Like the rest of the level that she's seen so far, the room she steps into is minimalist and elegant. Straight ahead of her lies a calligraphy scroll hanging in a small alcove, and a mat has been set up ahead of her before doors that have been already slid open. A peek shows the "outside" is where the soft burbling noise is coming from, bamboo pipes carrying water into a small pond and a lovely camellia garden growing around it. To the left, however, is what interests her most: her target, Hibari Kyoya, seated neatly in a dark gray yukata. To Haru's surprise, tea has been set out between his mat and what is presumably hers.
Well, she's not going to let a freak like him outdo her when it comes to basic manners! Using the utmost care to sit down without ruining the kimono she's been so generously allowed to borrow, Haru bows. "Thank you for your time, Hibari-san."
Even with his sense for tradition, Haru supposes she can't be particularly surprised when he cuts straight to the point. "What did you come here for?"
She can play that game too, if that's really what he wants. Thinning her lips, Haru squares her shoulders. "What did you mean when you came up to me out of nowhere and said you had found me?"
Coolly, he raises an eyebrow. "Is that all?" Haru's face heats up a little at his dismissive tone, but Hibari keeps going. "I had no interest in having you try to run away again, so I put an end to it."
It looks like there's no hiding it, then. She resists the urge to puff her cheeks out in annoyance, and focuses on just responding. "So you know we're soulmates?"
"It leads to you, so there's no doubt about it, is there?"
"....So?"
"So what?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Why should I do anything?"
Even with all the restraint she's doing her best to use, Haru has to gape. "But- we're soulmates!"
Elbow pressing into his knee, he lets his cheek rest on one propped up fist. "What does that matter to me? You're the one who's been constantly running, well aware of your soulmates but too much of a coward to follow the threads."
"I'm not-!"
"I have no time," Hibari says, coldly cutting her off, "for cowardly herbivores or liars, whether those lies are to themselves or others. Why should I be interested in you when you're both, outside of the challenge you posed?"
There's no reason for this to hurt. Really, doesn't this work out for her in the end? She never wanted to be tied down by her soulmates anyway, and now look! One of them doesn't care about it either. It's fine. It should be fine.
It's actually not fine, and, to her surprise, she can feel the painful tug of tears wanting to push out from behind her eyes.
Stubborn to a fault, she digs her fingers into the delicate fabric of her kimono as if to grasp something, anything, to keep the unexpected flood of feeling from pouring out. The sting of tears, wet stickiness all across her cheeks, a damp backlog blocking up her throat, that horrible stuffiness from her nose that twists her voice and makes her misery obvious- Haru hates all of it. She despises it, more than anything else in the world, how weak and fragile crying transforms her both in looks and feeling. All she can think of every time, too, is the last time she cried, all draped in black and hidden away in her room.
So she doesn't- she refuses to, sitting there with a back of unsteady steel, shoulders shaking and her jaw tense. There's no possible way for anyone to miss it, she knows, but Hibari Kyoya doesn't say anything. All he does is pour out tea for both of their cups and drink, ignoring her completely.
Eventually, when she breathes, her throat is no longer squeezed so tight and Haru exhales quietly in her thankfulness. Fighting against herself is exhausting, worse than running away from Hibari has ever been, but at least she has a little clarity now. Because.... Because she guesses she shouldn't be surprised, even though the knowledge stings.
A soul bond isn't a guarantee for anything else save for the fact that one person is connected to another. That's the fact that she's told herself for years and years but.... Even with how much she had run, even with how much she had clenched her fists at every romance movie and ad playing to the heartstrings... She's wanted that. Tsuna's cute, and kind, and it's easy to care for him, but he's not her soulmate. He doesn't look at her like he looks at the others, Kyoko or Yamamoto or Gokudera, doesn't look at her like he wants her. Yet in the back of her mind, lurking, there's always been the idea that someone out there would, and... Maybe it'd been a comfort to think she'd still be wanted, even when she was running away.
Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb!
"...Thank you for being honest with me, Hibari-san." His gaze flicks up at her again at the sound of her voice, and Haru can barely meet it from beneath her bangs. Embarrassment burns hot in her gut, another fight she forces herself to win. "I'm sorry for any trouble..."
No immediate answer. He merely takes a sip from his teacup, seeming to savor the taste, before his eyes glance in the direction of her own cup. "Drink."
"Thank you."
"Don't waste the food either."
"Hibari-san, I know how to eat!"
Yet it's surprisingly nice, not having to really worry about conversation with Hibari. The entire situation has left even her too drained for talking, let alone anything that might address the fool she'd probably made of herself just a moment ago, but.... He doesn't pursue it. There's only trickling water, the smell of tea, and chirping from that lone bird who eventually, to Haru's surprise, flutters in brazenly. Unable to stop herself, she grins at its fat little yellow body, and does her best to sneak it crumbs. She's positive Hibari notices, but he doesn't say anything. Soon enough, it grows bold enough to hope onto her knee, and she almost chokes on her own tongue from the effort it take to keep from laughing as it belts out a familiar song.
When the sweets have run out and Hibari has stopped pouring tea, Haru gives another polite bow before awkwardly getting up to her feet. "Thank you for having me, Hibari-san."
All he does is yawn into his hand and gesture vaguely to the door. "Tetsu will see you out."
She almost has a heart attack at the realization that Kusakabe has been patiently waiting at the door on his knees the whole time; she'd completely forgotten him the second she'd laid eyes on Hibari. At least he doesn't seem tired or displeased, escorting her back to the elevator with the same kind patience as before. Once they're far away enough that Haru doesn't think her voice will carry to Hibari, she peeks up at Kusakabe. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long, Kusakabe-san. I'll-" A yawn breaks through her words, her own hands too slow to catch it. "I'll.... fold up the kimono right away."
Glancing down at his watch, Kusakabe shakes his head. "It's gotten late, Miura-san. Simply change into your night clothes and I can fold it back into its box. You should rest."
When he comes back and has put the kimono box back into storage, it seems as though Kyoya has adjusted the lighting for a more nighttime effect. Tetsuya finds him in the same room as where he had the meeting with Haru, only now he's moved to sit lazily on the porch "outside". Even from his position at the doorway, he can see how Kyoya pets Hibird with all the care in the world. "I escorted Miura-san back to her room," he informs him, although it hardly needs to be said. When a small noise lets him know he's been heard, Tetsuya continues with a tinge of amusement coating his voice. "Was it necessary to insist on bringing her that particular kimono, Kyo-san? She was quite nervous wearing it."
"But she still wore it." Lazily, Kyoya glances back at him. "That's all I wanted to see."
Tetsuya's lips twitch up into a small grin. "It has needed to be aired out," he concedes. "Would you like more tea, Kyo-san?"
"Mm. Get more manjū as well."
Tetsuya obeys, like he always does, but goes to settle down besides Kyoya when he comes back- a display no one else is ever privy to. As he pours out the camellia tea again, he hums thoughtfully. "Was that harshness necessary?"
"Of course." Kyoya takes one of the sweets from the tray, nibbling it. "She won't grow otherwise, Tetsu. I have no interest in women who run away."
A good thing his head is bowed. Tetsuya couldn't hide his smile if he tried. "It would be good if your past self could meet her sooner, too."
Kyoya doesn't give an answer, instead preferring to purse his lips, so Tetsuya knows he's right. Self-serving as always, even if it's an unusual appliance of what "self" means in this case. "Have we received any messages from Shimon?" Kyoya asks instead.
"Yes, I learned of something after I escorted Miura-san back to her room. Mizuno Kaoru left a message for us in the arranged method."
"What did it say?"
"Shimon managed to divert a Millefiore squadron to the Yunnan province in China. The leader has been dispatched, and two underlings framed for the dath. Last Shimon checked, the squadron was in disarray and left without communications as they had sabotaged their equipment. Shimon has retreated to the city of Yuxi, where they will gather supplies and tend to injuries they have sustained since away from Japan. In the next week or so, they will attempt to return by way of the Fukuoka Prefecture. Should things go smoothly, they will give us more information then."
"Were there details of the injuries they sustained?"
Only for a second, Tetsuya pauses. "The only one made note of was a broken leg sustained by Suzuki Adelheid."
"How?"
"The message said that they came into contact with a solo operative while withdrawing, and she had to withstand the pressure of his box weapon in order to snap his neck before he could contact reinforcements."
That seems to satisfy him, sipping his tea with a short nod. "Good."
No concern, no fear, no worry- Tetsuya supposes he can't be surprised. Kyoya would never show such feelings openly, and besides... While he's not been told the details, Tetsuya suspects that his no-longer-young master has some sort of plan in mind for when they start the base invasion. He seems confident that the Millefiore, even with all the Vongola have lost, won't win this war.
Then again, on occasion, Kyoya's idea of "victory" has meant forcing a shattered body onwards and tearing it out of the enemy's grasp with bloody fangs. It's more than a little concerning, but....
All Tetsuya can do is have faith that the Vongola and all its allies will survive this.
The very first thing Haru does when things are made right again- when the Millefiore are defeated, when the wounded are gathered, when they're returned to the time they're meant to be in- is hug her father.
It's only been... What? A week? A month? Their journey into the future feels like it's taken years. Too long, to be certain, to be away from her father. She wraps her arms tight around him when he comes through the door from the university, almost barreling him back out the door, and his surprised laugh reverberates through her entire body. Haru doesn't tell him why she hugs him so tightly, face burying into the well worn smell of his jacket, she just does it. Maybe, even oblivious as he is, he senses that something has happened, because it doesn't take nearly as much haggling as she expected for him to agree to eating out that night. Sushi can be expensive, but they haven't splurged all month, so it's fine. For once, there's not a lot of people in TakeSushi, and Haru quietly enjoys the peaceful chatter of a place free of danger and tension.
If she notices Yamamoto-kun doing the same with his father from behind the counter, mask slipping just a little from the weight of relief, well. She doesn't say anything.
When they return home, perfect and mundane and not empty or destroyed, Haru goes to have a bath and runs her fingers over her soul bonds. The journey to the future hasn't changed them one bit. Hibari Kyoya, all swift elegant strokes of kanji. Suzuki Adelheid, longer katakana left unfulfilled. Neither of them are scars, beautiful black transformed into jagged edges made uglier for what they represent.
They hadn't become scars in the future, either.
People were hunting them and all their loved ones down, family had been murdered, her and Kyoko and the kids had almost come close to dying themselves... But her soul bonds hadn't reflected any loss like the books said they would in the event of a soulmate's death. Then again, she supposes, none of the books had ever taken time travel into account. That's not the kind of thing most people do, really. Maybe her bonds simply reflected her connection to the Hibari and Suzuki of her own time instead of the future.
Knees drawn up out of the water, she traces the lines of Hibari's name again. In the face of everything, he'd been utterly casual about it all. Fear and tension had been humming throughout the base despite everyone's best attempts to ignore it, and the world above had been nothing but danger and death... But you never would have been able to tell in the Foundation base as Hibari drank tea and listened to his bird chirp. He'd beaten back hordes of Millefiore soldiers, made his way to the base on his own after everyone else, and still came back. Oh, sure, by that last part, he'd become ten years younger, but still. Hibari Kyoya had flung himself into raging infernos of danger and still come out not even particularly bothered by it all.
There are implications here, feelings that press down on all her buttons, but Haru forces herself to both stop touching her soul bond and stop thinking about it. No soulmates! She told herself. Yet for all her best efforts, the thoughts still hound after her from the bath to her bed. There's something she has to consider, no matter how much she doesn't want to:
What is she going to do about the Hibari Kyoya of this time?
When he'd become younger, there hadn't been any time for their usual hide-and-seek pattern. Everything had been happening, from Choice to fleeing for safety to hiding in the forest for that final battle... Had he realized who she was? Had he had the chance to? His old self had sniffed when he'd hunted her down; is his bond to her scent based? And if he hadn't realized who she was, who she is to him... Should she tell him? The questions circle all around her as she fades into sleep, and the last thing she clearly thinks...
...is that he'd probably be disappointed if she ruined his fun by hunting him down instead of letting the chase continue.
2
Well, she's not going to let a freak like him outdo her when it comes to basic manners! Using the utmost care to sit down without ruining the kimono she's been so generously allowed to borrow, Haru bows. "Thank you for your time, Hibari-san."
Even with his sense for tradition, Haru supposes she can't be particularly surprised when he cuts straight to the point. "What did you come here for?"
She can play that game too, if that's really what he wants. Thinning her lips, Haru squares her shoulders. "What did you mean when you came up to me out of nowhere and said you had found me?"
Coolly, he raises an eyebrow. "Is that all?" Haru's face heats up a little at his dismissive tone, but Hibari keeps going. "I had no interest in having you try to run away again, so I put an end to it."
It looks like there's no hiding it, then. She resists the urge to puff her cheeks out in annoyance, and focuses on just responding. "So you know we're soulmates?"
"It leads to you, so there's no doubt about it, is there?"
"....So?"
"So what?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Why should I do anything?"
Even with all the restraint she's doing her best to use, Haru has to gape. "But- we're soulmates!"
Elbow pressing into his knee, he lets his cheek rest on one propped up fist. "What does that matter to me? You're the one who's been constantly running, well aware of your soulmates but too much of a coward to follow the threads."
"I'm not-!"
"I have no time," Hibari says, coldly cutting her off, "for cowardly herbivores or liars, whether those lies are to themselves or others. Why should I be interested in you when you're both, outside of the challenge you posed?"
There's no reason for this to hurt. Really, doesn't this work out for her in the end? She never wanted to be tied down by her soulmates anyway, and now look! One of them doesn't care about it either. It's fine. It should be fine.
It's actually not fine, and, to her surprise, she can feel the painful tug of tears wanting to push out from behind her eyes.
Stubborn to a fault, she digs her fingers into the delicate fabric of her kimono as if to grasp something, anything, to keep the unexpected flood of feeling from pouring out. The sting of tears, wet stickiness all across her cheeks, a damp backlog blocking up her throat, that horrible stuffiness from her nose that twists her voice and makes her misery obvious- Haru hates all of it. She despises it, more than anything else in the world, how weak and fragile crying transforms her both in looks and feeling. All she can think of every time, too, is the last time she cried, all draped in black and hidden away in her room.
So she doesn't- she refuses to, sitting there with a back of unsteady steel, shoulders shaking and her jaw tense. There's no possible way for anyone to miss it, she knows, but Hibari Kyoya doesn't say anything. All he does is pour out tea for both of their cups and drink, ignoring her completely.
Eventually, when she breathes, her throat is no longer squeezed so tight and Haru exhales quietly in her thankfulness. Fighting against herself is exhausting, worse than running away from Hibari has ever been, but at least she has a little clarity now. Because.... Because she guesses she shouldn't be surprised, even though the knowledge stings.
A soul bond isn't a guarantee for anything else save for the fact that one person is connected to another. That's the fact that she's told herself for years and years but.... Even with how much she had run, even with how much she had clenched her fists at every romance movie and ad playing to the heartstrings... She's wanted that. Tsuna's cute, and kind, and it's easy to care for him, but he's not her soulmate. He doesn't look at her like he looks at the others, Kyoko or Yamamoto or Gokudera, doesn't look at her like he wants her. Yet in the back of her mind, lurking, there's always been the idea that someone out there would, and... Maybe it'd been a comfort to think she'd still be wanted, even when she was running away.
Dumb. Dumb dumb dumb!
"...Thank you for being honest with me, Hibari-san." His gaze flicks up at her again at the sound of her voice, and Haru can barely meet it from beneath her bangs. Embarrassment burns hot in her gut, another fight she forces herself to win. "I'm sorry for any trouble..."
No immediate answer. He merely takes a sip from his teacup, seeming to savor the taste, before his eyes glance in the direction of her own cup. "Drink."
"Thank you."
"Don't waste the food either."
"Hibari-san, I know how to eat!"
Yet it's surprisingly nice, not having to really worry about conversation with Hibari. The entire situation has left even her too drained for talking, let alone anything that might address the fool she'd probably made of herself just a moment ago, but.... He doesn't pursue it. There's only trickling water, the smell of tea, and chirping from that lone bird who eventually, to Haru's surprise, flutters in brazenly. Unable to stop herself, she grins at its fat little yellow body, and does her best to sneak it crumbs. She's positive Hibari notices, but he doesn't say anything. Soon enough, it grows bold enough to hope onto her knee, and she almost chokes on her own tongue from the effort it take to keep from laughing as it belts out a familiar song.
When the sweets have run out and Hibari has stopped pouring tea, Haru gives another polite bow before awkwardly getting up to her feet. "Thank you for having me, Hibari-san."
All he does is yawn into his hand and gesture vaguely to the door. "Tetsu will see you out."
She almost has a heart attack at the realization that Kusakabe has been patiently waiting at the door on his knees the whole time; she'd completely forgotten him the second she'd laid eyes on Hibari. At least he doesn't seem tired or displeased, escorting her back to the elevator with the same kind patience as before. Once they're far away enough that Haru doesn't think her voice will carry to Hibari, she peeks up at Kusakabe. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long, Kusakabe-san. I'll-" A yawn breaks through her words, her own hands too slow to catch it. "I'll.... fold up the kimono right away."
Glancing down at his watch, Kusakabe shakes his head. "It's gotten late, Miura-san. Simply change into your night clothes and I can fold it back into its box. You should rest."
When he comes back and has put the kimono box back into storage, it seems as though Kyoya has adjusted the lighting for a more nighttime effect. Tetsuya finds him in the same room as where he had the meeting with Haru, only now he's moved to sit lazily on the porch "outside". Even from his position at the doorway, he can see how Kyoya pets Hibird with all the care in the world. "I escorted Miura-san back to her room," he informs him, although it hardly needs to be said. When a small noise lets him know he's been heard, Tetsuya continues with a tinge of amusement coating his voice. "Was it necessary to insist on bringing her that particular kimono, Kyo-san? She was quite nervous wearing it."
"But she still wore it." Lazily, Kyoya glances back at him. "That's all I wanted to see."
Tetsuya's lips twitch up into a small grin. "It has needed to be aired out," he concedes. "Would you like more tea, Kyo-san?"
"Mm. Get more manjū as well."
Tetsuya obeys, like he always does, but goes to settle down besides Kyoya when he comes back- a display no one else is ever privy to. As he pours out the camellia tea again, he hums thoughtfully. "Was that harshness necessary?"
"Of course." Kyoya takes one of the sweets from the tray, nibbling it. "She won't grow otherwise, Tetsu. I have no interest in women who run away."
A good thing his head is bowed. Tetsuya couldn't hide his smile if he tried. "It would be good if your past self could meet her sooner, too."
Kyoya doesn't give an answer, instead preferring to purse his lips, so Tetsuya knows he's right. Self-serving as always, even if it's an unusual appliance of what "self" means in this case. "Have we received any messages from Shimon?" Kyoya asks instead.
"Yes, I learned of something after I escorted Miura-san back to her room. Mizuno Kaoru left a message for us in the arranged method."
"What did it say?"
"Shimon managed to divert a Millefiore squadron to the Yunnan province in China. The leader has been dispatched, and two underlings framed for the dath. Last Shimon checked, the squadron was in disarray and left without communications as they had sabotaged their equipment. Shimon has retreated to the city of Yuxi, where they will gather supplies and tend to injuries they have sustained since away from Japan. In the next week or so, they will attempt to return by way of the Fukuoka Prefecture. Should things go smoothly, they will give us more information then."
"Were there details of the injuries they sustained?"
Only for a second, Tetsuya pauses. "The only one made note of was a broken leg sustained by Suzuki Adelheid."
"How?"
"The message said that they came into contact with a solo operative while withdrawing, and she had to withstand the pressure of his box weapon in order to snap his neck before he could contact reinforcements."
That seems to satisfy him, sipping his tea with a short nod. "Good."
No concern, no fear, no worry- Tetsuya supposes he can't be surprised. Kyoya would never show such feelings openly, and besides... While he's not been told the details, Tetsuya suspects that his no-longer-young master has some sort of plan in mind for when they start the base invasion. He seems confident that the Millefiore, even with all the Vongola have lost, won't win this war.
Then again, on occasion, Kyoya's idea of "victory" has meant forcing a shattered body onwards and tearing it out of the enemy's grasp with bloody fangs. It's more than a little concerning, but....
All Tetsuya can do is have faith that the Vongola and all its allies will survive this.
The very first thing Haru does when things are made right again- when the Millefiore are defeated, when the wounded are gathered, when they're returned to the time they're meant to be in- is hug her father.
It's only been... What? A week? A month? Their journey into the future feels like it's taken years. Too long, to be certain, to be away from her father. She wraps her arms tight around him when he comes through the door from the university, almost barreling him back out the door, and his surprised laugh reverberates through her entire body. Haru doesn't tell him why she hugs him so tightly, face burying into the well worn smell of his jacket, she just does it. Maybe, even oblivious as he is, he senses that something has happened, because it doesn't take nearly as much haggling as she expected for him to agree to eating out that night. Sushi can be expensive, but they haven't splurged all month, so it's fine. For once, there's not a lot of people in TakeSushi, and Haru quietly enjoys the peaceful chatter of a place free of danger and tension.
If she notices Yamamoto-kun doing the same with his father from behind the counter, mask slipping just a little from the weight of relief, well. She doesn't say anything.
When they return home, perfect and mundane and not empty or destroyed, Haru goes to have a bath and runs her fingers over her soul bonds. The journey to the future hasn't changed them one bit. Hibari Kyoya, all swift elegant strokes of kanji. Suzuki Adelheid, longer katakana left unfulfilled. Neither of them are scars, beautiful black transformed into jagged edges made uglier for what they represent.
They hadn't become scars in the future, either.
People were hunting them and all their loved ones down, family had been murdered, her and Kyoko and the kids had almost come close to dying themselves... But her soul bonds hadn't reflected any loss like the books said they would in the event of a soulmate's death. Then again, she supposes, none of the books had ever taken time travel into account. That's not the kind of thing most people do, really. Maybe her bonds simply reflected her connection to the Hibari and Suzuki of her own time instead of the future.
Knees drawn up out of the water, she traces the lines of Hibari's name again. In the face of everything, he'd been utterly casual about it all. Fear and tension had been humming throughout the base despite everyone's best attempts to ignore it, and the world above had been nothing but danger and death... But you never would have been able to tell in the Foundation base as Hibari drank tea and listened to his bird chirp. He'd beaten back hordes of Millefiore soldiers, made his way to the base on his own after everyone else, and still came back. Oh, sure, by that last part, he'd become ten years younger, but still. Hibari Kyoya had flung himself into raging infernos of danger and still come out not even particularly bothered by it all.
There are implications here, feelings that press down on all her buttons, but Haru forces herself to both stop touching her soul bond and stop thinking about it. No soulmates! She told herself. Yet for all her best efforts, the thoughts still hound after her from the bath to her bed. There's something she has to consider, no matter how much she doesn't want to:
What is she going to do about the Hibari Kyoya of this time?
When he'd become younger, there hadn't been any time for their usual hide-and-seek pattern. Everything had been happening, from Choice to fleeing for safety to hiding in the forest for that final battle... Had he realized who she was? Had he had the chance to? His old self had sniffed when he'd hunted her down; is his bond to her scent based? And if he hadn't realized who she was, who she is to him... Should she tell him? The questions circle all around her as she fades into sleep, and the last thing she clearly thinks...
...is that he'd probably be disappointed if she ruined his fun by hunting him down instead of letting the chase continue.