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Ivory Towers (Hibari, Chrome)
Title - Ivory Towers
Author -
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ibuberu Characters/Pairings – Hibari/Chrome, Ken, Chikusa, Mukuro
Genres – General, Romance, Drama
Rating - PG
Summary - She wipes away the blood and pretends he is the anti-prince of her dreams.
Spoiler - tiny one for the end of Future Arc
Note(s) - argghh idk what is this
The first week after Byakuran is killed; she wanders into Nanimori High with shoddy boots and hunched shoulders. She blinks and tries to discern familiarity in the surroundings crowding her vision, the imagery of buildings looming overhead and the large sports hall burns vividly in her eyes, and she remembers the sensation of choking tentacles and the weight of debris. She swallows, but her throat remains coarse and dry as she shuffles past the students that stare blankly over her head, up a flight of seemingly never-ending stairs to the third floor of the quiet corridors.
She slides open the door located to the right and mumbles a barely audible excuse me before entering the room where he is lounging with an absent countenance. Hibari raises a questioning eyebrow and shifts, hands clasping defensively on his weapons as her illusion descends even more thickly over her. Her hands curl tightly around the metal body of the trident, thoughts swimming in the memory of how he held her hand and lifted her head ten years in the future. He, well, in the future, saves her tiny life and she has not thanked him properly yet. She approaches him timidly, one step at a time, fully intent on planting a quick kiss on his cheek before departing with her duty fulfilled. But he is not as approachable as the boss; he is far too wary, she thinks, under the guise of air. This will be the easiest way to clear the nagging feeling of owing the ferocious male a debt, as well as to be rid of the sickening feeling of ungratefulness.
She leans forward, suddenly feeling so feminine and apparent within the vicinity of Hibari and his judging gaze, even though the truth is that he cannot she her nor feel her. This is not the emotion she experiences near the Boss, nor Ken, nor Chikusa, nor even Mukuro. Said male seems to cloud her mind excessively now, cautioning her queer movements in soft, disapproving whispers of thoughts. She pauses briefly to digest the sensation of her cheeks heating and her heart palpitating. She wonders if she should just leave in a mist, she cannot cope with these feelings of drawing so near to Hibari.
But her decision catches on too slow; and Mukuro cringes in her head and his voice seems to echo in alarm as Hibari turns his head, an insulted grimace appearing on his face as he allows his right tonfa to slam into her stomach. She lurches forward, gagging as her illusion shatters and the pretense breaks. Her mind spirals out of coherency, as if she is roaming out of her body with Mukuro cursing and amplifying his presence. Within the following instance, everything snaps decidedlyy into starry black.
When she rouses, the council room is a chilling disaster, the tables and coach overturned and scattered across the floor. Hibari is staring daggers at the ground that is littered with books, papers and shards of glass as a small chick-like bird flutters in through the broken panes of the window. He almost looks as if he is sulking to himself, his arm drenched in a sheen of dark blood and his face bruised. There is this picture of unbreakable determination written across his mature, stern countenance, and it makes her gaze linger over him far longer than required. When his glare finally shifts over to pierce her right in the eye, she startles, recoils back into reality and comprehends what has happened. She bites her lip, collects herself onto her wobbling feet, and inches closer to him with an extending arm. She suggests a bandage and a pack of ice; he growls and bats her away with his remaining mobile hand. Get out of my school, he orders above the song of the yellow bird, the way his eyes flash and his voice cracks winning her unexplainably so.
She hustles out with aching bones, but leaves her heart unmistakably there.
-
Mukuro stops all communication with her that day, ceases talking and invading her mind. Coldness descends perpetually on her frame, and her stomach seems to sink, but it never really does. The field in her mind grows strangely bare. She can hear herself think coherently for once. The feeling of loneliness ebbs with the passing of hours and the noncommittal acknowledgements she receives from Ken and Chikusa as they stare at the television. By the next night, she still fails to sense Mukuro’s presence at all, and she wonders if he is boding well in Vindice, or if he is just being choleric.-
She tries to cook riceballs to make it up to Hibari. Chikusa insults her deformed creations with a bitter tongue, while Ken devours everything up without a second thought. She does not let her heart falter, and instead, walks wordlessly out of the room.
-
She leaves bird feed outside the gate of the school and hides in the leaves and thorns of the bush on the road opposite the school. The healing pain over her gut and the sting of the sharp thorns is negligible, but the anticipation of his reaction to her apologetic gift is too difficult to ignore. The yellow avian flies and descends over no longer than five minutes later and begins to peck at the ground contentedly and in triumph. In fifteen, Hibari saunters out on his morning round, jacket catching the rolling breeze. She glimpses his arm wrapped in a layer of white bandages, and gulps and whispers sorry to no one. He frowns tentatively at the scattered seeds, and instead of pleasant surprise, a glower etches itself on his face. Her heart thumps and plummets as Hibari coaxes the chirping bird into his palm and orders the disciplinary committee to clean up the disgusting mess. He launches a punch at the face of first member who runs up all too eagerly with a dustpan and broom, kicks the offending bird feed, before stalking off.
-
Four letters are crushed because the words were too flowery and plastic-fake.
Three are eaten by a ravenous Ken; three are wrenched mercilessly apart by Chikusa.
One is written on magenta paper, and she decides that that sickening colour would remind him of an unworthy herbivore, so she dunks it into the sink and observes how the words fade with the pink and run down into the faulty pipes. On another, the dark black pen spills out of ink and she is tempted to use her blood to finish the words because she has weaved too much effort and girlish feelings into it. She ends up folding it into a paper airplane and thrusting it down the deepest, yawning pothole in Kokuyo Land. She stops writing the next, and last, one halfway, tossing it out the window as a paper wad.
She pens thirteen letters in total, none of which are read by him.
-
She attempts to talk to him on several occasions, but there is nothing significant to say, no relevant topic to broach. And frankly, she is terrified of him. She follows him patiently and shyly, praying that he doesn’t notice. She cloaks herself in the thickness of illusion even though she knows he hates that, but to see the rare smile touch his face and the way his countenance transforms when he is sound asleep is well worth the trouble of containing a heavy conscious.
He blinks his eyes and angles his chin and walks quietly away each time he passes her by in the emptiest streets of town. She takes a breath and spends a second berating herself for not bothering to establish conversation, but ultimately deciding not to do much about it. She resigns obediently to fate most afternoons, and strays back to the abandoned amusement park with a sense of hopelessness.
One day, she searches and gathers ample courage to step into the school grounds without her trident and accompanying illusion. She sticks out like a sore thumb in her dark green apparel and he approaches her within a minute or so of her entering. She lowers her one eye bashfully as he stops in front of her and regards her with a serious, solemn expression. A flicker of recognition flashes by his face, and her heart palpitates in her chest. She opens her mouth, but not before he moves to say get out of my school. Her mouth snaps shut, her gaze darting around to see the students whispering with pitying looks on their faces. She avoids Hibari’s eyes, stands firm, and promptly decides on saying her piece and leaving. It takes her a few solid seconds to construct her sentences in her mind, remember what she has planned. When she is finally ready to talk, the words she has spent hours rehearsing the night before slip away from her grasp in the moment his tonfa smashes into her cheek.
-
She travels to the store and collects all the potato chips and biscuits off the shelves she can carry with her scrawny wrists. Her wallet becomes barren as she slings the plastic bags over her shoulders and trudges back to what is masquerading as her home. She grabs a pack of cotton bandages and ice on the way out.
-
She sits next to the window with the cracked glass and leans on the dirty grey sill, holding the ice to her face; she tears open a packet of crisps and crushes them with her shivering hands. The crumbs trickle mutely through her pale fingers and stain the creaking floorboards. She continues to draw out the biscuits and watches how they break and crumble. Break and crumble, crush and seep, from big to small, significance into insignificance.
Ken barges into her room and snatches the open packet from her and sniffs loathingly. He immediately deems her to be a crazy bitch, but not before taking the rest of the purchased foods.
Later, he grumbles and tosses a bag of cookies into the room out of the remaining traces of guilt and concern he has left in him. She leaves it in the corner of the room to decay and rot, her appetite escaping her as she compresses into a ball to numb the jabbing pain.
Her cheek heals over time, but her heart doesn’t.
-
That is why Ken and Chikusa lament and call her a retard.
-
She asks for Kyoko and Haru’s assistance in making chocolates for a simple but acceptable apology for intruding him. They are more than happy to oblige, running their smooth hands through her short hair and giving her comforting rubs on the shoulder. They grin like angels and tell her she is too skinny and make her feel like a human being, she pretends they are best friends and smiles meekly along.
But then she clumsily covers them all in flour, and the batter she churns and spills chokes the drain in Kyoko’s house, and chocolate splatters the floor like dirty blood. She holds back the urge to escape the situation, and goes down on her knees and begins to wipe the place spotless, her lip quivering and her body shaking. She knows that even though the two girls don’t show it nor say it, she is a burden to them and they are only helping her because they are too charitable and nice and benevolent.
She doesn’t know how or why, but they finally succeed.
-
She patters into the council room and places the transparent bag on chocolates on Hibari’s desk. She takes a step back, manages a slight lopsided smile in accomplishment, before turning tail and departing the room as unnoticeably as she first entered. She will not commit the same mistake again, and she will send her feelings to him in the most subtle way possible, and that will be the end of this hurtful game of cat and mouse. She grins weakly to herself, the taste of something akin to belief and confidence enveloping her heart and mouth, just as her mind begins to roam absently.
-
He shuts the door behind him and strolls up to the confectionaries. A smirk encompasses his face as he takes the bag and proceeds to marvel at its contents for a moment. The chocolates are horribly disfigured and weakling soft, yielding to the force applied by his fingers. He stifles an amused laugh, draws out one piece and flicks it into his mouth, before dropping the closed bag on the floor and crushing the rest of the chocolates with the heel of his boots, stomping on them over and over again, renewing each drive with zest until what remains is scraps and fragments of something abominating.
He launches the bag of destroyed chocolate out the open window, and hears it land with a gratifying and conclusive crack on the ground far below. He narrows his glinting eyes and smiles tightly, before vaulting out the window just as the door slides open again.
-
Hibari steps into the room and stills. He stops briefly to scan the area, as if the atmosphere is different today, mixed and polluted with an ambience that is not his to emit. He scrutinizes the plain walls and floors with suspicion, but finds nothing amiss, proceeding to settle in the chair behind his desk. From his drawer, he procures a wrinkled paper that is covered with the scars of messy scrawls long erased by the hand of agitation and frustration. From the sunlight that streams in through the open window, he reads the word silently to himself. He realizes how incredibly stupid the whole thing is before sighing curtly and ripping the paper to shreds and tossing it into the waste basket at the foot of his desk.
‘S-or-ry.’
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But I do like how everyone is so IC! :D great job~
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thank you!♥
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Sorries...it's just that your work convinces me right there and then so well about what happens to the interactions in this pairing and so forth. In-character completely. Poor, poor Chrome. ;___;
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Wow! Haha, I was on the edge of my seat!
I really like how in character everyone was! And your writing style is fabulous!
♥ ♥ +mems :)
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This is a hard pairing to write for so I don't see much of it in the way of fanwork XD so many thanks for sharing.
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