[Katekyou Hitman Reborn!]: "The Raven" (Hibari/Chrome + Mukuro...sort of; as requested by Rune)
Well, to be fair, I'm generally not one to take requests, so. But but BUT, since runesque's art is just so gorgeous, I couldn't resist pestering her to do something for me. ^___^;; *shameless WHORE* Which, uh, sorry for pestering, Rune. D: I'm not sorry about the whore part, though, so don't you dare try and make me take it back. >F
At any rate, she requested of me in return Hibari and Mukuro doing mafia-ish things because a.) apparently I don't like either Hii-kun OR Mukuro (?!), and also b.) because despite KHR being a series ABOUT the mafia, very un-mafia-like things have occurred thus far. (Conceded.)
So, because apparently the words "request fic", to me, seem to have translated themselves into "oh, just go ahead and write whatever the @#$% you want, Lori", somehow this turned into 1896 subtexty gen instead. -____-;; Apparently Rune is okay with this, so, well, here you have it.
Title: The Raven
Author: Edgar Allen Poe Lorelei DiAngelo
Rating: Eventual NC-17 porn porn PORN, but this part is disappointingly PG-13.
Pairing: Eventual (again) Hibari/Chrome (+ nosy and obnoxious Mukuro butting in from the sidelines, but not actually DOING anything OTL). At any rate, this part can be read as just extremely subtexty gen.
Summary: Hibari didn't like cars. Nor did he like people, or democracies, or microwave ovens, as well as a number of other unfortunately prominent commodities in today's society.
For: runesque, for graciously enabling my megane!Gokkun fetish. ^___^ I'd totally sell my soul for some more of her art...wait, did I say that out loud? *gulp* (XD)
Notes: Biggest challenge with this was that Rune wanted me to include my "awesome, awesome dialogue-ness into things", which, whatever the hell that means. XD But the words "Hibari" and "dialogue" were enough to make me cringe, ahahaha, so, *fails*. Also, wao, the wordcount for this beast by the time it was done was ridiculously farking long. I'm never doing this again. *faceplant*
Word count (this part only): 8,833 (!!!). The other parts that follow this are decidingly shorter, though.
He walks the Samsara again.
For him, it is almost always the same. The world spins in a wheel, and his existence spins with it. He walks the Fifth Path, the Path of Men, because he is the growing shadow, the dirty king, and this time, as he walks, he counts the flowers that bloom eternally in the fields, pale and faded and grey.
'True death', was it? He doesn't think he has ever experienced such a thing. The thought is inconceivable. For him, the walker of the wheel, death is an interlude from sound, the thoughtless pause before breath where the actions of his existence mean nothing more to him than the counting of flowers.
(Their number of which is, ironically, one thousand. A mille fiore.)
He nearly chokes on his own blood. And that's when he hears her call.
Rokudou Mukuro stops; sighs, dramatically, the iris of his right eye dizzily ticking the count of one to five.
Last one, he thinks, as the flowers around him wither and crumble to dust, as his eye stops its frantic spinning to settle on a single ebony number, six;
Last time.
Laughing wildly, he spreads his arms upward, turns his face towards the sun, and walks into the sky.
---
Chrome Dokuro was once a girl named Nagi. If you blinked for long enough, she'd disappear.
But she was strong, too. It was the sort of strength born from loneliness, born from the terrible knowledge that no one would ever want her life for their own; the sort of strength born from the tragic poverty of being unnoticed, and unloved. It was the sort of strength held by the very powerful, and the often very desperate. And it was because of that strength that she was finally able to stop casting her thoughts inward, and spread them out to the space beyond.
She put all of her power into the call, and all of her heart into hearing the answer.
---
"That - that girl - !" Bianchi burst into the communications room of the underground Vongola base, hair stuck up in untidy wisps around her forehead, stuck in her goggles (which had now grown rather fogged from the sweat she had accrued while running. She nearly bowled over Giannini, who was short and had the tendency to fade into the background if he wasn't being watched). "That girl - the Chrome Dokuro from ten years ago! She's disappeared!"
Kusakabe looked up sharply from where he had been studying the wave energy radar map of the surrounding area, brusque features drawn into a tight frown. "What?!" His eyes flickered briefly back to the mass of small, dull dots clustering around the large, purple pulsating dot in the medium-sized warehouse some two or so miles away. (Neither big, nor small, it was...) His gaze zipped back to Bianchi instantly. "When?"
"Just now - I couldn't have been gone for more than a second - the girls needed my help with something - " Bianchi, when under the threat of serious pain or death, could admit that she at least somewhat liked Chrome, if not felt terribly sorry for her. The loneliest girl, void of caring or love. Bianchi, defender of all things amore, couldn't stand for that, at least, and thus deemed it fit to care for Chrome in her master's place. (It also didn't hurt that, being devoid of most of her internal organs, that Chrome Dokuro was the single human being alive who could stomach, and even have an appetite for, Bianchi's infamous poison cooking.) "Her wave energy - can we find her?"
Kusakabe observed. "It's hard," he admitted, dark eyes narrowed at the screen to almost squinting. "There's a lot of commotion right now, and with Kyou-san's power interfering with most of the detectors, it'll be hard to get a reading on her, even if she is using the power of the Mist Ring to substitute her illusory organs."
Bianchi tsked irritably, and vented her frustration by shoving her specialty Seafood Screamer Deluxe into the face of the nearest passerby as she whisked out of the room, pausing in the threshold of the door for only a second.
"I'm going to look for her myself," she asserted, vengefully, clearly implying that whomever was responsible for the girl's disappearance had better be prepared to seek assistance from heaven in dealing with her wrath - even if the perpetrator were none other than Chrome herself. The hatch to the communications room slid shut behind her with a bang.
Kusakabe, concerned, dove from his chair to perform first aid on Bianchi's hapless victim, as the man foamed and gurgled and struggled for breath.
In the middle block, unbeknownst to anyone, a ripple of wave energy formed, and began to stir.
---
Hibari Kyouya watched himself die.
One moment, he was standing triumphant amidst the bodies of his enemies, dipped in the blood of the noisy, flocking herbivores, and the next he was jerking, twisting this way and that as a hail of bullets tore at him seemingly from out of nowhere.
Blood arced in a fine spray. His mouth opened, but he didn't utter a single cry; barely faltered, even, bashing through the remaining hordes of the enemy with his tonfas before even those, too, were blown away. His legs buckled, and nearly gave way, but he struggled, spine bowed, and managed to stay on his feet. His breathing labored, became slow, and his eyes eventually slipped closed. When he died, he died annoyed at the noise of it all, and the claustrophobia.
Hibari watched this all from a vantage point some twenty feet away.
"Just where are you looking?" he asked amusedly of the remaining advance guard, the three with the camoflauge mist boxes who had so cowardly attacked him from behind with their guns. He took a second to enjoy the looks of stunned horror on their faces as the Hibari Kyouya in front of them burst with a cloud of smoke into a thousand twittering birds, before he spared them the trouble of worrying about the hows and the whys of it all by biting them all quite thoroughly to death.
"Well," he murmured immediately after that, looking down on them, cutting himself off with a yawn. He didn't spare a single second. Hibari turned to the slim figure standing in the doorway behind him, fingers clutching desperately to her three-pronged trident as though she would break, thin chest heaving up and down with no apparent lack of effort, and he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve.
"That was amazingly vivid," he said appreciatively to Chrome Dokuro, an almost-smile beginning to bloom across his pale, blood-splattered face. "That illusion of my death."
A trickle of red slid down her chin; the girl wiped it into a single, bloody smear.
"I must have counted at least five or six dozen bullets in those rounds," Hibari continued, something dangerously akin to glee beginning to spark in his narrow, dark eyes. "Sixty or seventy bullets, shredding my skin as though it were paper. My body breaking, stumbling, until my shoulders droop, until I'm bent nearly double. Until I'm standing before you, bowing almost to the ground." For a moment, the spark in his eyes seemed almost to shimmer; "Surely that imagery isn't something that is your own, now is it, Dokuro Chrome?"
In the doorway, the girl faltered, noticeably dizzy, and only spared herself a fall to the floor by the wooden threshold of the entrance, which she clutched at with her other hand, the one not holding the spear. But when she spoke, her voice was clear, and pure.
"Hibari Kyouya-sama," she said politely, with only the slightest trace of uncertainty, "you are coming with me." She coughed, and choked, and vomited up a miniature puddle of blood. She stayed on her feet.
Hibari's eyebrows raised. "Oh?" he parried back at her, unable to stop the smile from spreading on his face this time. This mild-mannered little girl, suddenly brave enough to start barking out orders to him? Now that was interesting; "Am I, now?" (And she thought so highly of him, too; '-sama', for sure.) "We'll have to see about that. I don't associate myself with half-dead, scavenged animal carcasses any more than I'd stoop to consorting myself with certain weakling herbivores, girl. Be sure to tell your master that, too."
Ah; and there it was. The girl's single eye sparked, grew brighter, until it flared almost sapphire with defiance.
"You can tell him yourself," she said seriously, determinedly (but somehow no less politely), before letting go of the wall to stand on her own, "when we break him out of the Vindice."
---
The plan had been foolproof, really, with the only exception being the moment where it had all fallen apart.
Unfortunately for Mukuro, this means he's in rather serious trouble, now. This means he's been stuck in a dank, rotting cesspit at the very bottom of the Vindice and been left to rot, and this also means that he's been left so powerless and bereft that he almost wishes he actually had died.
(Only 'almost', though.)
Fortunately for Mukuro, he has not been left without options. Byakuran Millefiore hadn't been quite so informed of the nature of Mukuro's relationship with Chrome as he had thought. Or rather Byakuran, like so many others before him, had simply ignored Chrome's existence as a threat to his goals entirely. Had grossly misjudged her potential.
For Chrome, of course, is a gifted illusionist in her own right.
Gifted enough to make an illusion seem real from almost any light.
---
They leave under cover of darkness.
(Hibari's smile had been flat, and condescending. "My curiosity takes me as far as the walls," he conceded, his calculating gaze boring intensely into Chrome's own, as though the answers he craved were to be sought somewhere within the depths of her single, blue eye; "And don't expect me to help you, either. The only interest I have in you is an interest in the way you will die.")
It was Chrome who had devised the way to sneak past the Vongola's frantically-growing search party; a master of illusion, she was familiar with the concept that the most powerful forms of deception were often the ones that were the most tangible.
I'm curious, my dear Chrome, Mukuro said to her, quite suddenly, and inexplicably out of nowhere. What did he say to you, back then, in order to give you the courage to save your own life?
The dark-haired girl fought the urge to shake her head; fought harder to keep her sudden intake of breath silent. She couldn't afford to give her disguise away, not now, but it was him; her light, her life, her reason for being. He had been so quiet up until now, and now he was... Chrome's heart beat faster. I'll show you, Mukuro-sama.
She did.
"Kyou-san!" The tall, athletic, and (in Chrome's opinion) rather attractive vice-commander to the Vongola intelligence and research unit could be heard speaking to Hibari from some distance away. "97% casualties, sir? As to be expected from you, sir!"
There was a dull thud as the corpse Kusakabe had been carrying was dropped unceremoniously onto the forest floor some mile or so from their warehouse warground.
"One of them misfired his own box weapon and died," Hibari admitted, boredly, and his shoulderblades rumbled against Chrome's thin chest with the low timbre of his voice. From her hiding place, she fought to keep still. "It was probably better for him, really. He was gathering, obnoxiously, something like a group of five. Even if they're dead, a group of herbivores like this still makes me feel ill."
"Shall I finish up for you, then, Kyou-san?" Kusakabe offered, and Hibari shrugged. Chrome, slung over his shoulders in a fireman's carry, dressed in a pilfered Millefiore uniform and mask, bounced somewhat painfully.
"No need," he murmured, in something close to a sigh. The uniform trousers were thin, and Chrome could feel his breath on the backs of her knees, his arms locked around her thighs. Inside her head, Mukuro went nearly mad with the force of his own laughter. "This is the last one. Report to whatever idiot's in charge the results of tonight's battle, Tetsuya. I'll be back shortly."
With no sense of grace or gentleness whatsoever, Hibari tossed Chrome into the corpse pile. She bit through her own tongue to hide her startled gasp, and struggled to breathe only through her nose. It stunk. She was used to the dilapidation of buildings, of the musty smell of abandoned warehouses or the defunct Kokuyo Healthy Land, but she'd had only a limited experience at best with the dilapidation of humans.
I...I can't breathe!
You can, dear Chrome, Mukuro soothed her, and his voice was deeper than she remembered. She'd never seen him, not once, since she'd come to this dreary and dreadful future. She hung on with all of her might. Focus on the sound of my voice. In fifteen seconds, you will be free. In fifteen seconds, Hibari Kyouya's yes-man will have descended down the slope that leads out of this forest, and you can rip this foul-smelling mask off, dispose of these ill-fitting garments. In fifteen seconds, you will be my dear, cute Chrome once more, and -
"Up. Quit wasting time." Fingers tangled in the cloth behind her head, and the Millefiore mask was ripped free. Almost exactly fifteen seconds, as he'd said. Chrome sucked in a shaky, blood-tinged breath, making a sound like a swimmer coming up from the water, and latched onto Hibari's arm desperately in an attempt to pull herself free from the corpse pile. He shook her off roughly, genuine annoyance showing in his eyes, and started off in the direction opposite from where Kusakabe had gone, leaving her behind.
"W-Wait!" Chrome, inwardly feeling ashamed of her stutter, clawed her way unsteadily to her feet, ignoring the flesh unfeeling and stiff beneath her hands, ignoring the bones that didn't quite yield to her underfoot. As she hopped along after the black-haired man, she stripped hurriedly, shedding layer after layer of rank, dead-smelling Millefiore uniform for her own comfortable, Kokuyo green one.
Something soft hit her in the face.
"Change. Over there." Hibari's gesture to a thatch of trees somewhere to his right was nearly as brusque as his voice. Chrome, fingers trembling, unfolded the package that had been thrown at her, to reveal a simple black blazer and a matching pleated skirt, both slightly too large. She looked down at her own garments, puzzled, and back to the bundle again, not understanding the difference.
You should just humor him for now, shouldn't you, Chrome? That Hibari Kyouya-sama.
Chrome twinged, shamefully.
Kufufufu. Don't worry, my dear Chrome. I find it rather amusing, actually. I'll respect him too, certainly, if he manages to assist you with what I asked.
The girl sheltered herself behind the trees, undoing the buttons of her uniform hurriedly. Don't... Please don't misunderstand, Mukuro-sama. I hold no one in the same esteem as I do you.
A mental pause not unlike the delicate intake of breath. In the future, dear Chrome, that may change.
"No!" Chrome shrieked aloud, vehemently, before slamming her mouth shut so quickly that her teeth clicked. No! she repeated, no less fervent than before, shaking her head. Her fierce expression melted to one of fearful doubt. How could I...possibly...? If it weren't for you, Mukuro-sama, I'd be nothing! Because of you, I have...
But Mukuro, deep in the recesses of her mind, said nothing.
Chrome, disheartened, shrugged the too-large blazer over her pale shoulders, and thought that the cloth felt somehow familiar. She struggled a bit, with the skirt, pulling it up over her muddy boots, and it too was too large. It might have been a problem, had her Kokuyo skirt not been a bit too big, as well, and thus was always worn accompanied with a thick leather belt, which Chrome wrapped around her hips now. She stepped out from behind the patch of trees, eyes growing adjusted to the growing light. It would be dawn soon. They were considerably behind schedule.
"Let's hurry," she suggested to Hibari, who gave her a glance mid-yawn that had scared the most staunch of warriors before. She quailed under it, a bit, but he only shrugged, turning on his heel, and making his way through the thick trees to the road.
Chrome followed, at a noticeably slower pace. Walking this far on her own power was an effort. She struggled to keep her following cough quiet, and hastily wiped the flecks of blood that spotted her hand on the fabric of her skirt. The bare minimum. She could only allow herself to use the bare minimum. The rest of it was needed to complete her goal. If she could maintain this level of power channeling towards her illusory organs, and have them still keep her alive, then any amont of pain or discomfort was nominal.
The trees thinned, eventually, and just as the first rays of dawn were starting to spread over the sky, they reached the road. It was still quiet, this early in the morning, which presented a problem in the form that Chrome's original intention had been to simply hijack a car. It was improbable, therefore, to hijack such a car if there were none to be found on the road. Could they wait? She thought of Mukuro, blind and freezing at the bottom of the Vindice. No.
But you're dizzy, dear Chrome. And there's no one here who can help you. Not I, nor Ken, nor Chikusa. No, true, she'd lost them as much as she'd lost Mukuro in this horrible, bitter place. She swayed, before collapsing onto her rear at the side of the road. See? Mukuro prompted her, voice amused but kind. The you of ten years later would have no problem with this, I think, but as you are now...
Chrome blanched at the insinuation that she was of no use. The toe of a pristine leather loafer dug into her thigh.
"If you're going to die, don't die on the side of the road," Hibari told her, carelessly, and gestured with a pale, tapered hand. "The Namimori border is just on the other side of that hill. Go and dump your corpse in Kokuyo, since you prefer it so much, girl. I don't want your dead body defiling the order in my land."
But you just dumped a whole bunch of - Chrome was about to say, until she caught the smoke and flare of a brilliant orange forest fire from the area they had just left, and she shut her mouth. Using her trident, she managed to haul herself to her feet. It took a considerable amount of energy to maintain the illusion of that weapon, but it was needed for her purpose, so she didn't mind. True; she could go and die in Kokuyo later, after she had been of some use, at least.
"I understand," she started, humbly; "I, too, have - "
But then, quite suddenly, a nondescript, small black car zoomed around the bend; screeched to a halt beside them.
"Please, get in," a familiar voice said.
---
Kusakabe, for all of his ignorance on the hairstyle standards set by today's current social elite, was certainly no idiot. He knew that there were %97 casualties from the results of today's battle. Those who had been slain by Kyou, among them, and the unfortunate victim of the misfiring box weapon.
And the remaining %3, of which no doubt belonged to Chrome Dokuro.
As he rounded the curve in the road in his borrowed Vongola car, he was almost alarmed to see that he had been right.
---
Hibari didn't like cars. Nor did he like people, or democracies, or microwave ovens, as well as a number of other unfortunately prominent commodities in today's society (he'd once choked, and nearly tasted bile, when Kusakabe had gotten it into his head to move a television into Namimori's disciplinary commitee reception room). He tolerated airplanes, out of a necessary convenience for his current profession - he would, of course, simply walk to Italy if such a thing were possible - but he disliked the cramped, crowded atmosphere that could only be brought about by a compact car.
"Please, get in," Kusakabe offered, no doubt attempting to be of help.
"No," replied Hibari, bluntly. Chrome Dokuro, halfway into the backseat already, paused, and gave him a despairing look, which really made him want to kill her all the more.
"Hibari-sam - " she started, painfully, before cutting herself off with a rather inexplicable pause. And - Hibari, who was admirably sharp-eyed, noticed - her gaze seemed to turn inward, to fold in on itself, as though she were listening to voices that only she could hear. They came back into focus.
"I see," she said instead, voice calm. "May I borrow Kusakabe-san for a while, then, please?"
Hibari, eyes narrowed, made a do-what-you-want motion in Kusakabe's general direction. His gaze never left the girl's face. It was the predators in nature that were the ones who laid the traps, yet he, unbelieveably, was starting to smell one laid for him here.
"I...certainly don't mind," the Kusakabe in question conceded, "but, Kyou - "
"Thank you, Hibari Kyouya-sama," Chrome interrupted, smiling, eyes innocent and polite. Duplicitous, just like her master's. She climbed into the car, rolling the window down and hanging her head out as Kusakabe turned over the engine again. And, there it was; the trap, as predicted; "Mukuro-sama sends his thanks to you, as well."
Rokudo Mukuro; the ever undead.
Snarling, moody, Hibari yanked open the driver's side rear door.
---
Kusakabe had served under the man for a little under thirteen years, but he had never seen Kyou make a face like that before in his life. That mixture of anger, excitement, and an almost invisible air of longing that seemed far too urgent to actually hide. It begged to be captured, it begged to be questioned - what?, when?, why? -
But - "Where to?" Kusakabe asked solicitously instead, putting the car into drive.
"Narita Airport," little Chrome said decisively, though she flushed a bit when he turned around to look at her in surprise. (Couldn't for the life of him figure out why.)
"Is that alright, Kyou-san?" he asked deferentially of the shorter man, chewing idly on his omnipresent stick of grass.
"As the girl says," Kyou muttered, tersely, and though he wasn't certain what such an expression would portend, Kusakabe knew better than to argue when the man made a face like that.
"All right, then," he agreed evenly, and turned back to the wheel.
Kyou pulled a face, dug his hands into the leather of his seat; little Chrome leaned her head back on her headrest, and let out a weary little sigh.
They were on their way.
---
Chrome had just been about to drift off to sleep when she felt the cold butt of a tonfa dig into her lower lip.
"Tell him to come out," Hibari ordered her, murderously, regarding her out of the corner of his narrow, curved eyes.
There was a frightening amount of calm in the way he was murderous about it, however, and it was that fact, more than anything else, that caused Chrome to draw in her breath.
"I...can't," she stalled, unsure of what to do. Her head swam. Without rest, her illusory organs weren't going to last. "If...If I could, we wouldn't be going to the Vindice, would we?"
Which was partially true. Chrome fought to keep the innocence going in her wide, blue eye. Hibari was frowning at her so severely that his teeth showed over his lower lip. The dark-haired girl stared at them, fascinated, using them as a distraction.
The tonfa dug in deeper. "But you speak to him, don't you? Tell him to come out. Or I'll bite you to death, without question." The way his tongue momentarily pierced his teeth on the word death was also apparently fascinating. Either way, it held Chrome in thrall. From within, Mukuro laughed, fiercely.
Now, now, Chrome. There's no need to be so ferociously protective of me. We can play a little game of chat, for a while. For example, this -
- and for that, Chrome summoned her courage. Shrinking back into her corner of the backseat, she looked at Hibari's slanted, fever-bright eyes, and said:
"Mukuro-sama says he'll speak to you. But only if he can call you 'Kyou-chi'."
A considerable, pregnant pause.
Then, Hibari smiled. It was not a particularly reassuring smile. (Those teeth.) "He can do whatever he wants," he allowed smoothly, "because as soon as I set eyes on him, I'm going to kill him."
Well said, Kyou-chi. The tonfa disappeared as quickly as it had came, and Chrome relaxed, marginally. Though I usually leave the trademark of adorable nicknames up to Ken.
"Is he alive?" Hibari demanded, seeming to put an unusual amount of weight into the question. He leaned forward, intimidatingly, and Chrome caught the scents of sakura and pine. "If I can't have the satisfaction of biting him to death myself..."
Your concern is touching, Kyou-chi. And the answer to your question is directly relative to your definition of the word 'alive'. I exist, you see.
Chrome relayed the message, slightly dizzy. The leather seat of the car was surprisingly comfortable, and she fought the urge to give in to exhaustion right there. Trees whizzed behind her, out the window, in a gray-green blur. The morning was misty.
"What was it that Byakuran Millefiore did to him, then? Surely he didn't just get away." Hibari, bent over, palms on either side of her legs, was all blunt assurance and intensity, and Chrome was momentarily insulted on her master's behalf.
Now, now, there's no need for that. He's right, after all. It was overindulgence in my own whims that led to my current condition, before all else.
This question, Chrome could answer without assistance. "He...stole...Mukuro-sama's skills. The Six Paths of Reincarnation - that's what Byakuran Millefiore did."
If Hibari was surprised, he didn't show it in the least. "That's his power?"
Chrome, transfixed by the sliver of collarbone that hung out from the man's open jacket, nodded swiftly.
"So the scavenger is stuck at the bottom of the Iron Walls, then," Hibari mused, unrepentant in his satisfaction. "And without the ability to toy with other people's bodies, he needs you to break him free." He finally leaned back, though, blessedly. "This is more convenient than I'd hoped."
Yes, yes, all very enabling for your ultimate goal of 'biting' me to death, Kyou-chi. Of course, we won't let it come to that, now will we, dear Chrome?
Never, she agreed silently, wholeheartedly. But Chrome, who was rather timid but never actually scared of anything, was actually quite afraid of Vongola's Guardian of the Cloud, and she couldn't understand why. (Mukuro chortled so hard in the back of her head that if he'd had lungs of his own, he wouldn't have been able to breathe.)
"But then - you, girl." Chrome, preoccupied with her own thoughts, had no time at all to see Hibari even move, before one of his hands was coiled tightly around her wrist, the hand on which she wore the Vongola Mist Ring, which he held up to his face; and the other pressed firmly against her stomach, curling slightly into her ribs. She inhaled, sharply. Kusakabe, driving, swerved slightly on the road for a moment before regaining his composure, coughing, and adjusting the rearview mirror to tilt away.
No, don't! she tried to cry out, but her lips wouldn't move and her heart wouldn't slow its excited thumping.
Something you inherited, my dear, Mukuro chuckled, but he too seemed to be teetering on the edge of glee. She struggled, but the man's grip was like iron. (It didn't help that, being so small a space, there was really nowhere for her to get away to, even if she had entirely wanted to.)
"But then, you," Hibari was saying, and his hair was in his eyes, and his breath was on her taut, outstretched hand (sakura, and pine), "you were about to die, without the help of his powers. If his condition really is as you say, then how is it that he can speak to you, like now? Without his possession powers?" The fingers around her wrist tightened, almost to breaking; "Unless, of course, there is some part of your story that is simply a clever ruse."
"I," Chrome started shrilly, and faltered. "I - " Hibari's fingers curved against her belly, like claws, breaking the effect of the illusion that kept her organs. She coughed, and a bit of blood flew past her teeth to splatter on his pale, angular face. He didn't even flinch. "I...can't tell you," Chrome managed, finally, feeling the air cool against her hips from where her blazer had slid up over her skirt. She was frightened, but also curiously elated, and light-headed, besides. Someone who finally wanted her life for their own? (Even if it was only to take.)
"Can't say? Is that your answer, or his?" His tone was cool, but his hands, his eyes, were hot. You should tell him, Chrome, Mukuro told her, consolingly, indifferently; it makes no difference to me. We have nothing to fear. He won't strike until I've fully recovered my powers - that's just his way.
But; "The answer is m-mine," the dark-haired girl breathed, and felt a bizarre sensory withdrawl that was Mukuro's equivalent to surprise.
Hibari let her go.
"Then," he told her lowly, confidently, fingers smearing her blood from his cheek and flicking across his tongue with ease, "when I've finished my business with your master, I'm going to bite you to death."
Chrome, gaze fixed on his straight, perfect teeth, could only bring herself to feel a sudden, inexplicable thrill.
---
There's an unexpected wrench in his plans in the form of one affectionately-named 'Kyou-chi'.
(Which, Mukuro notes, is the absolute first thing he's going to do when he's free from this hellhole - say Kyou-chi, in as sweet and as sentimental a tone he can muster.)
Of course, he has to get out of here, first.
Though the Mist Guardian prefers to act on his own, without witness or obstacle, in this case, he's been left with limited options. In some ways, Mukuro finds it ironic that Chrome should rely so heavily on him now, when without her, he is the one who would have been made as nothing.
It was sheer good fortune that Chrome had happened, at the time, to be drawing heavily upon one of his favorite illusions - without it, he wouldn't have been able to imbue the rest of his essence, his existence, into her half-empty body. That, by doing so, the rest of his spirit hadn't entirely disappeared. It was sheer good fortune that she had been able to take the burden of living under her own power, as well, along with managing to keep the truth about his condition secret, until now. It is sheer good fortune that she is, even, being quite the good girl by carrying his spirit miles and miles across the ocean in order to complete the task he has laid out for her.
Those are, of course, about the only bits of good fortune.
It's cold in the Vindice.
---
The girl dozed in her corner of the backseat almost as soon as he'd let her go, and Hibari just as quickly rolled down his side window. Though he disliked the noise, and the smell of exhaust that ultimately poured in through the opening, he hated the cramped, claustrophobic feel of the interior even more.
(He was going to take his time biting Rokudo Mukuro to death, for certain. The blood would positively run from his mouth, from his hands.)
"She'll get sick," Kusakabe murmured from the driver's seat, but low enough that Hibari could pretend he didn't hear him, and continue breathing in the sweet, crisp morning air. What did he care? If she was weak enough to succumb to an insignificant cold and die, she wasn't worth biting to death, anyway.
Which... - and here he paused, frowning. It didn't particularly matter to him, one way or another, when it came to the subject of a gaggle of herbivores or a slaughterground of half-starved scavenger corpses, but...he'd never bitten a girl to death, before.
(Particularly because there was always no sport in it. Whenever he'd threatened, in school, girls would only laugh at him, twitteringly, and somehow misinterpret his intention as a sport that miraculously required their address, and phone number. In his later years, he would come to further understand what the implications behind their stuttering little laughs meant, but to this day, he still couldn't infer how women could reach a conclusion as pointless as copulation from something so obviously fatal as "bite you to death".)
Of course, it wasn't particularly orderly to go around beating girls when a simple word or glare would often do, either. Nor did he bully the weak just for the sport of it, either. The world was separated into two things: things he could forgive, and things he could not forgive. Among those, there were factors like interest and temperance take into consideration, too.
So, then, those things taken into account, he'd settled on his first female victim. She wouldn't have been so unforgiving to him if she hadn't looked, spoke, and smelled exactly like that Rokudo Mukuro. Her existence spoke volumes against the natural order of things, which was something that made Hibari feel almost physically ill. Idly, he remembered how she had looked before; concave, shrunken, spitting up blood. Now shivering from her corner of the backseat, folded in on herself in a tangle of bony arms and legs, all shades of blue and black and cream, she looked less like a girl, and more like a bird of prey.
Hibari shrugged out of his suit jacket and threw it over her, forcefully, so that he wouldn't have to look at her stupid, dreaming face.
---
In the driver's seat, Kusakabe's chest ached with the effort of holding back his laughter.
---
Chrome awoke to the almost cloying scent of sakura and pine. She huffed, under the cover of Hibari's jacket, and found that she couldn't breathe. Like his skin, like his temperament, it was almost impossibly fever-warm. She was suddenly dizzy, again, and her internal illusion nearly shattered; collapsed. From within her, Mukuro's mind caught her recognition of the scent, and he began to stir.
Kind of him, wasn't it? Your Hibari Kyouya-sama.
N-No, that's - Chrome stuttered, and trembled.
Do you remember, Chrome? Mukuro went on, without missing a beat. The uniform of the Vendicare.
Chrome went admirably still. The gravity of her mission forced her pounding heart to slow. It wasn't the time to worry about Hibari Kyouya or anyone else. I do, Mukuro-sama. All I have to do is duplicate it, right?
It goes beyond duplicating the mere appearance of the Vendicare garb, dear Chrome. You must duplicate the Vendicare's very form - mannerisms, skills, speech. You must learn from your mistakes of your era. The Vendicare are thorough. Simply pretending to have prisoners is not enough - such was your shortcoming when you teamed with Ken and Chikusa, so very long ago.
For Chrome, almost as though it were yesterday. She swallowed, and exhaled. I remember, Mukuro-sama. I apologize. Their roster and clearance checks were unexpectedly organized.
Around them, the car slowed, and ground to a halt.
'Unexpectedly'? Kufufufu. Dear Chrome, do you think anything less would have been able to keep me in?
No, not if she were being honest. And that was what frightened her. A place strong enough to seal Rokudo Mukuro-sama, the lord of things that were never that which they appeared to be? (Under the smell of the trees, there was the faintest scent of new-dug earth. The wind whispered through the open window.) I won't fail, this time. It might even be easier, with just me. If what you say is true, and this is the future, then ten years is certainly long enough for them to have forgotten about me, right? After all, I'm...easily overlooked.
But then the cover was torn off of her, and Chrome was hit with a flash of blinding sun.
"The sooner we leave," Hibari declared to her impassively, pushing his door open with a jerk, "the sooner I can send your master back to hell;" and behind him was the smooth white of the clouds, and the endless expanse of the sky.
---
If he were to be honest with himself, there was one thing that Hibari was wary of, and that was airplanes. Which was perhaps why he tried to hard to tolerate them, above all other things; in that doing so, he might one day find the way to conquer his fear. It was an irony, considering the origin of his name - that he should be, of all things, acutely aware of the fact that, if that slim cage of metal were to suddenly buckle and crumble away around him, that there would be no simply flying away. But, standing in the crowded lobby of the Narita waiting for their tickets to be paid, there it was, just out of the corner of his eyes.
(He wondered if that was how his parents had felt, ripped to shreds some 30,000 feet in the air because of a fuselage failure. That was also his first real murder, too, when he was seventeen - the unfortunate engineer in charge of Flight 284 to Paris, who should have made sure that all the equipment was in proper working order before giving authorization for take-off, for God's sake.)
The 4:10 to Venice was their closest shot; from there, they'd have to either drive or walk to the shore. It was too easy and convenient, predictably, for the Vindice to be placed anywhere where others might reach. They weren't the "Iron Walls" in name only; quite literally, around every side of the facility were steep, impregnable cliffs - on one side, the mountains, on the other, the sea. Hibari had only been in the general area just once, researching a lead on the Arcobaleno Verde that had, disappointingly, turned up empty. It was certainly no easy journey. Despite his best efforts, he was beginning to look forward to it.
Kusakabe bought the tickets. As he stood in the queue, the girl Chrome Dokuro watched the lights of the arrivals and depatures with an almost infantile impatience in her eye, breasts rising and falling to the tune to which she bounced on her heels, hair curling slightly at the nape of her neck. People moved this way and that, in a constant, buzzing throng. Hibari yawned, finding the entire crowded noisyness of the airport to be a massive bother. (Bite him slowly, with his bare hands.)
Chrome Dokuro's gaze melted inwards, and her bouncing began to slow. "Is...that all right?" she asked breathlessly, cautiously, of the anagram inside herself; if he stared for hard and for long enough at the indigo fault of her pulse just beneath her jaw, Hibari was certain that he could see it jump. "...I'll do that, then."
"Hibari-sa - " she started to say to him, respectfully, but cut off with a pause and a flush when she caught him staring at her neck. He looked at her, flatly, and rolled his shoulders in a shrug. Shifting a bit on her bare, slender legs, the dark-haired girl went on.
"A-About the security clearance check up ahead..."
That? Hibari couldn't care less about something so trivial. Impassively, he said: "Figure it out for yourself."
"But - !" she cried in protest, and he was annoyed at the look of stubborn, willful defiance on her delicate, heart-shaped face.
A low, melodious dong sounded over the airport loudspeakers.
"Now boarding: the 4:10 for Venice. I repeat: we are now boarding the 4:10 for Venice," the PA system blared above them, monotonously. "All passengers, please proceed to Gate 9. All passengers boarding the 4:10 for Venice, please proceed to..."
"Here; the tickets, Kyou-san!" Kusakabe panted in a rush, slightly red-faced from having jogged over all the way from the queue. He bent over for a moment, catching his breath (nearly catching his pompadour on a woman's purse as she jostled by), before leaning in to his boss with a look of deferential concern on his face. "Are...you sure it's really all right, to take off across the ocean like this with only the clothes on your backs? And in the midst of a mafia war like this, besides?"
Hibari nonchalantly raised his tonfas.
"A-Ah - I see. How very inconsiderate of me, sir." Kusakabe took a single, hurried step back, before his nervous face melted into something more serene, and he clicked his heels together in a casual version of a salute. "Have a good holiday, then, Kyou-san."
A good holiday? He planned on it. With a careless flick of his wrist, Hibari held out the other ticket to Chrome Dokuro. She had been silent ever since Kusakabe had come back from the queue, eyes fixed purposefully onto the ground, face hidden by her hair. Shamed, perhaps, or subdued - it didn't matter much to him.
But what she grabbed was not the ticket, but instead, his wrist.
"Begging your pardon," she said courteously, albeit a bit breathlessly, and threw herself quite suddenly around his waist.
---
Chrome, flustered, sought to keep her composure as she spread her hands under the fabric of the Cloud Guardian's jacket, fought to keep her legs from trembling as she passed her fingers lightly over the plain white dress shirt that lay underneath, and her Vongola Mist Ring caught one of the buttons, and she had to twine her fingers in the cloth just below the man's chest in order to work it free. He was impressively still. It felt, even, under her shaking hands, that he'd stopped breathing, which was surely something that had to be a mistake. This man, hesitating?
Which, she had far more important things to concern herself with at the moment other than that, such as finding what she had set out to find as well as struggling not to keel over from the sudden rush of blood to her head. Her face was on fire. She imagined what Chikusa, or, God forbid, Ken would have done to her had she tackled one of them as brazenly as this, and just as quickly tried to unimagine it. (Ken's claws were sharp, and Chikusa's words even sharper.)
Chrome found the tonfas first, holstered under his jacket in the way someone else would holster a gun, and they weren't stored as they usually were, in their cloud box. She passed the first illusion over them, deftly, as well as the 36 other rings and boxes he had somehow managed to conceal on his person; the illusion that hid them from the eyes, before casting the second illusion over them, as well; the one that hid them from sensory devices of any accuracy or nature. She ignored how he loomed over her, this close, and how willowly and lithe his body was under her hands, and how Mukuro was currently laughing a stream of words at her in Italian that were both too fast and too breathless for her to catch.
(Because he'd told her, hadn't he, to figure out the way to bypass airport security by herself?)
"All right," she said, with that done, stepping back and quite relieved to have the entire ordeal over without incident, "now, you should be able to - "
Hibari split her lip with his tonfa.
---
It wasn't that she surprised him, he thought, marvelling at how the illusion cast over his weapons didn't falter, not once, not even when he hit her; it wasn't even that she'd crowded him, and touched him, at least not entirely.
It was just that her body, and her hands, were so wretchedly cold.
---
Chrome dozes, fitfully, on the plane, and comes to Mukuro in her dreams.
Mukuro...sama? she asks as she appears; steps towards him, hesitantly, and her cute reverent face is always the same. There is a difference from usual, of course, in the form of her jagged, swollen lower lip. Mukuro closes the distance between them and touches it, gently, wearing a soft expression on his face that is unfortunately the closest he has ever been able to come to pity.
A brute, your Hibari Kyouya-sama, he says to her mournfully, mockingly; does it hurt?
It's the same place, the same time. They're always standing in the same time. Pale, grey flowers drift aimlessly back and forth in the breeze, and the black trees stand stark against the ashen storminess of the sky. Even the two of them, with their white skin and crow-colored hair, add little color to this world of grey.
Chrome shakes her head, earnestly. D-Don't worry about it. More importantly, Mukuro-sama...
He is always the age she as remembers him; fifteen, hair shorter than it is now, face a touch less arrogant but considerably more elegant - too much so, perhaps, but this is her illusion, after all, and her choice. Much like her earlier decision to live, this was also something which had been pushed out of the reach of his hands. It doesn't particularly bother him; it's quite endearing, actually.
Yes? he prompts kindly, if not a bit indulgently.
Can I...really do this? She doesn't question whether or not she should.
Can you? he parrots back at her, inquisitively, shoulders shaking with his silent laughter.
She starts, nervously; tosses her dark, fringed bangs a bit as though she were a filly facing an impending storm. When she speaks, however, her illusory voice is quite steady, and quite clear.
I have no choice. But she's so thin, so fragile. If you blinked for long enough, she'd disappear.
You always have a choice, dear Chrome, Mukuro assures her, smoothly, and I'm honored that you chose me.
Her resulting flush is the single splash of color in this dull grey world.
I... she starts, but doesn't seem to know what to say.
The simple truth is, Chrome is such a gifted illusionist that she is often unable to see the most powerful illusions that she casts: the ones she casts over herself. Mukuro knows this, but since it's convenient, he won't dispel her of those particular notions, not yet. It isn't that he doesn't wish the best for her - rather, due to the natural course of things, her best interest has actually in a way become his own - but instead that, for a girl like her, to be thrust into such a world of deception and mayhem without anyone to guide her, she would surely crumble, and perish.
He can feel it, anyway: the time for her to grow into her own skin, to walk with her back straight and without her form being cast in his shadow - that time is periously close at hand.
But he blinks for too long, and when he opens his eyes, she's gone.
---
There was turbulence on the airplane, as it drifted aimlessly sometime that evening over the Caspian Sea. Hibari exhaled, quietly, as the rest of the passengers aboard the flight gasped and squeaked and made other annoying little animal noises of terror, and he subtlely tightened the cinch on his seat belt. He was in a very, very bad mood. It didn't help that, crowding his personal space from less than a foot away, Chrome Dokuro seemed perfectly content to ignore the noise, sleeping on her side with her arms folded neatly underneath her head, lips murmuring things to people that perhaps only she could see.
The plane bounced, again, and it took years of strict personal schooling for Hibari to mutter an almost inaudible 'hmph', rather than an explosive, particularly colorful oath. Despite the fact that they were flying in the first-class cabin, up front, someone's baby began to cry. Hibari wouldn't have minded babies, if only they didn't cry. Of course, he'd only ever seen one baby in his life that was like that, and in this era, that baby was now dead.
The stewardess came up the aisle, having an obvious difficulty with staying on her feet. "Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you - oh, good, you've already buckled in. But your, ah...lady friend..."
(Chrome Dokuro, with the bony limbs, and the ill-fitting clothes, and the split on her lip that was very, very obvious.)
"...she, um, also has to have her safety belt properly fastened, sir..." The stewardess was looking back and forth between the two of them, and wringing her hands. On an airline so frequented by abusive mafioso, she must have been new. It was annoying.
Hibari glanced at the woman, sidelong. "It's no concern of mine," he clarified, reaching over and pinching, hard, the cut he had made on Chrome Dokuro's pale, thin lower lip. She winced a little, and drew back in her sleep, fresh blood a bright color on her drawn, washed-out face. "If it were possible, I'd open the emergency hatch and throw her out myself." He shrugged, indifferently. "But if it matters that much to you, you can just tell her yourself."
"Um..." The stewardess bounced, quite unsteady on her feet, and unsure of her stance. Perhaps being the type who was determined to see her job through to the end, regardless of the danger, the woman leaned over the seat, hand stretching towards the dark-haired girl's small, sharp-angled shoulder. "Um, miss..."
But Hibari, who was in a temper that only seemed to be getting worse and worse, reached up quite suddenly, and snagged the stewardess by the arm.
"If you lean over there any farther," he told her, quite calm, "I'm going to bite you to death."
The stewardess gaped. "But... But - you just said - !" But she took a step back, hurriedly, wrenching her wrist away. Their eyes met, in a deadlock, before the woman swallowed, nervously, and at last moved her business elsewhere. (She'd been crowding him, leaning over his seat like that, obnoxiously spreading her body heat all over the place, and of course it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Chrome Dokuro had been laying there, peaceful and quiet, for once, absolutely nothing.)
The baby up front at last ceased its dreadful wailing, and during the commotion, the plane seemed to finally ebb its constant flow of bumps and shakes. The plane was quiet, engines rumbling in a muted hum. Continuing to be annoyingly oblivious to his temper, the girl slept on next to him, blood on her lower lip pooled such to the point of almost spilling over, shimmering and seeming almost to quiver in the wan, fluorescent cabin lights. Hibari stared at it, almost uncomprehendingly, feeling a frown that was half-hearted, at best, settle itself onto the lines of his face.
(Maybe it was his father, whose face he always knew but whose name he could never remember, smiling broadly and telling him at dinner to just skip his vegetables, and go straight for the meat.)
Slowly, slowly, he reached over, and smeared the lot of it with the pad of his thumb.
Even her blood was cool to the touch. Her breath fluttered precariously over the tips of his fingers. He brought his thumb back to his mouth and licked it clean, absently, before replacing it again, stroking over her bloodless, colorless lip with unnatural precision and care.
(It was his mother, apologizing to one of the neighboring boys' parents on his behalf, and joking that his saliva must contain some sort of anticoagulent, for all boys seemed to bleed after having the misfortune of meeting with his teeth.)
Hibari paused, thumb resting over the jagged line of her split lip, before angling his knuckle in, sharply, and digging into the wound with his nail.
---
Chrome woke with a whimper and a start.
She blinked as the airplane came sharply into focus, as the clouds drifted by outside the window beside her and the cloud on her other side turned his head, abruptly, in the other direction. Her lips were wet, and her chin was, too. Chrome touched the skin tentatively and was completely bewildered when her fingers came away red with blood. She stuffed the sleeve of her blazer to her lip, hurriedly, and was about to stand to rush to the bathroom when a handkerchief was thrust at her, suddenly.
Hibari didn't say a word, and yet strangely, his eyes were calm. They were, in fact, the calmest she had seen them, ever, and Chrome wondered nervously as she blotted her lips if their calm was to represent something like the calm before the storm.
There was a streak of red at the corner of his mouth.
"I'm hungry," he said quietly, intensely, and Chrome couldn't, for the life of her, even begin to understand what that meant.
---
Mukuro can, though, and maybe that's why he winds up laughing so hard, in the end.
---
That had been three days ago. That had been before the two of them, Hibari Kyouya and Chrome, had been standing on the thick, foresty bluff that overlooked the Vindice, and that man chose then to do something that very nearly ruined everything.
"I changed my mind," Hibari said suddenly, decisively, and plunged his arms inside of his jacket, eyes cast low to the ground; "Right here, right now - "
Chrome, crouching down, stare fixed on the tall, forbidding structure that lay hunkering against the sea, barely looked up in time to dodge.
"...I'm going to bite you to death."
AN: Well, er, before you start panicking, Rune, it's not done yet. It's just - this GODDAMNED SETUP TOOK SUCH A FARKING ETERNITY that I figured to spare everyone the trouble of reading in one sitting, I'd break this up into multiple parts. (Wouldn't have fit into a single LJ post anyway, ahahahahah NARF. *shot*) Which...in the end, sorry this part was such a disappointment, anyway. There's porn and actual pairing-ness in the next part, though, so whee, look forward to that?
General things... Well, other than the fact that I'm generally frustrated with the lack of THINGS GOING ON in this part, it mostly didn't turn out as terrible as I'd thought. I just...feel like the beginning, which promises Epic Things Happening, kind of tapers off around the end and eventually becomes this weird, sort of personal journey that has absolutely nothing to do with plot at all. Or something. It was just like, halfway through I was like "HOSHIT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A PAIRING FIC ORZ" and spent a lot of time working on the setup.
Well, jfdsa;lfkadsfl'adsf in general. I feel like the characterization is all off, too, which makes me sad considering how badly I wank at other people for bad characterization. /hypocrite Writing Mukuro was fun, though.
Kyouya =/= Kyoya? By the time I noticed, though, I didn't feel like going back and fixing it, OTL.
NEXT POST LATER. OR MAYBE TOMORROW IF I DON'T HAVE TIME TONIGHT.
[EDIT]: In which there is a next part, The Jungle. OOH, WOW, SHINY.
At any rate, she requested of me in return Hibari and Mukuro doing mafia-ish things because a.) apparently I don't like either Hii-kun OR Mukuro (?!), and also b.) because despite KHR being a series ABOUT the mafia, very un-mafia-like things have occurred thus far. (Conceded.)
So, because apparently the words "request fic", to me, seem to have translated themselves into "oh, just go ahead and write whatever the @#$% you want, Lori", somehow this turned into 1896 subtexty gen instead. -____-;; Apparently Rune is okay with this, so, well, here you have it.
Title: The Raven
Author: Edgar Allen Poe Lorelei DiAngelo
Rating: Eventual NC-17 porn porn PORN, but this part is disappointingly PG-13.
Pairing: Eventual (again) Hibari/Chrome (+ nosy and obnoxious Mukuro butting in from the sidelines, but not actually DOING anything OTL). At any rate, this part can be read as just extremely subtexty gen.
Summary: Hibari didn't like cars. Nor did he like people, or democracies, or microwave ovens, as well as a number of other unfortunately prominent commodities in today's society.
For: runesque, for graciously enabling my megane!Gokkun fetish. ^___^ I'd totally sell my soul for some more of her art...wait, did I say that out loud? *gulp* (XD)
Notes: Biggest challenge with this was that Rune wanted me to include my "awesome, awesome dialogue-ness into things", which, whatever the hell that means. XD But the words "Hibari" and "dialogue" were enough to make me cringe, ahahaha, so, *fails*. Also, wao, the wordcount for this beast by the time it was done was ridiculously farking long. I'm never doing this again. *faceplant*
Word count (this part only): 8,833 (!!!). The other parts that follow this are decidingly shorter, though.
He walks the Samsara again.
For him, it is almost always the same. The world spins in a wheel, and his existence spins with it. He walks the Fifth Path, the Path of Men, because he is the growing shadow, the dirty king, and this time, as he walks, he counts the flowers that bloom eternally in the fields, pale and faded and grey.
'True death', was it? He doesn't think he has ever experienced such a thing. The thought is inconceivable. For him, the walker of the wheel, death is an interlude from sound, the thoughtless pause before breath where the actions of his existence mean nothing more to him than the counting of flowers.
(Their number of which is, ironically, one thousand. A mille fiore.)
He nearly chokes on his own blood. And that's when he hears her call.
Rokudou Mukuro stops; sighs, dramatically, the iris of his right eye dizzily ticking the count of one to five.
Last one, he thinks, as the flowers around him wither and crumble to dust, as his eye stops its frantic spinning to settle on a single ebony number, six;
Last time.
Laughing wildly, he spreads his arms upward, turns his face towards the sun, and walks into the sky.
---
Chrome Dokuro was once a girl named Nagi. If you blinked for long enough, she'd disappear.
But she was strong, too. It was the sort of strength born from loneliness, born from the terrible knowledge that no one would ever want her life for their own; the sort of strength born from the tragic poverty of being unnoticed, and unloved. It was the sort of strength held by the very powerful, and the often very desperate. And it was because of that strength that she was finally able to stop casting her thoughts inward, and spread them out to the space beyond.
She put all of her power into the call, and all of her heart into hearing the answer.
---
"That - that girl - !" Bianchi burst into the communications room of the underground Vongola base, hair stuck up in untidy wisps around her forehead, stuck in her goggles (which had now grown rather fogged from the sweat she had accrued while running. She nearly bowled over Giannini, who was short and had the tendency to fade into the background if he wasn't being watched). "That girl - the Chrome Dokuro from ten years ago! She's disappeared!"
Kusakabe looked up sharply from where he had been studying the wave energy radar map of the surrounding area, brusque features drawn into a tight frown. "What?!" His eyes flickered briefly back to the mass of small, dull dots clustering around the large, purple pulsating dot in the medium-sized warehouse some two or so miles away. (Neither big, nor small, it was...) His gaze zipped back to Bianchi instantly. "When?"
"Just now - I couldn't have been gone for more than a second - the girls needed my help with something - " Bianchi, when under the threat of serious pain or death, could admit that she at least somewhat liked Chrome, if not felt terribly sorry for her. The loneliest girl, void of caring or love. Bianchi, defender of all things amore, couldn't stand for that, at least, and thus deemed it fit to care for Chrome in her master's place. (It also didn't hurt that, being devoid of most of her internal organs, that Chrome Dokuro was the single human being alive who could stomach, and even have an appetite for, Bianchi's infamous poison cooking.) "Her wave energy - can we find her?"
Kusakabe observed. "It's hard," he admitted, dark eyes narrowed at the screen to almost squinting. "There's a lot of commotion right now, and with Kyou-san's power interfering with most of the detectors, it'll be hard to get a reading on her, even if she is using the power of the Mist Ring to substitute her illusory organs."
Bianchi tsked irritably, and vented her frustration by shoving her specialty Seafood Screamer Deluxe into the face of the nearest passerby as she whisked out of the room, pausing in the threshold of the door for only a second.
"I'm going to look for her myself," she asserted, vengefully, clearly implying that whomever was responsible for the girl's disappearance had better be prepared to seek assistance from heaven in dealing with her wrath - even if the perpetrator were none other than Chrome herself. The hatch to the communications room slid shut behind her with a bang.
Kusakabe, concerned, dove from his chair to perform first aid on Bianchi's hapless victim, as the man foamed and gurgled and struggled for breath.
In the middle block, unbeknownst to anyone, a ripple of wave energy formed, and began to stir.
---
Hibari Kyouya watched himself die.
One moment, he was standing triumphant amidst the bodies of his enemies, dipped in the blood of the noisy, flocking herbivores, and the next he was jerking, twisting this way and that as a hail of bullets tore at him seemingly from out of nowhere.
Blood arced in a fine spray. His mouth opened, but he didn't utter a single cry; barely faltered, even, bashing through the remaining hordes of the enemy with his tonfas before even those, too, were blown away. His legs buckled, and nearly gave way, but he struggled, spine bowed, and managed to stay on his feet. His breathing labored, became slow, and his eyes eventually slipped closed. When he died, he died annoyed at the noise of it all, and the claustrophobia.
Hibari watched this all from a vantage point some twenty feet away.
"Just where are you looking?" he asked amusedly of the remaining advance guard, the three with the camoflauge mist boxes who had so cowardly attacked him from behind with their guns. He took a second to enjoy the looks of stunned horror on their faces as the Hibari Kyouya in front of them burst with a cloud of smoke into a thousand twittering birds, before he spared them the trouble of worrying about the hows and the whys of it all by biting them all quite thoroughly to death.
"Well," he murmured immediately after that, looking down on them, cutting himself off with a yawn. He didn't spare a single second. Hibari turned to the slim figure standing in the doorway behind him, fingers clutching desperately to her three-pronged trident as though she would break, thin chest heaving up and down with no apparent lack of effort, and he wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve.
"That was amazingly vivid," he said appreciatively to Chrome Dokuro, an almost-smile beginning to bloom across his pale, blood-splattered face. "That illusion of my death."
A trickle of red slid down her chin; the girl wiped it into a single, bloody smear.
"I must have counted at least five or six dozen bullets in those rounds," Hibari continued, something dangerously akin to glee beginning to spark in his narrow, dark eyes. "Sixty or seventy bullets, shredding my skin as though it were paper. My body breaking, stumbling, until my shoulders droop, until I'm bent nearly double. Until I'm standing before you, bowing almost to the ground." For a moment, the spark in his eyes seemed almost to shimmer; "Surely that imagery isn't something that is your own, now is it, Dokuro Chrome?"
In the doorway, the girl faltered, noticeably dizzy, and only spared herself a fall to the floor by the wooden threshold of the entrance, which she clutched at with her other hand, the one not holding the spear. But when she spoke, her voice was clear, and pure.
"Hibari Kyouya-sama," she said politely, with only the slightest trace of uncertainty, "you are coming with me." She coughed, and choked, and vomited up a miniature puddle of blood. She stayed on her feet.
Hibari's eyebrows raised. "Oh?" he parried back at her, unable to stop the smile from spreading on his face this time. This mild-mannered little girl, suddenly brave enough to start barking out orders to him? Now that was interesting; "Am I, now?" (And she thought so highly of him, too; '-sama', for sure.) "We'll have to see about that. I don't associate myself with half-dead, scavenged animal carcasses any more than I'd stoop to consorting myself with certain weakling herbivores, girl. Be sure to tell your master that, too."
Ah; and there it was. The girl's single eye sparked, grew brighter, until it flared almost sapphire with defiance.
"You can tell him yourself," she said seriously, determinedly (but somehow no less politely), before letting go of the wall to stand on her own, "when we break him out of the Vindice."
---
The plan had been foolproof, really, with the only exception being the moment where it had all fallen apart.
Unfortunately for Mukuro, this means he's in rather serious trouble, now. This means he's been stuck in a dank, rotting cesspit at the very bottom of the Vindice and been left to rot, and this also means that he's been left so powerless and bereft that he almost wishes he actually had died.
(Only 'almost', though.)
Fortunately for Mukuro, he has not been left without options. Byakuran Millefiore hadn't been quite so informed of the nature of Mukuro's relationship with Chrome as he had thought. Or rather Byakuran, like so many others before him, had simply ignored Chrome's existence as a threat to his goals entirely. Had grossly misjudged her potential.
For Chrome, of course, is a gifted illusionist in her own right.
Gifted enough to make an illusion seem real from almost any light.
---
They leave under cover of darkness.
(Hibari's smile had been flat, and condescending. "My curiosity takes me as far as the walls," he conceded, his calculating gaze boring intensely into Chrome's own, as though the answers he craved were to be sought somewhere within the depths of her single, blue eye; "And don't expect me to help you, either. The only interest I have in you is an interest in the way you will die.")
It was Chrome who had devised the way to sneak past the Vongola's frantically-growing search party; a master of illusion, she was familiar with the concept that the most powerful forms of deception were often the ones that were the most tangible.
I'm curious, my dear Chrome, Mukuro said to her, quite suddenly, and inexplicably out of nowhere. What did he say to you, back then, in order to give you the courage to save your own life?
The dark-haired girl fought the urge to shake her head; fought harder to keep her sudden intake of breath silent. She couldn't afford to give her disguise away, not now, but it was him; her light, her life, her reason for being. He had been so quiet up until now, and now he was... Chrome's heart beat faster. I'll show you, Mukuro-sama.
She did.
"Kyou-san!" The tall, athletic, and (in Chrome's opinion) rather attractive vice-commander to the Vongola intelligence and research unit could be heard speaking to Hibari from some distance away. "97% casualties, sir? As to be expected from you, sir!"
There was a dull thud as the corpse Kusakabe had been carrying was dropped unceremoniously onto the forest floor some mile or so from their warehouse warground.
"One of them misfired his own box weapon and died," Hibari admitted, boredly, and his shoulderblades rumbled against Chrome's thin chest with the low timbre of his voice. From her hiding place, she fought to keep still. "It was probably better for him, really. He was gathering, obnoxiously, something like a group of five. Even if they're dead, a group of herbivores like this still makes me feel ill."
"Shall I finish up for you, then, Kyou-san?" Kusakabe offered, and Hibari shrugged. Chrome, slung over his shoulders in a fireman's carry, dressed in a pilfered Millefiore uniform and mask, bounced somewhat painfully.
"No need," he murmured, in something close to a sigh. The uniform trousers were thin, and Chrome could feel his breath on the backs of her knees, his arms locked around her thighs. Inside her head, Mukuro went nearly mad with the force of his own laughter. "This is the last one. Report to whatever idiot's in charge the results of tonight's battle, Tetsuya. I'll be back shortly."
With no sense of grace or gentleness whatsoever, Hibari tossed Chrome into the corpse pile. She bit through her own tongue to hide her startled gasp, and struggled to breathe only through her nose. It stunk. She was used to the dilapidation of buildings, of the musty smell of abandoned warehouses or the defunct Kokuyo Healthy Land, but she'd had only a limited experience at best with the dilapidation of humans.
I...I can't breathe!
You can, dear Chrome, Mukuro soothed her, and his voice was deeper than she remembered. She'd never seen him, not once, since she'd come to this dreary and dreadful future. She hung on with all of her might. Focus on the sound of my voice. In fifteen seconds, you will be free. In fifteen seconds, Hibari Kyouya's yes-man will have descended down the slope that leads out of this forest, and you can rip this foul-smelling mask off, dispose of these ill-fitting garments. In fifteen seconds, you will be my dear, cute Chrome once more, and -
"Up. Quit wasting time." Fingers tangled in the cloth behind her head, and the Millefiore mask was ripped free. Almost exactly fifteen seconds, as he'd said. Chrome sucked in a shaky, blood-tinged breath, making a sound like a swimmer coming up from the water, and latched onto Hibari's arm desperately in an attempt to pull herself free from the corpse pile. He shook her off roughly, genuine annoyance showing in his eyes, and started off in the direction opposite from where Kusakabe had gone, leaving her behind.
"W-Wait!" Chrome, inwardly feeling ashamed of her stutter, clawed her way unsteadily to her feet, ignoring the flesh unfeeling and stiff beneath her hands, ignoring the bones that didn't quite yield to her underfoot. As she hopped along after the black-haired man, she stripped hurriedly, shedding layer after layer of rank, dead-smelling Millefiore uniform for her own comfortable, Kokuyo green one.
Something soft hit her in the face.
"Change. Over there." Hibari's gesture to a thatch of trees somewhere to his right was nearly as brusque as his voice. Chrome, fingers trembling, unfolded the package that had been thrown at her, to reveal a simple black blazer and a matching pleated skirt, both slightly too large. She looked down at her own garments, puzzled, and back to the bundle again, not understanding the difference.
You should just humor him for now, shouldn't you, Chrome? That Hibari Kyouya-sama.
Chrome twinged, shamefully.
Kufufufu. Don't worry, my dear Chrome. I find it rather amusing, actually. I'll respect him too, certainly, if he manages to assist you with what I asked.
The girl sheltered herself behind the trees, undoing the buttons of her uniform hurriedly. Don't... Please don't misunderstand, Mukuro-sama. I hold no one in the same esteem as I do you.
A mental pause not unlike the delicate intake of breath. In the future, dear Chrome, that may change.
"No!" Chrome shrieked aloud, vehemently, before slamming her mouth shut so quickly that her teeth clicked. No! she repeated, no less fervent than before, shaking her head. Her fierce expression melted to one of fearful doubt. How could I...possibly...? If it weren't for you, Mukuro-sama, I'd be nothing! Because of you, I have...
But Mukuro, deep in the recesses of her mind, said nothing.
Chrome, disheartened, shrugged the too-large blazer over her pale shoulders, and thought that the cloth felt somehow familiar. She struggled a bit, with the skirt, pulling it up over her muddy boots, and it too was too large. It might have been a problem, had her Kokuyo skirt not been a bit too big, as well, and thus was always worn accompanied with a thick leather belt, which Chrome wrapped around her hips now. She stepped out from behind the patch of trees, eyes growing adjusted to the growing light. It would be dawn soon. They were considerably behind schedule.
"Let's hurry," she suggested to Hibari, who gave her a glance mid-yawn that had scared the most staunch of warriors before. She quailed under it, a bit, but he only shrugged, turning on his heel, and making his way through the thick trees to the road.
Chrome followed, at a noticeably slower pace. Walking this far on her own power was an effort. She struggled to keep her following cough quiet, and hastily wiped the flecks of blood that spotted her hand on the fabric of her skirt. The bare minimum. She could only allow herself to use the bare minimum. The rest of it was needed to complete her goal. If she could maintain this level of power channeling towards her illusory organs, and have them still keep her alive, then any amont of pain or discomfort was nominal.
The trees thinned, eventually, and just as the first rays of dawn were starting to spread over the sky, they reached the road. It was still quiet, this early in the morning, which presented a problem in the form that Chrome's original intention had been to simply hijack a car. It was improbable, therefore, to hijack such a car if there were none to be found on the road. Could they wait? She thought of Mukuro, blind and freezing at the bottom of the Vindice. No.
But you're dizzy, dear Chrome. And there's no one here who can help you. Not I, nor Ken, nor Chikusa. No, true, she'd lost them as much as she'd lost Mukuro in this horrible, bitter place. She swayed, before collapsing onto her rear at the side of the road. See? Mukuro prompted her, voice amused but kind. The you of ten years later would have no problem with this, I think, but as you are now...
Chrome blanched at the insinuation that she was of no use. The toe of a pristine leather loafer dug into her thigh.
"If you're going to die, don't die on the side of the road," Hibari told her, carelessly, and gestured with a pale, tapered hand. "The Namimori border is just on the other side of that hill. Go and dump your corpse in Kokuyo, since you prefer it so much, girl. I don't want your dead body defiling the order in my land."
But you just dumped a whole bunch of - Chrome was about to say, until she caught the smoke and flare of a brilliant orange forest fire from the area they had just left, and she shut her mouth. Using her trident, she managed to haul herself to her feet. It took a considerable amount of energy to maintain the illusion of that weapon, but it was needed for her purpose, so she didn't mind. True; she could go and die in Kokuyo later, after she had been of some use, at least.
"I understand," she started, humbly; "I, too, have - "
But then, quite suddenly, a nondescript, small black car zoomed around the bend; screeched to a halt beside them.
"Please, get in," a familiar voice said.
---
Kusakabe, for all of his ignorance on the hairstyle standards set by today's current social elite, was certainly no idiot. He knew that there were %97 casualties from the results of today's battle. Those who had been slain by Kyou, among them, and the unfortunate victim of the misfiring box weapon.
And the remaining %3, of which no doubt belonged to Chrome Dokuro.
As he rounded the curve in the road in his borrowed Vongola car, he was almost alarmed to see that he had been right.
---
Hibari didn't like cars. Nor did he like people, or democracies, or microwave ovens, as well as a number of other unfortunately prominent commodities in today's society (he'd once choked, and nearly tasted bile, when Kusakabe had gotten it into his head to move a television into Namimori's disciplinary commitee reception room). He tolerated airplanes, out of a necessary convenience for his current profession - he would, of course, simply walk to Italy if such a thing were possible - but he disliked the cramped, crowded atmosphere that could only be brought about by a compact car.
"Please, get in," Kusakabe offered, no doubt attempting to be of help.
"No," replied Hibari, bluntly. Chrome Dokuro, halfway into the backseat already, paused, and gave him a despairing look, which really made him want to kill her all the more.
"Hibari-sam - " she started, painfully, before cutting herself off with a rather inexplicable pause. And - Hibari, who was admirably sharp-eyed, noticed - her gaze seemed to turn inward, to fold in on itself, as though she were listening to voices that only she could hear. They came back into focus.
"I see," she said instead, voice calm. "May I borrow Kusakabe-san for a while, then, please?"
Hibari, eyes narrowed, made a do-what-you-want motion in Kusakabe's general direction. His gaze never left the girl's face. It was the predators in nature that were the ones who laid the traps, yet he, unbelieveably, was starting to smell one laid for him here.
"I...certainly don't mind," the Kusakabe in question conceded, "but, Kyou - "
"Thank you, Hibari Kyouya-sama," Chrome interrupted, smiling, eyes innocent and polite. Duplicitous, just like her master's. She climbed into the car, rolling the window down and hanging her head out as Kusakabe turned over the engine again. And, there it was; the trap, as predicted; "Mukuro-sama sends his thanks to you, as well."
Rokudo Mukuro; the ever undead.
Snarling, moody, Hibari yanked open the driver's side rear door.
---
Kusakabe had served under the man for a little under thirteen years, but he had never seen Kyou make a face like that before in his life. That mixture of anger, excitement, and an almost invisible air of longing that seemed far too urgent to actually hide. It begged to be captured, it begged to be questioned - what?, when?, why? -
But - "Where to?" Kusakabe asked solicitously instead, putting the car into drive.
"Narita Airport," little Chrome said decisively, though she flushed a bit when he turned around to look at her in surprise. (Couldn't for the life of him figure out why.)
"Is that alright, Kyou-san?" he asked deferentially of the shorter man, chewing idly on his omnipresent stick of grass.
"As the girl says," Kyou muttered, tersely, and though he wasn't certain what such an expression would portend, Kusakabe knew better than to argue when the man made a face like that.
"All right, then," he agreed evenly, and turned back to the wheel.
Kyou pulled a face, dug his hands into the leather of his seat; little Chrome leaned her head back on her headrest, and let out a weary little sigh.
They were on their way.
---
Chrome had just been about to drift off to sleep when she felt the cold butt of a tonfa dig into her lower lip.
"Tell him to come out," Hibari ordered her, murderously, regarding her out of the corner of his narrow, curved eyes.
There was a frightening amount of calm in the way he was murderous about it, however, and it was that fact, more than anything else, that caused Chrome to draw in her breath.
"I...can't," she stalled, unsure of what to do. Her head swam. Without rest, her illusory organs weren't going to last. "If...If I could, we wouldn't be going to the Vindice, would we?"
Which was partially true. Chrome fought to keep the innocence going in her wide, blue eye. Hibari was frowning at her so severely that his teeth showed over his lower lip. The dark-haired girl stared at them, fascinated, using them as a distraction.
The tonfa dug in deeper. "But you speak to him, don't you? Tell him to come out. Or I'll bite you to death, without question." The way his tongue momentarily pierced his teeth on the word death was also apparently fascinating. Either way, it held Chrome in thrall. From within, Mukuro laughed, fiercely.
Now, now, Chrome. There's no need to be so ferociously protective of me. We can play a little game of chat, for a while. For example, this -
- and for that, Chrome summoned her courage. Shrinking back into her corner of the backseat, she looked at Hibari's slanted, fever-bright eyes, and said:
"Mukuro-sama says he'll speak to you. But only if he can call you 'Kyou-chi'."
A considerable, pregnant pause.
Then, Hibari smiled. It was not a particularly reassuring smile. (Those teeth.) "He can do whatever he wants," he allowed smoothly, "because as soon as I set eyes on him, I'm going to kill him."
Well said, Kyou-chi. The tonfa disappeared as quickly as it had came, and Chrome relaxed, marginally. Though I usually leave the trademark of adorable nicknames up to Ken.
"Is he alive?" Hibari demanded, seeming to put an unusual amount of weight into the question. He leaned forward, intimidatingly, and Chrome caught the scents of sakura and pine. "If I can't have the satisfaction of biting him to death myself..."
Your concern is touching, Kyou-chi. And the answer to your question is directly relative to your definition of the word 'alive'. I exist, you see.
Chrome relayed the message, slightly dizzy. The leather seat of the car was surprisingly comfortable, and she fought the urge to give in to exhaustion right there. Trees whizzed behind her, out the window, in a gray-green blur. The morning was misty.
"What was it that Byakuran Millefiore did to him, then? Surely he didn't just get away." Hibari, bent over, palms on either side of her legs, was all blunt assurance and intensity, and Chrome was momentarily insulted on her master's behalf.
Now, now, there's no need for that. He's right, after all. It was overindulgence in my own whims that led to my current condition, before all else.
This question, Chrome could answer without assistance. "He...stole...Mukuro-sama's skills. The Six Paths of Reincarnation - that's what Byakuran Millefiore did."
If Hibari was surprised, he didn't show it in the least. "That's his power?"
Chrome, transfixed by the sliver of collarbone that hung out from the man's open jacket, nodded swiftly.
"So the scavenger is stuck at the bottom of the Iron Walls, then," Hibari mused, unrepentant in his satisfaction. "And without the ability to toy with other people's bodies, he needs you to break him free." He finally leaned back, though, blessedly. "This is more convenient than I'd hoped."
Yes, yes, all very enabling for your ultimate goal of 'biting' me to death, Kyou-chi. Of course, we won't let it come to that, now will we, dear Chrome?
Never, she agreed silently, wholeheartedly. But Chrome, who was rather timid but never actually scared of anything, was actually quite afraid of Vongola's Guardian of the Cloud, and she couldn't understand why. (Mukuro chortled so hard in the back of her head that if he'd had lungs of his own, he wouldn't have been able to breathe.)
"But then - you, girl." Chrome, preoccupied with her own thoughts, had no time at all to see Hibari even move, before one of his hands was coiled tightly around her wrist, the hand on which she wore the Vongola Mist Ring, which he held up to his face; and the other pressed firmly against her stomach, curling slightly into her ribs. She inhaled, sharply. Kusakabe, driving, swerved slightly on the road for a moment before regaining his composure, coughing, and adjusting the rearview mirror to tilt away.
No, don't! she tried to cry out, but her lips wouldn't move and her heart wouldn't slow its excited thumping.
Something you inherited, my dear, Mukuro chuckled, but he too seemed to be teetering on the edge of glee. She struggled, but the man's grip was like iron. (It didn't help that, being so small a space, there was really nowhere for her to get away to, even if she had entirely wanted to.)
"But then, you," Hibari was saying, and his hair was in his eyes, and his breath was on her taut, outstretched hand (sakura, and pine), "you were about to die, without the help of his powers. If his condition really is as you say, then how is it that he can speak to you, like now? Without his possession powers?" The fingers around her wrist tightened, almost to breaking; "Unless, of course, there is some part of your story that is simply a clever ruse."
"I," Chrome started shrilly, and faltered. "I - " Hibari's fingers curved against her belly, like claws, breaking the effect of the illusion that kept her organs. She coughed, and a bit of blood flew past her teeth to splatter on his pale, angular face. He didn't even flinch. "I...can't tell you," Chrome managed, finally, feeling the air cool against her hips from where her blazer had slid up over her skirt. She was frightened, but also curiously elated, and light-headed, besides. Someone who finally wanted her life for their own? (Even if it was only to take.)
"Can't say? Is that your answer, or his?" His tone was cool, but his hands, his eyes, were hot. You should tell him, Chrome, Mukuro told her, consolingly, indifferently; it makes no difference to me. We have nothing to fear. He won't strike until I've fully recovered my powers - that's just his way.
But; "The answer is m-mine," the dark-haired girl breathed, and felt a bizarre sensory withdrawl that was Mukuro's equivalent to surprise.
Hibari let her go.
"Then," he told her lowly, confidently, fingers smearing her blood from his cheek and flicking across his tongue with ease, "when I've finished my business with your master, I'm going to bite you to death."
Chrome, gaze fixed on his straight, perfect teeth, could only bring herself to feel a sudden, inexplicable thrill.
---
There's an unexpected wrench in his plans in the form of one affectionately-named 'Kyou-chi'.
(Which, Mukuro notes, is the absolute first thing he's going to do when he's free from this hellhole - say Kyou-chi, in as sweet and as sentimental a tone he can muster.)
Of course, he has to get out of here, first.
Though the Mist Guardian prefers to act on his own, without witness or obstacle, in this case, he's been left with limited options. In some ways, Mukuro finds it ironic that Chrome should rely so heavily on him now, when without her, he is the one who would have been made as nothing.
It was sheer good fortune that Chrome had happened, at the time, to be drawing heavily upon one of his favorite illusions - without it, he wouldn't have been able to imbue the rest of his essence, his existence, into her half-empty body. That, by doing so, the rest of his spirit hadn't entirely disappeared. It was sheer good fortune that she had been able to take the burden of living under her own power, as well, along with managing to keep the truth about his condition secret, until now. It is sheer good fortune that she is, even, being quite the good girl by carrying his spirit miles and miles across the ocean in order to complete the task he has laid out for her.
Those are, of course, about the only bits of good fortune.
It's cold in the Vindice.
---
The girl dozed in her corner of the backseat almost as soon as he'd let her go, and Hibari just as quickly rolled down his side window. Though he disliked the noise, and the smell of exhaust that ultimately poured in through the opening, he hated the cramped, claustrophobic feel of the interior even more.
(He was going to take his time biting Rokudo Mukuro to death, for certain. The blood would positively run from his mouth, from his hands.)
"She'll get sick," Kusakabe murmured from the driver's seat, but low enough that Hibari could pretend he didn't hear him, and continue breathing in the sweet, crisp morning air. What did he care? If she was weak enough to succumb to an insignificant cold and die, she wasn't worth biting to death, anyway.
Which... - and here he paused, frowning. It didn't particularly matter to him, one way or another, when it came to the subject of a gaggle of herbivores or a slaughterground of half-starved scavenger corpses, but...he'd never bitten a girl to death, before.
(Particularly because there was always no sport in it. Whenever he'd threatened, in school, girls would only laugh at him, twitteringly, and somehow misinterpret his intention as a sport that miraculously required their address, and phone number. In his later years, he would come to further understand what the implications behind their stuttering little laughs meant, but to this day, he still couldn't infer how women could reach a conclusion as pointless as copulation from something so obviously fatal as "bite you to death".)
Of course, it wasn't particularly orderly to go around beating girls when a simple word or glare would often do, either. Nor did he bully the weak just for the sport of it, either. The world was separated into two things: things he could forgive, and things he could not forgive. Among those, there were factors like interest and temperance take into consideration, too.
So, then, those things taken into account, he'd settled on his first female victim. She wouldn't have been so unforgiving to him if she hadn't looked, spoke, and smelled exactly like that Rokudo Mukuro. Her existence spoke volumes against the natural order of things, which was something that made Hibari feel almost physically ill. Idly, he remembered how she had looked before; concave, shrunken, spitting up blood. Now shivering from her corner of the backseat, folded in on herself in a tangle of bony arms and legs, all shades of blue and black and cream, she looked less like a girl, and more like a bird of prey.
Hibari shrugged out of his suit jacket and threw it over her, forcefully, so that he wouldn't have to look at her stupid, dreaming face.
---
In the driver's seat, Kusakabe's chest ached with the effort of holding back his laughter.
---
Chrome awoke to the almost cloying scent of sakura and pine. She huffed, under the cover of Hibari's jacket, and found that she couldn't breathe. Like his skin, like his temperament, it was almost impossibly fever-warm. She was suddenly dizzy, again, and her internal illusion nearly shattered; collapsed. From within her, Mukuro's mind caught her recognition of the scent, and he began to stir.
Kind of him, wasn't it? Your Hibari Kyouya-sama.
N-No, that's - Chrome stuttered, and trembled.
Do you remember, Chrome? Mukuro went on, without missing a beat. The uniform of the Vendicare.
Chrome went admirably still. The gravity of her mission forced her pounding heart to slow. It wasn't the time to worry about Hibari Kyouya or anyone else. I do, Mukuro-sama. All I have to do is duplicate it, right?
It goes beyond duplicating the mere appearance of the Vendicare garb, dear Chrome. You must duplicate the Vendicare's very form - mannerisms, skills, speech. You must learn from your mistakes of your era. The Vendicare are thorough. Simply pretending to have prisoners is not enough - such was your shortcoming when you teamed with Ken and Chikusa, so very long ago.
For Chrome, almost as though it were yesterday. She swallowed, and exhaled. I remember, Mukuro-sama. I apologize. Their roster and clearance checks were unexpectedly organized.
Around them, the car slowed, and ground to a halt.
'Unexpectedly'? Kufufufu. Dear Chrome, do you think anything less would have been able to keep me in?
No, not if she were being honest. And that was what frightened her. A place strong enough to seal Rokudo Mukuro-sama, the lord of things that were never that which they appeared to be? (Under the smell of the trees, there was the faintest scent of new-dug earth. The wind whispered through the open window.) I won't fail, this time. It might even be easier, with just me. If what you say is true, and this is the future, then ten years is certainly long enough for them to have forgotten about me, right? After all, I'm...easily overlooked.
But then the cover was torn off of her, and Chrome was hit with a flash of blinding sun.
"The sooner we leave," Hibari declared to her impassively, pushing his door open with a jerk, "the sooner I can send your master back to hell;" and behind him was the smooth white of the clouds, and the endless expanse of the sky.
---
If he were to be honest with himself, there was one thing that Hibari was wary of, and that was airplanes. Which was perhaps why he tried to hard to tolerate them, above all other things; in that doing so, he might one day find the way to conquer his fear. It was an irony, considering the origin of his name - that he should be, of all things, acutely aware of the fact that, if that slim cage of metal were to suddenly buckle and crumble away around him, that there would be no simply flying away. But, standing in the crowded lobby of the Narita waiting for their tickets to be paid, there it was, just out of the corner of his eyes.
(He wondered if that was how his parents had felt, ripped to shreds some 30,000 feet in the air because of a fuselage failure. That was also his first real murder, too, when he was seventeen - the unfortunate engineer in charge of Flight 284 to Paris, who should have made sure that all the equipment was in proper working order before giving authorization for take-off, for God's sake.)
The 4:10 to Venice was their closest shot; from there, they'd have to either drive or walk to the shore. It was too easy and convenient, predictably, for the Vindice to be placed anywhere where others might reach. They weren't the "Iron Walls" in name only; quite literally, around every side of the facility were steep, impregnable cliffs - on one side, the mountains, on the other, the sea. Hibari had only been in the general area just once, researching a lead on the Arcobaleno Verde that had, disappointingly, turned up empty. It was certainly no easy journey. Despite his best efforts, he was beginning to look forward to it.
Kusakabe bought the tickets. As he stood in the queue, the girl Chrome Dokuro watched the lights of the arrivals and depatures with an almost infantile impatience in her eye, breasts rising and falling to the tune to which she bounced on her heels, hair curling slightly at the nape of her neck. People moved this way and that, in a constant, buzzing throng. Hibari yawned, finding the entire crowded noisyness of the airport to be a massive bother. (Bite him slowly, with his bare hands.)
Chrome Dokuro's gaze melted inwards, and her bouncing began to slow. "Is...that all right?" she asked breathlessly, cautiously, of the anagram inside herself; if he stared for hard and for long enough at the indigo fault of her pulse just beneath her jaw, Hibari was certain that he could see it jump. "...I'll do that, then."
"Hibari-sa - " she started to say to him, respectfully, but cut off with a pause and a flush when she caught him staring at her neck. He looked at her, flatly, and rolled his shoulders in a shrug. Shifting a bit on her bare, slender legs, the dark-haired girl went on.
"A-About the security clearance check up ahead..."
That? Hibari couldn't care less about something so trivial. Impassively, he said: "Figure it out for yourself."
"But - !" she cried in protest, and he was annoyed at the look of stubborn, willful defiance on her delicate, heart-shaped face.
A low, melodious dong sounded over the airport loudspeakers.
"Now boarding: the 4:10 for Venice. I repeat: we are now boarding the 4:10 for Venice," the PA system blared above them, monotonously. "All passengers, please proceed to Gate 9. All passengers boarding the 4:10 for Venice, please proceed to..."
"Here; the tickets, Kyou-san!" Kusakabe panted in a rush, slightly red-faced from having jogged over all the way from the queue. He bent over for a moment, catching his breath (nearly catching his pompadour on a woman's purse as she jostled by), before leaning in to his boss with a look of deferential concern on his face. "Are...you sure it's really all right, to take off across the ocean like this with only the clothes on your backs? And in the midst of a mafia war like this, besides?"
Hibari nonchalantly raised his tonfas.
"A-Ah - I see. How very inconsiderate of me, sir." Kusakabe took a single, hurried step back, before his nervous face melted into something more serene, and he clicked his heels together in a casual version of a salute. "Have a good holiday, then, Kyou-san."
A good holiday? He planned on it. With a careless flick of his wrist, Hibari held out the other ticket to Chrome Dokuro. She had been silent ever since Kusakabe had come back from the queue, eyes fixed purposefully onto the ground, face hidden by her hair. Shamed, perhaps, or subdued - it didn't matter much to him.
But what she grabbed was not the ticket, but instead, his wrist.
"Begging your pardon," she said courteously, albeit a bit breathlessly, and threw herself quite suddenly around his waist.
---
Chrome, flustered, sought to keep her composure as she spread her hands under the fabric of the Cloud Guardian's jacket, fought to keep her legs from trembling as she passed her fingers lightly over the plain white dress shirt that lay underneath, and her Vongola Mist Ring caught one of the buttons, and she had to twine her fingers in the cloth just below the man's chest in order to work it free. He was impressively still. It felt, even, under her shaking hands, that he'd stopped breathing, which was surely something that had to be a mistake. This man, hesitating?
Which, she had far more important things to concern herself with at the moment other than that, such as finding what she had set out to find as well as struggling not to keel over from the sudden rush of blood to her head. Her face was on fire. She imagined what Chikusa, or, God forbid, Ken would have done to her had she tackled one of them as brazenly as this, and just as quickly tried to unimagine it. (Ken's claws were sharp, and Chikusa's words even sharper.)
Chrome found the tonfas first, holstered under his jacket in the way someone else would holster a gun, and they weren't stored as they usually were, in their cloud box. She passed the first illusion over them, deftly, as well as the 36 other rings and boxes he had somehow managed to conceal on his person; the illusion that hid them from the eyes, before casting the second illusion over them, as well; the one that hid them from sensory devices of any accuracy or nature. She ignored how he loomed over her, this close, and how willowly and lithe his body was under her hands, and how Mukuro was currently laughing a stream of words at her in Italian that were both too fast and too breathless for her to catch.
(Because he'd told her, hadn't he, to figure out the way to bypass airport security by herself?)
"All right," she said, with that done, stepping back and quite relieved to have the entire ordeal over without incident, "now, you should be able to - "
Hibari split her lip with his tonfa.
---
It wasn't that she surprised him, he thought, marvelling at how the illusion cast over his weapons didn't falter, not once, not even when he hit her; it wasn't even that she'd crowded him, and touched him, at least not entirely.
It was just that her body, and her hands, were so wretchedly cold.
---
Chrome dozes, fitfully, on the plane, and comes to Mukuro in her dreams.
Mukuro...sama? she asks as she appears; steps towards him, hesitantly, and her cute reverent face is always the same. There is a difference from usual, of course, in the form of her jagged, swollen lower lip. Mukuro closes the distance between them and touches it, gently, wearing a soft expression on his face that is unfortunately the closest he has ever been able to come to pity.
A brute, your Hibari Kyouya-sama, he says to her mournfully, mockingly; does it hurt?
It's the same place, the same time. They're always standing in the same time. Pale, grey flowers drift aimlessly back and forth in the breeze, and the black trees stand stark against the ashen storminess of the sky. Even the two of them, with their white skin and crow-colored hair, add little color to this world of grey.
Chrome shakes her head, earnestly. D-Don't worry about it. More importantly, Mukuro-sama...
He is always the age she as remembers him; fifteen, hair shorter than it is now, face a touch less arrogant but considerably more elegant - too much so, perhaps, but this is her illusion, after all, and her choice. Much like her earlier decision to live, this was also something which had been pushed out of the reach of his hands. It doesn't particularly bother him; it's quite endearing, actually.
Yes? he prompts kindly, if not a bit indulgently.
Can I...really do this? She doesn't question whether or not she should.
Can you? he parrots back at her, inquisitively, shoulders shaking with his silent laughter.
She starts, nervously; tosses her dark, fringed bangs a bit as though she were a filly facing an impending storm. When she speaks, however, her illusory voice is quite steady, and quite clear.
I have no choice. But she's so thin, so fragile. If you blinked for long enough, she'd disappear.
You always have a choice, dear Chrome, Mukuro assures her, smoothly, and I'm honored that you chose me.
Her resulting flush is the single splash of color in this dull grey world.
I... she starts, but doesn't seem to know what to say.
The simple truth is, Chrome is such a gifted illusionist that she is often unable to see the most powerful illusions that she casts: the ones she casts over herself. Mukuro knows this, but since it's convenient, he won't dispel her of those particular notions, not yet. It isn't that he doesn't wish the best for her - rather, due to the natural course of things, her best interest has actually in a way become his own - but instead that, for a girl like her, to be thrust into such a world of deception and mayhem without anyone to guide her, she would surely crumble, and perish.
He can feel it, anyway: the time for her to grow into her own skin, to walk with her back straight and without her form being cast in his shadow - that time is periously close at hand.
But he blinks for too long, and when he opens his eyes, she's gone.
---
There was turbulence on the airplane, as it drifted aimlessly sometime that evening over the Caspian Sea. Hibari exhaled, quietly, as the rest of the passengers aboard the flight gasped and squeaked and made other annoying little animal noises of terror, and he subtlely tightened the cinch on his seat belt. He was in a very, very bad mood. It didn't help that, crowding his personal space from less than a foot away, Chrome Dokuro seemed perfectly content to ignore the noise, sleeping on her side with her arms folded neatly underneath her head, lips murmuring things to people that perhaps only she could see.
The plane bounced, again, and it took years of strict personal schooling for Hibari to mutter an almost inaudible 'hmph', rather than an explosive, particularly colorful oath. Despite the fact that they were flying in the first-class cabin, up front, someone's baby began to cry. Hibari wouldn't have minded babies, if only they didn't cry. Of course, he'd only ever seen one baby in his life that was like that, and in this era, that baby was now dead.
The stewardess came up the aisle, having an obvious difficulty with staying on her feet. "Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you - oh, good, you've already buckled in. But your, ah...lady friend..."
(Chrome Dokuro, with the bony limbs, and the ill-fitting clothes, and the split on her lip that was very, very obvious.)
"...she, um, also has to have her safety belt properly fastened, sir..." The stewardess was looking back and forth between the two of them, and wringing her hands. On an airline so frequented by abusive mafioso, she must have been new. It was annoying.
Hibari glanced at the woman, sidelong. "It's no concern of mine," he clarified, reaching over and pinching, hard, the cut he had made on Chrome Dokuro's pale, thin lower lip. She winced a little, and drew back in her sleep, fresh blood a bright color on her drawn, washed-out face. "If it were possible, I'd open the emergency hatch and throw her out myself." He shrugged, indifferently. "But if it matters that much to you, you can just tell her yourself."
"Um..." The stewardess bounced, quite unsteady on her feet, and unsure of her stance. Perhaps being the type who was determined to see her job through to the end, regardless of the danger, the woman leaned over the seat, hand stretching towards the dark-haired girl's small, sharp-angled shoulder. "Um, miss..."
But Hibari, who was in a temper that only seemed to be getting worse and worse, reached up quite suddenly, and snagged the stewardess by the arm.
"If you lean over there any farther," he told her, quite calm, "I'm going to bite you to death."
The stewardess gaped. "But... But - you just said - !" But she took a step back, hurriedly, wrenching her wrist away. Their eyes met, in a deadlock, before the woman swallowed, nervously, and at last moved her business elsewhere. (She'd been crowding him, leaning over his seat like that, obnoxiously spreading her body heat all over the place, and of course it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Chrome Dokuro had been laying there, peaceful and quiet, for once, absolutely nothing.)
The baby up front at last ceased its dreadful wailing, and during the commotion, the plane seemed to finally ebb its constant flow of bumps and shakes. The plane was quiet, engines rumbling in a muted hum. Continuing to be annoyingly oblivious to his temper, the girl slept on next to him, blood on her lower lip pooled such to the point of almost spilling over, shimmering and seeming almost to quiver in the wan, fluorescent cabin lights. Hibari stared at it, almost uncomprehendingly, feeling a frown that was half-hearted, at best, settle itself onto the lines of his face.
(Maybe it was his father, whose face he always knew but whose name he could never remember, smiling broadly and telling him at dinner to just skip his vegetables, and go straight for the meat.)
Slowly, slowly, he reached over, and smeared the lot of it with the pad of his thumb.
Even her blood was cool to the touch. Her breath fluttered precariously over the tips of his fingers. He brought his thumb back to his mouth and licked it clean, absently, before replacing it again, stroking over her bloodless, colorless lip with unnatural precision and care.
(It was his mother, apologizing to one of the neighboring boys' parents on his behalf, and joking that his saliva must contain some sort of anticoagulent, for all boys seemed to bleed after having the misfortune of meeting with his teeth.)
Hibari paused, thumb resting over the jagged line of her split lip, before angling his knuckle in, sharply, and digging into the wound with his nail.
---
Chrome woke with a whimper and a start.
She blinked as the airplane came sharply into focus, as the clouds drifted by outside the window beside her and the cloud on her other side turned his head, abruptly, in the other direction. Her lips were wet, and her chin was, too. Chrome touched the skin tentatively and was completely bewildered when her fingers came away red with blood. She stuffed the sleeve of her blazer to her lip, hurriedly, and was about to stand to rush to the bathroom when a handkerchief was thrust at her, suddenly.
Hibari didn't say a word, and yet strangely, his eyes were calm. They were, in fact, the calmest she had seen them, ever, and Chrome wondered nervously as she blotted her lips if their calm was to represent something like the calm before the storm.
There was a streak of red at the corner of his mouth.
"I'm hungry," he said quietly, intensely, and Chrome couldn't, for the life of her, even begin to understand what that meant.
---
Mukuro can, though, and maybe that's why he winds up laughing so hard, in the end.
---
That had been three days ago. That had been before the two of them, Hibari Kyouya and Chrome, had been standing on the thick, foresty bluff that overlooked the Vindice, and that man chose then to do something that very nearly ruined everything.
"I changed my mind," Hibari said suddenly, decisively, and plunged his arms inside of his jacket, eyes cast low to the ground; "Right here, right now - "
Chrome, crouching down, stare fixed on the tall, forbidding structure that lay hunkering against the sea, barely looked up in time to dodge.
"...I'm going to bite you to death."
AN: Well, er, before you start panicking, Rune, it's not done yet. It's just - this GODDAMNED SETUP TOOK SUCH A FARKING ETERNITY that I figured to spare everyone the trouble of reading in one sitting, I'd break this up into multiple parts. (Wouldn't have fit into a single LJ post anyway, ahahahahah NARF. *shot*) Which...in the end, sorry this part was such a disappointment, anyway. There's porn and actual pairing-ness in the next part, though, so whee, look forward to that?
General things... Well, other than the fact that I'm generally frustrated with the lack of THINGS GOING ON in this part, it mostly didn't turn out as terrible as I'd thought. I just...feel like the beginning, which promises Epic Things Happening, kind of tapers off around the end and eventually becomes this weird, sort of personal journey that has absolutely nothing to do with plot at all. Or something. It was just like, halfway through I was like "HOSHIT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A PAIRING FIC ORZ" and spent a lot of time working on the setup.
Well, jfdsa;lfkadsfl'adsf in general. I feel like the characterization is all off, too, which makes me sad considering how badly I wank at other people for bad characterization. /hypocrite Writing Mukuro was fun, though.
Kyouya =/= Kyoya? By the time I noticed, though, I didn't feel like going back and fixing it, OTL.
NEXT POST LATER. OR MAYBE TOMORROW IF I DON'T HAVE TIME TONIGHT.
[EDIT]: In which there is a next part, The Jungle. OOH, WOW, SHINY.