Disclaimer: I don't own Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
Vietato l'ingresso
Written October Sixth, 2008
Dokuro's eyes are calmly staring into him, and he smiles, and he speaks. Her fingers reach up to fix the elastic band in her hair, which is loose. Can he hear the words as well, or is he entirely withdrawn from sentiency? This is his question, and this is the first time he's been in a good enough mood to ask it, skin warm and with the scent of mud in the air. Limbs still, the familiar weight of the tonfa settled into the waistband of his slacks, uniform jacket slung over his shoulders with careless deliberacy. Leaning against nature.
She doesn't know.
And it's no matter; he can wait. Because the first time he hears that quiet, light voice change into one of a more sonorous pitch, the swish of pleats melt into silence, he will be at the point where his teeth are iron pinpricks, unnoticeable, killing from the inside out like a thousand tiny slashes and water dashed with salt, like an opiate sweetness on the tip of the tongue from muted memories of summer days, soft and humid drifts of thoughts. Something vague and hazy to dull the senses. And before long it will be over; he will have won. Hibari turns the page, heady descriptions of a girl-child - of an insolent nymphet and suburban propaganda - hidden among the words, and holds one hand over his eyes to shield the sun.
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Hospital. Glaring, starch-white fluorescents that bleed in through eyelids and bits of gauze. Sounds: the scuffing of shoes against the metal of his bed, against the polished floor of the sanatorium, words too soft, too soft, too –
His fingers are gone. Unable to feel nails scraping against the sheets, or the pressing of plaster and fabric wraps: only the oozing, pulsating ache of his blood moving through his veins and the velvet of his lungs, fluttering. Cracked. And - he'd never say anything, never- Hibari knows that someone is here. Their candor is nearly sickening, or perhaps this is a mixture of chemical synthesis and thought, because when:
You still can't win. It drifts. He can taste the syllables, like granite flakes and dust, coating the inside of his mouth as he breathes in, breathes out. His parietal lobe, too, something is wrong. A touch against his shoulder, against the smooth, sensitive skin on the inside of his wrist, against his mouth. The same phantasmal half-consciousness he's been rousing with, lately.
Once upon a time, inside a bamboo shoot, a princess was found. He almost laughs, almost. Dino speaks but the words are garbled, blurred and dripping with monochrome the way the herbivore always, always does, so he wouldn't have listened [even if he wasn't seeing streaks of bloated colour invade his vision, a plethora of spots]. There is violet, garnet seeping everywhere, and he can't move, because even these ideas are lethargic and - because his wings have been clipped and his fangs have dulled like roots, mere nubs. Something in his mouth tastes like lukewarm taro, slimy and reeking of the earth.
He can't help but come to the conclusion of yes, it was them, and yet and yet. And yet there is static; his pupils have contracted with the lights, and el "enfermero" le pone una inyección and he knows because even his enervation -
xxxxx
There is an incessant need to study illusions, ever since the battle of rings and his first witness of coarse, glaucous twill. Vitriolic disgrace, in his failure to maintain the discipline of Namimori. Her sea-glass bias has been burned into his memory along with the knowledge that he would not, in fact, be prepared for an attack of that type. Still, he doesn't ally: Turn weaknesses into strengths, and only the lamed have defects to begin with, and he is not about to breakfast cud. He hates humanity for again developing something he must learn to combat, and for that reason will master it and beat it to his will, in order to gain the ability to castigate dear Mukuro with steel and teeth and -
[Now, his smile is hidden by gloved fingers and his hair is cut with a razor's edge.] Hibari can see the two at once, one eye closed and one staring straight ahead, and he marks his progress with broken bones in the tiled hallway of his beloved junior high. An art that lets slender, phlegmatic little girls and halcyonic men alike thrash him as they wish is intolerable, and he tastes blood on his lips when replaying the mirages of vines and frost, glimpses of the future, glimpses of the past, glimpses of downy, scarred skin and sardonic smiles as his - her - their body twists and shudders amidst an onslaught of mental attacks. Fighting, and winning, against an Arcobalenco.
Impressive. The only ones to have sped his heart rate, besides the baby with that [single counter-attack hidden among the recollections of by-gone days.] In addition, Mukuro has beaten him, once - mottled bruises, snapped bones, gouged skin. The affirmed knowledge that there are, certainly, those who are still his superiors; that he can't idly sit by and watch the world spin on the rooftop of Namimori, cement underfoot and feathers in his hair. And the differences between supple and unwavering, Hades and lair, are few. He plans to close the gap.
xxxxx
Sweet, crystal-sugar lemonade on candy sticks and oil-slick fingers, the scent of warehouses and dishonest work. The whirring of mechanics and the heat of yellowing, fraying lights that sputter and fade in a rhythmic, sporadic, pattern of comfortable familiarity above his head. Desolate yet welcoming of home, an autonomic nervous of thick cords and elicited imagination, the dreams of a skilled roboticist slowly forming amidst the mess of a well-hidden room in this supposed "Family". The parts in his hands are as delicate and slick as freshly-buttered doves, as still-warm, ironed clothing, like little beating hearts of possibility lurching and fluttering against the sweat of his palm. There are dusts of matcha powder on the make-shift nightstand by the empty space where he unrolls his bed, and a novel with sullied pages, and a radio transmitter that's been picked apart like a carcass set by birds, like bare bones and voiceless reeds and papers burnt to smoke.
Cooling fluid and deft fingers, blonde hair. The careful twisting of microscopes and a fleeting suggestion of iontophoresis, textbook ministrations on electric currents and phylloquinonic properties. He likes the thought, and the words slip in his mouth, muddled when not in his native tongue. It's almost what inspired the method of absorb-and-reflect for his current model of killing machine, brandless like la madre della natura. Someday, he'll create something as realistic as a human itself, but fifty times as powerful as Vongola The Tenth, holding both the secrets of the rings and of life.
At another station there is the charmingly naïve blush of a young, half-dead boy, stapling papers and biding his time like a good informant will, having learned the proper savoir faire from now-old schoolmarms in stuffy classrooms and polished shoes: uniform immaculate and collar starched. His skills and breadth of knowledge - everything from mechanics to Gosse - have improved remarkably since he first captured this young frame. Unaccented, except when it counts, when empty beds are too forlorn and he won't be missed. For a little while. He's not stupid enough to show his impatience, and what does it matter, anyway? It's not often that the room's too hot for sleeping, so he can waste his time playing subordinate for as long as he likes.
Flowers, indeed.
He reads between the lines as easily as breathing, can imagine Spanner and Mukuro, secrecy and illusory youth. Hibird rests, silently nestled in his hair, and taps at the keyboard in front of him, stooping to glance at the screen with a bored frown. The raid will come soon, and so he destroys all traces with an unnecessary flourish, and doesn't mind the idea of being caught.
xxxxx
Chrome. He can feel her body heat, sickeningly warm, and hear the throbbing of her pulse from even this distance. She doesn't seem to notice, and it's irritating that even now -
I'll have to ask him. She says in response, tracing the hem of her skirt. Hibari thinks that maybe, he could beat it out of her, make her say yes no matter what - and still, he knows, he's thinking irrationally. He's been woken up from sleep, these past few days. Too many heartbeats, too loud. Instead, fix your shirt, he tells her: pulling needle and thread and thread from a pocket in his suit, using his teeth to cut the length.
She's a girl, after all.
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Written for La Consorteria.