Chapter 20 : those whom the sun sets upon
There's an older hospital in the part of Namimori where Lark's Haven resides, nestled into the wooded hills at the foot of the shrine. As Namimori grew, it slowly became overburdened, and unable to expand due to the buildings around it, eventually a new hospital was built further away from those old parts of the town. There are a dedicated few who still reliable visit that old hospital, but for most of Namimori, if they don't go to their local clinics, they go to the large, modern hospital in the middle of town.
In other words, when Nana and Tsunayoshi leave the hospital in the company of Hibari and his men, and Kyoya, it's to a car to be driven all the way across the town to Lark's Haven. Tsunayoshi, who has only at best ridden trams and buses, is reluctant to get into the cab of the car that waits, shining and expensive, outside the hospital. Inside even smells odd and fancy, and he is all the more painfully aware that he's still dressed in clothes that are stained with his own blood and the blood of others and worse things.
That Hibari man that has Kyoya come to heel stands outside the car for a while. He's on his phone and talking too quiet to overhear, while the bulk of his men scatter to other cars - there are other cars! Really! The extravagance of the Hibari family certainly knows no boundaries! He's fairly sure even the Tomaso family wouldn't go so far. This one is larger and fancier than the others, since the back seat isn't just the usual bench for two or three people like Tsunayoshi has seen in movies, but boasts a second bench turn to face the other.
While Nana goes along with her usual aplomb despite the situation, Tsunayoshi's eyes are on Kyoya. It's worse than 'weird' to see Kyoya so subdued as if he's coming to heel. His eyes are flat like no one is behind them, his hair a mess where the bandages were hastily applied, as if he refused to sit still for it or the doctors rushed through it in order to get away. His uniform overshirt is missing, and the white button up under it is bloodstained like a murder scene, still with a strange shade that suggests the worst of it hasn't even dried yet. It's only loosely buttoned back on, so there's a long stretch of Kyoya's neck and shoulder and collarbone visible, and strips of white where the gauze is tapped on over the wound.
The bandaged that had been applied to Tsunayoshi's busted lip tastes awful as he chews on the edge of it.
"Oh my, this is so fancy," Nana says lightly, covering up her own nerves with effortless flutter.
"Where's Fon, senpai?" Tsunayoshi asks.
The facade shatters immediately in the way Kyoya looks at him like some annoying, yappy dog. He doesn't really make much of a face over it, but his eyes are sharp and narrowed just so. "That guy went ahead," he says evenly, and then glances at Nana.
Nana beams at him. "So you're Tsu-kun's senpai!" she says, as if she actually knows anything at all about Kyoya, which she doesn't. "It's nice to meet you. Thank you for taking care of my son."
Kyoya looks incredibly nonplussed by this, a bit like he's never had a parent say something nice to him. His mouth actually opens slightly, and his shoulders tense like his fight or flight instincts are kicking in - although Tsunayoshi hadn't even realized Kyoya had such a thing. To see Kyoya react to Nana like she's something he needs to run away from is so ludicrous that Tsunayoshi feels like laughing - the same way Naito laughed earlier.
Nana looks at the blood staining Kyoya's shirt, and the sling that's laying abandoned around his neck, and she adds, gently, "It seems that you got caught up in something dangerous… I'm not sure what went on during that school field trip that should have been safe, but… thank goodness you made it out alive."
"I won't be killed that easily," Kyoya says in rebuke, but - ahh, as close to adulthood as he's getting, Kyoya's still more or less a kid, and for the first time, he looks like it, too.
"Of course not," Nana says, touching the tips of her fingers to her mouth and tilting her head. "I know my Tsu-kun won't either, but it's difficult to be left behind and not know if something might happen, or if everyone will be okay. If you ever need some place to stay, our house has a few extra rooms. Please intrude at any time."
It's hard to apply normal emotions to Kyoya's expressions to begin with, but in this case 'appalled' and 'uncomfortable' seem to be the closest to it. Before Nana can harass him further, the door opens and the Hibari man gets into the back of the car with them. He takes a lingering look at Kyoya's disrupted poise and then looks to Tsunayoshi with an unreadable expression.
As if Tsunayoshi could have ever affected Kyoya that much.
The way that man settles in beside Kyoya only serves to wind the uneasy knot in Tsunayoshi's stomach tighter. He hates it. It feels like a threat, or a point, and something dark flashes across Kyoya's face like he's reading the situation the same way.
Hibari looks at Nana and smiles. Nana smiles back.
The ride itself isn't a long one, but the awkward silence inside the car makes it feel that way. Tsunayoshi sinks into the seat, rounding his shoulders and lowering his eyes. He doesn't have the self control to avoid causing problems for Nana, and for now she seems to be handling the situation, so he'll leave it up to her for the time being.
They finally arrive at Lark's Haven. It's a massive, sprawling compound that's easy to believe to be the founding family of Namimori. It towers, despite the feudal architecture. Over generations the Hibari family has lived inside those walls, and a chill goes up Tsunayoshi's spine when he sets foot in that ancient ground. He flinches, and looks over his shoulder - but there's nothing there other than those people in suits who escorted them this far.
Tsunayoshi and Nana are ushered inside, mostly by those men and then what Tsunayoshi can only identify as servants after his turn in the Tomaso residence. Despite that, the two places aren't alike at all - and it goes further than just the western-eastern divide. The elegance of Lark's Haven is understated compared to the rampant luxury of the other.
The way that Hibari moves with them, as if they're equals instead of 'guests' is a bit unsettling more than reassuring, and although Tsunayoshi doesn't want to see it any longer than he has to, he's unhappy to watch that man send Kyoya away to get washed up. It makes him even more aware of the state of his clothing.
Self consciousness hasn't completely set in yet when a woman arrives, neat and poised in one way, but practically vibrating with excitement otherwise. "Uncle!" She greets, bright and attentive - eager. "We have guests?"
Hibari looks at her with no particular expression on his face. The resemblance is enough - the shape of their ears and eyes. His hair is cropped too short to know of it matches the flat, silky curtain of blackness she sports, loose and pulled over her left shoulder.
"Ikumi-kun," he says, "those guests are standing before you."
She looks first to Nana, and then her gaze turns to Tsunayoshi, uncomprehending for several brief seconds before she looks back to her Uncle. "But," she says, the excitement fading from her expression, like biting into a piece of cake to find it stale, and just so: her face turns to something unpleasant. "That's a child."
Hibari sighs and looks away from her for a moment, turning to the servant who had greeted them at the door. "Please see to that child and the mother's needs," he says, to which the servant bows and immediately moved to Nana and Tsunayoshi's sides.
"Please," he says, bowing shortly again and gesturing.
"Thank you," Nana says pleasantly, and then pauses and turns slightly. "there's no offense that's been taken," she says to the Hibari man, "Ikumi-chan is basically a child herself, right?"
"Thank you for your forbearance," he says, not looking at her or anyone in particular.
Nana hums, a bit dissatisfied and concerned, but - it's not really their place, is it? And so she goes with the servant with one hand in Tsunayoshi's shoulder. He's thankful for it. It's becoming increasingly clear that this visit has everything to do with him and his connection with Kyoya, and he really can't relax about how everything has been going.
Even worse: they seem to expect him to bathe, and by the time he finishes that, his clothing is missing and Ikumi is there, subdued with a kimono for him.
"Please forgive the unworthy behavior displayed earlier," she says, eyes lowered as she dips into an embarrassingly deep bow.
"Ah!" he flusters, clutching the bathrobe he'd reluctantly put on, "there's really nothing to forgive!" Or rather: she should be asking for forgiveness regarding barging in on him when he's not dressed. And the sudden shift in her behavior has every last hair on the back of his neck standing on end.
"Then, please," she says, straightening, the kimono in hand. It's black and dark gray and purple, silhouettes of birds cutting across a night sky, and-
Some part of Tsunayoshi deeply rebels at the idea of clothing himself in anything linked to the Hibari name. He doesn't like how Kyoya acts at times. He doesn't like Ikumi's Uncle, and how his mother is being treated, and these immediate circumstances set his teeth on edge. Regarding every time he's met anyone's parents ever - compared to them, the picture that's coming into focus is making him anxious.
"Um," he says, and rounds his shoulders and ducks his head into the perfect picture of a useless kid, "sorry, it's just - something more comfortable? I still feel a little sick, so-"
"Of course," she says, and the sight of a grown woman flustering that way doesn't settle his nerves at all. It's only a few minutes wait for Ikumi to come back with a more simple kimono - still elegant, but undecorated.
The less said of the helps he needs to actually put it on, the better.
His skin crawls a little as he settles into the final layer, and not just because of Ikumi's behavior - a fine sense of dread settles into his gut, and when Ikumi answers the door - it turns out to be because Kyoya is standing behind it.
Tsunayoshi flinches. It's not right. This isn't Kyoya's aura at all, his eyes shards of onyx that stare Ikumi down, face impassive, his arm finally resting in the brace and tucked inside the housecoat he's wearing over his own dark kimono. There's only barely no water dripping from his hair, hanging heavy in unbrushed disarray that appears to be bristling.
Ikumi's hand comes down on Tsunayoshi's shoulder, and Kyoya's eyes grow even more flinty than before.
"That's behavior unbecoming the Hibari name," Kyoya murmurs, a flat and even tone that nonetheless sounds like the distant howl of a descending army of demons.
"Is it?" Ikumi asks, an ancient blessed blade forged particularly for slaying such things drawn over raw silk. "Isn't it a forgone conclusion, already? What does one such as you even have to offer?"
Ikumi, he thinks nonsensically, could easily destroy threats to Tsunayoshi and his family. Easily, easily, easily. It's in her voice and in her manner and her resolve - it's strong. Somehow, despite their meeting getting off on the wrong foot, and her storming the room to clothe him in traditional cloth, he thinks they could get along and she would be a fine tool with which to strike at threats and destroy them utterly. All these times Tsunayoshi has thought of making himself into whatever weapon necessary to face those things himself for the sake of his family, and here is something foraged specifically for it, already having decided of its own accord to rest in his hand so he doesn't have to do it himself.
And yet.
Standing before him and not even looking at him, Kyoya's narrow eyes hood into dangerous slits. Forget whatever words that he spoke to Shoichi over territory, Tsunayoshi thinks: to Kyoya, the largest threat stands before him, and yet there are no tonfa in his hands nor any aura of any demons. There's no violet in his coal black eyes. But his resolve is-
"Um," Tsunayoshi says, ducking out from under Ikumi's hand and sidling sideways between them. "Senpai. Do you know where Nana is?"
The tension between Ikumi and Kyoya doesn't do anything as crass as 'crackle' - Ikumi's eyes flash unpleasantly, and she stands even taller than Kyoya, who is just barely not a 'kid' anymore and still far from being an 'adult' like her. Ahh. It's stressful. Neither of them acknowledge him for a long moment, barely breathing themselves over their staredown, before Kyoya finally grunts inelegantly and tips his head.
Eagerly assuming that he's being gestured onward, Tsunayoshi swiftly ducks from between the two even if his final destination is uncertain. For once, he's not unthankful that he's in the short side, since it makes the maneuver very easy.
It feels like Ikumi's feelings are going to peel the skin off his back. It's a very similar feeling to that man back at that clearing in the mountains, but at the same time very different. There had been something beautiful about that hot red light that man had wielded. A bit wistfully, Tsunayoshi thinks he'd like to meet that man here again if only to break the stalemate.
Kyoya hadn't been happy to see the man, but more or less, he'd accepted that man stepping in on the battle, and even so injured hadn't been on the defensive. Seeing someone's eyes literally glow red should have been scary, but more than anything else, Tsunayoshi had felt safe. He wonders if that's what a trusted adult is supposed to feel like.
Kyoya doesn't put his hands on Tsunayoshi, but he's skilled in scattering and herding herbivores, and so he effortlessly herds Tsunayoshi down the hallway to room much like the one that he once met old man Yamamoto in. As stressful as that was, this is a hundred times worse for the elegantly dressed couple who sit at the head of the table - one of whom Tsunayoshi somehow recognizes from years ago when his father had taken him out for ice cream. Neither of their faces so much as flicker as Tsunayoshi is herded to the side opposite them, where Nana sits in her own fine kimono, dove gray and cream with a neutral sable accent.
There are no larks on her either, he's somewhat relieved to see.
Ikumi moves to sit at one side of the table closest her mother, while at her side sits another boy, some years older than Tsunayoshi - older yet than even Kyoya, he notices uncomfortably. And then is distracted when after depositing him at the table, Kyoya leaves it completely to join the woman seated beside the opposite doorway. She's-
Tsunayoshi feels incredibly awkward and cheap just being in the same room as this woman, dressed in a kimono that's humble for all it is elegant. She's so obviously Kyoya's mother as he settles in beside her, impassive and unreadable. Her face should look the same, like a stone wall with no give, but there's something at the corner of her eyes that Tsunayoshi thinks is a dark, vicious amusement. Every inch of her is polished like a finer blade can't be found in all of Japan, more so than any words Ikumi could use or even Takeshi dreamed of being; she is a weapon and takes pride in being a weapon and only doesn't gladly wear the blood of her enemies because it's a bit crass, isn't it?
"Thank you for accepting our invitation, Sawada-dono," the man at the table says while his wife smiles pleasantly.
"Oh, not at all," Nana titters, waving them off. "We were honored to be invited to such a beautiful home. It was very kind to allow us to freshen up and lend us such nice clothes."
"It's our pleasure to have such honored guests," the Lady Hibari says, and allows her gaze to fall to Tsunayoshi.
"As we are to understand the situation," her husband continues, "your family has done a favor to us, in protecting one with our name. We would like to repay our debt to you."
Ahh. He'd thought so this entire time, and based on the way that Nana doesn't falter for one second beside him, she had more or less figured out the exact same thing. He's done something troublesome and brought the attention of this ancient and honored family down on his newcomer mother. It's making him anxious.
"In order to show our gratitude," the wife says, "we would extend the companionship of our son, and our daughter." She gestures to either child, who both look to Tsunayoshi. They're both undeniably Hibari children, and it only makes sense that of course they're the heirs, more or less. Ikumi's eyes gleam triumphantly, and the son makes a smile that is more unpleasant and smug. Though their eyes are aimed in Tsunayoshi's direction, the truth of it is that neither of them are really paying Tsunayoshi or Nana any attention at all.
It's much more obvious that instead, they're paying attention to how those words affect the mother and child at the doorway.
The dark, vicious amusement around the corner of Kyoya's mother's eyes has disappeared, and now she gazes into some kind of middle distance with what could be boredom or finally trained apathy. Clearly anything further that happens here is far beneath her attention, and at her side, Kyoya may as well have been an inhuman statue formed of fine silk and marble. There's still no recognizable aura whatsoever from him. Tsunayoshi's stomach ties in anxious knots. It's bad. It's too bad. Ahh, no.
"There's no need to concern yourself with that further," Lord Hibari says, seeing where Tsunayoshi's attention has strayed. "It would please the Hibari clan to find you companions much better suited for keeping your company."
Tsunayoshi's limbs seem to jitter from the stress, his lungs trembling. His palms are cold and damp. His head aches and the burnt bones in his chest seem fit to burst between the heavy squeeze of his muscles and the inferno that churns inside him, devouring everything. Kyoya faced that thing down and fanned the flames even though his instincts should have sent him running for the hills: even apex predators are at the mercy of something like that which cannot be reasoned with.
"Abandon senpai?" Tsunayoshi echoes faintly, turning to look at the two heads of household before him. Ah, no. Although technically they're definitely running this clan, they aren't the same as him at all. This is a situation more like Naoko and Nana herself, isn't it? Why are they getting involved in it, then?
"It's not abandoning," Lady Hibari says gently, kindly, and Tsunayoshi thinks of Kyoko gently shutting the door on his muddy nose; "It's 'setting free.' Something like that child prefers not to be weighted down and hampered by such tiresome matters. The companionship of Ikumi-chan and Sozui-kun would be a better fit."
That's not entirely wrong, Tsunayoshi thinks. It's the efforts of Kusakabe and now Hoshino that allow Kyoya the freedom to move as he wishes while still attending to the responsibilities he himself has sought out. Naturally Kyoya requires his freedom. He needs to be allowed to make his own decisions and do as he feels necessary without having to worry about coordinating with others. But Tsunayoshi doesn't see what that has to do with him. Haven't they worked this all out themselves? Hasn't Kyoya allowed him to be around, and haven't their subordinates helped them coordinate it all without interfering with one another? Isn't Kyoya already the kind of person that Tsunayoshi will kill for, and doesn't Kyoya already return that regard?
Tsunayoshi looks at Ikumi, and he looks at Sozui, neither of whom seem troubled or even very invested in all of this going on at the table. Kyoya is already at least a year older than Tsunayoshi, maybe more, and that sits between them as it is. Sozui is at least a few years older than that, and Ikumi is already an adult, and neither of them are being prevented from sitting at the table. The weight of everyone's eyes here makes his head throb, like this is already a forgone conclusion. He thinks of Ikumi facing Kyoya and saying: what does one such as you even have to offer?
All these assumptions that Tsunayoshi has made all along, while maybe not entirely right, were not all that wrong, either. Kyoya's toothaches. The way he goes so far and yet hangs back and refuses to get close. Fon himself saying that he'd never thought that Kyoya would come to have friends, and Kyoya declaring Tsunayoshi his territory.
He thinks of meeting Saitoh and Saitoh asking for Kyoya's character reference, and how on Tsunayoshi's word, he'd give Kyoya a chance. How, after that, the more that Tsunayoshi visited Saitoh on the Committee's behalf, the more that awful fury seemed to drain out of him like a lanced boil.
All the Committee members who gathered at Kyoya's heels and Nakamoto Kei who calls him 'taichou.'
Tsunayoshi is far from the first person to take notice of Hibari Kyoya and think him worthwhile. He wonders if Kyoya will ever come to believe it himself, regardless of whatever shielding his mother must have done for his sake so far. Tsunayoshi's instincts are good, after all. That sister and brother are strong, and they're good to have around, and even if they're still not thinking about Tsunayoshi's part in this, or their own part in regards to Tsunayoshi: he could get along with them.
But the fact that the thing that they're both focusing on the most is taking this thing away from Kyoya? Well. The stress of that makes him feel like he might shake and fall apart.
Yes. Already there is a forgone conclusion to be had here.
"In the first place," Tsunayoshi says, looking across the table at Lady Hibari, "I did no such favor to Clan Hibari and so there is no such debt. The only thing I did was move to aid one of my own. If Clan Hibari benefited from that at all, it was merely by happenstance. And secondly, even if such a debt did exist, the idea that I would ever willingly surrender anyone who belongs to my household for the sake of gaining two such self-absorbed people who can't even see what's in front of their faces…" It feels like looking through a window wet with condensation, but there are two ways that walls like that work, and he looks at the Lady Hibari and feels troubled with something that's not worth the breath it's taking to shoot it down: "Isn't that a bit of an insult?"
It's already stressful, but the sudden tension that twangs through the room and then seems to crackle? It feels bad enough to suffocate on, Nana's hands on her knees beside him tightening until her knuckles are white. Tsunayoshi dies a hundred million deaths in the eyes of Lord and Lady Hibari, but though his palms sweat and his muscles tremble and shake, he meets those gazes directly. Their composure holds, as he thought it might after they treated him and Nana with such high honors.
If adults persist in dealing with him as if he's a peer, in on their secrets with them, then Tsunayoshi will behave as a peer and not a biddable child.
Somewhere, that guy that has been accusing Tsunayoshi of this and that must be sneezing himself into an early grave.
"You-!" Ikumi says sharply, raising up on her knees with a hot flush of anger in her cheeks. Something surges and in response, something rattled down through Tsunayoshi's quivering limbs but-
"It would be like spitting into the wind, I told you."
Back the way that Tsunayoshi had entered the room with Kyoya and Ikumi, it's the man from the woods with the glowing eyes. They aren't glowing now, though, and instead of wearing clothing that matches the air of the occasion, he's dressed in a thick red cotton long-robe. In the lighting of the room, instead of the distorted shadows of the clearing in the mountain, the resemblance to Kyoya and his mother is truly disorienting.
He leans against the doorway, gazing at Lord and Lady Hibari with slanted eyes fit to slice them painlessly from throat to gut and leave them guessing for at least five seconds before the pain sets in and everything peels apart.
"Perhaps it's because you are unaccustomed to meeting a person of this quality," he continues in a gentle, measured voice at odds with the danger radiating from him, "but this child could no more leave Kyoya than you could leave Namimori. Or rather, another way of saying is it something like… if this child so readily abandoned one, would he really be so reliable that you'd lend your children to him?"
"I don't recall it being your business," Lady Hibari says, and it is only not frigid because there is already no warmth to the room to contrast it.
The man smiles, small and insincere. He dips his head and peers through his lashes at her, saying, "those of my blood are of my blood. How fortunate that in this situation, our families are joined. Is this not enough to satisfy you?"
By their white knuckled silence, Lord and Lady Hibari are not satisfied in the least.
He leans off the doorway and moves into the room, inclining his head briefly to both Tsunayoshi and Nana before going to the side of Kyoya's mother and settling there beside her on the bare floor. It's quite the stunning array, those three lined up, even though Kyoya's mother has turned just the barest fraction in a snub toward that man. Who is he? An estranged brother? Fon's father, perhaps? He's young to have a four year old son already, but-
"I won't mind sharing," Sozui says suddenly, and Tsunayoshi blinks to realize that the youngest Hibari son has focused on him at last. As sharp as Kyoya's eyes are, the softness of their angles is definitely his Hibari blood, as is the roughness of his hair compared to his mother and her brother(?). Though Sozui makes large eyes at him - not rabbit eyes, but deer eyes, perhaps, Tsunayoshi can't bring himself to trust the light that glitters inside them. "Forgive Mother's rash words, Sawada-kun. If you're that attached to Cousin Kyoya, then I've shared a household with him before."
Across the table, Ikumi lets a slight breath escape her in fury, trying to stare down Sozui who ignores her effortlessly.
His close attention makes Tsunayoshi's skin crawl in a deeply unpleasant way. Although he's come down from the formal way of talking that his parents had used, to match Tsunayoshi's own uncultured way of speaking, it doesn't put Tsunayoshi the least at ease. It's his own fault for forgoing the traditional structures, maybe, but - there's no way he can maneuver around them without knowing what the rules are in the first case.
Tsunayoshi, with rounded shoulders and tipped head, reaches up to rub uneasily at the back of his neck. "Well," he hedges, "it's not rash words that are really the problem here, you know?"
Nonplussed for a moment, Sozui says: "Then what?"
Hedging some more, Tsunayoshi fidgets. His breath quivers in his lungs. He hums, tugging at the longest spikes of his hair, still drying from the bath. It won't be manageable if he doesn't take a comb to it soon. "It's not like I'd hate it, I think," he says vaguely, because it's true. Part of him says that Ikumi and Sozui could be good to have around. And yet- "It's just that other than Nana, Kyoya-senpai is more important to me than anyone else in this room, so expecting me to abandon, or do anything to inconvenience senpai- how you run your household is how you run it, but for me, my primary concern before anything and anyone else is the happiness of those who are already reliably beside me.
"Ahh." The breath rattles out of him tight and tense and weirdly aggravated and worn, like he's on his last nerve. It's hard to breathe, a bit, with how the stress keeps tying his muscles in endless twisted knots, and he shifts uncomfortably. "Thinking that I'm the kind of person to be swayed just because I've been brought to the table," he says, avoiding looking at anyone in particular, "as if no one has ever taken me aside before… doing it this way, and trying to make a point by not letting those I've already come to care about and rely on come, as if they aren't worthy of sitting there? I'm just going to wonder at the thickheadedness of the people who've decided that in the first place."
"That's obviously because low-borne trash like you doesn't understand the first thing about worth," Ikumi says, trying for speaking evenly - but her voice shakes and trembles with insult and rage. Those words of hers - that ancient, blessed blade that she's aimed what seems likely to be a hundred thousand times at Kyoya - that becomes leveled directly at Tsunayoshi's heart.
Infernos were never meant to be contained within a human body, but then: Tsunayoshi, too, just as easily becomes a demon - a spirit - a kami. The charred bones that have been scarred and destroyed and turned into carbon simply compress into diamond. There is no smoke, nor soot nor sulfur for him to choke on as total clarity descends - it burns too hot and too cleanly for that.
It'll melt that sword of hers in an instant if it makes contact.
It's been scary all along. There are parts of Tsunayoshi that don't work the same as a normal person's, or at least like he thinks one should. It's too calculating. It's too cruel. It's too hungry and hot and cold and it will destroy the world and consume everything if given the slightest excuse. It says things like gather power, and ready your positions, and we do not tolerate harm befalling the family.
Though at first, family seemed to mean 'blood,' Tsunayoshi has learned better than that. Every precious connection he has is worth more than anything else the world could offer him.
Staring at Ikumi, Tsunayoshi feels his brow pinch. "Just because you were born as the first child of the Lord and Lady Hibari - doesn't make you worthy," he says. The word drip and drop and roll in an unfamiliar way. "There's nothing to like or find inspiring about someone who squanders that to simply satisfy their own ego. I feel sad for the Hibari family having such a stain on their name."
Ikumi is incandescent. A little bit literally. Her eyes lens crimson and cherry and something surges, hot and hungry, like lava or the roiling rumble of a volcano or the churning of a massive cloud full of fury. It isn't anywhere near as pure or as beautiful as that power of the man related to Kyoya, though. It's strangely thwarted as she glares at him, and only for the briefest moment does she look at Nana, but then her gaze focuses on Kyoya who still sits, impassive and unmoved, at the doorway with his mother and that family member of his.
Tsunayoshi smiles even though it splits his torn lip wide open, because it's better than becoming the kind of scum that would reach for the pin that's swept Nana's hair up off her neck and put it through Ikumi's skull. She dies, and dies, and dies, in so many different, horribly ways. He keeps seeing it: Nana struck down, and her eyes. Kyoya standing, blood soaked, one arm hanging limp. From there, it spirals wildly out of control: visions of Haru, of Takeshi, of Nakamoto and Kyoko and Ryohei and Shoichi.
Ikumi's attention comes back to him, her eyes wide, her already pale skin the color of sour milk and turning gray, gray, gray, like soot. Like fine ash. The heart inside him burns so pure and clean that he no longer has to deal with the bitterness himself, but there seems to be a fine dusting of it on other things around him.
"I would really rather get along with the Hibari family," he says, but gently, evenly - as if to avoid jarring the way he feels all his limbs and soul tremble, ready to messily explode with something awful at the slightest disturbance, "because I'm not the kind of person that likes fighting. But - it seems like the Hibari family hasn't been behaving in a way that I can rest easy with. Getting along with someone who attacks my family leaves a bad taste in my mouth, after all."
"Hibari Kyoya is still Hibari Kyoya," Lord Hibari says, drawing Tsunayoshi's attention away from his daughter.
The clean-burning firestorm in Tsunayoshi's chest surges and roils and claws at the confines which is Tsunayoshi's own body. Their resolve is a bit pathetic, like Ikumi's, like Sozui's. His head throbs. His limbs shiver and shake. The soft organs inside him, and his brains, and his heart, have long since become dust which has been annihilated and made atoms and energy. Does Lord Hibari mean to forbid it using that as leverage? Or to change the circumstances to his advantage? If he's trying to say that because of that name, Tsunayoshi has no business sticking his nose into it-
"Ahh, even if you say it that way, your actions speak even louder," he says. He feels fuzzy and dizzy with exhaustion, sick with the endless, toxic churn of the thing devouring him. Planting his hands on the table, Tsunayoshi rises to his feet, wobbling slightly with exhaustion. It's been a long night, or rather morning at this point, he thinks. He doesn't mind if it shows on his face.
Looking down at the adults still seated at the opposite end of the table, Tsunayoshi takes pity, and kindly points out: "You already rejected all claims on Kyoya-senpai when you refused him the right of sitting at the table when you already knew he was important to me, right? So. The way I see it, there are only two distinctions that senpai has - that as the proud taichou of the Disciplinary Committee, and that as the Demon of Nami Mi- no, the Demon of Namimori. How long do you intend to argue this in circles? Bringing me here, and forcibly involving my mother was a waste of time, you know? It only confirmed what I already thought:
"I have no interest nor intention of entertaining the whims of the Hibari clan."
A yawn cracks his jaw, because this has all been a bit ridiculous in the wake of him killing three men and going to the hospital and accepting a vassalage and declaring a silent war on all of Namimori anyway. Nana rises beside him, and though her hands shake and she's pale, she smiles at Tsunayoshi as if she has no problems with anything that he's decided tonight, which is - it's not as though he forgot for one moment that she was here, but since it was all a problem caused by him-
As a person better suited to be a weapon than a human being, Kyoya's mother rises to her feet, followed by both her family member and her son. "We will see you to the door," she says. She has a very slight accent. Her dark eyes glitter with something vicious and pleased.
What would have made Tsunayoshi more stressed out from the Hibari clan only flusters him coming from Kyoya's devastatingly exceptional mother. "Th-thank you very much," he stutters, dipping into a quick and awkward bow that would have sent him swooning into the table if Nana hadn't set her hand on his shoulder to steady him.
Nana turns and smiles at the two adults, releasing him as he rights himself and finds his feet again. They move to bracket her and then leave Tsunayoshi to Kyoya's 'tender' mercies - only: Tsunayoshi is too exhausted to be afraid at this point. He feels like he's running entirely off the inferno that's churning away inside his chest, flushing through his limbs and narrowing his focus so that all he can do is rise, rise, rise upon the relentless heat of it.
The door behind them closes crisply under Kyoya's careless hand, and then he turns to stare down at Tsunayoshi, eyes glittering just as his mother's had, although the emotions there are more difficult to discern. "Those are some annoying enemies you just made," Kyoya observe flatly.
Tsunayoshi wilts a bit. "I know, I thought so, too." He bites his lip and winces at the hot, swollen tear in it bleeds into his mouth. Seeing that the adults aren't waiting up for them, he quickly moves to follow, trying to read the tensions in Nana's back. "Sorry," he adds as Kyoya keeps pace. "It must have been annoying to have to listen to people bicker over your head that way."
Kyoya grunts, and Tsunayoshi revises his impression - for Kyoya, who grew up in this household, perhaps he's too accustomed to listening to people argue over his head about him without being able to do anything about it. A glance shows that he doesn't look annoyed, since he still has no aura for Tsunayoshi to easily read at this point, and - actually, he looks pretty amazing in the kimono beneath that housecoat. It's different when he's not terrorizing the kids at school: here, in this house, he has the same flawless poise of his mother.
Tottering along beside him, flat footed, his jaw cracking in a yawn, Tsunayoshi feels a bit self-conscious. "It seems that I caused a lot of trouble and drew some pretty heavy attention," he says uneasily. "But… thinking back on it, I don't see how I could have done anything else. I guess I'm not very obedient." He cringes with a nervous chuckle, because this is probably the last time he'll be able to speak with Kyoya. Well, the first and last time, after that introduction where Kyoya had threatened him.
Ahh. He promised to unwaveringly let go of anyone who asked it of him, although it seems a bit weird to expect Kyoya to ask to be let go rather than just leaving on his own. What should he do? Kyoya is the first of his household that he's killed for the sake of, he's not sure how he should behave in the aftermath when Kyoya will want nothing to do with him.
A flicker of that familiar aura puts a stop to those thoughts, and he looks over to see Kyoya no longer impassive, but annoyed.
"Heh?"
Kyoya shows his teeth then, all sharp white points under the violet gleam of his eyes, pausing next to Tsunayoshi to seize him by the shoulder with his good arm. "Thinking troublesome things," he says irritably. "A king-sized herbivore like you should learn his place as my food source."
And then he bites Tsunayoshi's broken lip.
Well, it's true that his teeth close on it and press the blood from it, and he sucks like some kind of western horror movie vampire, and that's his tongue on the wound, stinging and hot and weird. The inferno inside Tsunayoshi burns even hotter, if that's at all possible, like its twisting and struggling to escape the diamond-clad cage that traps it inside him. And then something awful happens.
The world stretches. It keeps stretching. The inferno inside him roars as it burns away at Tsunayoshi and it feels like something is shredding him apart, like he's an egg that will crack wide open and the yolk will come out and break and everything will be thrown away. He's not in the Hibari residence. He hasn't been there all along, and he's alone, and the world shudders and shakes and something is pulling all his insides out of him.
It hurts far too much to even scream. It paralyzes him. The world turns white.
Survive, he remembers the man with endless long lank locks of hair and thin limbs and needle tracks on his arms saying. And so he tries. He tries. His very soul is being ripped from his body. The world keeps stretching.
Tsunayoshi sees himself and Nana leaving. He sees Kyoya's mother, Nao, saying that she'll be going away with that family member, since she's become a hostage against Kyoya and can no longer protect him. I'll leave him to your care, she says, ignoring Tsunayoshi's bleeding lip and the smudge of blood at the corner of Kyoya's mouth. He sees returning to the hospital several times. He meets a girl there with shy eyes, who is always carrying a bag. She's sad and her eyes see too much and Tsunayoshi would like to keep her around, but he introduces her to his sister instead as to not be unkind. The situation with the Hibari family gets worse. Ikumi gets worse. His hands. They become sticky all the time, then.
Tsunayoshi can't really focus on all these things as the world stretches and he stretches with it and then it begins to fracture, to change into-
"Bare with it," the boy with milkspill hair says urgently, but he's not a boy, he's just a few years shy of being an adult for how awful he looks. His eyes are frenzied. "Is your will this weak? If you're going to die anyway, then live through this, at least!"
But he's being scooped out or torn into a million tiny pieces, or forcibly squashed into a pancake - it's like all of those things, but happening all at once, and the some terrible weakness is coming in over him. Something vital is being drained out while all of everything else is happening.
"Don't you want to meet that child?" that guy demands, clawing at Tsunayoshi, but somehow not being able to touch him. "Hey! Don't be ungrateful! Yuni and I picked him out especially for you to make up for everything! Hey! Tsunayoshi! Hey! Wake up!"
But as stressed out as Tsunayoshi is about all this screeching while he's being ripped apart at the molecular level, he does precisely the opposite and blacks out.
-0-
"Hey," somebody says, or seems to say, but he has no ears to hear them with. "Hey! Are you okay?"
The blackness swims. It's interrupted by a gentle white glow next to him, and there, kneeling beside him is the guy with the milkspill hair and faded pressed flowers in his eyes. "Thank goodness," he sighs, wane and exhausted himself. "That makes the odds of us surviving this roughly eight hundred trillion to one. Thank goodness. What a relief." He seems to shake, and then he clutches at his face with thin, trembling hands that are barely skin over bone, and sobs.
"Hey? Come on," that someone says again, and then sighs, short and aggravated. "I can't just leave you here…"
The sobs hiccup and begin to turn into something else. It's some kind of horrible, jagged laugh. The hands clutching his face shift and begin to claw and pull at his hair and he throws back his head and laughs in harsh jags that sound ripped right out of him. It comes to a sudden, awful halt. The bones of his expanded chest seem to press out through the hospital gown. "Nayo-kyun," he drawls, still bent backwards from laughing, still with claws full of his own hair. "Zunetto is waiting for you."
"I'll take you with me, so just - wake up."
And since it's not that guy who has been laughing over his body this entire time, Tsunayoshi complies.
-0-
NOTES:
* Tsunayoshi, since the last chapter and continuing in this one, is basically being pressure cooked by his own flames thanks to that Seal. He's taken some massive spiritual damage. Also, the whole thing with Kyoya acknowledging him - that's when despite being Sealed, Tsunayoshi's flames still tried to Harmonize for the first time. Although he couldn't, it went better the real time it happened.
* People who have no idea about flames in this scenario: Kyoya, Tsunayoshi, and Nana.
* Tsunayoshi's strong resemblance to his ancestor sure is troublesome.
* Fon throwing shade by showing up to their super formal meeting in an everyday cotton changpao lmao.
* I got a bit bratty and rushed through Kyoya's loyalty arc for a few reasons. First of all, he's sincerely not really interested in Tsunayoshi while they're this young - just like in canon, Hibari isn't that interested in Tsuna while he's that weak. Secondly, although I did it to him, I really hate the dynamic he has with his older cousins? And furthermore, there's nothing currently redeemable about Ikumi and Sozui. Finally, Tsunayoshi's primary concern is their victim, not redeeming the people who tormented his friend/companion/guardian for his entire life. He's not like canon!Tsuna, who'll forgive people who hurt his friends.
And yeah, basically Tsunayoshi just went full Sky mob-boss on the Hibari family. He got really fortunate in that for their own reasons, they aren't loyal to the Families in Italy that have such a sway over Namimori. Naturally, if Tsunayoshi were in his right mind, he never would have told an entire clan to go fuck itself because he himself doesn't have the political backing or manpower to support him against a family like Hibari.
* This marks the end of the prologue of Chroma Diamonds. Although the shift might be a bit confusing, please bare with it. It's a lazy reason to do a time skip.
* At some point, I'll probably do a Kyoya POV intermission just to better address everything that's going on with him since it just didn't fit into the flow of the story.
Also RIP Byakuran, but listen: he's been going through something scary for a long time, okay?
