A/N
Kay, this is the last pre-written stuff. I dunno when I'll have the next chapter finished. I'm gonna try to have regular-ish updates, but don't be surprised if they are real slow from now on...
.:Chapter Eight: Solar Eclipse:.
It's been a year since Tsuna arrived in this world; or roughly about that long, she didn't exactly have an accurate date.
By now she's really settled into her life as Sawada Tsunayoshi, and things were steadily getting better day by peaceful day. Though, she never thought she'd ever get used to being the wrong gender... It was so fucking bizarre, the sheer scale of things you can get used to.
It wasn't like she hadn't considered the issue of gender before. She still thought of herself as female in her mind, and the option of getting a sex change was always available. But, well, she had weird feelings about it... Her first and foremost issue being she simply could not imagine Sawada Tsunayoshi as female. It just felt wrong.
When she looked at her face in the mirror all she could see was a boy, one who was meant to be a boy. And if she changed her gender she'd have to change her name too (Tsunayoshi was a very masculine name after all), which she really did not want to do. She already had to get used to having a new name once already, and frankly, she quite liked it.
There was also the fact that getting a sex change meant getting surgery. Tsuna still hated hospitals with a passion. She hated doctors, hated the idea of taking any sort of medication, hated the thought of having so called "experts" tell her they knew more about her own mind and body than she did...
Yeah, no more hospitals, fuck you very much.
The final point (which it all boiled down to really) was that, when all was said and done, she was actually, kind of, weirdly okay with everyone else seeing her as a boy.
Was there such a thing as being too adaptable?
It feels like she's supposed to be really not okay with this. Yet, here she was, perfectly happy with leaving everything as is. As the saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Her life is good right now, there's no reason to change things.
Naturally, this is the point where the Universe decides it needs to fuck her up. Life is if nothing else, consistent in the way it brings about suffering…
Lately she'd been testing the limits of Nana's tolerance in her overprotective streak; staying late at school, going out on her own or with Hana, walking to and from school on her own, you know, that sort of thing. It'd taken months, but they'd finally managed to convince Nana to let Tsuna stay the night at Hana's place.
It helped that Hana's parents were very understanding, and were always kind to Nana. They were probably very used to dealing with victims struggling with PTSD and the like.
There had been no major issues with school or bullies lately. She'd recently moved up to the orange belt in karate, and no one could understand why she was so gleeful about it, considering it meant she was still pretty low on the food chain ("orange is my colour" apparently wasn't a good enough reason for them). It was a Saturday afternoon and the sky was clear as can be.
As one can expect, Tsuna was in a very good mood.
Really, she should have expected something to go horribly wrong…
Hana's mum was a lot less restrictive and allowed them their independence, which was so freaking bizarre after living so long under the weight of Nana's fears. Still, she wasn't going to waste the opportunity to bask in freedom while it lasted.
Hana wanted to do "girly" things like painting their nails, but didn't actually have any nail polish so had decided they needed to go get some. Tsuna had always assumed those kinds of "girly" things you saw people do on TV was just that, a stereotypical thing they show you girls do during sleepovers, but no one actually does it in real life. But, well, she didn't really mind the idea. She's going to have Hana paint her nails orange and it's going to be amazing. (And no one will understand why, which is somehow even funnier.)
(She also may be contemplating how flammable nail polish is. Hmm, something to put to the test in the near future, she thinks.)
It happened on the way to the convenience store. All the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and a sickening sense of dread rose up from the pit of her stomach. It was like a scene from a horror movie, where the camera pans off to linger ominously on that one object, or door, or street, or house, or whatever, and you just know that's where shit is going to go down.
Tsuna hadn't even realised she'd stopped walking until a hand waved in front of her face, "Hello? Earth to Tsuna!"
"Ah! Oh, sorry, I— uh..." She stopped, trying to collect herself against the ominous feeling stirring up her insides. "I guess I just, uh, spaced out… What were you saying?"
Hana raised her eyebrows in annoyance, or exasperation, or possibly both. "Really, 'spaced out'?" She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Ugh, whatever, you weirdo. I said, even I can't make orange look good, so pick another colour."
In that moment Tsuna couldn't be more grateful for the subject change. She gasped in mock indignation, a hand raised to her chest, "Bitch, are you questioning my sense of fabulousity? Besides, orange doesn't need you to look good. Orange is its own colour."
"What the actual fuck is 'fabulousity' supposed to mean?"
What followed was an argument over colour theory, of all things, which devolved into light nudging and a bit of name calling and a lot of laughing. Sufficiently distracted, Tsuna was able shove the uneasy feelings into the back of her mind.
Though she couldn't help but wonder... Was this hyper intuition? Was this her instincts warning her against danger? She couldn't really remember the exact explanation behind how hyper intuition was supposed to work. Damn, she should've paid closer attention to all the exposition stuff.
Well, if this was a warning against danger, then it was probably best to avoid it. Whatever "it" was supposed to be...
...
Tsuna got bright orange nail polish, complete with glitter. Hana was mortally offended by the mere sight of it. Tsuna feels accomplished already.
She is going to rock orange sparkly nails so hard, and Hana is going hate every second of it.
The only obstacle on her path to extreme fabulousness, is the fact that neither of them have ever painting their nails before. It can't be that hard, Tsuna thinks. Though it should be noted that Tsuna does not have the best hand-eye coordination (she's slowly getting better with those things), and lacks any form of talent in painting.
Hana is confident enough in her own steady hands, and if all else fails, there's always the internet. There's bound to be a tutorial somewhere out there.
"Have you ever noticed," Tsuna mentions, a sudden memory interrupting her train of thought, "that when Sailor Moon transforms, she starts by getting pink nails, but then gets those gloves. What the heck is the point of doing up your nails if you're just going to cover it up with gloves straight after?"
Hana squints a bit as she searches her own memories. "Oh my god, you're right! How come I've never noticed that before?" She says and that hilarious slightly offended, yet slightly impressed, look is back.
"Do the rest of the Sailor Scouts get nail polish too? It's been a while since I've watched Sailor Moon..." She hasn't seen it since before she died, now that's she's thinking about it.
"They did a remake recently. I haven't seen it yet though. We should watch it when we get back."
"Indeed, we shou—" That horrible foreboding feeling came back moments before four teenage boys came sprinting around the corner, one nearly bowling Tsuna over.
"Hey! Watch it!" Hana yelled after them, puffed up like an indignant cat that had been forced to move from its comfy spot on the couch.
Normally Tsuna would have happily joined in on the snarking, but her eyes were drawn down as if pulled by magnetic force. There was something that looked a lot like blood on their hands and shoes. The one that had knocked into her was the worst off; his entire arm soaked in red and he was clutching an equally drenched object in his hand.
Was that a bloody butterfly knife...?
Tsuna look down at her clothes. There was a stain on her sleeve where they had touched, that was almost certainly blood. She looks up and realises this is the exact spot where she was struck by that ominous feeling. Her heart leapt to her throat, and she took off down the street those boys had come from, before she could even register what she was doing.
She could hear Hana yelling after her but she paid it no mind. That ominous feeling had evolved into a sensation of raw urgency, pulling her along. Her mind blanked as she allowed it to lead her.
Every now and then she thought she saw the impression of a bloody footprint in the pavement, but it was hard to distinguish without stopping to check. And Tsuna sure as heck was not stopping.
She's not sure she's ever run so far and so fast in her life (either of them). Her lungs burned, her heart pounded ferociously against her ribcage, and the muscles in her legs screamed in protest. Her body was still not used to any strenuous form of exercise, and probably won't be for a long while yet.
Which was beside the point, but the mind tends to focus on the strangest things when faced with bizarre and/or stressful situations.
...
Fun fact about the fight or flight system: when your brain senses danger and the amygdala sets off the alarm, the logical thinking portion of your brain will completely shut down.
Yeah, doesn't sound all that useful to not be able to think in a life or death situation, right?
Wrong!
When you're in a life or death situation, you don't have time to think! You have to already be acting! Survival is the priority here! So when the alarm goes off, you ability to think is shut off with it, and you have one of three options: fight, flight, or freeze.
You cannot consciously choose which response you will have. The subconscious portion of your brain, the place where all your memories are stored, will determine the best course of action for your survival. To put it simply, you will have very little input over your reaction once you're in survival mode.
It's a simple system, designed purely to ensure your survival and nothing else. Useful during a genuine life or death moment, not so useful during other times when it only seems like you life is in danger. Like during an awkward social situation, for instance. This is why people with anxiety have such a hard time.
When Tsuna rounds the final corner, her nerves already on high alert, and is met with the sight of a disturbingly familiar girl sobbing hysterically over the body of slightly older, also disturbingly familiar, boy. Well, she panics. The amygdala sets of the alarm, and she fucking freezes.
She realises this much later, when she is able to logically think through her reactions with the benefit of hindsight. However, in that moment all she can to stare wide eyed, feet stuck fast to the pavement while something inside her screams just fucking to do something you idiot!
It's Hana, who has somehow managed to keep up, that manages to snap her out of her frozen state when she rushes passed with a shout of, "Oh god, KYOKO!"
She numbly follows Hana's lead, stumbling over on shaking legs and all but collapsing beside what can only be Sasagawa Ryohei, laying bleeding on the grass. Hana has her arms wrapped tightly around Kyoko, and it takes several painful seconds for Tsuna's brain to register that she needs be doing something instead of just sitting there like a useless idiot.
(Yeah, logical thinking part of the brain still has yet to be turned back on...)
She feels a lot like she's trapped under water. It's hard to breathe, and her limbs respond too slowly. But she does eventually manage to pull out her phone and dial for an ambulance at Hana's insistence. (Tsuna's not the only one in panic mode but, luckily, one of Hana's first instincts is to call for help in these kinds of situations.)
She's suddenly incredibly grateful for Nana's paranoid insistence of putting all the emergency numbers as contacts in her phone. With part of her brain still shut off, she would never have remembered the right number.
She's not sure what possesses her to put it on speaker, but her thumb moves there automatically, and she's glad for it when the operator asks for their location and Hana is able answer, because Tsuna has no fucking clue where they even are right now.
The woman on the other end of the line reminds Tsuna of the lawyer that came to visit her in the hospital. She's calm, succinct, and practical. She orders them to stay on the line, to put pressure on the wounds, and Tsuna's phone ends up in Hana's hands as she moves to obey.
They're asked if they know what happened. Tsuna and Hana have no idea, only guesses, and Kyoko may have quieted from hysterical sobbing to hysterical whimpering, but she's in no state to answer.
Ryohei stirs and grunts out pained groans and whimpers every now and then. Tsuna stares at his face and then to her hands over his bloody stomach – oh god, there's so much blood – and whispers reassurances like a broken record. "It's okay. The Ambulance is coming. Stay with me. You're gonna be okay."
It stays like this for a while. There's nothing but the sound of Kyoko's whimpers, Hana's gentle hushing, Ryohei's groaning, and Tsuna's murmured encouragements, punctuated every now and then by the calm queries of the emergency service operator over the phone. The monotony is broken as sirens sound off in the distance.
Everything passes in a blur, and she follows along numbly where the adults take her, still feeling like her head is trapped underwater. The next conscious thought Tsuna has, is when she's sitting next to Hana in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
What the fuck happened to my nail polish? She thinks, upon realising her hands are empty.
Funny what your mind chooses to focus on during stressful situations.
...
Hours, or maybe minutes, later Tsuna sits outside the operating theatre with Hana, who sits pressed up against Kyoko, who sits clinging to Hana like she's the only real thing left in the world.
Hana's mum arrives first, Kyoko's parents charging in only a few steps behind. The pair are scooped up in a flurry of limbs and frantic, worry fuelled queries. Tsuna is left to stare blankly in their general direction, stewing in her thoughts.
The unfortunate part of having her brain finally boot itself back up again, is all the unnecessary, horribly unhelpful thoughts it churns out. Like it has to make up for all that time it was off. The worst part is there's nothing to distract herself with here.
There's nothing to stop her from wondering what might have happened had she decided to investigate it, when she first felt that strange sense of foreboding. Would anything have changed? Or would that just have ended with more people ending up in surgery? Would she even have been led to the Sasagawa siblings, or would she just have wandered in circles?
She hadn't known Sasagawa Ryohei. But at the same time, she did. She knew him intimately as a character from her favourite anime. Sure, he wasn't her favourite, wasn't even one she had liked all that much. But he was a main character, always present at the centre of the action. He was always there, like the sun that rises every morning without fail.
But she didn't know this Ryohei. She hadn't even particularly wanted to get to know him. He was nothing to her. She was nothing to him. Now they might never get the chance to know each other.
Tsuna sits on the uncomfortable plastic chairs outside the operating theatre and wonders about what ifs and what could have been.
Then all at once, there are hands on her face, and her entire field of vision is taken up by a borderline hysterical Sawada Nana. "Tsuna! What happened? Are you okay? Where does it hurt? Why aren't you with a doctor!?"
"Huh?" is really all Tsuna can conjure up in response to the rapid-fire questions.
Why would she need a doctor? She's not the one that got stabbed repeatedly by a bunch of rabid teens. She's about to say as much when she catches sight of a dark clump of something in her hair as it shifts.
Slowly, as best she can in Nana's hold, she turns her gaze down to her hands clutching the front of her shirt. Her grip is knuckle white, and she has this weird sensation like she watching someone else's hands move as she peels them away from her shirt, still sticky with flakes of dried blood dropping off in some places.
Her shirt is ruined, unless Nana knows how to get bloodstains out of clothes. The thought pops into her head about the same time she realises she must have accidentally smeared blood on her face too.
Which, yeah, gross. Why did no one think to do anything about the kid covered in blood? This is a fucking hospital for Christ's sake! Someone should have approached her about this ages ago!
Nana is unusually quiet, her mouth pressed into thin line when Tsuna finally looks back up and announces in a surprisingly even voice, "It's not my blood."
This does very little to soothe Nana's nerves, even as she tugs her up, presumably to take her to a bathroom where she can wash the worst of the blood off.
Tsuna's knees are wet, her pants completely soaked through. It's weird she took so long to notice. Glancing across at Hana, she notices the edges of her skirt and knees are also wet with blood.
Shit. Holy fucking shit. That whole time, they'd been kneeling in a pool of Ryohei's blood.
Bile rises to her throat and Tsuna makes the mistake of putting her hand to her mouth as she gags. It's lucky that they were already on their way to the bathroom...
And I leave you here with this cliff hanger~ (Mwa. Ha. Ha.) This was something I had planned pretty early on, and it's nice to have finally reached this point. (We're still so far off from many of the plot points I have in my head ride now though...)
Thank you Naomipy and guest reviewer "Human" for your reviews!
See you all whenever (hopefully soon), NyanNyan-suru