8042: Five Things

Five Things

Summary: Who never knew getting married and falling in love would change the way Yuki Kanazawa viewed the world and her life in a whole? A gift for myself.

Pairing: 8042, okay, slight Yuki x her weapons

1. Touches - When he first touched her hand and held it, Yuki couldn't actually take it seriously. Who would dare hold her hand? Who dared?! No one had did. No one had done it. No one had the balls to do it. Why? Why? As a child, her hands were already considered too unclean, too dirty and taken anyway to do it with. No one dared to touch and hold her hands as a child, she recalled, growing up covering her hands with her long sweaters and balling them so she could learn to throw fists and punches and eventually, trained herself to hold knives and cutters and toss them to mark her enemies.

The day she returned home with cuts on her arms, rips in her uniform and her long hair messy and her ribbons stolen away from her, she decided no one would have the right to touch her at all. She'd make them all go away. She would alienate herself. She would touch things with her hands - things that those bullies would fear and abhor and be turned away from her. After she had locked herself, she had seen the quick silver shine of the scissors and the cutter and grinned.

She let the long hair go first. Spiky and masculine and strong, like the heroes she admired. No one would admire her hair again, as long as she would be strong. She was a tomboy, and so she sacrificed her one beauty to be strong. Then in her anger, she threw the cutter angrily across the room.

Then the knives.

In due time, her wall became messed up majorly with cuts and the wounds from training herself to throw knives. Her hands became feared, after the day she tackled a girl to the ground and with her cutter and fist, destroyed the girl's shirt, yowling like a wild animal. She used her other cutter to pin the others, and after that, no one dared to know her again.

In time, her skills became so known for the way her touch for weapons appeared. She loved her weapons and her knives. Because of such skills, she eventually found friends. The day one of them held her hand, she felt her heart melt.

Eleven years later, she felt his touch as they got married.

2. Lemons - Four weeks after Takeshi's departure for a mission, she missed him terribly. Hayato loved her, but he had to move on. Hibari was stoic and cared about no one but him and Hakuya, who tolerated Yuki's awkward ways to deal with the departure of her husband. And in an effort to cheer herself up, Yuki decided to continue the project Tsuna wanted her to pursue. He had enjoyed Sakura Addiction and he was pressing for another novel.

"Better than have you reading all those depressing Haruki Murakami novels," he had claimed and so Yuki felt like picking up scratch paper, making drafts and staying up late for the next three weeks. She ate little, she wore icy eye masks to cover the bags forming under her eyes. Her skin was one of her best features and she didn't want to waste looking grubby Takeshi arrived home.

This project would be later known as Shigure, a Heian Age samurai, with his mischievous tomboy sister Reira, save a rebellious lady.

The research was hard enough, and it was bad enough that the lady was based on Kanji Kanazawa. Plus, the paperwork piling up at Vongola wasn't helping. Hibari didn't bother cheering her up and it was awful Haru was also away. Tsuna was always busy and Gokudera was on leave. Mukuro would tease her, and the next minute scheme and plot with Hakuya as if they were siblings.

From the three weeks of typing late in the night, making diagrams, sneaking out to save old scrolls and develop Box Animal technology, Yuki's voice was starting to get its toll. Her alluring voice was going out. Her throat ached a lot. The soreness got more awful as each  week passed and she was ready to give out by the fourth week and her husband wasn't there. She didn't want to visit the doctor, who would laugh at her. Shamal had started skirt-chasing her, by the time she turned twenty and to him, she looked best, and she was in her prime. Besides, she didn't want Shamal inquiring his nose into her sex life, or lack of it. She disliked having pervert doctors around.

So the sore throat remained.

By the time her husband arrived and it was one week late, she found herself kissing too eagerly and wanted more than kisses from him. She wanted him to pleasure and placate her. She wanted him to love her and help her. For more than three minutes, they made out and for dinner, he bought her lemons. He claimed that lemons had Vitamin C, which would help with her throat since she was losing her voice. After the lemons, she kissed him with her thanks.

For the next two days, they were unstoppable. She missed him and needed him and loved him.

Lemons were so sweet and sour and sticky - like life, often.

3. Sweaters - As she worked, she wore sweaters sometimes. Old sweaters that her mom had had when she was in her prime. Sweaters she bought when she was pregnant with Yuki. And now, they were Yuki's.

She ate more. She had the appetite of ten persons and ten men. Sometimes, she'd lose a bit of her stamina, her usual strength. Hibari noticed everything, and so did Hakuya. The weapon specialist's luminous skin was as pearly as ever, her hips more pronounced and wider, her breasts swelling from her usual modest A-cups. Nothing could hide the signs - not even the old hand-me-down sweaters Yuki wore to work, as a Vongola officer. The most horrible things happened, then: she started stealing food from the Foundation's secret stash of food. She'd cry in the middle of training and beg Hibari for tomatoes and coconuts, in a pool of sweat and tears.

There was something wrong. Her basal temperature was changing. Her period was skipping a cycle or two.

Yuki was a woman in her prime, and she knew it. She had nice skin, but oh God, her hips... She sometimes even found herself crying for tomatoes and coconuts, and Hibari had a dafuq look on his face. After she had yelled at him a thousand times, he'd have Hakuya give her tomatoes and coconuts.

"Maybe you're pregnant," Hakuya had suggested.

So Yuki tried the tests about three times - and yup, she was positive.

When you're pregnant, nothing can hide it - even old sweaters.

4. Sky - The sky was dark when she told Takeshi the good news. It was deep blue, and wide and endless, a sea of hope and possibilities. He had grinned and hugged her, and told her he was happy.

"Do you want a son?"

He smiled.

"I'm not planning at all. If it's a boy, then we'll be happier. If it's a girl, it's still a blessing, still the same."

A boy or a girl. That was the limit of the sky of the probability they faced. A fifty-percent, and he didn't wish to narrow it down.

Yuki loved him for that - for the next two pregnancies that would follow with timeskips in between.

5. Spring - The third time she conceived, the due date would be the spring. Her sons, Takeo and Yuu were hoping for another boy. Her husband was silent but deep inside, full of pride and adoration. He adored his wife, his glorious and lively children, who took after him and her. Takeo was a smaller version of his father, except for the gentler nature he bought with him whenever he read, a small traveler in the isles of imagination. The bookish nature and the boyish livelihood he endowed made him a treasure to her clan. And Yuu, he was a child of his father, with dark hair, but the texture told him he was a destined bishounen, a boy who wished to grow his hair long.

He had blue eyes and his mother's pale skin, and most of his attributes were mixes of his parents. At a young age, he was an athletic and powerful boy, of the quick silver that alchemists condemned as Luna, Melusina, and Susanoo.

Yuki wanted a child of her own making, to foster the clan manners and her own rebellious spirit that was capable of love and ferocity.

In the spring, Haruko would be born - and  in the springs to come, Yuki wanted to remain like this.

Her family was an estuary of spring. A permanent spring she'd never forget.