Chapter Text
It's a dark, dreary day that finds you in the park by the end of the road, palm digging into skin and throat, fingertips crushing windpipe as the man chokes on a stringent of pleas and apologies, kneeling on a pool of blood and sweat and piss. Hands scrabble for purchase against your own, desperate in contrast to its earlier bravado, but the burning sensation in the cavity of your chest presses and the man goes limp once more, eyes rolling to the back of his head.
Sorry, he gurgles out through bloodied teeth. Imsorryimsorrypleaseforgiveme—
Something heady rushes through your veins. Tangent and cloy like honey, a sour tang on your tongue that you can almost taste in the air. Hunger, you think, staring into the fear and pain and desperation overtaking clouded eyes—a sobbing mess that whimpers and sobs in the face of your boiling ire.
Where did your pride go, you want to ask. Struggle more, you want to say.
But the echo of footsteps is loud in the stillness of early morning, and you stifle the man's cries with a grip that burries your nails deeper in tendons and flesh, red running rivulets down your wrist and elbow.
"Brother!"
A warm air that tangles around you like a living, breathing shawl.
You inhale deeply, taking in the scent of dewdrops and sunflower, eyes tracking the hazy tinge of orange colouring the air.
"Yuni."
You return the call, as quiet as the whisper of the wind running through the trees.
The girl skips to your side, a bubbly cheer present in her steps that hasn't been there before. She stops just out of reach, a flutter of white dress and black hair in the corner of your eyes.
"Brother, you reek." She frowns and scrunches her nose, exasperation colouring her tone. She spares no glance to the bodies littering the ground, the hands still scrabbling against your own, and doesn't acknowledge the stillness in the air filled with a tension you haven't noticed before.
Maybe she would, you can't help but think, if she hasn't claimed your Sky as hers with a fierceness bordering on obsession, as possessive as Skies are wont to be.
You tilt your head and peer to the side, where the girl stands bracketed by familiar faces.
You ignore Gamma's piercing, calculating gaze, the way he tenses but sways as though intoxicated, ignore the white haired teen that greets you with a jovial laugh, and keep your eyes upon the girl that has grown all too mature in so short a time.
"Yuni."
You breathe out again, the warmth in your chest seeping out to chase at the heat teasing your skin, the shadow of hands wrapping tightly around your waist in the amalgamation of an embrace.
Mine, the pulsing warmth whispers.
Mine, you echo back.
One other threads into the lazy dance of sunset glow, sly as a fox, slipping past the knots until all that you can feel, sitting heavy inside your chest, is a tangled yarn of warmth and home and kin.
"Not fair, I want in too!"
Childish, like sugar and sweets moulded into human skin. His eyes belie the coy upturn of his lips, sharp and knowing, but your fingers run through tangled locks nonetheless, and the teen whines at the blood now sticking to the surprisingly soft strands. He doesn't bat your hand away and Yuni laughs, a tinkling sound that dissipates the weight inside your chest like a fog.
What do you mean, you've heard people exclaimed before. Listened as they remarked, almost scandalised, at what ties the three of you together.
You can't do that, Skies aren't meant for that, you aren't supposed to bond like that—
You exhale quietly, taking in the scent of sugar and dews, the calm suffusing your veins even as the man slowly grows limp in your idle grip.
Long, slender fingers release your choking hold on the man, and he falls to the ground with a loud sob. Hands wrapping gently around a palm painted almost entirely red, Byakuran crushes the man's head under his feet with a grin.
You don't bother looking at what remains of him, tracking Gamma's movement as he mutters something into his phone. Cleanup, you think, as Byakuran clicks his tongue.
"Were they looking to settle, too?" He croons sweetly. "Tried to force something so brittle and weak on you?"
The words are almost unkind, almost mocking. If not for the steel in Byakuran's gaze and amber threading around your wrist like an invisible chain, you would've smeared his remains on the floor too.
You hum instead. Return Yuni's hold as she tugs you away from the carnage.
Byakuran laughs and floats after the two of you, the flames on his back like brilliant wings. "Idiots, the lot of them." He sneers. A cruel tinge in his smile and the promise of danger on his tongue. "You should've told me! It's more fun if we crush them together!"
You smile as the Yuni scolds the teen just as quickly, the two bickering on what is appropriate for your weekly excursion 'dates' and what isn't.
The pacifier around your neck feels like shackles but, for the moment, blanketed by the heavy tangle of Harmony, you think you have never felt so peaceful.
"Don't you hate me?"
You asked her once, as you stood above the mangled body of someone who had pressed too much, forced too much, trying hard to find chinks in your armour and settle home when all you could feel were nothing but the raw itch of something tearing and clawing inside—
—The pacifier you wore pulsed along your raging heartbeat, left there just moments before by the man who was supposed to crown someone else in your stead.
"This is supposed to be yours. They are supposed to be yours."
Your hands were shaking, you realised belatedly. Something like fear echoing in the back of your head, screaming traitortraitortraitor at you.
Tiny hands clasped tightly around your waist, warm and present and familiar.
"...no." The word was nothing more than a whisper.
Yuni looked up, then, and her eyes were burning. Something dark hiding within the bright orbs, and for a second you felt like you were looking at a stranger, not the girl that had claimed you as her brother the moment she laid eyes on yours.
"You're mine."
Yuni confessed, like a secret kept only for the ears of two.
"It makes sense you're theirs too, doesn't it?"
A smile full of knives. A monster that lurked behind kind, gentle gaze. The air was warm, and the heat curling around the two of you felt like a promise. A declaration, perhaps.
Mine, your flames agreed just as easily, two Skies tangled in a dance that seared the very ground beneath you.