him. His face is a flushed and pale and twisted mess, tears and snot carelessly smeared all over it. There's an odd light in his eyes.

(For a split second, Tsunayoshi's fingers and knuckles itch. Something in his sick heart hardens. The inferno in his chest remains smothered while some kind of pressure builds against the confines of bone and blood, unyielding and cold, and tells him: bend forward and snuff that out.

Tsunayoshi, already accustomed to the awful things inside his heart and inside his head, barely gives this reflex passing acknowledgement.)

"You mean… change it ourselves?" Naito asks, sniffling.

"Like you said," Tsunayoshi says, looking down at him. "We're always the ones who have to do it anyway. If the generation before us is all rotten, so they refuse to lift a finger themselves, then shaking this town up is the only thing we have left to do." He tilts his head. "Maybe it's fine with you, but the thought of growing up and becoming rotten just like them? I can't tolerate that. I'll change this town by force or die trying."

"Dame- … no, Sawada-chan sure is amazing," Naito says. He wipes his face off on the arm of his shirt, still sniffling and hiccuping a bit. "I've hated this place my entire life, but… I'm just me, you know? I'm annoying, and I'm hated, and I've always failed at everything I've ever done, and I couldn't seem to change it, so I started taking pride in that… my life is the worst. I thought I was already at rock bottom, so it's fine, right?"

Naito pauses for a second, the palms of his hands pressed tight against his eyes.

"I really thought I could keep living like that. At least I'm the annoying Naito, and not known as something like Dame-Tsuna, right?" he says, muffled into his knees. "I hate the part of me that thought that the most. Who cares about the opinion of people who can think that of someone else? Even Hiba-chan couldn't do anything against those guys, but because of him, you showed up, and Yamacchin, and Mangusta might not wake up-" He sucks in a wretched, quavering breath.

Tsunayoshi remains silent, listening to the awful crack of a poorly built dam bursting. Something like that will destroy the cities made below it, he thinks. Countless lives would be lost that way.

"If Sawada-chan is going to change it, then I want to support him," Naito says, and sucks in another breath, and finally lowers his hands from his face. "The support of someone like me might not count for much. I don't have any sway with my family, even though I'm on the Tomaso registry, but - the people they're associated with, and their business. I know about all of that. If Sawada-chan needs it, I can do that much."

Is it really okay for him to accept something like that? Although he could, he doesn't want to become the kind of scum that misleads others into trouble without them knowing what they're getting into.

"I appreciate it, Naito-kun," he says, "but before you hand over something as precious as that, you should know… nothing that I did back there was for your sake. Although it was awful, I only lifted a finger to help because Kyoya was in trouble. That's all. That's the reason why I did it."

"I know," Naito says, but Tsunayoshi wonders if he really does. Although he's still shaking and there are still tears stubbornly leaking out of his eyes, he forces himself to his feet. That kid really does tower over Tsunayoshi. "That's fine. I can also be useful and prove myself like Hiba-chan. I'm a proud bearer of the Longchamp name, after all."

Tsunayoshi should probably be feeling something in response to having someone more or less swear fealty to him, but his hands keep feeling wet and there's iron in his nose and bitter bile and ash in his mouth. He makes himself smile anyway. "Thank you, Naito-kun. I'll work hard to be worthy of your regard."

Naito's head bobs. He keeps scrubbing at his face with the sleeves of his shirt like a little kid. That chaperon that treated him like something less than a person really was that important to him. Or maybe he's still scared because he hadn't been able to do anything - although it's probably not that. After all, Naito talked at some length about how he's never succeeded at anything in his entire life before. There's no way he's unfamiliar with that feeling, if maybe not in such dire circumstances.

Tsunayoshi can probably find some task where he'll perform well. It'll be good for him.

-0-

The boy with milkspill hair laughs, and laughs, and laughs, sharp and painful. Those thin arms, nothing but skin and bones and painful scars where needles were pushed in again and again and again and left there for countless days or weeks, twine over Tsunayoshi's narrow shoulders so that the spider lengths of his finger tips pitter patter over the breastbone.

"There it is. That's it," he says, hateful and gleeful all at once. "That's the power that she's seeking from you. I wonder how many different worlds also got this far but it just wasn't enough?"

"Shouldn't you of everyone know that best?" Tsunayoshi wonders.

"Even I'm not omniscient," he huffs. Though his face presses in where hair meets neck, there is no breath to prickle Tsunayoshi's skin. After all, that kid isn't here at all, is he? "Certainly, it's my mind alone that's capable of grasping the nature of reality without snapping entirely, but - it's not as though I've been allowed to look around as I please." The words drip and drop, viscous and drenched in bitter, spoiled honey.

Something like that could easily poison a person who listened to it for very long. And yet it doesn't trouble Tsunayoshi in the least. His heart is made of fire. There's not enough bitterness and bile inside this child to douse that flame out or sway it.

"With this," the boy says, the uncut points of his fingernails biting into the shirt, slotting into the hollows between Tsunayoshi's ribs, "we might just be the one that makes it. Survive, Nayo. If you have to cling to life with broken nailbeds and chipped, teeth, survive. If you can, you'll be saved, and maybe you can meet that child. It'll be plenty amusing, I think! How would you like to make this reality one in a hundred billion? Hmm?"

Tsunayoshi is left alone in an empty hallway with one hand grasped to his chest, feeling the hollow thump of his sick heart beneath charred ribs. Although smothered, the inferno is only banked. It won't can't ever become embers again. He feels a little like he'll really choke on the poisonous ash, but - somehow, he thinks he'll survive somehow no matter what.

He doesn't have a choice. There are people who depend on him, after all.

-0-

By the time he catches back up with Nana, she's looking anxious again, and only manages to barely cover it when she spots him again and stops bouncing on her toes about it, rolling down to rest her heels on the ground and giving a beaming smile as if she'd never been doing something so embarrassing in the first place, surely he was mistaken.

"How are your friends, Tsu-kun? Are they okay, too?"

"Ah," he says, because he'd more or less delayed them leaving the hospital that way, but - he'd only managed to find Naito. He can more or less guess at the fate of Nerina and her Di Tella, but as for Kyoya - Tsunayoshi is the worst! Never for one moment had he thought about Kyoya after seeing that the paramedic would look after him!

Tsunayoshi has every confidence that he could more or less tell Nana that and she'd patiently wait longer, or perhaps even go with him to meet a 'new friend' of his, since he's so far failed to properly explain the situation with Kyoya, or even mention him at all. But though he's anxious to see Kyoya, and will probably be bitten many more times to death over the upcoming months due to the likelihood of him crowding, Tsunayoshi doesn't quite say that he's overlooked someone.

In the next instant, his gut proves correct by a wall of black coming down one of the other hallways toward the lobby, with white fringes of doctor's coats. The Hibari clan has a certain distinctive look to them, although Tsunayoshi has become intimately acquainted with how little Kyoya, the most familiar Hibari face to the general populace (of Nami Middle, anyway) resembles them at all. Still, they all have that dark hair and black eyes and aristocratic bearing, like something out of a feudal fairy tale.

Though those people ignoring the fretful doctors shouldn't be painted with that brush. Most of them are bodyguard-escorts of some sort, although they have the look enough. But it's the man that's obviously the nexus of the group that immediately catches Tsunayoshi's eye, that makes him round his shoulders and duck his head, even as he glances past him to where Kyoya stalks along with the group. Well, a little along with them; somehow he manages to be within a foot and a half of that man while appearing to be completely uninvolved with anything going on immediately beside him, his face impassive. The wound that had bled down the side of his face has been bandaged, and then strapped to his head with white gauze, and though a sling hangs around his neck, he's refusing to use it.

Tsunayoshi can't exactly help the minuscule step he takes that direction, wanting to say something about it. His shoulder is shot. Even Takeshi, who only got muscle bruising, diligently used his sling! There had been a bullet in there! Demon or not, Kyoya should take care with himself or otherwise there's no way that Tsunayoshi is going to rest easy about it!

Kyoya gives him such a sharp, forbidding look that Tsunayoshi's mind blanks out, and then the man with him says, "Ah." He stops, and Nana's hand lands on Tsunayoshi's shoulder, and the other people with that Hibari clan member fan out. It's not that Nana and Tsunayoshi are immediately surrounded, but it suddenly feels that way.

There's a strange pressure against Tsunayoshi's eardrums as the man looks at him and says, "I see. Things are starting to make a little more sense now." The set of his shoulders are familiar. The line of his jaw, and the shape of his ears. Kyoya very strongly favors the blood he shares with little Fon, but there's a resemblance enough to this man too that he has to be family. "This is really interesting," he says, and Tsunayoshi wants, a little, to work his jaw so the incredible pressure in his ears lets up, and then that man looks at Nana.

As anxious as it makes him, Tsunayoshi is a little grateful that Nana is beneath this man's notice. There are too many of them, and he can already tell that Kyoya won't move with him against these people, and it's a hospital besides. That man smiles and says, "It may be a little late, but won't you come over to Lark's Haven for a while?"

Nana's hand doesn't tighten even a fraction on Tsunayoshi's shoulder as she titters, "Thank you, Hibari-san, but it's been such an upsetting day-"

And he says, "Please. I insist."

There's a slight pause, because both Nana and Tsunayoshi know that despite his polite words, it won't last if they refuse again. Then Nana says, brightly, clasping her hands together, "Well, I've always wanted to visit the old parts of the town!"

"The Hibari family would be honored to have you," he says, but his gaze falls on Tsunayoshi most of all, and ahh, but Tsunayoshi doesn't care for it, not at all. He wants to go back to his house with just himself and Nana, and he wants to sit down and have snacks with Takeshi and Haru again, and go to TakeSushi and get yelled at while Shoichi has a snack at the service bar, or if none of those then to give Saitoh Itsuki a call and let him ramble on about this or that from the class he's taking.

Instead, Tsunayoshi searches for the second wind inside his heart. Fine. If the Hibari clan wishes to push, then Tsunayoshi will face them and steal Kyoya away from them in one fell swoop.

-0-


NOTES:

* Tsunayoshi manages to both have a worse reaction to murdering people this time, and to be like "Oh well! I yam how I yam!" And Takeshi's first kill had like. No fanfare at all, but like to him, it's a complete nonissue. I love how Omerta is a thing, but Tsuyoshi is over there, "Takeshi! A normal person will react badly to death!" and Takeshi was probably like, "oh, what, really? How weird, haha."

* That's how the Tomaso family ended up allied with the Sawada family tho lol. The Tomaso family actually don't have flames of their own, but Naito got them from his mother.

Also, a taste of Tsunayoshi encountering another sky who isn't related to him and experiencing that 'skies eat their own' phenomena. The primary danger to a Sky is another Sky, after all. They can certainly coexist if properly socialized, of course, but even Dino in the canon universe probably felt at least a little of that when he met little brother Tsuna. Though, naturally, you don't attack a young Sky a powerful guy like Reborn is being broody over lmao.

* Naito Longchamp is only 6cm taller than Tsuna in canon, which is about 2in for imperial unit scum like myself, but he really gives the impression of being a lanky beanpole.

* Tsunayoshi is like - half in shock and half suffering under the yoke of his Sky flames. Look forward to that continuing to be so at Lark's Haven next chapter! It'll be called 'those whom the sun sets upon'


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