Title: It's Been A Long Time

Summary: Harry doesn't want to fight the long-haired assassin, but he was terrorising the middle-schooler. He might not even help things, it's been a while since he'd fought... but he did always learn best in the thick of things.

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Harry gasped for breath, sprawled on the training mats that lined the floor of Kyouya's personal training room (because the man refused to share with herbivores). He managed to escape after the whole Byakuran fiasco by crawling into the ducts of the Japanese Vongola base, but eventually got lured out by the promise of more ice-cream.

Harry did actually get the ice-cream since he made Kyouya pinky promise, but as soon as he was done Kyouya dragged him to the Foundation side of the underground base. The man wasn't angry, just rather bored since his usual punching bags were either trapped in a giant machine or scattered over the world in effort to combat Byakuran in their own ways.

Harry was therefore Kyouya's training partner. Unfortunately, the poor wizard got reset after every death so he needed to kill someone else to unlock his magic again. To be perfectly honest, if Kyouya flipped him one more damn time, Harry would start looking for another criminal.

Kyouya stepped up to Harry's feet and kicked him lightly.

Harry groaned pathetically.

The Cloud rolled his eyes and walked away to start clearing the random assortment of weapons littering the floor, most of them bloody because Harry kept setting off the hidden surprises. Although, really, after the seventh time you deploy spikes or extra blades, it shouldn't be considered a surprise.

The last time Kyouya pointed this logic out, Harry kindly told him to fuck off and to stop modifying his personal armoury with even more sharp, pointy things.

Harry blinked lazily as he watched Kyouya's trek around the large room. The man seemed a lot more mellow after Harry explained that he wouldn't -couldn't- die, but that brought more complications to the table.

Especially since Harry had never stayed in the same world before, unlike what he insinuated to Kyouya. He had pulled things out of thin air, blatantly lying to the man's face because Harry's only goal was to reassure Kyouya who looked so relieved (under all of that instinctive violence) when Harry woke up.

The wizard (unable to access magic but a wizard all the same) had no idea how he came back to this body instead of being moved to the next random world. It gave him a pathetic hope, easily smothered and ignored, that maybe he could backtrack, rewind to his original world.

Or just never leave this earth.

It's been so long. Was there anything to even go back to? Would he leave Kyouya here, where the man would throw himself head first into interesting fights without anyone to back him up?

"Herbivore," Kyouya called. "Did you do this?"

Harry snapped out of his musings only to find Kyouya twisted around to peer at his back through the mirrors spanning the left wall. Large, jagged cuts had been sliced through the fabric, the shirt barely hanging onto Kyouya's shoulders. His skin was unblemished as usual, though.

"That was the short sword," Harry said. "You ducked the actual hit but then it spawned eight other blades."

"Ah, it was the Kitsune," Kyouya murmured, still scanning his back in the mirror. He looked a bit too smug for someone who almost had his spine severed.

The man then decided the shirt had become obsolete and stripped it off in one smooth motion, tossing it next to the door where their shoes rested. Harry, still sprawled on the floor, blinked in shock. On the finely tuned instrument that was Kyouya, a mark tainted his perfection, sitting low on the left side of his abdomen.

A triangle.

A circle.

A line.

"What is that?" Harry demanded, suddenly serious as he pushed himself up.

Kyouya glanced over to see Harry standing on legs that were steady despite the last two hours of sparring. The teen crossed the room quickly and didn't stop until he was right in front of Kyouya, pressing a thumb hard into the skin of the man's abdomen, just below the mark.

"What is it?" Harry asked, just shy of a snarl. His eyes flicked up from the mark and met Kyouya's, the green almost glowing as they connected with silver. "How did you get this?"

Kyouya huffed in amusement at the sudden behaviour and slapped Harry's hand away, turning to the edge of the room where his water bottle was. He would humour the teenager later, when he was less thirsty.

The next second Kyouya's back hit the training mats, hard, and the two of them were rolling across the room, trading blows and trying to pin the other. Harry took a hit to his ribs in favour of reaching up and resting his palm against Kyouya's cheek so he would be stabilised.

They came to an abrupt stop, Harry pinning down the Cloud with his fingers hovering threateningly over the older male's eye. Harry's tongue slipped out and wet his dry lips, the teen only vaguely acknowledging that he was threatening to gouge out Kyouya's eye.

"Tell me," Harry murmured. "Now."

The red and gold hammock swayed lazily, strung up between two trees with the branches reaching over as shade. Harry let the wind rock him gently from side to side as he spun the heavy ring around his finger, the attempt to summon his parents habitual by this point instead of any actual need to see them.

The resurrection stone gave him no parents, but Harry was expecting that.

There was no crunch of dry leaves or breaking of sticks to indicate the man, but Harry sensed Kyouya's simmering blood lust that could never seem to go away, even in sleep. The green eyed male crossed his arms to hide the ring, unable to anything more when Kyouya was already so close.

The Cloud stepped up to the hammock, a raised eyebrow the only thing to indicate just how offensive the garish colours were to him.

"Don't be so prissy," Harry laughed and shuffled over, almost overbalancing and crashing to the ground before he caught himself.

Kyouya looked indecisive for a moment but eventually lay down on the hammock, a whole lot more graceful than Harry when he first got on it. They lie there, pressed against each other because of the hammock's slope.

"This is ridiculous."

"Hush," Harry berated jokingly. "Just enjoy the moment."

"The entire thing is shaking, you smell like the pineapple, and the colours are painful."

"It's supposed to sway, and I was having lunch with Chrome," Harry admitted. "Plus, your Disciplinary Committee armband was red and gold."

"That was tasteful," Kyouya deadpanned. "This is a monstrosity."

Harry huffed in amusement and half-heartedly smacked Kyouya with the back of his hand closest to the Cloud. How dare the man insult Gryffindor colours!

Kyouya abruptly lashed out and Harry was thrown from the hammock to land awkwardly on his shoulder, almost dislocating the limb.

The faint throb of pain was overshadowed by a rush of sensation, a dizzying double vision that extended to his other senses. There was a heart beat that kept rhythm with Harry's and a pair of lungs that expand in time. The wind that seeped through the trees passed over him in a disorientating, layered way.

The secondary sensations were cut off like a rubber band snapping and the wizard leapt to his feet, automatically scanning for Kyouya, now standing beside the hammock opposite Harry. Kyouya's hands hovered over his own stomach for a brief moment; the hole in the Cloud's yukata had burnt edges, barely seen through his fingers.

Kyouya tensed and quickly gripped his yukata, pulling the edges aside to assess the damage. Harry gaped at the burn on Kyouya's stomach. The skin there was raised and twisted like scar tissue, but it looked half healed as if the injury was years ago.

Harry unconsciously brought his hand up and glided his thumb over the ring, vague indents making the exact symbol on Kyouya's abdomen. The Cloud's head snapped up from his wound and narrowed in on the ring and the symbol there.

"What have you done to me?" Kyouya demanded.

Harry didn't have an answer.

"It's a leash," Kyouya drawled. He lay pliant under the tense wizard, the only acknowledgement to the hand beside his eye being the fact that he wasn't biting the herbivore to death.

"That symbol is dangerous," Harry hissed out. "I don't have time for your bloody word games. What do you mean?"

Kyouya raised a hand and aimed his fingers at the wall. A vicious spiral of deep blue and green sparks leapt from his reaching fingers and drilled into the wall before exploding, shattering the concrete and leaving a sizeable hole straight through the wall and into the other unoccupied training room.

Harry stared at the damage, at the blatant magic that Kyouya just used like it was the man's stupid tonfa, and felt that he really should have expected this.

Kyouya used Harry's distraction and gripped the wrist far too close to his eye, pushing it away as he rolled them over. He stared down at Harry, now straddling the wizard's hips, and smirked. "You should fight like this more often," Kyouya said calmly and then stood, moving for his water again as if they were just playing around before.

Harry scrambled to his feet as well and followed after the Cloud. "Why do you have magic?" Harry cried, a lot less anger and a lot more desperation now. "At least tell me you understand what it is - what I've done to you! Kyouya, it will ruin your life!"

Kyouya rolled his eyes and tossed Harry the other bottle as he uncapped his and took a few swallows.

"Why are you okay with this?" Harry tried, aiming for another way to convince Kyouya even as he snatched the bottle out of the air on instinct. "You called it a leash."

"It is a leash," Kyouya admitted in a casual tone. "But I'm not the one wearing the collar."

.

A/N: Merry Christmas! Just for the holiday, I'm posting this. It's all done now, I have nothing left, we're all finished. Absolutely no more, okay? Okay.

But if I did continue, Harry would be seeing some old friends...