Take a sailor soldier who fights to protect this planet from magical threats, and a guardian of the biggest, strongest mafia family. Connect with red string of fate. Of course the circumstances they meet in are going to be unorthodox.

Or – the Soulmate AU where Takeshi and Hotaru met differently. For Ninjy.

AN: Soulmates have first words written in black somewhere on their body, which only they can see until spoken. Once they're spoken, the words change color and are visible to other people. Though not seen or mentioned in this fic, if their soulmate dies, the words turn gray.

When Hotaru used to dream of becoming a nurse, her thoughts of the future had involved a more hospital-like setting. The best, worst and any other things she could imagine were usually along the lines of stories from Mamoru and Ami, about weird, funny or touching experiences they had in their practice.

But, again, in a hospital. Not at the anniversary gala she was somehow invited to – she was betting on Michiru having a hand in this – and wondering what to do, like other health care providers gawking.

In other words, this fiasco – because that truly was the best word to describe what was going on right now – was something she expected more from her life as a sailor soldier than a nurse.

The party was to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the hospital, and other than staff, there were also sponsors who came. Not interested or invested, Hotaru was mostly on the sidelines, chatting with Ami and Mamoru when they were called by the director of the board to discuss something doctor-relevant.

There were a few glances towards her, and while they'd kept away while she was with Ami and Mamoru, neither of her family were here to serve as a detergent now, and the last thing she wanted in this party was more strangers approaching her trying to strike up a conversation 'just out of curiosity', and then attempt to keep it up because 'soulmate or not why not try it out'.

Truth be told, poor attempts at pickups or not she would rather be home watching a soap opera than be here, but Michiru was worried that she didn't get out of the home enough and had insisted. Which was a lie, because while she didn't have many friends, she had a few that she spent time with.

None of her friends, not even the one she worked with, were here, and so that point was moot.

Hotaru idly turned the flute of sparkling water between her fingers, not eager to eat or drink but also rather bored. Soon it would be dinner, and then the speeches by the sponsors, and then maybe she could pretend something urgent came up and slip out of here. It was incredibly dull and she would rather be doing anything else. She would prefer being in a marathon, that was how bad it was. At least people in marathons were usually too busy running and breathing to try and regale her with details she wasn't interested in.

"Excuse me, miss."

Speak of the Devil.

Hotaru didn't roll her eyes, but it was a close thing. She turned to look at another man in a suit who looked at her expectantly after his eyes took a detour down to her chest.

She returned it with a blank, unimpressed look, one that she was fully aware appeared frigid. But if he could be under the impression that Hotaru wouldn't notice him checking out her chest, then she could appear, and even be, frigid.

Did she care? Absolutely not.

"Your suit is purple," she said as blandly as she could make her voice sound. Which was the same blandness as flour.

"I – sorry?" he looked surprised, and understandably so. His suit, like most people here, was black.

Hotaru waved it away. This was she hadn't said anything generic that might give him hope to continue on, and he also thought she was possibly insane. A win-win for her. "Can I help you?"

He looked to be weighing the pros and cons of continuing the conversation, but unfortunately for Hotaru, the pros apparently won. "I couldn't help but notice that you were alone and thought you might enjoy some company."

She had been alone for less than five minutes. Not enough time for most pop songs to start and finish, and certainly not enough to be driven mad or die of a lack of companionship.

How was it that when she was younger, she didn't even have to try to be weird enough to drive everyone away, and yet now she had to actually put in the effort? Hotaru began to calculate just how much to increase weirdness by when something exploded.

More than a few people screamed. Hotaru tensed instinctively, but her eyes went to the source of the sound – the back of the hall, an emergency exit, smoke climbing up towards the ceiling. It triggered the alarms that began to blare loudly.

Well, if this wasn't an excuse to get out of here nothing was. Sure, she'd have to find a place to transform and then check it out, but now she had a valid reason to give Michiru.

Then a hand grabbed her wrist.

"It's not safe, I'll protect you-" began the man who was about to be slapped on his head with her clutch.

Hotaru pulled her wrist out instead of following her first instinct, but it was a close one, and only because she liked this clutch too much to use as a blunt weapon. "No time, we need to evacuate."

The man was at a party celebrating a hospital's centennial anniversary, he had no excuse for his lacking evacuation and prioritization skills.

Outside – dark and a little chilly and her coat was inside because no one had time to stop by the coat check during an evacuation even if it was her favorite coat – she caught up to Mamoru and Ami, pretending to not hear the man calling for a 'miss'. He wasn't calling her name, she could pretend she had no idea who he was calling.

Ami, though, noticed, and she grimaced. "That's Nakamura Shinzo."

Hotaru wasn't really interested in his name, but she assumed that meant something.

"His father is important and he doesn't understand why someone might not be interested in him," Ami clarified. "He's never done anything illegal and he's persistent just on the side of not having anything hold up if charges get pressed."

She blew air out forcefully through her mouth, trying to release her frustrations harmlessly with the motion, and had very limited success with the attempt. Wonderful.

Mamoru frowned, but Ami gave a resigned shrug. "You know how it is."

They all did, and they did not approve or like it. He gave a hard look in the direction behind Hotaru. Great, he was still there.

"He does lose interest quickly, though," Ami said. "He alternates between the belief that he'll fall in love with someone if they only connect, and the belief that he'll 'click' if he just meets his soulmate."

Hotaru glanced down at her wrist, at the words visible only to her eyes because they hadn't been spoken to her yet.

"Will he lose interest this evening?" she asked, her biggest concern.

Ami winced, and it was clear that she had experience with Nakamura. Of the personal kind. "More like two weeks?"

Hotaru sighed. If that was the case it was going to be harder for her to slip away, and she didn't want to give him anything, much less their secret identities.

"I'll stay here," she said, feeling like a martyr, "and be your alibi if needed."

So they could go and check what it was. A gas explosion or an accident of some kinds could be possible and also the best-case scenario, but if this was something like a deliberate attack, and worse, if it was by non-Earth sources –

Then Sailor Mercury and Tuxedo Mask needed to go check it out, and also alert the others.

"Are you sure?" Mamoru asked, and Hotaru nodded, and made him keep his suit jacket when he tried to give her his. Most of the men were wearing theirs, and it would be easier for people to forget about not seeing Mamoru when Tuxedo Mask was inside fighting. She could handle a little evening chill and Nakamura.

She tried to remember that resolve when Nakamura began to head in her direction after Ami and Mamoru slipped away.

She was mentally weighing the merits of frigidly polite versus weird and crazy when a warm something fell over her shoulders. Jerking in surprise, Hotaru turned to see a man in a loosened tie and button up shirt. The jacket he might have been wearing a very short time ago, judging by the residual heat, was currently sitting on her shoulders.

He was as unfamiliar to her as Nakamura had been. The difference – other than their heights – was that he had a scar on the right side of his chin, and it wasn't the kind of scar you got from a shaving accident.

But she was hardly someone who was going to question someone's scars unless it was from a health care perspective.

In addition to his loosened clothes and scar, there was an openness to his face, an easygoing air that had settled into the lines of his face. He wasn't old – was actually a young man, possibly near her own age – but it was there, in his face like lines of a sketch.

When she met his eyes, he gave her a conspiring grin and a wink, and stepped away, pace brisk. Despite herself, she quietly laughed and thanked his retreating back. There was audacity in Jacket Man's lending – giving? – her his jacket, and she appreciated him not saying anything.

Hotaru may have been a little more lenient with him because the jacket was warm, and somehow made Nakamura not approach her.

The amusement, though, faded when more explosions rang throughout the building. The police who had arrived, realizing that what was going on was in the present and not a settled event, began evacuating everyone gathered.

Hotaru let the crowd hide her, and with a bit of magic slipped away so she could transform. Once she was Sailor Saturn, she turned on her communicator.

"Sailor Mercury?"

"There's a fight going on," replied the soldier of water, prompt and concise, "between two different parties. One's a monster of concentrated energy and magical malice, and the other's a human with a - burning leopard."

Saturn paused at that, like Mercury had hesitated.

"I'm fighting one, too," said Tuxedo Mask. "A monster, I mean, not a human or a leopard. I don't know where they're coming from, but their numbers are increasing, and they're weak to bright bursts of light."

"The leopard man figured that out as well," said Mercury. "That's why he's setting off those explosions."

"Venus is almost there," chimed in Luna. "Jupiter and Mars can come if backup is needed."

"No, they should stay with the princess," Saturn insisted, a sentiment echoed by Tuxedo Mask not even a second later. Usagi was pregnant, and that severely drained their princess of her magic to the point where she could not even transform anymore. Usagi had put her foot down on them planning their entire lives for the next seven months around her, but so had they on not leaving her with any protection, and the compromise was that at least two of them were with her at all times.

The sound of a watery harp strummed through the communicator, followed by the dying gargles of a creature unnatural being drowned in enchanted water, and Saturn knew Mercury had struck.

"Where am I needed?"

"With me, until Venus gets here," said Sailor Mercury, her voice coming through with inhuman growls. "Neither of us have any attacks with bright enough light, but once she comes, we can pair off appropriately."

Saturn agreed with the logic and moved to follow the plan.

The hospital was actually a clean business, and one of Tsuna's movements to bring the Vongola out of the mafia and into more legitimate areas, while simultaneously doing good. It wasn't even one of the only places that they donated to, but it was important in the sense that it was in Japan and not in Italy.

Because home.

The hospital was in Tokyo because the ones near Namimori, Hibari was touchy about the Vongola moving in on, and Tsuna respected that. It was good because it had good internal structure or something Gokudera mentioned that slipped from Takeshi's mind.

Basically it was a good hospital, a good investment for a lot of reasons, and this was one of the parties where there was supposed to be no fighting.

Which was why, of course, they were fighting what looked like monsters.

"This really wasn't how I imagined this night going," mused Takeshi.

Gokudera swore as Uri snarled and tore through a smaller monster attempting to kill him. The Storm Flames disintegrated the thing, but Uri had to move onto the next thing.

If Tsuna was here they could probably guess just what was up – whether these monsters were here because the hospital was actually into unethical, illegal experimentation, in which case Mukuro was going to bring his wrath down upon them all, or if they were here because of the three Vongola Guardians that were present. But he wasn't, so they were going to have to figure that out without hyper intuition's help.

Chrome was doing damage control, fooling cameras in the area and making sure no one else entered the evacuated building, which left Takeshi and Gokudera to fight whatever these things were.

He took out his own boxes, all retrieved from his pocket before he gave his jacket to that one young woman on his way here, and released Jiro and Kojiro. The Shigure Kintoki had to be left behind, but he had spare swords to use.

"Rain Flames aren't as effective!" Gokudera shouted at him, Systema C.A.I. circling around him. "Light is!"

Takeshi took a glance around. That explained why the lights had been shattered. And why Gokudera was being pushed back and just lighting everything alit with Storm Flames.

Kojiro was going to have less to work with, then, because sprinkling Rain Flames everywhere wouldn't help Gokudera's Storm out as much.

They cut easily enough, which told Takeshi that whatever these things were, they weren't flesh or bone, but there was a resistance nonetheless that made it difficult to pull his blade back if it caught. Like trying to cut into something sticky, it was less the cutting that was the problem, and more retrieving the blade. Definitely not good for him to use Rain Flames, at least with cutting, because that would slow him as well.

He and Gokudera and their box weapons fell into a familiar pattern of fighting together, established by practice and acknowledgement, and that was good.

Which, of course, could not last.

The ceiling above groaned, and exchanging looks, Takeshi and Gokudera leapt back just as it broke. With the creation of a new, giant hole in the ceiling fell to their floor the biggest monster yet, some massive thing with limbs – or tentacles, seeing as they were boneless and flailing – that roared.

"Eat this!" shouted a furious voice from above, and onto the massive shadow glob fell a blonde in a miniskirt and high heeled boots. The sword in her hand was her focus point as she fell, and she stabbed it into what might be considered the head of the massive glob. The blade sank in like a hot knife through butter, and it was only the hilt that prevented it from sinking deeper.

The roar turned louder, and higher pitched, until it grew into a scream. And it refused to go down quietly, because it began to flail harder, thrashing. The blonde hung on for dear life – what was it with long-haired users of the sword that made them crazy – but Gokudera and Takeshi weren't as lucky.

Systema C.A.I. groaned and nearly cracked when a tentacle struck Gokudera. Takeshi began to turn towards Gokudera to help when his eyes widened.

"Watch out-!" Gokudera began to shout in warning, and Takeshi turned, too late.

A tentacle as thick as his torso slammed into his side, and Takeshi choked on something that tasted like blood as a breaking sound came from his side and abdomen, and then he was flying into a wall and there was pain.

She figured that eventually, maybe, hopefully she would be able to return the jacket she had stashed away back to its rightful owner. It was a nice jacket, and while people who attended these kinds of galas usually could afford to replace them, it would still be rude to repay a kindness with stealing.

But the timeframe she was considering fell in the range of 'later'. How much later, she didn't know, but it was still 'later'.

Tonight was clearly a night of her expectations all laughing in her face, because Saturn ran into Jacket Man again, though this time he wasn't smiling or winking.

He was actually rather badly hurt, and struggling to hold onto consciousness. Despite his terrible injuries – and based on how unfocused his eyes were as well as the slight swaying of his body, Saturn guessed that he was concussed.

When he nearly fell, she reached out to steady him.

He looked at her, blinking in drowsy surprise as she reoriented him to the best of her abilities. Ideally, it would be best if he were to leave. Yes, he had been a decent fighter, but right now he was injured and –

"There's two of you," he said wonderingly despite the slurred quality of his words, and Saturn nearly dropped him. Not just because she was surprised at hearing the words hurriedly scrawled on her wrist from him – though in retrospect of course her soulmate would be concussed, he probably had double vision right now – but also because he stumbled, swayed, and collapsed.

He was lucky she was a lot stronger as a soldier than as a civilian, because otherwise he would have dropped to the floor.

Saturn picked him up in her arms, mind screaming in alarm, and set him to the side. Venus was taking down the rest of the monsters with extreme prejudice, blinding them with light and binding them with the glowing chains she wielded, or cutting them up with her sword, and most of them were gone now, which left Saturn to face her internal panic without any distractions save the unconscious man who she had, technically, already spoken to. Did it count if he hadn't heard? Had he heard her?

Sure, he could have, but they were hardly specific words, so if he had heard her, he could have not reacted because of all the false positives he got in his life. So he probably hadn't, because Hotaru hadn't spoken very loudly, and, well, with the sirens and chatter of everyone around, her quiet voice was easily buried.

Saturn was fairly sure there were a few movies whose plot and angst were driven by the fact that words had been spoken but not heard, so it did count, damn it all.

She looked down at her unconscious soulmate, and with a soft sigh, reached out to begin healing him, because mess that Saturn was right now aside, he didn't deserve to bleed out to death when she was here.

She had no idea if she wanted to see him again. He seemed to be a decent kind of person, one willing to give up his jacket to a complete stranger because they looked cold, but he was also undoubtedly suspicious, and Saturn had her own closet full of skeletons and mysteries that she wasn't sure how to share with a different, unrelated person. Soulmate or not.

Or maybe the gravity of it all was because he was, apparently, her soulmate.

She sighed again, but this time it was more in frustration.

Chrome got them out, he was told when he woke up in their getaway car. She had also made sure that no one could pin any of the night's events on the Vongola, because as far as witnesses were concerned, both Yamamoto Takeshi and Gokudera Hayato were in the evacuated crowd outside the building and not inside adding to the chaos.

When they arrived at their temporary base, the medics were already waiting.

"Yamamoto first," grumbled Gokudera when the medics reached for him, "the idiot got hit and thrown into a wall."

It was his way of caring, but Takeshi felt surprisingly okay, whereas Gokudera looked terrible.

But he took his shirt off nonetheless, and the medic looked him over.

"I feel fine," he protested, and he looked fine, too. His stomach wasn't even bruised, and his ribs didn't feel broken. Didn't even hurt, in fact.

"I would recommend taking it easy for the next few days, and maybe an X-ray and some blood tests just in case," said the medic, after one last glance and some palpations, "but I would agree with the Rain Guardian, sir. He seems fine."

And then, with a glance at his right shoulder, the medic added something under his breath so only Takeshi heard. "And, sorry for making you uncover your soulmark, sir."

"What?" he said, far louder than the medic's discreet voice.

"What?" said Gokudera, jerking up in alarm before he winced in pain.

Alarmed, Takeshi craned his head to look down at his soulmark, the two words that had been on his shoulder for all of his life, words that were now a dark, rich purple instead of the black they had been, visible now to other people, meaning that they'd been spoken to him at some point this evening, staring back at him in neat, elegant writing.

'Thank you'.

And his mind immediately flashed to the memory of that young woman, who looked cold, who had initially drawn his eye because at a quick glance he had almost mistaken her for Chrome – dark hair, pale skin, similar dresses – before realizing that she wasn't the Mist Guardian, wasn't hidden behind a layer of illusions that kept people from really noticing her.

But Takeshi had then noticed her face and body language, tightly locking down on discomfort that the man talking to her didn't seem to notice or care about, and he would have stepped in if Gokudera hadn't been attacked and everyone evacuated.

Outside, because he'd been next to a group of civilians who insisted he leave with them, he saw her again, noticed the chill of the evening, and how her dress had no sleeves, and how she had crossed her arms tightly to preserve what heat she could to herself.

And, well, fighting in suits usually meant he needed to get a new suit once the fight was over, so it wasn't like he needed to hold onto the jacket, especially not after emptying its pockets. There was nothing that could identify him in it, and so as he made his way back to give Gokudera a hand, he draped it across the young woman's shoulders, gave her a grin to try and reassure her that he wasn't trying anything, and then realized she was very pretty when seen up close, even prettier than she had been in the distance, and he ended up winking because she looked amused and not irritated.

She must have thanked him while he was rushing away, and she didn't know because he hadn't said a single word to her. Had he heard her voice, or had her words been too quiet for him to hear? Did the hit to his head – he felt fine now, but Fran apparently once lost a lot of memories because a wheel of cheese hit his head – wipe some very important memories?

"Gokudera," he said, trying to remember. It could have been someone else, but a gut instinct told him that it was her. He was about to ask if they could get a list of all the people at the party, and caught himself at the last moment.

There was a pretty good chance that the woman Takeshi gave his jacket to was a civilian, and soulmate information for Guardians were generally best kept Confidential. He could tell Gokudera and Tsuna later.

"Don't call and then say nothing!" seethed Gokudera.

"You met your soulmate," summarized Michiru, chopsticks idle despite the sushi before her, because she had more interesting morsels to savor, "and then you ran away."

"I retreated," Hotaru stressed. There was a difference. It wasn't exactly like she could stick around and then introduce herself to her soulmate, because she could not imagine that going well in any shape or form given the circumstances.

'Hi, I'm Sailor Saturn, soldier of destruction, protected by Saturn, the planet of silence. I'm also apparently your soulmate and the random woman you lent or gave your jacket to for whatever reason shortly before a monster nearly killed you. But it's nice to meet you at last.'

No. Just – no.

It was the weekend, and they were in Akita because Setsuna had a conference at a university she would be speaking at. They were all here for support, and nearby was a restaurant that Michiru favored. It was more of a local place than the kind that was fancy and famous, but Hotaru could see why Michiru liked it.

"He does sound strange," pointed out Setsuna, sipping at her tea. Haruka put some more food on her plate, and she looked down at it sadly before picking up her chopsticks again. "Fighting the monsters? And that other man?"

"Ami and Mamoru both said they sensed a third person nearby doing something as well," said Haruka, "that it wasn't just Ami's hacking that kept the cameras disabled."

And naturally Ami and Luna and Artemis were looking into it, going over the list of attendees at the anniversary gala and cross-referencing. Hotaru claimed conflict of interest and stayed out of it, because it was, and a mess and she didn't know how she was going to even deal with it. A member of the yakuza at the ER, angry and drunk and swinging a knife would honestly be easier for her to face than the thought of her soulmate, suddenly real instead of a vague faceless concept based on the words on her wrist.

. . . maybe she was running.

She sighed. "You know, between Usagi-san and Mamoru-san and Haruka-papa and Michiru-mama, I had really high expectations for soulmates."

Because even if they didn't have the convenient 'my soulmate is also involved in the fate of fighting in that eternal war between Chaos and Cosmos that all sailor soldiers and pseudo-sailor soldiers are conscripted in since birth and thus understands the crazy duality of my weird and mysterious life' thing, which they did, they were like, the ideal soulmates. Not all soulmates were good for each other, and not all soulmates worked out. Sometimes, their 'moment' of fate was just that – a moment.

And it figured that Hotaru's soulmate would likely be that kind. Or maybe they were soulmates in the 'we will end up killing each other' kind of way. Because of course the soldier of destruction's soulmate would be that kind of soulmate. It was fitting.

It sucked.

"I can feel your negativity," said Michiru. "Hotaru, you're being too harsh on yourself. We don't know anything yet."

Which was a warning for the direction of Michiru's plans if anything.

"Please don't have Ami and Artemis dig up everything about him," Hotaru begged.

Michiru just smiled serenely, and Hotaru groaned.

"I could just – never see him again?" she said.

"What if he wants to find you?" asked Setsuna.

Hotaru's mind screeched to a halt.

. . . she hadn't considered that her soulmate might want to find her. Because why would he not have agency, it wasn't like he wasn't a living, breathing, thinking human being with his own desires and history and life.

Which somehow made it even more terrifying, both her selfishness and inconsideration as well as the fact that he was a real person who actually, really existed, beyond the words on her wrist that were now a vivid blue. A shade of color she couldn't help but think suited him.

And if Jacket Man did want something? What then? What with his mysteries and her own double life, what was supposed to happen? What was she supposed to do?

Her chest tightened, with her heart pounding so much that it seemed a miracle it wasn't jumping out onto the table. Or maybe it had and she couldn't see it because her vision was too narrow, and she couldn't breathe, oh gods –

Haruka was the one sitting next to her, and she rubbed Hotaru's back with a firm hand. Even through her panic Hotaru heard Haruka's low voice.

"Open your mouth."

Mind running on autopilot she did, and something fell into her mouth.

A second later her tongue screamed as heat erupted in her mouth everywhere the foreign substance touched. Hotaru gasped, which turned out to be a mistake because the not insignificant chunk of wasabi Haruka had placed into her mouth went to the back of her throat which meant the heat was spreading.

Hotaru's eyes watered as she downed a glass of water. Setsuna pushed the sushi on her plate towards her, and Hotaru popped them into her mouth to cut the heat.

"I guess that's one way to snap someone out of a panic attack," Setsuna murmured, as Hotaru's mouth slowly started to calm down.

Haruka shrugged. "I didn't think the ginger would be enough."

Which was probably true, even if the wasabi had hurt.

"While I'm usually all for the idea of rushing into what terrifies you," said Haruka, who raced cars because she loved the speed and also beating people, "you don't have to if you don't want to. We can handle the investigations or leave it to the Inners."

"Of course," added Michiru, "fate may have other plans. But whatever comes, whatever choice you make, we'll always support you, Hotaru."

Setsuna held her hand, and Hotaru nodded, unable to speak because of the lump in her throat.

Done with their meal as well as the debrief, they got rid of the magic that kept their conversation from being overheard and remembered before heading to pay. It was a late lunch they had, and so there weren't many people in the place, but they needed to head back. Setsuna wanted to practice one last time before her speech tomorrow, and they were supposed to ask likely questions.

As Michiru paid, the door to the restaurant opened, the bell jingling.

"Hey Dad," said a voice that was, despite the very few words Hotaru had actually heard it speak, familiar. "Sorry I'm late, I was at Tsuna's-"

Hotaru turned, forcing her neck to move despite how stiff it had suddenly gotten, and lo and behold, there was Jacket Man.

He was far more casually dressed today, jeans and a T-shirt with a zip-up hoodie for a sports team. More like a university student, and it suited him, his open face and air.

"-dropping off . . ." Jacket Man trailed off, his eyes also landing on Hotaru. The smile slipped in surprise, and he stared at her like he couldn't believe she was there. In a sushi shop in Akita when they first saw each other in Tokyo.

Which was fair, because she was also convinced she was hallucinating. Under an illusory attack. Dreaming. Basically anything that meant this wasn't real.

But no, this was real, and apparently fate had planned that she meet her soulmate a lot sooner than she wanted or expected, before she could even try to get ready.

And didn't that just figure.

AN: last of the gifts and this is longer than the others but in my defense, it also was majorly late and I was inspired.

I have been told the traditional rom-com recipe is making sure any relationships have a heathy, hearty dose of meet-cute (?), mistaken identity, hidden identities, memory loss, miscommunication, shenanigans and misunderstandings with a side of funny. I think I met the requirements but Rom-com is difficult for me and I tried please *sobs*

My original plan was soulmate AU where different planets had different ways to identify their soulmates with Earth's being Daemons and the Silver Millennium being a Thing in this AU (very AU), but I kept trying to rip out my hair at the spoilers that came with it and I was stuck so one day I just said, as the Buddha said, it is my attachments that bring me suffering (I paraphrase) and let go and suddenly my life became so much easier.

So much. I wrote most of this in a day and only sat on it for a few more for edits and re-reads. Should have just done that from the start *grumble grumble*

I cheated a little, because this is basically the original plot for the KHR/SM x-over I had in mind before I thought about Tsuna and co going to talk with Kawahira and then suddenly Kawahira became a Terran from the SilMil times and then next thing I knew Hotaru had allergies and went to stay in Namimori and Kawahira had a major part in the story (in other words Petrichor).

I just added soulmate to the early draft idea, rewrote everything because one should always start fresh, and it just wrote itself. My hands were possessed I swear.

Anyways I do have some thoughts on where they go from here but given that they're very vague ideas (as in no timeline / organization – there's a reason why Petrichor is the main story) I'll spare you the details. Maybe I'll write more for this AU in the future if people are interested? IDK I'm still also writing the Hotaru POV of Saturnine and I'm working full time so we'll see.