close to home - part 1
They tell me the rapture is upon us. I think that makes it a good time to post this fic. XD
What happened was, this whole thing with Iemitsu got me wondering what kind of parents the tenth generation kids would be. I'm guessing:
Tsuna-would be an awesome parent. Arguably, he already is an awesome parent.
Kyoko-likewise.
Yamamoto-might be an awesome parent. Although depending on the personalities of his kids, that thing he does where one minute he’s a goofy jock and the next minute he’s a natural-born assassin might be a problem. Then again, it doesn’t seem to bother him about his own dad, so who knows?
Hibari-might actually raise happy children. Stone-cold psychos, of course, but happy ones. Just look at his pets.
Ryouhei-would be a wonderful if horrifyingly embarrassing dad, but too bad for him, he’s totally going to marry Hana who hates children.
Haru-could be okay? Then again, she could be awful. I’m torn.
Lambo-will probably end up with a flock of illegitimate kids, half of whom don’t even know his name. Tsuna will cry forever.
Chrome-yikes. I think the pressure would break her. Very possibly Iemitsu-style absentee.
Gokudera-let’s not even go there. Capslock disaster.
Mukuro-likewise, only more.
In view of all that, I chose to go with Hibari/Chrome for kidfic. Because I am amused by a lot of strange things.
Spoilers through 320 or so. I don’t own KHR. Not at all, coach. …*closes eyes and hits post*
Close to Home
“Boss?”
A familiar, hesitant voice. Chrome.
Except that that’s impossible, because it’s…four in the morning, according to Tsuna’s clock. And he’s in bed, as everyone ought to be at this hour. Chrome, of all people, can’t possibly be in his room right now, particularly since she’s supposed to be in Seoul, has been in Seoul for five months.
It’s too weird to be true, therefore it isn’t true. It’s a crazy dream, that’s all. Tsuna’s going back to sleep.
“Boss?”
A crazy, persistent dream.
“I’m. I’m sorry to bother you, Boss, but…”
Tsuna sighs, crawls across the bed to the nearest lamp, and turns it on. The sudden light stabs into his eyes, and he whimpers. Once he’s stopped squinting and cringing and can actually see, he observes that Chrome is plastered against the door with a hand on the knob like she’s thinking of bolting right back out. And she’s been crying. She never cries. Tsuna scrubs his face with his hands and tries to wake the hell up. This is apparently a crisis.
“What’s wrong?” he croaks, sounding, he’s sure, the epitome of reassuring calm.
“N-nothing.” It doesn’t take hyper-intuition to know that’s a blatant lie. “It’s just…I’m, I’ll be away for a while, and. I thought I should tell you. Because you worry.”
True…and yet the conversation so far hasn’t done much to make him worry less. “Well. Thank you for telling me. Um…you were in Korea…?”
“Mukuro-sama and Fran-kun are finishing up.”
“So you left there and came back here…to tell me you’re leaving.” At four in the morning. Is he still half-asleep, or does that make no sense at all?
“I’ll be gone for four months,” she says. “Or. A year?”
“That’s a long time,” Tsuna says carefully, wide awake now. “Are you…can you tell me where you’ll be?”
“Oh,” she breathes, looking away. “I don’t know.”
He gives up on asking her questions, because he can see that she’s about ten seconds away from crying again, which is-weird, beyond weird, since when does Chrome cry? Not since before Daemon Spade, anyway. Tsuna studies her, trying to puzzle out the problem.
The strange thing is, she doesn’t look bad, apart from the terrifying tears. Tired, yes. Maybe a little pale, though it’s hard to tell in this light. Otherwise, she seems unusually healthy. Certainly better-fed than normal; she must like Korean food. It’s hard to tell exactly how much weight she’s put on, though, because her clothes are the least form-fitting things he’s ever seen her wear-a long, flowing shirt, almost as long as some of her skirts, and a knee-length skirt under that. Like she’s trying to hide her body.
Trying to hide her body. Random crying. Five months in Korea, which is to say, five months since she was last in Japan. To be followed by four months to a year elsewhere, anywhere.
What Tsuna’s thinking is crazy. It’s impossible.
Is it crazier and more impossible, though, than Chrome showing up in his room in the wee hours of the morning crying and threatening to disappear? Maybe not.
Does she even have those body parts? Tsuna’s seen her on bad days, and her middle collapses completely, nothing in there at all.
Well. But isn’t that the point? Can’t she have any organs she feels like having? So this was a deliberate choice.
God, does she think she can maintain the illusion of a womb through labor? Because that doesn’t seem remotely safe.
Tsuna does a quick calculation, and it’s going to be a near thing, but Chrome probably won’t be a teen mother. He’s not sure why he finds that comforting, but he does, and since it’s the only comforting thing about this situation so far, he’s planning to cling to it.
“Please be careful,” he whispers, trying not to panic.
“I will,” she whispers back.
“Don’t be alone. That’s an order, Chrome.”
“…Okay, Boss.”
“If you need anything-it doesn’t matter what it is, doesn’t matter when-you can have it. Call me, okay? It’s fine. Anything.”
She nods and leaves the room, tears running silently down her face.
Tsuna gets out of bed. He’s not sleeping any more tonight; there’s no point kidding himself about it. He may as well get some work done.
He wonders if the father knows. Given the way Chrome is currently fleeing the country, probably not. But it’s not Tsuna’s place to tell him, if Chrome doesn’t want him to know.
Tsuna feels a little like crying, himself.
* * *
Kusakabe stopped questioning Kyouya years ago. There’s no point; it only irritates him and frustrates you. Kyouya has his reasons for everything he does, and you can love him or leave him, but you’re not going to change his mind. Besides, his reasons are generally good. The problem is that he insists on doing everything according to his own system, and his system makes very little sense from the outside.
Kusakabe stopped trying to explain Kyouya to other people around the same time he stopped questioning him. Again, there’s really no point.
In accordance with these philosophies, when Chrome Dokuro started wandering in and out of Kyouya’s rooms at odd hours, Kusakabe neither commented on it to Kyouya nor mentioned it to anyone else. After all, Chrome is a free agent. If she’s also a touch insane, well, the same can be said of Kyouya. So that’s fair. Besides, Kusakabe’s watched them attacking each other (Chrome refers to it as “practice,” Kusakabe refers to it as “fighting very nearly to the death”), and it’s obvious that Chrome can hold her own.
The Chrome visits have gone on for a couple of years now, and it has blessedly never been Kusakabe’s business or concern. Or at least, that was true until today.
Chrome wanders in. Kusakabe’s glad to see her, because it’s been almost a year. She is prone to inexplicably vanishing for long periods of time, but this was unusually long, and it’s always a relief when she reappears. Even Kyouya half-smiles at the sight of her, though the smile vanishes when he notices that she’s carrying something.
It’s a mysterious bundle wrapped in cloth. She’s cradling it with exaggerated care, like the idea of dropping it-of holding it in the first place-terrifies her. Strange for her to be carrying anything other than a weapon.
She casts Kusakabe an alarmed look, as if she’s never seen him before-which is normal-then kneels opposite Hibari and stares at him, worried and confused. Which is not normal. When she tugs the cloth back from the bundle, everything starts to make a horrible kind of sense.
It’s a baby. They say babies look like their fathers, and this one definitely looks like Kyouya. Only a lifetime of dealing with the bizarre keeps Kusakabe from gasping out loud.
Romario maintains that Kyouya is a blank slate-a creepy, sociopathic blank slate, in fact-but that’s not true. Kyouya’s very expressive, in an understated way. Easy to read once you get used to him.
This time, though, he really is blank-as if something critical just disconnected inside his head. Kusakabe doesn’t blame him.
Chrome very carefully holds the baby out to Kyouya, and after a stunned moment, he takes it. Chrome hesitates, fidgeting and searching for words for an agonizingly long time before she gives up, stands, and walks out, eyes studiously on the floor. Out of the room, out of the building, and gone, Kusakabe expects, for the next several months.
Kyouya doesn’t watch her go; he’s still staring at the baby with that total lack of expression. The baby’s slept through all of this, and why not? Not a word’s been spoken.
Ten minutes pass, the silence broken only by quiet, sleeping baby noises. Kusakabe refuses to allow himself any reaction until he knows which direction Kyouya’s going to run with this. Dwelling on the scary possibilities won’t help anything.
Kyouya shifts slightly, looking away from the baby and blinking at the room. Apparently he’d forgotten the room existed, and is annoyed to find it there.
“Tetsu,” he snaps, low and irritated. “Go buy…baby things.”
“Yes, Kyou-san,” Kusakabe breathes in relief.
He heads to the stores with a spring in his step. Kyouya’s decided he’s responsible for the baby; this is the best case scenario. Once Kyouya’s taken responsibility for something, he never lets it go. And Kusakabe likes babies.
He wonders if it’s a boy or a girl. He’ll have to buy gender-neutral things until he knows. Baby clothes are sold by age, aren’t they? Given how long Chrome was gone, the baby can’t be much older than three months. Is it healthy for a baby to be without its mother so soon?
Well, but. Chrome. What can you do?
So, formula and bottles. Clothes. Diapers. Blankets. A crib. Kyouya will definitely keep the baby in his room at first-Kyouya is going to be a terrifying, possessive monster about this, this is going to be worse than the time Hibird sprained a wing-but eventually they’ll need to make up a nursery. What else do babies need? Toys? Things to chew on?
Doctor’s appointments. Finding out if the baby has a name and which country it’s a citizen of, if any. Explaining all of this to the ward office. Oh God, and babies keep weird hours, don’t they? Kyouya’s going to be really short on sleep, and everyone over the age of one is going to bleed because of it. This should be fun.
But first, shopping. Easiest and most immediately necessary. Everything else can wait.
Kusakabe has had to buy a lot of strange things for Kyouya over the years. He finds it’s best to have a sympathy-inducing story to go with his bizarre purchases, or else he gets funny looks.
This time it should be easy. He can stick very near the truth, and it may even win him help from bystanders. He thinks his story will start, “So my best friend’s girlfriend just-right now!-showed up out of the blue…”
He should probably hurry, though. Eventually the baby is going to wake up, find its mother gone, and likely have a screaming fit. Kusakabe needs to get back home before Kyouya does something rash in response.
Romario is going to laugh for hours when he hears about this.
* * *
There’s a toddler running around the house.
This isn’t so odd in itself. There have been, off and on, a lot of toddlers running around the Chiavarone estate. But there’s one key difference between those toddlers and this one, which is that Dino always knew who those children belonged to and where they came from.
This one is a little mystery. A cute little mystery, but that doesn’t really help. She’s clearly Japanese, which cuts down the possibilities a bit too much, since Dino can’t think of anyone on that side of the Vongola family who has a kid this age. Or any kids at all.
She is ridiculously cute-moving with awkward care, a serious expression on her cherubic, round face, wearing a screamingly pink dress designed on the theory that fluffier is better. But seriously. Whose kid is she? And why is she trying to dismantle that antique jewelry box?
“Hello,” Dino says in Japanese, trying to distract mystery toddler from her destructive efforts. “What’s your name?” Seems wise to keep things simple.
She turns away from the box and stares at him for an uncomfortably long time before dismissively declaring, “Stranger,” and attacking the box again.
“Your name is Stranger?” Dino asks.
“Papa says don’t talk to strangers,” she corrects, eyes on the box.
“But…I can’t be that much of a stranger. You’re in my house.”
“Stranger,” she insists, voice starting to climb.
“I’m Dino Chiavarone. This is my house. There, now we’re not strangers, right?”
“Stranger, stranger, stranger!”
Suddenly there’s a fist pressed to his back, a tonfa across his throat, and a pleasantly familiar but completely insane voice hissing into his ear, “You’re annoying my daughter.”
Dino thinks he can actually hear the sound of his mind snapping clean in half.
“Papa!” the little girl cries in a complete reversal of attitude, seizing the box and bouncing a few steps in their direction, beaming. “I found a box like yours!”
“It’s not like mine,” Kyouya corrects blandly. “But take it to Tetsu. I’ll follow you once I’ve bitten this one to death.”
“Okay!”
“Kyouya, that box is pretty expens-” the rest of the words come out as a pitiful croaking noise thanks to an increase in tonfa pressure, and Dino can only watch sadly as the box is stolen away by tiny hands. Tiny hands that keep dropping it every few yards. Goodbye, dear family heirloom. I’m sorry I failed you.
Dino reflects, as Kyouya releases him only to launch into a head-on attack, that Romario must have known about this…child situation. He and Kusakabe are brain twins, after all; what one of them knows, the other will know within twenty-four hours. Which means Romario deliberately chose not to tell Dino, probably in the hope that he’d get to see Dino’s face when he found out.
At first blood-his, of course-it occurs to him that Tsuna also must know, because Tsuna keeps obsessively close track of his family. Besides, Gokudera tells him everything, and Gokudera is a confirmed stalker. Who knew Tsuna was malicious enough to spring something like this on Dino with no warning? Little traitor.
By the time Kyouya’s bleeding, Dino has confronted the fact that there has to be, God help them all, a woman somewhere in this equation. A crazy woman, one must assume. A dangerous woman, or Kyouya wouldn’t have bothered. Dino reflects on the crazy, dangerous women Kyouya knows. The little girl doesn’t look like any of them. Actually, she looks a bit like a tiny, female Kyouya, if Dino considers it with that horrifying possibility in mind.
“So that’s your daughter.”
Kyouya responds by trying to steal Dino’s whip and break his arm.
“She’s awfully cute, Kyouya.”
“Shut up.”
“You must’ve been a cute kid, too!”
“You’re a dead man, Chiavarone.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Yes.”
“…Does she have a mother?”
“If you have to ask, it’s no wonder you have no children.”
“Kyouya! That was below the belt!”
“Whatever works.”
Kyouya…appears to be messing with him. This is a new and troubling development. Could it be that fatherhood has mellowed him? “Do I know her mother?”
“I don’t keep track of your social life.”
“No, seriously, Kyouya, who is she?”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
This reluctance is really strange. Who’s he trying to protect? “Who should I contact if you and Kusakabe get yourselves killed?”
“We won’t.”
“If you did.”
“Sawada Tsunayoshi.”
“So Tsuna’s the mother?”
Dino quickly finds himself flat on his back staring up at the sole of a shoe as it makes a fairly sincere effort to crush his nose into the rest of his face.
“We’ll be here until Friday,” Kyouya says calmly. “If you annoy my daughter again, I’ll feed her your heart.”
What, no bite you to death? Well, switching things up, that’s nice. And Dino vaguely remembers that you’re supposed to eat the hearts of brave enemies to absorb their courage and strength. This may be the creepiest compliment he’s ever received.
Kyouya removes his shoe from Dino’s face and stalks off. Dino rubs gently at his nose and feels comprehensively sorry for himself, scary compliments notwithstanding. Kyouya, no longer satisfied with physical abuse, is now mocking him, too. Romario’s withholding information. Tsuna is laughing at him from across the ocean. Kyouya’s adorable little girl wears pink, fluffy dresses.
This is all starting to feel like a cosmic joke at Dino’s expense.
* * *
Hibari named their daughter, but Chrome was the one who explained the name to Tsuna, when the girl was still a baby and Chrome was still afraid to touch her.
Asami, spelled with the kanji for morning and sea, because she was born in the morning and over the sea. And Hibari will never forget it, Chrome said, smiling a strange smile.
Tsuna listened very carefully and understood very little. It was frustrating; Chrome’s explanation barely skirted the edge of what Tsuna wanted to know. What had she called the baby before leaving her with Hibari? Why was she so afraid of her own daughter? Where exactly had Asami been born, and who’d been there? Just Mukuro, or Ken and Chikusa, too? Had they bothered with a hospital?
The idea of an exhausted Chrome, an unsupervised Mukuro, and another man’s child alone together…Tsuna isn’t sure exactly what he’s afraid of, but he is afraid. He watches Asami, a quiet and composed five, and tries to convince himself that he would have noticed by now if Mukuro had done something to her.
And besides, Mukuro, however drastic his faults, has always loved Chrome. He wouldn’t hurt her daughter, especially not a daughter she’d fought so hard to have. Tsuna knows that; he can’t tell whether his lingering worry is intuition or paranoia.
Asami places a stone on the go board and stares at Tsuna, feral and eager. She seems quiet and composed until you really look at her. Tsuna smiles and turns to study the board. He has no idea what’s going on, but he suspects he may be losing. To a five-year-old.
It’s lucky his pride came pre-crushed. He places a piece at random and despairs-not just of go, more’s the pity. Of his opponent, too.
Hibari has spent most of the last five years in Namimori or near it, leaving Japan only for relatively tame scouting missions that he could bring Asami along for. And that’s been fine so far, but eventually…eventually Tsuna’s going to need his Cloud back.
He’s babysitting a child while thinking of stealing her father away. There’s got to be a special hell for that.
“Tsuna?” asks the child in question. “Are you gonna resign or what?”
“Oh.” As is not infrequently the case at this point in a go game, the board has blurred, to Tsuna’s eye, into a random array of black and white spots. “Am I losing?”
“You lost ages ago, Tsuna. Aaages ago.”
“Oh.” Now that she mentions it, her pieces are pretty noticeably dominating the board. “I resign.”
Asami whoops, leaping up to do a victory dance around the room. Tsuna has no idea who she inherited this tendency to gloat from, but he likes to think it’s Hibari’s side of the family.
The door handle turns, and before the door has a chance to swing open, Asami is back in silent, contemplative seiza across from Tsuna, looking like she’d never dream of dancing around the room. Tsuna salutes her acting abilities, but he also smiles over how very slowly that door opened.
Hibari walks in, and Asami grins at him. “Papa!”
Hibari’s mouth quirks almost imperceptibly in response, and he comes over to stand beside Asami and study the board. “Wow,” he drawls, dry and unimpressed. “Who played black?”
“I did,” Tsuna sighs. Hibari gives him a look. “Yes, I know. I got trounced by your five-year-old.”
Hibari’s expression suggests a hurtful lack of surprise. Still, Tsuna catches his sidelong, proud glance at Asami.
Asami catches it, too. She ducks her head, grinning.
“Why does she even know how to play go?” Tsuna asks, amused. “It’s not a preschooler’s game, Hibari-san.”
“It disciplines the mind,” he informs Tsuna. “I’m not interested in how herbivores train their children.”
Hibari treats child-rearing almost exactly like animal-training-the same basic pattern modified for a bipedal, very intelligent creature. It’s a little upsetting to watch. On the other hand, both his animals and his child seem happy, if odd, so maybe it works out.
“It’s time,” Hibari tells Asami, who leaps to her feet, giving Hibari a questioning look. He nods. Thus permitted, she flies into Tsuna’s arms, catching him in her usual strangle-hold hug.
“Next time, Tsuna, you pick the game,” she says, bouncing back. “But I’ll beat you anyways!”
“Anyway,” Hibari corrects.
“I’ll beat you anyway!”
“I look forward to it,” Tsuna says seriously.
“Asami,” Hibari barks, marching toward the door, apparently bored with the conversation. Asami scurries after him. Hibari never looks back, but he has cut his usual walking speed in half.
Tsuna leans back on his hands and studies his crushing defeat on the go board. Another few years, he thinks. Hibari-san can stay in Japan for another few years.
* * *
Takeshi’s not sure how things turned out this way. He’s not sure he’s happy about it, either.
Tsuna’s in Italy this week. For reasons known only to Tsuna, he took Hibari and Kusakabe with him, but not Gokudera or Takeshi. This drove Gokudera into hysterics, and Takeshi had to calm him down. But that’s fine; he signed up for Gokudera duty.
He doesn’t feel like he signed up for Hibari duty.
“Take care of my daughter,” Hibari said, randomly appearing at Takeshi’s door holding giant overnight bags and trailing a scowling little girl in a blinding purple dress. “Or I’ll bite you to death.”
Takeshi had never so much as talked to Hibari’s kid before-Hibari’d always kept her hidden away. Takeshi knows nothing about kids. On the other hand…well, he didn’t sign up for babysitting, but he does know how to pick his battles.
So it ends up like this: Tsuna’s spending the week in Italy with Hibari, Gokudera’s panicking all day every day, and Takeshi and his dad are teaching Hibari’s kid how to make sushi because Takeshi has no idea what to do with her. Definitely a recipe for some kind of disaster.
“Okay, Asami-chan. First we have to pick what kind of sushi we’re making. What do you like?”
She looks up at Takeshi with Chrome’s big eyes and Hibari’s unnervingly direct stare and asks, “What’s the best?”
“There isn’t really a best kind of sushi,” he tells her, kneeling down so they’re level.
“There’s a best everything,” she assures him with scary conviction. “Papa says you should never accept anything but the best.”
Takeshi’s learned more about the life philosophy of Asami’s papa in the last hour than he had over the previous fifteen years. “Haha, right. So if people try to give you second-class stuff, are you supposed to bite them to death?”
“No. Papa says girls shouldn’t bite people to death,” she informs him primly. “Girls should gouge people’s eyes out, because it’s acceptable for us to wear our nails longer. So that’s more practical.” She gives Takeshi a pitying look. “You don’t know anything, do you?”
He senses that this is going to be a long week.
“My favorite,” Dad announces, “is inari sushi.” Takeshi raises an eyebrow, because that’s not true, and he’s not sure what Dad’s up to. “And if it’s my favorite, then it must be the best.”
Asami is openly dubious.
“I make sushi for a living. I’m an expert.”
Asami turns this over, then nods grudging acceptance. “We can make inari sushi,” she allows.
Little kids, Takeshi remembers, usually like inari sushi best, because it’s sweet, maybe. He smiles at his dad; Dad winks back.
Inari sushi turns out to be a success, and it kills a couple of hours, too. Eventually, though, Dad kicks them out, and Takeshi has to take Asami home. No Dad to protect him. Just Takeshi and a little brainwashed-by-Hibari eight-year-old, walking home alone together. Yikes.
Really, it’s weird how Hibari-influenced Asami is. Yeah, Chrome isn’t what you’d call an overwhelming personality, but she’s still Asami’s mom. She must’ve had some kind of impact. Takeshi sure can’t see it, though.
Weird.
“You see much of your mom, kiddo?”
“No,” Asami answers, apparently more interested in the cracks in the sidewalk than the question. “She’s a very busy person. And don’t call me that.”
“Hm.” So Chrome’s busy, but Hibari…isn’t? “You ever jealous of other kids? I mean, the ones who get to see their moms all the time.” God knows Takeshi had spent his whole childhood jealous.
“No,” Asami declares with a superior sniff. “Papa says herbivores come with all the parts to make babies already, so they can have babies by accident. My mama made a place for me, special. She wanted me more than theirs wanted them. Papa says she doesn’t like to hold still, is all.”
Takeshi thinks of the way Chrome is, the way she walks into a room already looking for a way out, the way she’s never really all there. Maybe she doesn’t like to hold still. Or maybe she can’t stand to. “I think your papa’s right.”
“Papa is always right.”
Haha, of course.
They make it back to the apartment uneventfully. Takeshi puts away the leftover sushi and tries to remember what he liked to do as a kid. Apart from eating food and playing baseball, he’s coming up depressingly blank, and he already tried the food thing.
Asami is staring at him with a dance, monkey, dance expression.
Takeshi’s about to suggest baseball out of sheer desperation when Gokudera pounds on the door. Best timing ever. “Gokudera,” Takeshi tells Asami, figuring she might attack if he doesn’t warn her in advance.
She scowls at him. “How do you know that?”
Because Gokudera’s lonely when Tsuna’s gone; he comes by every day. “Well…he’s got a distinctive knock?”
Asami is skeptical. Takeshi opens the door to prove his point, and, indeed, there’s Gokudera. Asami’s eyebrows go up. Hey, for the first time ever, Takeshi’s impressed her. Win.
“Where the fuck are you looking, baseball freak?” Gokudera hasn’t noticed Asami yet because he’s too busy glaring death at Takeshi.
Takeshi smiles in response. He can’t help it. “Gokudera!”
“Yamamoto. Since you’re too lazy to haul your ass the three blocks to base, I have to come to you, is that it? Work is piling up on your desk like a trash heap, and whenever you’re gone, five people a day come to me to ask where you are like I’m your goddamn moth-holy shit is that a kid?”
“Asami-chan, come see your Uncle Hayato!” Takeshi calls out with slightly manic cheer.
“Gokudera Hayato,” Asami murmurs, peering around Takeshi, not quite clinging to him.
“That’s Hibari’s kid.” Gokudera backs uneasily out onto the walkway. “What are you doing with Hibari’s kid?”
“…Babysitting?”
Gokudera makes Takeshi’s favorite shocked-and-appalled face. “Why you?”
“I think because Tsuna’s busy.”
“It’s my naptime,” Asami cuts in. “Past my naptime. Where am I supposed to sleep?”
“You’ve got a naptime?” Gokudera is incredulous. “You’re way too old for that.”
Asami glares. Gokudera glares. The two of them aren’t hitting it off the way Takeshi had hoped. “Papa naps,” Asami decrees, as if that’s a definitive argument. And it is, in her world. Papa is always right.
“Haha, yeah. I guess he does,” Takeshi cuts in before this gets out of hand. No point arguing with Hibari through his brainwashed kid. “Okay. You can sleep over here…”
Takeshi gets Asami tucked in for naptime, and she only glares a little. He doesn’t have to worry that he’s not meeting his daily glaring quota, though, because now he gets to talk to Gokudera.
Gokudera rants about Yamamoto’s work backlog for a while, but once he’s decided Asami’s asleep, he starts in on her family life, instead. Sometime during the last few years, he totally lost track of the concept of not my business. “Have you ever seen Chrome and Hibari together?” he asks.
“Um…?”
“I mean, have you ever even seen them in the same room for long? Because I haven’t. And…not that I’m an expert on domestic bliss or anything, but that seems really fucking weird.”
“Yeah, but, you know. Those two.” It would be much weirder if their relationship seemed normal. “Asami says she doesn’t see a lot of Chrome.”
“So Hibari’s the reliable one.”
“Pretty crazy, huh?”
Gokudera jams his hands in his pockets and scowls. “Am I supposed to feel bad for her?”
“Nah, she seems fine. Kinda bossy.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Two minutes, and already I want to smack her.”
“But if you smack her, she’ll gouge your eyes out.”
Gokudera rubs his forehead. “Seriously, who let Hibari breed?”
“Chrome.”
“It was a rhetorical question, asshole.” Takeshi holds his peace, and Gokudera fidgets and works himself around to feeling guilty for having said that. Given enough time and silence, Gokudera can be counted on to make himself feel guilty about anything. “So-so what, you’ve got the kid until Tenth gets back? That sucks. And it sucks for me, too, because I’m the one who has to make sure your desk doesn’t collapse under paperwork. Fucking Hibari.”
Takeshi laughs; Gokudera’s apologies are something else. “I don’t know. It might work out.”
“May God,” Gokudera says, “have mercy on your soul.”
But Takeshi’s right-things do get better after the first day. Asami eases up a lot once you know and respect her rules (Hibari’s rules). Actually, most of her problem is that she’s crazy homesick, and once Takeshi figures that out, everything makes a lot more sense. The rules are comfortable for her, familiar, and Takeshi can put up with them if they keep Asami from crying.
Still, he really wouldn’t want to deal with Hibari rules for more than a week. For one thing, the schedule might’ve been specifically designed to crush the fun out of life.
One must be awake and sparring by six, or the day is wasted, apparently. (Takeshi’s never fought a little kid before. She’s a rabid little kid, but he still has to be really careful. The idea of Hibari being that careful is…bizarre.) Breakfast is at eight. One is then free to do what one likes until lunch, as long as it involves being totally silent (death glare from a tiny kid, Do you have to be so loud?). Then lunch, then a long walk (or you could call it a patrol of Namimori), then a nap. Studying go until dinner, after which silence, and then bed. Asami reads a lot. Hibari probably works during quiet time. Takeshi cooks, or else sits around feeling like he’s going slowly insane. He should have Gokudera bring him some of that paperwork.
By midweek, Takeshi’s achieved the great victory of substituting baseball for go. Once he’s managed that, it’s not a bad lifestyle. Well, it’s survivable, anyway. It’s worth it.
Once the rules are in place and everything’s on track, Asami turns almost cheerful. Though she is still given to sharing the Gospel According to Hibari at every opportunity. The correct and only way to fold towels, water plants, brew tea, so on and so forth.
Hibari lives this way on purpose. Asami’s brainwashed, so she has an excuse, but Hibari does this to himself. Takeshi doesn’t get it.
Eventually, and though there were times when it seemed it would never happen, the week does come to an end. Takeshi escorts Asami and all of her luggage to the base. They had a fun week, more or less, but Takeshi now knows for sure that he never wants kids of his own. So in that sense, the week was productive.
Tsuna laughs when they drag Asami’s crap into his office, but Hibari doesn’t see the humor in it. He looks…well, if he were anyone else, he’d be coming off as uncertain. Takeshi gives him an encouraging smile.
Hibari’s worrying, Takeshi’s trying to cheer him up. This is the Twilight Zone.
Asami takes this moment to drop her bags and look around, and she lights up at the sight of Hibari. “Papa!” She bounds over to him, barely holding back from doing something embarrassing and crazy, like, horror of horrors, hugging her dad in front of people.
Hibari’s unsure look disappears, and he reaches out to briefly touch Asami’s hair, smiling one of his stealth smiles. “I see,” he says, “that Yamamoto Takeshi still has his eyes.”
Asami shrugs, but she can’t seem to stop herself from grinning.
“Sorry I stole him away from you, Asami-chan,” Tsuna says, watching the two of them, peaceful and pleased. “I’ll try not to do it too often, okay?”
Asami looks up at Hibari. He nods, and Asami goes barreling over to Tsuna, who kneels down to meet her. She crashes right into him, hugging him around the neck until he looks likely to choke, not that he seems to mind. It must be acceptable to hug Tsuna in public. Makes sense, really. Hugging Tsuna can’t be a bad thing; that’s got to be a natural law.
Tsuna leans back, hands on Asami’s shoulders, and asks about her week. She launches into an explanation of the finer points of sushi-making and baseball, periodically checking on her father to see if he’s listening. He is. Hibari always pays attention to things that interest him.
Tsuna’s amazing with Asami, which is no surprise. He was amazing with kids when he was a kid. But here he is, almost thirty, and not only does he not have kids of his own, he doesn’t even have kids vaguely in sight on the horizon. And Takeshi’s in the same boat. In fact, Hibari and Chrome are still the only guardians with a kid, and it wasn’t Hibari’s idea. This means Chrome is the bravest of them all, or maybe the one with the most faith.
That doesn’t bode well for the rest of them.
* * *
Tsuna’s trying to work, really he is. Unfortunately, he’s always been easily distracted, and Asami, like her father, unlike her mother, is an especially distracting distraction. It’s not her fault-she’s curled up beside Chrome on the couch, perfectly quiet. Neither of them needs anything from Tsuna, and yet he can’t help checking on them every thirty seconds.
Asami is balancing a sketchbook on her knees and whispering to Chrome. Chrome is conjuring up illusions in response to the whispers-flowers, birds, weapons-for Asami to sketch. They’re laughing together, quiet and low and private. Tsuna’s never seen Chrome happier. It’s a shame she can’t stand to be happy for long.
Hibari and Asami are different when they’re together. They don’t talk much, but Asami always watches him, looks to him for approval, guidance, reassurance. Things most people would never think to look to Hibari for. And Hibari’s always watched her, too-with demented protectiveness when she was young, but more and more with quiet pride. They’re a self-sufficient, closed circuit of two, happy in themselves and each other, deadly to almost everyone else. It shouldn’t be anywhere near as cute as it is.
Chrome fits into this circuit the same way she fits into anything-hesitantly, peripherally, never giving herself a chance to settle in, but never giving anyone a reason to get rid of her. She spends as much time with Mukuro as she does with Asami, and she spends as much time missing as she does with either of them, but because Hibari and Asami don’t need anything, they don’t resent Chrome for being gone so often. On the other hand, they always seem pleased when she’s there.
Again, it shouldn’t work, but it seems to.
Yamamoto walks in, interrupting these thoughts. He follows Tsuna’s line of sight to the day’s distraction, and laughs. “Hey, Chrome. Hey, Asami, you doing homework in Tsuna’s office now?”
“Just art. He has the best light,” she answers absently, sparing Yamamoto a second’s acknowledging glance before returning her attention to her mother and her sketchbook.
Tsuna’s reasonably sure that’s a lie. From what he can remember of art class, outdoor light was meant to be best. Not that he plans to argue with her-it never works. He sighs, fighting a smile. “She’s not just doing homework,” he tells Yamamoto. “She’s cheating on it. She’s supposed to be drawing things that don’t exist.”
In response to this, Chrome conjures up a free-floating eyeball with a spade for a pupil.
Yamamoto says, “There. That doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t see a problem.”
Tsuna laughs helplessly, proving that he’s as sick as the rest of them. “I think she’s meant to be drawing without a model. I’m pretty sure that’s the point.”
“If that was what my teacher wanted,” Asami declares, “then that’s what she should have said.”
Tsuna wishes Yamamoto wouldn’t encourage her by laughing like that.
* * *
Chikusa is eating ice cream with a twelve-year-old girl. It feels like a punishment. In fact, he finds it helpful to think of it as a punishment, because that lowers his expectations to an appropriate level.
By rights, Ken should be doing this-he, at least, likes sweet things. It’s oddly typical that Chrome dumped the job on Chikusa instead. Sometimes it seems he’s spent half his life cleaning up after Rokudo Mukuro’s tantrums and Chrome Dokuro’s mistakes. Though he’s never been able to decide whether Asami is Chrome’s most spectacular mistake, or the best idea she ever had.
“Uncle Chikusa, how do you kill someone with a yo-yo?”
Just at the moment, he’s inclining more to the spectacular mistake opinion.
“It’s not a weapon you can use,” he explains. “You’re the wrong flame. Doesn’t your father have someone training you?”
The child of cloud and mist, Asami has somehow managed to grow up a sun type. Chikusa puts that down to sheer willful perversity.
“Aunt Adelheid is teaching me to kill people with knives, no flames,” Asami informs him. “Reborn sits and shoots at me sometimes; he says he’s too old to chase me around. Uncle Ryouhei is teaching me to make my body into a rifle. He’s not very smart, is he? Uncle Ryouhei, I mean.”
“It doesn’t matter; he’s a great fighter. Listen to him when he tells you how to fight. Ignore him if he tries to help you with homework.”
“Papa says that’s what Uncle Hayato and Aunt Haru are for, anyway.”
Every once in a while, Chikusa can almost see what Chrome sees in Hibari Kyouya. “I suppose he’d know.”
“He has jobs for everybody,” Asami goes on thoughtfully. “All the aunts and uncles. But not you and Uncle Ken.”
“We were there when you were born,” Chikusa points out. “Maybe we’ve fulfilled our duty.” In your deranged father’s eyes.
Asami stares at him. “I didn’t know you were there when I was born.”
“Mm.” So Chrome doesn’t talk about that. Well, why would she?
“What was it like?” Wide eyes and avid curiosity.
What was it like.
Just past the witching hour in a ratty hotel room in Italy, absurdly far north. Lega Nord territory for the irony in it, too cold for the season, room not particularly clean. Chrome moaning like the damned, too worn out to scream, blood painting the sheets, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and Chikusa still doesn’t know how they managed that; like a murder scene, like the lab when Mukuro was done with it. Ken holding a baby, the baby screaming, screaming Chrome’s share of screams and then some. Ken shouting at Chikusa, “What the hell is this cord thing, this is gross, should I bite it off? What the fuck?” Mukuro leaning over Chrome, murmuring, “No, you need your kidneys, keep hold of those. Shh. Dear Chrome, you need your stomach, too. Did you think I wouldn’t notice it missing? Don’t fight me, little one.”
And Fran, who showed up out of nowhere, presumably at Mukuro’s invitation. Fran, wandering in and out with boiling water and towels and sterilized scalpels, talking non-stop in a bland, uninflected voice. “Wow, that’s not normal. There’s an awful lot of blood, isn’t there? I’m surprised she’s not dead already. I can see you’ve never held a baby before, Mr. Ken, because you’re doing everything wrong. Mr. Chikusa, if you’re just going to stare like an imbecile, please move to the corner to do it.”
After the worst was over, after the screaming had stopped and everyone seemed likely to live through the night, Mukuro handed Chrome her baby. She took it in her arms so, so carefully, and stared into its face like her heart was breaking.
Then she turned suddenly and pushed the baby back toward Mukuro, panic-stricken, whispering, “I can’t, I can’t do this, I can’t-take it away.”
In the end, Chrome, who routinely stares death, torture, and madness in the eye with nothing more than a deep breath and a set mouth, ran screaming from the reality of motherhood.
Chikusa doesn’t think the baby wants to know any of that. “It was a nightmare,” he says. “But we all lived through it.” That’s how life goes, generally. Up until the nightmare you don’t live through.
“…Oh. Were you and Uncle Ken the only ones there?”
“And Fran,” Chikusa corrects. “And Mukuro-san, of course.”
Asami’s eyes glaze over a bit. “After this,” she says, “can we go to the park? You can show me how to kill people with a yo-yo. Maybe I can’t learn it, but I want to see.”
Ah. This again.
Asami’s very odd on the subject of Mukuro, and no wonder. Her father hates the man, but her mother adores him; these facts are known, accepted, never discussed. Any opinion she has will make one of her parents unhappy.
Her solution is to pretend that Mukuro doesn’t exist. Mukuro finds this hilarious, and when Mukuro finds something hilarious, it never ends well.
There is another, more disturbing possibility, of course. Maybe she really doesn’t know Mukuro exists. He might have liked the idea of being invisible to Hibari Kyouya’s daughter. He might have cheated to make it so.
The girl probably deserves some leeway. It’s not her fault she came to Mukuro’s negative attention the instant she was born.
“All right,” Chikusa agrees. “The park.”
Part 2
What happened was, this whole thing with Iemitsu got me wondering what kind of parents the tenth generation kids would be. I'm guessing:
Tsuna-would be an awesome parent. Arguably, he already is an awesome parent.
Kyoko-likewise.
Yamamoto-might be an awesome parent. Although depending on the personalities of his kids, that thing he does where one minute he’s a goofy jock and the next minute he’s a natural-born assassin might be a problem. Then again, it doesn’t seem to bother him about his own dad, so who knows?
Hibari-might actually raise happy children. Stone-cold psychos, of course, but happy ones. Just look at his pets.
Ryouhei-would be a wonderful if horrifyingly embarrassing dad, but too bad for him, he’s totally going to marry Hana who hates children.
Haru-could be okay? Then again, she could be awful. I’m torn.
Lambo-will probably end up with a flock of illegitimate kids, half of whom don’t even know his name. Tsuna will cry forever.
Chrome-yikes. I think the pressure would break her. Very possibly Iemitsu-style absentee.
Gokudera-let’s not even go there. Capslock disaster.
Mukuro-likewise, only more.
In view of all that, I chose to go with Hibari/Chrome for kidfic. Because I am amused by a lot of strange things.
Spoilers through 320 or so. I don’t own KHR. Not at all, coach. …*closes eyes and hits post*
Close to Home
“Boss?”
A familiar, hesitant voice. Chrome.
Except that that’s impossible, because it’s…four in the morning, according to Tsuna’s clock. And he’s in bed, as everyone ought to be at this hour. Chrome, of all people, can’t possibly be in his room right now, particularly since she’s supposed to be in Seoul, has been in Seoul for five months.
It’s too weird to be true, therefore it isn’t true. It’s a crazy dream, that’s all. Tsuna’s going back to sleep.
“Boss?”
A crazy, persistent dream.
“I’m. I’m sorry to bother you, Boss, but…”
Tsuna sighs, crawls across the bed to the nearest lamp, and turns it on. The sudden light stabs into his eyes, and he whimpers. Once he’s stopped squinting and cringing and can actually see, he observes that Chrome is plastered against the door with a hand on the knob like she’s thinking of bolting right back out. And she’s been crying. She never cries. Tsuna scrubs his face with his hands and tries to wake the hell up. This is apparently a crisis.
“What’s wrong?” he croaks, sounding, he’s sure, the epitome of reassuring calm.
“N-nothing.” It doesn’t take hyper-intuition to know that’s a blatant lie. “It’s just…I’m, I’ll be away for a while, and. I thought I should tell you. Because you worry.”
True…and yet the conversation so far hasn’t done much to make him worry less. “Well. Thank you for telling me. Um…you were in Korea…?”
“Mukuro-sama and Fran-kun are finishing up.”
“So you left there and came back here…to tell me you’re leaving.” At four in the morning. Is he still half-asleep, or does that make no sense at all?
“I’ll be gone for four months,” she says. “Or. A year?”
“That’s a long time,” Tsuna says carefully, wide awake now. “Are you…can you tell me where you’ll be?”
“Oh,” she breathes, looking away. “I don’t know.”
He gives up on asking her questions, because he can see that she’s about ten seconds away from crying again, which is-weird, beyond weird, since when does Chrome cry? Not since before Daemon Spade, anyway. Tsuna studies her, trying to puzzle out the problem.
The strange thing is, she doesn’t look bad, apart from the terrifying tears. Tired, yes. Maybe a little pale, though it’s hard to tell in this light. Otherwise, she seems unusually healthy. Certainly better-fed than normal; she must like Korean food. It’s hard to tell exactly how much weight she’s put on, though, because her clothes are the least form-fitting things he’s ever seen her wear-a long, flowing shirt, almost as long as some of her skirts, and a knee-length skirt under that. Like she’s trying to hide her body.
Trying to hide her body. Random crying. Five months in Korea, which is to say, five months since she was last in Japan. To be followed by four months to a year elsewhere, anywhere.
What Tsuna’s thinking is crazy. It’s impossible.
Is it crazier and more impossible, though, than Chrome showing up in his room in the wee hours of the morning crying and threatening to disappear? Maybe not.
Does she even have those body parts? Tsuna’s seen her on bad days, and her middle collapses completely, nothing in there at all.
Well. But isn’t that the point? Can’t she have any organs she feels like having? So this was a deliberate choice.
God, does she think she can maintain the illusion of a womb through labor? Because that doesn’t seem remotely safe.
Tsuna does a quick calculation, and it’s going to be a near thing, but Chrome probably won’t be a teen mother. He’s not sure why he finds that comforting, but he does, and since it’s the only comforting thing about this situation so far, he’s planning to cling to it.
“Please be careful,” he whispers, trying not to panic.
“I will,” she whispers back.
“Don’t be alone. That’s an order, Chrome.”
“…Okay, Boss.”
“If you need anything-it doesn’t matter what it is, doesn’t matter when-you can have it. Call me, okay? It’s fine. Anything.”
She nods and leaves the room, tears running silently down her face.
Tsuna gets out of bed. He’s not sleeping any more tonight; there’s no point kidding himself about it. He may as well get some work done.
He wonders if the father knows. Given the way Chrome is currently fleeing the country, probably not. But it’s not Tsuna’s place to tell him, if Chrome doesn’t want him to know.
Tsuna feels a little like crying, himself.
* * *
Kusakabe stopped questioning Kyouya years ago. There’s no point; it only irritates him and frustrates you. Kyouya has his reasons for everything he does, and you can love him or leave him, but you’re not going to change his mind. Besides, his reasons are generally good. The problem is that he insists on doing everything according to his own system, and his system makes very little sense from the outside.
Kusakabe stopped trying to explain Kyouya to other people around the same time he stopped questioning him. Again, there’s really no point.
In accordance with these philosophies, when Chrome Dokuro started wandering in and out of Kyouya’s rooms at odd hours, Kusakabe neither commented on it to Kyouya nor mentioned it to anyone else. After all, Chrome is a free agent. If she’s also a touch insane, well, the same can be said of Kyouya. So that’s fair. Besides, Kusakabe’s watched them attacking each other (Chrome refers to it as “practice,” Kusakabe refers to it as “fighting very nearly to the death”), and it’s obvious that Chrome can hold her own.
The Chrome visits have gone on for a couple of years now, and it has blessedly never been Kusakabe’s business or concern. Or at least, that was true until today.
Chrome wanders in. Kusakabe’s glad to see her, because it’s been almost a year. She is prone to inexplicably vanishing for long periods of time, but this was unusually long, and it’s always a relief when she reappears. Even Kyouya half-smiles at the sight of her, though the smile vanishes when he notices that she’s carrying something.
It’s a mysterious bundle wrapped in cloth. She’s cradling it with exaggerated care, like the idea of dropping it-of holding it in the first place-terrifies her. Strange for her to be carrying anything other than a weapon.
She casts Kusakabe an alarmed look, as if she’s never seen him before-which is normal-then kneels opposite Hibari and stares at him, worried and confused. Which is not normal. When she tugs the cloth back from the bundle, everything starts to make a horrible kind of sense.
It’s a baby. They say babies look like their fathers, and this one definitely looks like Kyouya. Only a lifetime of dealing with the bizarre keeps Kusakabe from gasping out loud.
Romario maintains that Kyouya is a blank slate-a creepy, sociopathic blank slate, in fact-but that’s not true. Kyouya’s very expressive, in an understated way. Easy to read once you get used to him.
This time, though, he really is blank-as if something critical just disconnected inside his head. Kusakabe doesn’t blame him.
Chrome very carefully holds the baby out to Kyouya, and after a stunned moment, he takes it. Chrome hesitates, fidgeting and searching for words for an agonizingly long time before she gives up, stands, and walks out, eyes studiously on the floor. Out of the room, out of the building, and gone, Kusakabe expects, for the next several months.
Kyouya doesn’t watch her go; he’s still staring at the baby with that total lack of expression. The baby’s slept through all of this, and why not? Not a word’s been spoken.
Ten minutes pass, the silence broken only by quiet, sleeping baby noises. Kusakabe refuses to allow himself any reaction until he knows which direction Kyouya’s going to run with this. Dwelling on the scary possibilities won’t help anything.
Kyouya shifts slightly, looking away from the baby and blinking at the room. Apparently he’d forgotten the room existed, and is annoyed to find it there.
“Tetsu,” he snaps, low and irritated. “Go buy…baby things.”
“Yes, Kyou-san,” Kusakabe breathes in relief.
He heads to the stores with a spring in his step. Kyouya’s decided he’s responsible for the baby; this is the best case scenario. Once Kyouya’s taken responsibility for something, he never lets it go. And Kusakabe likes babies.
He wonders if it’s a boy or a girl. He’ll have to buy gender-neutral things until he knows. Baby clothes are sold by age, aren’t they? Given how long Chrome was gone, the baby can’t be much older than three months. Is it healthy for a baby to be without its mother so soon?
Well, but. Chrome. What can you do?
So, formula and bottles. Clothes. Diapers. Blankets. A crib. Kyouya will definitely keep the baby in his room at first-Kyouya is going to be a terrifying, possessive monster about this, this is going to be worse than the time Hibird sprained a wing-but eventually they’ll need to make up a nursery. What else do babies need? Toys? Things to chew on?
Doctor’s appointments. Finding out if the baby has a name and which country it’s a citizen of, if any. Explaining all of this to the ward office. Oh God, and babies keep weird hours, don’t they? Kyouya’s going to be really short on sleep, and everyone over the age of one is going to bleed because of it. This should be fun.
But first, shopping. Easiest and most immediately necessary. Everything else can wait.
Kusakabe has had to buy a lot of strange things for Kyouya over the years. He finds it’s best to have a sympathy-inducing story to go with his bizarre purchases, or else he gets funny looks.
This time it should be easy. He can stick very near the truth, and it may even win him help from bystanders. He thinks his story will start, “So my best friend’s girlfriend just-right now!-showed up out of the blue…”
He should probably hurry, though. Eventually the baby is going to wake up, find its mother gone, and likely have a screaming fit. Kusakabe needs to get back home before Kyouya does something rash in response.
Romario is going to laugh for hours when he hears about this.
* * *
There’s a toddler running around the house.
This isn’t so odd in itself. There have been, off and on, a lot of toddlers running around the Chiavarone estate. But there’s one key difference between those toddlers and this one, which is that Dino always knew who those children belonged to and where they came from.
This one is a little mystery. A cute little mystery, but that doesn’t really help. She’s clearly Japanese, which cuts down the possibilities a bit too much, since Dino can’t think of anyone on that side of the Vongola family who has a kid this age. Or any kids at all.
She is ridiculously cute-moving with awkward care, a serious expression on her cherubic, round face, wearing a screamingly pink dress designed on the theory that fluffier is better. But seriously. Whose kid is she? And why is she trying to dismantle that antique jewelry box?
“Hello,” Dino says in Japanese, trying to distract mystery toddler from her destructive efforts. “What’s your name?” Seems wise to keep things simple.
She turns away from the box and stares at him for an uncomfortably long time before dismissively declaring, “Stranger,” and attacking the box again.
“Your name is Stranger?” Dino asks.
“Papa says don’t talk to strangers,” she corrects, eyes on the box.
“But…I can’t be that much of a stranger. You’re in my house.”
“Stranger,” she insists, voice starting to climb.
“I’m Dino Chiavarone. This is my house. There, now we’re not strangers, right?”
“Stranger, stranger, stranger!”
Suddenly there’s a fist pressed to his back, a tonfa across his throat, and a pleasantly familiar but completely insane voice hissing into his ear, “You’re annoying my daughter.”
Dino thinks he can actually hear the sound of his mind snapping clean in half.
“Papa!” the little girl cries in a complete reversal of attitude, seizing the box and bouncing a few steps in their direction, beaming. “I found a box like yours!”
“It’s not like mine,” Kyouya corrects blandly. “But take it to Tetsu. I’ll follow you once I’ve bitten this one to death.”
“Okay!”
“Kyouya, that box is pretty expens-” the rest of the words come out as a pitiful croaking noise thanks to an increase in tonfa pressure, and Dino can only watch sadly as the box is stolen away by tiny hands. Tiny hands that keep dropping it every few yards. Goodbye, dear family heirloom. I’m sorry I failed you.
Dino reflects, as Kyouya releases him only to launch into a head-on attack, that Romario must have known about this…child situation. He and Kusakabe are brain twins, after all; what one of them knows, the other will know within twenty-four hours. Which means Romario deliberately chose not to tell Dino, probably in the hope that he’d get to see Dino’s face when he found out.
At first blood-his, of course-it occurs to him that Tsuna also must know, because Tsuna keeps obsessively close track of his family. Besides, Gokudera tells him everything, and Gokudera is a confirmed stalker. Who knew Tsuna was malicious enough to spring something like this on Dino with no warning? Little traitor.
By the time Kyouya’s bleeding, Dino has confronted the fact that there has to be, God help them all, a woman somewhere in this equation. A crazy woman, one must assume. A dangerous woman, or Kyouya wouldn’t have bothered. Dino reflects on the crazy, dangerous women Kyouya knows. The little girl doesn’t look like any of them. Actually, she looks a bit like a tiny, female Kyouya, if Dino considers it with that horrifying possibility in mind.
“So that’s your daughter.”
Kyouya responds by trying to steal Dino’s whip and break his arm.
“She’s awfully cute, Kyouya.”
“Shut up.”
“You must’ve been a cute kid, too!”
“You’re a dead man, Chiavarone.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Yes.”
“…Does she have a mother?”
“If you have to ask, it’s no wonder you have no children.”
“Kyouya! That was below the belt!”
“Whatever works.”
Kyouya…appears to be messing with him. This is a new and troubling development. Could it be that fatherhood has mellowed him? “Do I know her mother?”
“I don’t keep track of your social life.”
“No, seriously, Kyouya, who is she?”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
This reluctance is really strange. Who’s he trying to protect? “Who should I contact if you and Kusakabe get yourselves killed?”
“We won’t.”
“If you did.”
“Sawada Tsunayoshi.”
“So Tsuna’s the mother?”
Dino quickly finds himself flat on his back staring up at the sole of a shoe as it makes a fairly sincere effort to crush his nose into the rest of his face.
“We’ll be here until Friday,” Kyouya says calmly. “If you annoy my daughter again, I’ll feed her your heart.”
What, no bite you to death? Well, switching things up, that’s nice. And Dino vaguely remembers that you’re supposed to eat the hearts of brave enemies to absorb their courage and strength. This may be the creepiest compliment he’s ever received.
Kyouya removes his shoe from Dino’s face and stalks off. Dino rubs gently at his nose and feels comprehensively sorry for himself, scary compliments notwithstanding. Kyouya, no longer satisfied with physical abuse, is now mocking him, too. Romario’s withholding information. Tsuna is laughing at him from across the ocean. Kyouya’s adorable little girl wears pink, fluffy dresses.
This is all starting to feel like a cosmic joke at Dino’s expense.
* * *
Hibari named their daughter, but Chrome was the one who explained the name to Tsuna, when the girl was still a baby and Chrome was still afraid to touch her.
Asami, spelled with the kanji for morning and sea, because she was born in the morning and over the sea. And Hibari will never forget it, Chrome said, smiling a strange smile.
Tsuna listened very carefully and understood very little. It was frustrating; Chrome’s explanation barely skirted the edge of what Tsuna wanted to know. What had she called the baby before leaving her with Hibari? Why was she so afraid of her own daughter? Where exactly had Asami been born, and who’d been there? Just Mukuro, or Ken and Chikusa, too? Had they bothered with a hospital?
The idea of an exhausted Chrome, an unsupervised Mukuro, and another man’s child alone together…Tsuna isn’t sure exactly what he’s afraid of, but he is afraid. He watches Asami, a quiet and composed five, and tries to convince himself that he would have noticed by now if Mukuro had done something to her.
And besides, Mukuro, however drastic his faults, has always loved Chrome. He wouldn’t hurt her daughter, especially not a daughter she’d fought so hard to have. Tsuna knows that; he can’t tell whether his lingering worry is intuition or paranoia.
Asami places a stone on the go board and stares at Tsuna, feral and eager. She seems quiet and composed until you really look at her. Tsuna smiles and turns to study the board. He has no idea what’s going on, but he suspects he may be losing. To a five-year-old.
It’s lucky his pride came pre-crushed. He places a piece at random and despairs-not just of go, more’s the pity. Of his opponent, too.
Hibari has spent most of the last five years in Namimori or near it, leaving Japan only for relatively tame scouting missions that he could bring Asami along for. And that’s been fine so far, but eventually…eventually Tsuna’s going to need his Cloud back.
He’s babysitting a child while thinking of stealing her father away. There’s got to be a special hell for that.
“Tsuna?” asks the child in question. “Are you gonna resign or what?”
“Oh.” As is not infrequently the case at this point in a go game, the board has blurred, to Tsuna’s eye, into a random array of black and white spots. “Am I losing?”
“You lost ages ago, Tsuna. Aaages ago.”
“Oh.” Now that she mentions it, her pieces are pretty noticeably dominating the board. “I resign.”
Asami whoops, leaping up to do a victory dance around the room. Tsuna has no idea who she inherited this tendency to gloat from, but he likes to think it’s Hibari’s side of the family.
The door handle turns, and before the door has a chance to swing open, Asami is back in silent, contemplative seiza across from Tsuna, looking like she’d never dream of dancing around the room. Tsuna salutes her acting abilities, but he also smiles over how very slowly that door opened.
Hibari walks in, and Asami grins at him. “Papa!”
Hibari’s mouth quirks almost imperceptibly in response, and he comes over to stand beside Asami and study the board. “Wow,” he drawls, dry and unimpressed. “Who played black?”
“I did,” Tsuna sighs. Hibari gives him a look. “Yes, I know. I got trounced by your five-year-old.”
Hibari’s expression suggests a hurtful lack of surprise. Still, Tsuna catches his sidelong, proud glance at Asami.
Asami catches it, too. She ducks her head, grinning.
“Why does she even know how to play go?” Tsuna asks, amused. “It’s not a preschooler’s game, Hibari-san.”
“It disciplines the mind,” he informs Tsuna. “I’m not interested in how herbivores train their children.”
Hibari treats child-rearing almost exactly like animal-training-the same basic pattern modified for a bipedal, very intelligent creature. It’s a little upsetting to watch. On the other hand, both his animals and his child seem happy, if odd, so maybe it works out.
“It’s time,” Hibari tells Asami, who leaps to her feet, giving Hibari a questioning look. He nods. Thus permitted, she flies into Tsuna’s arms, catching him in her usual strangle-hold hug.
“Next time, Tsuna, you pick the game,” she says, bouncing back. “But I’ll beat you anyways!”
“Anyway,” Hibari corrects.
“I’ll beat you anyway!”
“I look forward to it,” Tsuna says seriously.
“Asami,” Hibari barks, marching toward the door, apparently bored with the conversation. Asami scurries after him. Hibari never looks back, but he has cut his usual walking speed in half.
Tsuna leans back on his hands and studies his crushing defeat on the go board. Another few years, he thinks. Hibari-san can stay in Japan for another few years.
* * *
Takeshi’s not sure how things turned out this way. He’s not sure he’s happy about it, either.
Tsuna’s in Italy this week. For reasons known only to Tsuna, he took Hibari and Kusakabe with him, but not Gokudera or Takeshi. This drove Gokudera into hysterics, and Takeshi had to calm him down. But that’s fine; he signed up for Gokudera duty.
He doesn’t feel like he signed up for Hibari duty.
“Take care of my daughter,” Hibari said, randomly appearing at Takeshi’s door holding giant overnight bags and trailing a scowling little girl in a blinding purple dress. “Or I’ll bite you to death.”
Takeshi had never so much as talked to Hibari’s kid before-Hibari’d always kept her hidden away. Takeshi knows nothing about kids. On the other hand…well, he didn’t sign up for babysitting, but he does know how to pick his battles.
So it ends up like this: Tsuna’s spending the week in Italy with Hibari, Gokudera’s panicking all day every day, and Takeshi and his dad are teaching Hibari’s kid how to make sushi because Takeshi has no idea what to do with her. Definitely a recipe for some kind of disaster.
“Okay, Asami-chan. First we have to pick what kind of sushi we’re making. What do you like?”
She looks up at Takeshi with Chrome’s big eyes and Hibari’s unnervingly direct stare and asks, “What’s the best?”
“There isn’t really a best kind of sushi,” he tells her, kneeling down so they’re level.
“There’s a best everything,” she assures him with scary conviction. “Papa says you should never accept anything but the best.”
Takeshi’s learned more about the life philosophy of Asami’s papa in the last hour than he had over the previous fifteen years. “Haha, right. So if people try to give you second-class stuff, are you supposed to bite them to death?”
“No. Papa says girls shouldn’t bite people to death,” she informs him primly. “Girls should gouge people’s eyes out, because it’s acceptable for us to wear our nails longer. So that’s more practical.” She gives Takeshi a pitying look. “You don’t know anything, do you?”
He senses that this is going to be a long week.
“My favorite,” Dad announces, “is inari sushi.” Takeshi raises an eyebrow, because that’s not true, and he’s not sure what Dad’s up to. “And if it’s my favorite, then it must be the best.”
Asami is openly dubious.
“I make sushi for a living. I’m an expert.”
Asami turns this over, then nods grudging acceptance. “We can make inari sushi,” she allows.
Little kids, Takeshi remembers, usually like inari sushi best, because it’s sweet, maybe. He smiles at his dad; Dad winks back.
Inari sushi turns out to be a success, and it kills a couple of hours, too. Eventually, though, Dad kicks them out, and Takeshi has to take Asami home. No Dad to protect him. Just Takeshi and a little brainwashed-by-Hibari eight-year-old, walking home alone together. Yikes.
Really, it’s weird how Hibari-influenced Asami is. Yeah, Chrome isn’t what you’d call an overwhelming personality, but she’s still Asami’s mom. She must’ve had some kind of impact. Takeshi sure can’t see it, though.
Weird.
“You see much of your mom, kiddo?”
“No,” Asami answers, apparently more interested in the cracks in the sidewalk than the question. “She’s a very busy person. And don’t call me that.”
“Hm.” So Chrome’s busy, but Hibari…isn’t? “You ever jealous of other kids? I mean, the ones who get to see their moms all the time.” God knows Takeshi had spent his whole childhood jealous.
“No,” Asami declares with a superior sniff. “Papa says herbivores come with all the parts to make babies already, so they can have babies by accident. My mama made a place for me, special. She wanted me more than theirs wanted them. Papa says she doesn’t like to hold still, is all.”
Takeshi thinks of the way Chrome is, the way she walks into a room already looking for a way out, the way she’s never really all there. Maybe she doesn’t like to hold still. Or maybe she can’t stand to. “I think your papa’s right.”
“Papa is always right.”
Haha, of course.
They make it back to the apartment uneventfully. Takeshi puts away the leftover sushi and tries to remember what he liked to do as a kid. Apart from eating food and playing baseball, he’s coming up depressingly blank, and he already tried the food thing.
Asami is staring at him with a dance, monkey, dance expression.
Takeshi’s about to suggest baseball out of sheer desperation when Gokudera pounds on the door. Best timing ever. “Gokudera,” Takeshi tells Asami, figuring she might attack if he doesn’t warn her in advance.
She scowls at him. “How do you know that?”
Because Gokudera’s lonely when Tsuna’s gone; he comes by every day. “Well…he’s got a distinctive knock?”
Asami is skeptical. Takeshi opens the door to prove his point, and, indeed, there’s Gokudera. Asami’s eyebrows go up. Hey, for the first time ever, Takeshi’s impressed her. Win.
“Where the fuck are you looking, baseball freak?” Gokudera hasn’t noticed Asami yet because he’s too busy glaring death at Takeshi.
Takeshi smiles in response. He can’t help it. “Gokudera!”
“Yamamoto. Since you’re too lazy to haul your ass the three blocks to base, I have to come to you, is that it? Work is piling up on your desk like a trash heap, and whenever you’re gone, five people a day come to me to ask where you are like I’m your goddamn moth-holy shit is that a kid?”
“Asami-chan, come see your Uncle Hayato!” Takeshi calls out with slightly manic cheer.
“Gokudera Hayato,” Asami murmurs, peering around Takeshi, not quite clinging to him.
“That’s Hibari’s kid.” Gokudera backs uneasily out onto the walkway. “What are you doing with Hibari’s kid?”
“…Babysitting?”
Gokudera makes Takeshi’s favorite shocked-and-appalled face. “Why you?”
“I think because Tsuna’s busy.”
“It’s my naptime,” Asami cuts in. “Past my naptime. Where am I supposed to sleep?”
“You’ve got a naptime?” Gokudera is incredulous. “You’re way too old for that.”
Asami glares. Gokudera glares. The two of them aren’t hitting it off the way Takeshi had hoped. “Papa naps,” Asami decrees, as if that’s a definitive argument. And it is, in her world. Papa is always right.
“Haha, yeah. I guess he does,” Takeshi cuts in before this gets out of hand. No point arguing with Hibari through his brainwashed kid. “Okay. You can sleep over here…”
Takeshi gets Asami tucked in for naptime, and she only glares a little. He doesn’t have to worry that he’s not meeting his daily glaring quota, though, because now he gets to talk to Gokudera.
Gokudera rants about Yamamoto’s work backlog for a while, but once he’s decided Asami’s asleep, he starts in on her family life, instead. Sometime during the last few years, he totally lost track of the concept of not my business. “Have you ever seen Chrome and Hibari together?” he asks.
“Um…?”
“I mean, have you ever even seen them in the same room for long? Because I haven’t. And…not that I’m an expert on domestic bliss or anything, but that seems really fucking weird.”
“Yeah, but, you know. Those two.” It would be much weirder if their relationship seemed normal. “Asami says she doesn’t see a lot of Chrome.”
“So Hibari’s the reliable one.”
“Pretty crazy, huh?”
Gokudera jams his hands in his pockets and scowls. “Am I supposed to feel bad for her?”
“Nah, she seems fine. Kinda bossy.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Two minutes, and already I want to smack her.”
“But if you smack her, she’ll gouge your eyes out.”
Gokudera rubs his forehead. “Seriously, who let Hibari breed?”
“Chrome.”
“It was a rhetorical question, asshole.” Takeshi holds his peace, and Gokudera fidgets and works himself around to feeling guilty for having said that. Given enough time and silence, Gokudera can be counted on to make himself feel guilty about anything. “So-so what, you’ve got the kid until Tenth gets back? That sucks. And it sucks for me, too, because I’m the one who has to make sure your desk doesn’t collapse under paperwork. Fucking Hibari.”
Takeshi laughs; Gokudera’s apologies are something else. “I don’t know. It might work out.”
“May God,” Gokudera says, “have mercy on your soul.”
But Takeshi’s right-things do get better after the first day. Asami eases up a lot once you know and respect her rules (Hibari’s rules). Actually, most of her problem is that she’s crazy homesick, and once Takeshi figures that out, everything makes a lot more sense. The rules are comfortable for her, familiar, and Takeshi can put up with them if they keep Asami from crying.
Still, he really wouldn’t want to deal with Hibari rules for more than a week. For one thing, the schedule might’ve been specifically designed to crush the fun out of life.
One must be awake and sparring by six, or the day is wasted, apparently. (Takeshi’s never fought a little kid before. She’s a rabid little kid, but he still has to be really careful. The idea of Hibari being that careful is…bizarre.) Breakfast is at eight. One is then free to do what one likes until lunch, as long as it involves being totally silent (death glare from a tiny kid, Do you have to be so loud?). Then lunch, then a long walk (or you could call it a patrol of Namimori), then a nap. Studying go until dinner, after which silence, and then bed. Asami reads a lot. Hibari probably works during quiet time. Takeshi cooks, or else sits around feeling like he’s going slowly insane. He should have Gokudera bring him some of that paperwork.
By midweek, Takeshi’s achieved the great victory of substituting baseball for go. Once he’s managed that, it’s not a bad lifestyle. Well, it’s survivable, anyway. It’s worth it.
Once the rules are in place and everything’s on track, Asami turns almost cheerful. Though she is still given to sharing the Gospel According to Hibari at every opportunity. The correct and only way to fold towels, water plants, brew tea, so on and so forth.
Hibari lives this way on purpose. Asami’s brainwashed, so she has an excuse, but Hibari does this to himself. Takeshi doesn’t get it.
Eventually, and though there were times when it seemed it would never happen, the week does come to an end. Takeshi escorts Asami and all of her luggage to the base. They had a fun week, more or less, but Takeshi now knows for sure that he never wants kids of his own. So in that sense, the week was productive.
Tsuna laughs when they drag Asami’s crap into his office, but Hibari doesn’t see the humor in it. He looks…well, if he were anyone else, he’d be coming off as uncertain. Takeshi gives him an encouraging smile.
Hibari’s worrying, Takeshi’s trying to cheer him up. This is the Twilight Zone.
Asami takes this moment to drop her bags and look around, and she lights up at the sight of Hibari. “Papa!” She bounds over to him, barely holding back from doing something embarrassing and crazy, like, horror of horrors, hugging her dad in front of people.
Hibari’s unsure look disappears, and he reaches out to briefly touch Asami’s hair, smiling one of his stealth smiles. “I see,” he says, “that Yamamoto Takeshi still has his eyes.”
Asami shrugs, but she can’t seem to stop herself from grinning.
“Sorry I stole him away from you, Asami-chan,” Tsuna says, watching the two of them, peaceful and pleased. “I’ll try not to do it too often, okay?”
Asami looks up at Hibari. He nods, and Asami goes barreling over to Tsuna, who kneels down to meet her. She crashes right into him, hugging him around the neck until he looks likely to choke, not that he seems to mind. It must be acceptable to hug Tsuna in public. Makes sense, really. Hugging Tsuna can’t be a bad thing; that’s got to be a natural law.
Tsuna leans back, hands on Asami’s shoulders, and asks about her week. She launches into an explanation of the finer points of sushi-making and baseball, periodically checking on her father to see if he’s listening. He is. Hibari always pays attention to things that interest him.
Tsuna’s amazing with Asami, which is no surprise. He was amazing with kids when he was a kid. But here he is, almost thirty, and not only does he not have kids of his own, he doesn’t even have kids vaguely in sight on the horizon. And Takeshi’s in the same boat. In fact, Hibari and Chrome are still the only guardians with a kid, and it wasn’t Hibari’s idea. This means Chrome is the bravest of them all, or maybe the one with the most faith.
That doesn’t bode well for the rest of them.
* * *
Tsuna’s trying to work, really he is. Unfortunately, he’s always been easily distracted, and Asami, like her father, unlike her mother, is an especially distracting distraction. It’s not her fault-she’s curled up beside Chrome on the couch, perfectly quiet. Neither of them needs anything from Tsuna, and yet he can’t help checking on them every thirty seconds.
Asami is balancing a sketchbook on her knees and whispering to Chrome. Chrome is conjuring up illusions in response to the whispers-flowers, birds, weapons-for Asami to sketch. They’re laughing together, quiet and low and private. Tsuna’s never seen Chrome happier. It’s a shame she can’t stand to be happy for long.
Hibari and Asami are different when they’re together. They don’t talk much, but Asami always watches him, looks to him for approval, guidance, reassurance. Things most people would never think to look to Hibari for. And Hibari’s always watched her, too-with demented protectiveness when she was young, but more and more with quiet pride. They’re a self-sufficient, closed circuit of two, happy in themselves and each other, deadly to almost everyone else. It shouldn’t be anywhere near as cute as it is.
Chrome fits into this circuit the same way she fits into anything-hesitantly, peripherally, never giving herself a chance to settle in, but never giving anyone a reason to get rid of her. She spends as much time with Mukuro as she does with Asami, and she spends as much time missing as she does with either of them, but because Hibari and Asami don’t need anything, they don’t resent Chrome for being gone so often. On the other hand, they always seem pleased when she’s there.
Again, it shouldn’t work, but it seems to.
Yamamoto walks in, interrupting these thoughts. He follows Tsuna’s line of sight to the day’s distraction, and laughs. “Hey, Chrome. Hey, Asami, you doing homework in Tsuna’s office now?”
“Just art. He has the best light,” she answers absently, sparing Yamamoto a second’s acknowledging glance before returning her attention to her mother and her sketchbook.
Tsuna’s reasonably sure that’s a lie. From what he can remember of art class, outdoor light was meant to be best. Not that he plans to argue with her-it never works. He sighs, fighting a smile. “She’s not just doing homework,” he tells Yamamoto. “She’s cheating on it. She’s supposed to be drawing things that don’t exist.”
In response to this, Chrome conjures up a free-floating eyeball with a spade for a pupil.
Yamamoto says, “There. That doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t see a problem.”
Tsuna laughs helplessly, proving that he’s as sick as the rest of them. “I think she’s meant to be drawing without a model. I’m pretty sure that’s the point.”
“If that was what my teacher wanted,” Asami declares, “then that’s what she should have said.”
Tsuna wishes Yamamoto wouldn’t encourage her by laughing like that.
* * *
Chikusa is eating ice cream with a twelve-year-old girl. It feels like a punishment. In fact, he finds it helpful to think of it as a punishment, because that lowers his expectations to an appropriate level.
By rights, Ken should be doing this-he, at least, likes sweet things. It’s oddly typical that Chrome dumped the job on Chikusa instead. Sometimes it seems he’s spent half his life cleaning up after Rokudo Mukuro’s tantrums and Chrome Dokuro’s mistakes. Though he’s never been able to decide whether Asami is Chrome’s most spectacular mistake, or the best idea she ever had.
“Uncle Chikusa, how do you kill someone with a yo-yo?”
Just at the moment, he’s inclining more to the spectacular mistake opinion.
“It’s not a weapon you can use,” he explains. “You’re the wrong flame. Doesn’t your father have someone training you?”
The child of cloud and mist, Asami has somehow managed to grow up a sun type. Chikusa puts that down to sheer willful perversity.
“Aunt Adelheid is teaching me to kill people with knives, no flames,” Asami informs him. “Reborn sits and shoots at me sometimes; he says he’s too old to chase me around. Uncle Ryouhei is teaching me to make my body into a rifle. He’s not very smart, is he? Uncle Ryouhei, I mean.”
“It doesn’t matter; he’s a great fighter. Listen to him when he tells you how to fight. Ignore him if he tries to help you with homework.”
“Papa says that’s what Uncle Hayato and Aunt Haru are for, anyway.”
Every once in a while, Chikusa can almost see what Chrome sees in Hibari Kyouya. “I suppose he’d know.”
“He has jobs for everybody,” Asami goes on thoughtfully. “All the aunts and uncles. But not you and Uncle Ken.”
“We were there when you were born,” Chikusa points out. “Maybe we’ve fulfilled our duty.” In your deranged father’s eyes.
Asami stares at him. “I didn’t know you were there when I was born.”
“Mm.” So Chrome doesn’t talk about that. Well, why would she?
“What was it like?” Wide eyes and avid curiosity.
What was it like.
Just past the witching hour in a ratty hotel room in Italy, absurdly far north. Lega Nord territory for the irony in it, too cold for the season, room not particularly clean. Chrome moaning like the damned, too worn out to scream, blood painting the sheets, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and Chikusa still doesn’t know how they managed that; like a murder scene, like the lab when Mukuro was done with it. Ken holding a baby, the baby screaming, screaming Chrome’s share of screams and then some. Ken shouting at Chikusa, “What the hell is this cord thing, this is gross, should I bite it off? What the fuck?” Mukuro leaning over Chrome, murmuring, “No, you need your kidneys, keep hold of those. Shh. Dear Chrome, you need your stomach, too. Did you think I wouldn’t notice it missing? Don’t fight me, little one.”
And Fran, who showed up out of nowhere, presumably at Mukuro’s invitation. Fran, wandering in and out with boiling water and towels and sterilized scalpels, talking non-stop in a bland, uninflected voice. “Wow, that’s not normal. There’s an awful lot of blood, isn’t there? I’m surprised she’s not dead already. I can see you’ve never held a baby before, Mr. Ken, because you’re doing everything wrong. Mr. Chikusa, if you’re just going to stare like an imbecile, please move to the corner to do it.”
After the worst was over, after the screaming had stopped and everyone seemed likely to live through the night, Mukuro handed Chrome her baby. She took it in her arms so, so carefully, and stared into its face like her heart was breaking.
Then she turned suddenly and pushed the baby back toward Mukuro, panic-stricken, whispering, “I can’t, I can’t do this, I can’t-take it away.”
In the end, Chrome, who routinely stares death, torture, and madness in the eye with nothing more than a deep breath and a set mouth, ran screaming from the reality of motherhood.
Chikusa doesn’t think the baby wants to know any of that. “It was a nightmare,” he says. “But we all lived through it.” That’s how life goes, generally. Up until the nightmare you don’t live through.
“…Oh. Were you and Uncle Ken the only ones there?”
“And Fran,” Chikusa corrects. “And Mukuro-san, of course.”
Asami’s eyes glaze over a bit. “After this,” she says, “can we go to the park? You can show me how to kill people with a yo-yo. Maybe I can’t learn it, but I want to see.”
Ah. This again.
Asami’s very odd on the subject of Mukuro, and no wonder. Her father hates the man, but her mother adores him; these facts are known, accepted, never discussed. Any opinion she has will make one of her parents unhappy.
Her solution is to pretend that Mukuro doesn’t exist. Mukuro finds this hilarious, and when Mukuro finds something hilarious, it never ends well.
There is another, more disturbing possibility, of course. Maybe she really doesn’t know Mukuro exists. He might have liked the idea of being invisible to Hibari Kyouya’s daughter. He might have cheated to make it so.
The girl probably deserves some leeway. It’s not her fault she came to Mukuro’s negative attention the instant she was born.
“All right,” Chikusa agrees. “The park.”
Part 2