A/N: KHR does not belong to me. It belongs to the wonderfully talented Akira Amano. I do not own anything except my OC.

My most heartfelt apologies for the six month delay. Since I have just started Uni, I felt it prudent to focus all my attention on my studies for the first semester atleast. Finally my semester-end exams are done and dusted with. So here I am with the newest one. And as I wanted to post this chapter before 2018 is over, the chapter is shorter than what I had planned. However, I hope you enjoy it!

(Also, I would say I'm sorry for the last cliffhanger, I'm really not.)

A Corsage of Foxglove

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

- Invictus

By William Ernest Henley.

Absolute silence.

Nary a sound could be heard as Reborn and Sayuri stared at each other, the air between them fraught with sizzling tension. She gazed at him in growing horror as something resembling contentment flashed in Reborn's eyes, his normally impassive face slightly slack-jawed.

Tsuna and Dino dared not to make even the slightest sound, in case it brought attention to them.

With humungous effort, Sayuri shoved the horror and denial firmly to the back of her mind, and stoutly ignored the steady thrum of satisfaction and euphoria which resonated along the golden yellow bond within her flames. Keeping her flames in the visible spectrum, she turned and growled at Dino, who had been inching towards the window in order to escape, chair held in front of him as a makeshift shield.

"Don't think I've forgotten about you, stronzo. You need to be taught manners," she snarled and leapt at the blond menace. He shrieked and tried to back away, but failed spectacularly, going arse over teakettle, arms flailing wildly.

Snagging his collar, Sayuri started to drag him out of the room, using her Cloud flames to enhance her strength. She ignored his babbled apologies and bodily hauled him down the stairs and to the main door.

Opening it, she firmly booted him out of the house and onto the collection of men still hovering near the gates.

"That will teach you that keeping your flames to yourself, and not letting them wander willy-nilly in others' houses is only polite, bastardo. Stay out and don't come back."

She closed the door with a bang and huffed, her anger cooling down somewhat, now that the intruding Sky was out of her house. She turned to go back upstairs and spied the bemused form of her mother in the kitchen entrance.

Pasting a beaming smile on her face, Sayuri cheerfully said, "He was being awfully rude, so I taught him some manners."

And skipped upstairs under the now-amused eye of her mother.

Reborn was still reeling from the harmonization when his Sky (and wasn't that surreal. He had a Sky. Him, whose hands were so coated in blood that no amount of washing them would remove those stains.) dragged his idiotic ex-student out of the room by his collar. This jarred him out of his stupor and he glanced at his current student.

Contrary to his expectations, Tsuna didn't look terrified and/or confused. Instead, he looked resigned, and was that? It was. He looked rather long-suffering as well. There was a smidgeon of concern hidden there, but it looked as if it was for Dino, and not his sister.

Interesting.

So he turned to his pupil and asked, rather dryly, "So, what was that, and why are you not surprised?"

Tsuna fidgeted a bit and answered, hesitantly, "Well, Aneki has always been very protective of me and Kaa-san, and ever since she started learning and practicing martial arts, she became very proactive as well. And…." Here he trailed off, looking a mite troubled.

"And what, Tsuna?" Reborn prompted in a rather sharp tone, the possessive and protective feelings from the bond already affecting him.

"And I think something bad happened. I don't remember it very well but she started changing when I was around five years old. Kaa-san says that she used to be much more cheerful and – and happy, you know. But suddenly, overnight, she became more serious and focused."

Here Tsuna smiled wistfully, and continued, "My sister is said to be a prodigy, you know. But it was only after that day that she really started studying, completing high school at age fourteen. She got her undergraduate degree in anthropology when she was eighteen. But she stayed in Namimori to look after my mom and me, even though she could have gone to university for her Master's. She thinks that I don't have any idea, but I have seen the scars she has on her body. She is always tense, even at home, as if someone's gonna attack us. And," Tsuna visibly steeled himself and said in a firmer tone, "I don't want to add to her troubles. That is why I don't want her to have any part in this mafia nonsense. Because I know she will not hesitate to try and raze the mafia to the ground if she thinks there is the slightest amount of danger to Kaa-san and I."

Looking at his student's brightly burning eyes, Reborn could almost see an orange flame flickering in them. He was almost proud.

"Hn." That was the extent of Reborn's response to his student's admittedly jarring revelation.

But inwardly, Reborn was seething with the burning desire to annihilate the cause of his Sky's suffering. He did not like the implications conveyed through Tsunayoshi's speech. (How dare they touch his Sky. How dare they harm her. They will feel his wrath. They will learn the scorching rage of the Strongest Sun.)

"Oh!" Tsuna said, panicking, "Please do not tell Aneki I told you all of this. She will skin me and eat me alive. I don't want to die so young!" He ended in a wail.

Reborn just looked at his student as if he was an alien, and bemoaned his job again. How pathetic, and here he was, thinking his student might just have a backbone, after all.

Then Tsuna perked up and said, "Reborn, why were you and Aneki on fire?"

Reborn actually growled out loud and replied, "Not now, Dame-Tsuna."

"But –,"

"Not. Now. Later."

Tsuna wilted. Reborn sighed, thankful that he had dropped that line of questioning. While he was going to explain all about the Dying Will Flames to his student, now was not the time. Especially with Reborn's new bond humming contentedly at the back of his mind.

The admittedly slight distance between his Sky and him was making him antsy, the fact that she was out of his sight not helping in the least. The information acquired from Sayuri's brother made him both murderous, and wanting to wrap his Sky in cotton wool and never letting her go.

Huh, he thought distractedly, that's new. Him being protective, that is. Being murderous was nothing unusual.

Sensing his new Sky come up the stairs and head to her room, Reborn decided to give her a few minutes to compose herself after her admittedly spectacular blow-up (literally) at Dino. It was a bit surprising that the usually composed young woman had flown off the rails so violently, but he suspected that Sayuri's Secondary was a Classic Cloud, not Inverted as he had previously assumed. (He resolutely ignored the admittedly large part of his mind which smugly emitted pride at the display of his Sky's visible superiority over Dino, whose Sky Flames were second only to Xanxus's , who in turn was regarded as the strongest Sky of the latest generation. The fact that Sayuri was a Strong Cloud as well was just the beautiful icing on a magnificent cake.)

He took that time to compose himself and explore the bond which had formed between them. He had never heard of a Harmony Bond being forged so instantaneously and so effortlessly. It was as if his sun and her Sky had just been waiting to be set loose. It was very disturbing to see his flames being so eager for Harmony, especially after what had happened with Luce. The whole situation would have made him very hostile towards his new Sky, had it not been for the very genuine horror and fear he could feel at her end of the bond the instant it had formed. Instead, the lack of acceptance from his sky resulted in a tiny upwelling of hurt, which he ruthlessly squashed the moment it reared its unwanted head.

Delving deep into his mind, he accessed the nexus of his flames and observed it. Searching, he quickly found the orange ribbon leading toward his core, which steadily changed colour to a warm sienna as it came closer to his flame nexus. Observing closely, he could see numerous tiny threads of purple fire twining closely with the orange ones. It seemed that even her cloud had deemed him hers. And he was surprisingly okay with that.

Testing the strength of the bond, he poked at the ribbon coiling around his Sun and got a feeling of warmthprotectionhomefreedom. Stunned, and wanting more of that blissful feeling, he caressed the bond with his flames and almost purred as the echoes of horror and reluctance faded away from his Sky's flames, and was replaced by acceptance and contentment. (He did not notice the steady thrum of possessiveness that the orange flames emitted. And he definitely did not notice the yellow flames doing the same. And he will stick to that story, thank you very much.)

He had heard stories of the wonder that was harmonizing with a sky, but none of those accounts came close to the way the bond felt. It was free-falling with a parachute, and it was driving a car with a seatbelt. It was a child's trust in their mother and it was a dancer's faith in their partner. It was the assurance that someone had your back. And it was coming home after a long day.

It was Harmony. And it resonated along his entire being and was reflected through the bond. His heart beat in tune with hers.

Closing her door behind her, Sayuri sighed as the smile slid off her face. Groaning, she dived onto her bed and buried her face in her pillows. Of all the idiotic things to do, she had to go and lose her temper because of an ill-mannered sky.

Her shifu had told her countless of times that her temper would one day bite her on her ass, albeit in a more eloquent way. And boy, what a spectacular ass-bite that was. Went to confront a sky and left with a Sun.

She could almost see her shifu smiling at her in amusement behind that calm mask of his. Be calm. Be collected. Never show them your real emotions. It gives an advantage to your opponents.

Calm and collected my ass, she snorted and rolled over, flopping her arms onto the bed. She had a very sudden, and very real, urge to throw a foot-stomping, toddler-esque tantrum over things not going her way. For a minute, she was tempted, and then common-sense won over and she exterminated that urge very thoroughly. Staring at the ceiling, she tried to marshal her rampaging emotions, and tried to think rationally.

She could feel the link between her Sun and her humming at the back of her mind. Already, her negative feelings towards the bond were dissolving in the face of the absolute bliss that was acquiring an Element for her Sky. The sheer possessiveness excluded by her Cloud had her giddy, weirdly enough. And her Sky was not helping matters, going by the frankly obnoxious smugness it was all but radiating.

(It was times like these that she questioned if her flames were her own or if she was co-inhabiting with a parasite, Venom style.)

For a few minutes, she just basked in the sheer pleasure her flames were thrumming with, the feeling coursing through her body, releasing tension she had not realized had been present. While she was still wary of accepting more elements into her Sky, she was rather glad that her first one was Reborn. He was someone she would not have to be worried about. For all that he was a Sun, he was rather Cloudy in his temperament, only doing what, and how he wanted. He marched to his own tune, taking no bull-shit from others. Having a Sky wouldn't change that aspect of his, and she would not have it any other way.

The only problem she could foresee was that the World's Greatest Hitman might expect her to be a "traditional" Sky. However, the chances of that happening were rather low so she wasn't worried about that.

A knock on her door jarred her out of her thoughts. Getting out of bed, she smoothed down her clothes and fixed her hair in a semblance of respectability.

"Come in!" Sayuri called out, knowing through her flames that it was her Sun on the other side of the door. (It was rather surreal to refer to the hitman as her Sun, since his reputation had reached even Namimori.)

The door opened a tad, and a small figure slipped inside. Reborn surveyed her form with his fathomless eyes, his flames radiating a minuscule amount of concern for a moment before vanishing from her senses.

Deciding to ignore that tiny slip of his composure, Sayuri let her Sky blanket the room with its warmth, the distinct flavor of harmony tingeing her flames where there had been none before.

Reborn visibly relaxed, his tiny shoulders slackening. He loosened his hold on his Sun and the flames rose to meet hers, still not in the visible spectrum. Her flames seemed to perk up in response. Her normally wary and prickly flames suddenly became as playful as a kitten, batting and coiling at Reborn's Sun.

A tiny smile played at her lips as her flames excluded sheer bliss for the first time in her life. She felt rhapsodic, as his and her flames entwined and merged between them.

So this is Harmony. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Thank you for all of your wonderful reviews, and most importantly, your patience. I will try to reply to most of the reviews, but no guarantees, unfortunately.

Thank you for all your well wishes as well. Makes my heart happy to see the support.

Meteorite: glad to see you love it! Lambo is going to make an appearance in the next chapter so make sure you catch it.

Runa22694: thanks hon!

Lunesther: first of all, looove your big review! Long reviews are my guilty pleasures! Thanks darling for your advice and well wishes! 3! Keep on reviewing!

Chibi-no-baka: so many questions, so few answers I can give! All I can say is, keep reading! Maybe you'll find out!

Rarae aves: I am so happy someone caught that!

LazyFae: now this is what I'm talking about! Keep up with these long reviews sweetheart! Makes me more motivated after feedback like this! To your question, all I'll say is that life is never smooth. It's bumpy all the way down. You just need to be a good driver to avoid crashing.

Valencia Carrow: thanks dear for your wonderful review! I am glad that you like Sayuri. And I completely agree with your observation. Those ditzy OCs get on my nerves! And my character has a lot of flaws so don't worry about her being deemed a "Mary Sue".

Dendule95: it is going to be spectacular *wink*.

A/N: Keep on reviewing! Love your feedback, guys! I'll be back!