Reborn Fanfiction: Nobless Oblige
Title: Nobless Oblige (or, I Knew That the Lights of the City Were Too Heavy For Me)
Paring: Kyoko/Haru
Rating: R
Words: ~2500
Warnings: Violence, Disfunctional relationships, Experimental characterization, Torture, confusing flashbacks, writing style discrepancies.
Prompt: "Haru/Kyoko - Cake, co-dependency, and guns. Kyoko and Haru realise as time goes by that they are each other's most complete support in the Vongola. I'd like it if they were kind of or literally married by TYL."
Summary: It takes two to make an accident. Haru, Kyoko, Running away and Losing themselves only to find each other. A Love Story. Alternate continuity.
Notes: Originally written for my yuri_exchange as demoerin 's gift. Flashback sections are in italics.
Haru forgets her gun more often than not, a thin outline of black slowly staining the table under its shadow. It's not for any lack of mind, but instead for some childish ideal that if she doesn't look the monsters won't exist, that the world will reach a concordant equilibrium. Yet, it's not as if she doesn't know so much better.
Kyoko can pinpoint her movements down to the minute (Though this will never be an exact science. Haru is erratic and unpredictable for all that Kyoko trusts her to be so.) and sets down her coffee as she hears the dead lock on the door clatter for valuable seconds, and holds the gun carefully in her out-stretched palm to the woman who is panting in the door way, nose red from winter air.
With a steady gaze, Kyoko beckons the other woman closer to wrap her clothed arms around sweaters and jackets and vests, to bury her cheek into the snow strewn in Haru's chestnut hair, to press kisses to the light sunburn of her face, to reach beyond all the layers that protect Haru from the outside world she so harshly throws herself to and slip the dark steel into the holster just above Haru's blouse.
“I forgot again.” Haru whispers into Kyoko's neck, bitterly laughing
“What would I do without you, Kyoko-chan.” She says and leaves.
One day, she doesn't come back.
-
Kyoko pushes up the red metal of her reading glasses with a thoughtless air, eyes transfixed on the steady stream of reports coming through the information feed of her aging laptop, fingers clenching lightly, mind stiffly ignoring the gun.
It has been hours and Kyoko knows she shouldn't worry (though the sentiment will never be unwarranted), knows that Haru is better with her bare fists than cold metal, knows that I-Pin taught her so well that it scares Kyoko sometimes, knows that she herself might just be deadweight if anything were to happen, knows all this but still, she finds that she can not help the anxious energy coiling within her stomach and heart. There is something about Haru's presence that makes her whole and Kyoko only ever begins to notice when she is alone (that maybe without Haru's passion and fire, her apartment walls freeze like her fragile heart).
The numbers on her computer blur. Death tolls, rising danger, a single suicide per minute.
Kyoko closes her eyes and tries to think of a way everyone can be saved.
The noon-chime of the clock breaks her reverie and she tenses just a bit before forcing her shoulders downward in a shaky sigh. She must be calm, for, if nothing else, Kyoko will always have her mind.
But Haru is late and if this is one thing Kyoko knows, it is that Haru always keeps her promises. She puts her all into everything she is and won't allow for any less.
Kyoko's chair clatters as she gets up and heads for the door.
-
Haru's favourite coffee shop sits at the top of a large hill. She's only been there a few times, but will wax lyrical to Kyoko about their honey cakes and fresh biscotti. Kyoko doesn't have to tell Haru what she already knows: if they become recognizable constants to this town, they will have to leave.
Snow crunches under Kyoko's feet, bitter and slushy, the remnants of someone's winter wonderland. She is searching right now, for a sign. A hint. A clue. Anything, just to tell her where the other woman might have gone. The haven behind the mirror glass tells her nothing, however, and as she sighs her warm breath transforms into vapor rings.
Her eyes fall down again into the reflected sunlight on snow and perhaps it is the angle, but Kyoko thinks she sees something out of the corner of her eye. It takes her approximately five steps to reach the small object laying haphazardly cracked upon a piece of visible sidewalk, a blob of flashy pink beside an oddly placed skid mark.
And as Kyoko picks up Haru's cellphone, her own rings in her pocket, echoing through the street.
-
Haru and Kyoko are not the type of people who could have met any other way.
Japan, even their small Namimori prefecture, is tiny, especially with all that electricity has shrunken the world to bite sized (such that it yearned for more and for stars, not knowing what it still possessed), yet ever aware of the movements and cliques of people enough to cage them where the humans believed they belonged. For the most part, Kyoko had never deviated. Her pale skin and the fraying straw of her hair made Kyoko anomalous, a new toy for her superficial friends, but kept her from truly feeling like she was truly meant to be anywhere. The coffee shops that lined her return path home were beckoning, but she followed the the inevitable march to the gate of her family home. At that time the house would be a deserted husk, but the Kyoko of then wouldn't have minded, simply happy to not have to be anything anymore. Her brother comes home hours later, bruised and shining, the bleach cracked tips of his hair only seeming to emphasize its blackness. And as Kyoko sits with him, mending tears and massaging dark spots, she honestly can not tell whether she is forcing her laughter.
Tsuna is her quiet storm, the boy who is able to express himself in ways Kyoko never could. He doesn't blend with the world, flitting through life alone in a way that would take all of Kyoko's bravery to even breathe and leave her with nothing. Tsuna is free and he doesn't know what he has, knowing he never has to be anything but himself. There is a strong boy underneath his lose uniform and shaking shoulders. Kyoko sees glimpses of him sometimes. It's hidden in the way the wind bites at his lips as he falls from the roof, the way he stands straight with an unwavering belief, the way his eyes glow like fire light when he tells Kyoko that he loves her.
But Tsuna is too perfect for her, and this just another one of the things he doesn't know yet. He has fallen deep into the shallow shadows Kyoko purposefully paints in her wake, the tar-like lies which coat everyone's perception of her. She lets herself become societal perfection, because the alternative truth is nothing at all.
Haru is the only one to ever truly understand her.
-
Tsuna's voice through the speaker is cracked with worry and plans that leave Kyoko to the sidelines. It gives Kyoko a vague sense of deja vu as she stands on that cracked walk, snow blowing up around the bottoms of her coat.
“No.” She says into her phone, pressing it against her cheek hard enough to carve deep etchings of red into her pale, pale skin.
“No.” Kyoko lets out again, merely a whisper now, to Tsuna's confusion. “Let me do it.”
And as the car pulls up around to the factory, Kyoko thinks only that her gun has never felt heavier.
-
She meets Haru when Kyoko thinks she may have needed her the most. There is something radiant about her, and it takes Kyoko not long after that spring day where the wind wipped at their skirts, made Haru's hair dance in the sun, for her to realize that she has found the strength she had always been searching for in Haru.
Haru who doesn't ignore the blushing light on Kyoko's face as Haru takes her hand through crowded city streets, merely lets her gaze darken and her hand clench a bit tighter (or it could just be Kyoko's imagination after all)
Kyoko thinks, this is love.
(If there is one thing Haru will never tell Kyoko, it is the truth: she needed an outlet in Kyoko just as much as Kyoko needed her fairytale night, for all that she was breaking with the force of trying to hold herself together and still is. But Haru can be selfless for the ones she loves, and could never bring herself to shatter Kyoko's dream.)
(It doesn't matter anyway. Haru has gotten good at lying, all it took was practice.)
And then the sky begins to fall.
-
Kyoko moves with purpose, ignoring the effect her intrusion has had on her surroundings and the way the gunfire makes her skin itch in anticipation. But her team is taking care of all this, tiny movements out of the corner of Kyoko's eye that swiftly dispatch with any who try to stop her steady walk.
She's just following the sounds now, the familiar echo of flesh damaging flesh, the same forceful yell of inquisition, and it nearly makes Kyoko flinch, but instead she lets her feet move onward, pausing just outside the door for a brief moment, before pressing her gun to the juncture of wood and unyielding knob and pulling. Just twice.
The bullets recoil but she's already prepared for that with the angle of her stance. Still, one of them manages to graze her, just a light touch to the outside of her thigh, but the metal is hot and tears against the scant millimeters of flesh it touches. Kyoko grits her teeth, she doesn't have time for this, not when that she has already announced her presence, and pushes it to the back of her mind for later just like all the other scars she must now possess.
The bronze of the knob now lays at the foot of the door, twisted and broken into all its wasted clockwork parts, and now Kyoko can easily open the door with just a bit of pressure. Kyoko knows what she will see in the room, but even that does not stop her eyes from widening at the scene.
There is blood on the floor, both thick puddles and tiny misted splatters; in one area of liquid there is a tooth, still gleaming against the red and it is perhaps the first thing that she sees. Kyoko forces her eyes up and meets the gaze of the man who has his revolver trained on Haru's bruised face and strong eyes.
(She hasn't talked, Kyoko knows without even having to look at the twisted form of her bound hands and the way each of her breathes is winced out, because Haru has always been stronger than Kyoko and will forever continue to be.)
The man is talking again (movements erratic for the man who must be this tiny gang's don, he would never have lasted anyway) but Kyoko can barely hear him over her own heartbeat echoing in her ears.
“You Vongola whores,” He says, spittle flying in glistening bursts as he speaks, “You better tell me where your base is or this bitch gets-”
The bullet hits him between the eyes before he can blink.
“Don't you dare call her that.” Kyoko says, but her arm is shaking. She does what she must, but never this, never before now.
(If there is one thing Kyoko will never tell Haru, it is how skilled she is with a pistol. She can still remember Reborn and his words in the test chamber when he taught her the basic skills she needed to survive. She was a natural, he had said and told her just what a shame it was to lose her, that she would have made a fine killer. And it scares her, even now, but she has always done what she must.)
Kyoko fists her hands tight enough that her chipped nails press into her skin and lets go, one foot in front of the other until she's beside Haru pressing her lips to every piece of skin that is still pale and freeing her, or maybe both of them, from bonds.
Out in the corridor, someone shouts an all clear.
-
Tsuna's eyes are tired as he gazes upon them. They are like tiny marbles, glazed over yet firm in their sockets, just translucent enough for Kyoko to be sure he means every word he says. There are scorch marks on his coat and even now the fighting doesn't end but is only muted in the background.
Haru lets a shaking hand slip into Kyoko's, fingers curling hotly and tightening with tiny heartbeat tremors. (There is a cut on Kyoko's cheek, fresh and still tacky with drying blood. It will scar.) The clock is the only sense she can find in the room is the infallible ticking of the clock idling on the far wall. The time slowly edges away and as Kyoko forces an answer past her lips, she keeps her gaze trained on clock work, unable to bare the raw humanity pervading the room.
Haru kisses Kyoko one day when the air is thick with resilient Spring and the acrid note of a new apartment and Kyoko thinks it could not have gone any other way.
-
It's Haru's last request in this town, that they come here just one more time.
Sunlight spills through the snowy windows, the ambient heat in the coffee shop creating a light fog against the glass. The tip of Kyoko's scarf is drawing yarn patterns in the condensation, but she has her eyes fixed on Haru and the way she smiles, how her skin is clear again, how beautiful the simplicity is.
“Kyoko,” Haru says brightly, dragging the metal tongs of her fork against her plate and opening her mouth wide. “You should feed me, my valiant princess, lest you let me starve with my mangled hands.”
Haru is grinning wide and waving her nearly healed fingers playfully, but Kyoko can see the vague flickers of pain in her eyes and plays along. It's not difficult, Haru has a way of luring people into her world and never letting them go.
So Kyoko laughs and cuts off a piece, cream, strawberries, and all, ignoring how messy this is for the way Haru's eyes light up and tell her all at once that she has been forgiven and that there is nothing to forgive.
“Do you think the sun will come out tomorrow?” Haru asks her when all the cake is gone, splattes of icing still dotting her cheek.
There is a ring on the the hand Kyoko uses to wipe away the sweet, gold and thick, matching Haru's own, curled loosely with chord around her neck. Kyoko remembers when they had bought them, the rings had gleamed like the sun.
Her gun is nestled firmly against her back and, for the first time, it makes Kyoko feel like she can do anything instead of just holding her down.
“Yeah.” She says, pressing a light kiss to Haru's lips. “Yeah, I do.”
And when Kyoko looks out the window again, the clouds have parted and the sky is blue.
-
They leave before morning can set in, hands clasped clammily and mirrored smiles painted in peeling lipstick on the faces of people who don't belong anywhere but here.