I'm glad you enjoyed the omake last chapter! I might plan on incorporating more of those in the future, so do look out for them! c:

I'd like to take the time to thank you for all the follows/reviews/favourites! I do try to respond to each and every review I receive. I hope I can continue to interest you with my future chapters and have your support!

Disclaimer: FANfiction. I only own the OC. Any changes to the original canon story is due to the fact that this is fanfiction.

Warning: May contain coarse language.

The first thing that came to Riko's attention when she regained consciousness was the mind-numbing pain she felt throughout her entire back. "Fucking fuck," she half-mumbled and half-croaked, realising that her throat was parched and her face was pressed against a soft, pillowy surface. As she squirmed, attempting to stand up, stabbing jolts of pain pulsated throughout her entire back, immediately forcing her to stop moving.

"Stop moving so excessively, or you'll rip the stitches, you idiot," a familiar voice muttered.

In her pain-induced haze, Riko felt none of the usual fear and abhorrence that usually overtook her when she heard that voice. Instead, she twisted her head to the left, the direction from which the voice had come, and saw Hibari sitting in front of her with his arms folded across his bare chest, staring down at her with a cold expression. Silence permeated the air for a good hour as Riko stared at her self-proclaimed nemesis with a slowly rising confusion.

Why was he here?

Where was she?

Why on earth was he half-naked?

Surprisingly, it was Hibari who decided to speak first.

"What do the symbols on your back mean?"

Riko scrunched her eyebrows together, momentarily puzzled by his question, before she very belatedly realised that her hoodie was gone, and her torso had been left completely bare, save for the bandages that were wrapped around the gunshot wounds. Two thoughts immediately came to mind upon this realisation:

One — Hibari Kyoya, the man that was not afraid to beat his subordinates for making a mistake, had gone out of his usual character and treated her wounds, and very well too, by the feel of it.

Two — he had found her tattoos. Those tattoos.

Time to feign ignorance. "Symbols? What symbols? Why, Kyoya, you must be seeing things!"

A brightly-lit screen of a phone was immediately thrust directly in front of her face, with a clear picture of a trio of different triangles tattooed vertically down the length of the spine on her upper back. Shit. "These ones."

Now, for the social justice warrior card. "They mean that I liked them, so I fucking got them. Why does society feel the need for one to validate one's decision to get body art? It's none of anyone's fucking business, in my opinion, as long as it's not wildly offensive."

"Fair enough," Hibari's placid answer surprised Riko. "Then tell me, why do you have the skills that you do?"

"Wouldn't you rather know why I kidnapped Hanabusa Saotome? That's much more interesting than why I can do a few tricks, si?"

Riko winced slightly when Hibari leaned down, his face inches away from hers. His stony eyes flashed with an emotion that she could not quite put a pin on, but it made her nervous as he searched her own eyes. Inwardly, she was cursing him for having taken off her goggles. Why on earth did he have an open agenda against them?!

"You're hiding something," Hibari said softly, "And I want to know what exactly it is."

Riko made a hissing noise as she narrowed her eyes into a glare. "You don't give a fuck about anyone's business! Why're you so interested in mine?!"

The small smirk on his face unnerved her. "Because I think you're interesting. And I want to fight you."

"The fuck you do! I will not willingly partake in a death match with you! I still enjoy being alive, graze mille!"

Hibari moved next to her, and Riko shivered from the warm touch of his fingertips as he placed them on the base of her spine. Before she could vocalise her adamance, his hand moved up her back and stopped in between her shoulder blades. He started tracing the black outlines inked into her skin, and leaned down next to her ear, whispering, "When I ask for answers, I expect to be given the truth."

"Too bad, you're not getting anything out of me." Riko fidgeted, taking great care to not move in a way that would re-open her wounds. As she lifted a hand towards her face to swipe Hibari's head away, she was stopped short of doing so when he caught it instead.

"I'll bite you to death," he warned.

"Vai avanti. Go ahead."

As soon as the words left her mouth, Riko felt a set of teeth clamping themselves over her wrist, causing her to hiss in pain and toss her head wildly towards Hibari, whose mouth was firmly lodged around her wrist.

"Kyoya! Jesus fucking Christ!"

In all the months she had known Hibari Kyoya, she had never seen him act upon his signature catchphrase quite so literally, until now. And if she was being honest, it shocked her more than it angered her. She attempted to pull her arm away, but Hibari stayed put, staring at her with expectant grey eyes. After five solid minutes of futile attempts to wrench herself free of the cloud guardian's jaws, a fresh wave of pain hit the Varia assassin, and she stopped moving, slumping her shoulders in defeat.

"Let go. Help me sit up and I'll tell you," she mumbled resentfully, her face pressed against the pillow.

Hibari seemed to weigh in on her offer, and eventually released her wrist from in between his teeth. Standing up, he bent down, hooking an arm around her neck, and pulled her into a sitting position with his other hand supporting the small of her back. He was being surprisingly gentle, which Riko found odd, but there was nothing about the entire situation that wasn't odd.

Riko rubbed a hand around the impression that Hibari's teeth had left around her wrist, and glared reproachfully at the cloud guardian, before he flung his uniform jacket into her face, catching her off-guard. Spluttering angrily, Riko pulled the jacket off her face. "What the fuck was that for, Kyoya!?"

"The lack of modesty doesn't phase me in the least bit, and I'm assuming the same applies to you, but we're in a holy place, so you should at least be respectful of that and cover up."

That was when Riko remembered that she was, in fact, still topless from when Hibari had tended to her injuries. "You're shirtless too!" she exclaimed hotly.

"And whose fault is it that blood got all over my shirt?"

Mustering as much dignity as she possibly could, Riko primly pulled on the jacket and buttoned it up. It was a few sizes too big and hung awkwardly off her shoulders, but it would have to do. As she did so, she surreptitiously scanned her surroundings, and noticed a spiral of smoke emanating from a shrine in the middle of the massive room. "Are we in a shrine?"

"You answer my questions first."

Riko cast a dirty look at the callous prefect seated directly in front of her, but he merely raised his eyebrows expectantly in return. "I'm waiting," he prompted.

"Ugh," Riko rubbed a hand frustratedly over her face, "My tattoos are glyphs, Sherlock. They mean, in order: explore, express and transcend."

"Which organisation is it?"

"What?" Riko furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. How had he guessed?

"I don't like repeating myself, herbivore."

"How'd you know they weren't random tattoos?"

"I'm the only one asking questions here, herbivore," he said, and narrowed his eyes menacingly as he added, "I'll bite you to death if you keep misbehaving."

Riko recoiled at his threat. "Fucking quit it with that biting shit already!" she eyed his mouth with distrust, "It's bordering on some weird kinky shit!"

"My threat isn't empty, I'll have you know."

"Okay, okay! You're right — they're tattoos that every single, fully-fledged member of the Cirque du Fantasia get when they, y'know, 'fully-fledge'."

Silence ensued as Riko watched Hibari process more questions from the tidbit of information she had just given him. A strange feeling took hold of her as she basked in the aftermath of having just released a small part of her past to Hibari. In her current line of work, Riko was accustomed to having people know her simply for her affiliation with the Varia, and nothing more, because the underworld didn't care for anything, except the whether or not you could get the job done. In her years of being a first-class assassin, no one outside of her squad had discovered that she had once been part of a circus, and now that Hibari Kyoya, of all people, was included in that intimate circle…

Weird.

"Cirque du Fantasia…" the French rolled off Hibari's tongue rather easily, which made Riko wonder if Hibari wasn't the monolingual he had claimed to be, "A circus. You were in a circus." His inflection meant that he was stating a fact that he didn't need her to confirm — he was merely repeating it, and probably tying it to the things he already knew about her.

Of course the herbivore had been in the circus. That explained everything he knew about her — well, almost everything. The acrobatic abilities, fearlessness, agility and grace… it all pointed to someone who knew their way around a death-defying occupation as a circus performer.

"Okay, now it's my turn," Riko tugged at the collar of the jacket nervously, her eyes darting around skittishly. It was clear that they had touched on a very uncomfortable subject from her past, and she was eager to change the focus of the conversation. "How'd you find me bleeding out on the streets?"

"I saw you," Hibari answered simply, "My turn — tell me how your cards work."

"That's barely an answer, you fucking cheat!" Riko glared at him indignantly, "And I'm not about to tell you the scope of my skills! That's practically skywriting all my weaknesses for you to exploit!"

"Exploitation?" Hibari smirked, "I just merely think you may be interesting enough for me to fight with."

"And why in fuck's name do you think I want to fight you?!"

"Why not?"

Unable to come up with a response, Riko sat fuming at the smug cloud guardian, who seemed pleased that he had backed her all the way into a far corner. It was then she realised all too late that him helping her out wasn't Hibari being altruistic, but rather Hibari being his usual self and working at an angle with a personal agenda in mind. Christ, he was one battle-obsessed maniac.

"Hibari-san, they didn't have the—"

Upon hearing the new voice, both Riko and Hibari immediately pulled their attention away from each other and looked at the man entering through the wooden sliding door of the shrine. Kusakabe stared dumbly at the pair seated in front of each other, his eyes slowly taking in Hibari's shirtlessness and the fact that Riko was clad in Hibari's uniform blazer. His gaze then landed on the rumpled futon that Riko was on top of, and the messy pile of clothing that sat on the floor nearby. His bottom lip trembled as realisation dawned upon him, and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

"I-I'm so sorry! I didn't realise I was interrupting something! I'm just going to leave no—"

"You didn't interrupt anything," the two interjected sharply, before casting pointed looks furtively in each other's direction.

"B-Bu—"

"Silenzio, Revolta," Riko snapped, "Kyoya is the last person I'd ever think of fucking."

Riko was expecting a backlash from him, but Hibari remained quiet, and instead continued staring at the acrobat. His eyes held an emotion that she could not quite identify. All of a sudden, Riko felt very self-conscious and shy under the cloud guardian's smouldering gaze.

"Kusakabe, I have something I need you to do."

When he gestured Kusakabe to come over, Riko broke away from his gaze and sighed in relief as he began a conversation with his righthand man. That was definitely a weird moment. She had seen plenty of Hibari's dark gazes to be able to differentiate between cold fury, dark humour and indifference, which she had long ago dubbed as 'Kyoya's Only Holy Trinity of Emotions'. Maybe she had been seeing things wrongly. She surreptitiously snuck a glance at the cloud guardian again, and found herself drawn back into the definitely new emotion that stormed in his cool grey eyes.

He hadn't looked away once.

Why?

Ooh. What is this? Do I see some storm clouds in the horizon?

Translations

grazie mille - thank you very much
vai avanti - go ahead
cirque du fantasia (French) - circus of fantasies
silenzio - silence

Let me know how you liked or disliked this chapter, or if you have any questions, and I'll see you in the next chapter!

Delphoxi