Kyouya used to be a child. It was hard to imagine a chibi-copy of the Namimori prefect, but it had been so and he had even been halfway sane, sane enough that he hadn't known what 'carnivore' and 'herbivore' meant. Sane enough, anyway, that, every once in a blue moon, he would smile at his parents whenever they did something specifically endearing to him.

Of course, that was excluding that the things he found most endearing about his parents were the fights to the death they had over matters such as that his mother wanted to be independent of their traditional Japanese ways or that his father's cooking was poisonous and he wouldn't admit to it.

All in all, he had been halfway ordinary for a small child.

He even used to have a stuffed toy that was the length of his (then tiny) body that he would curl around when he went to sleep at night and for his daytime naps. Whatever the animal had been, it had been an unidentifiable one. It had had the head of a lion, the body of a hippopotamus, butterfly wings, a horse tail, and clove hooves. It had had wide, unblinking brown eyes that always seemed happy to see Hibari at the time, like the stuffed toy was pleased to be in his company.

Hibari had never fallen asleep without it. It had been his companion where he had had no play mates or friends. It had been his pillow and while his lullaby had been the furious silence that would fill the Hibari manor, the aftershocks of another argument that had ended with both his parents surviving.

It had been a wonderful lullaby. It had taught him that silence was golden and that someone could be wordlessly directed to do another's bidding, like his father would know without being told that he had no place in the master bedroom alongside his own wife.

But his stuffed toy had been better because, with it around, Kyouya had been able to breathe through the stiff quiet, close his eyes, and drift off into a dreamless doze.

He had never really given that stuffed toy a name. It had always been, simply enough, his. Because he had never had to give it a specific name for it to be returned back to him, if it had been taken from him at all. If one of the maids had snuck it away to launder it, he would walk up to the hapless servant, pout, and say, "Where is it?"

And they would always know what he was talking about and he would have what was his back again.

It hadn't been like anyone had asked him for its name.

Kyouya had passed three peaceful years with his mutated companion, three of the best years of his childhood.

And then, one day, tragedy struck.

"Where is it?" he had asked his mother, who stood with a straight back and pride written in the lines of her face. She had been folding clothes and toiletries into a suitcase.

"I had the gardener burn it," she had answered without even bothering to ask what 'it' was. "Horrible toy, I could never understand why your father would feel the need to fill your head with such ugly imaginary creatures." Then she had noticed that he had begun sniffling. Even crying a bit. Because he had been a halfway ordinary child and that stuffed toy had been his best friend in the world. "Don't be weak," she had ordered. "It was just a toy."

But it hadn't been just a toy to him.

It had been his toy.

It had been his.

Just like this was his.

Hibari Kyouya, no longer a small child but now a teenager guarding Namimori with steel tonfas and carnivorous territorial tendencies, stirred slowly awake. The sun was gently roasting him while the roof of his beloved school was cool against his back, keeping a balance of temperature that was enjoyable to the prefect.

Settled against his one side was a light, softly breathing body. He turned his head, not opening his eyes, and his nose twitched as the lower half of his face was ambushed by something soft and yet ticklish – hair. A heady scent of oranges and oceans teased his senses and it was slow to dawn on him that his one arm was numb from having the body lie on it.

He flexed his sleeping hand, felt the sluggish sting of constricted blood flow, and heard a slow, tired sigh before the body against his side shifted and hands clenched in his coat.

Yes, he thought to himself, this was his.

And, this time, no one was going to take it away from him.

~""~

Author's Note: Implied 1827. I don't know, I just wanted to do something with Kyouya's childhood…