Creativity and rationality
The last clear thing Haru remembered before dying was the burning orange resolve in Kyouko’s eyes the sudden settling, the feeling of absolute rightness even as everything fell apart around them. Of course Kyouko was her Sky, she realised, it could never really have been anyone else, and the knowledge was cold comfort in the face of the knowledge that they were all going to die.
They had held back, and held back, and refused to go active, for so many reasons, some of them good some of them bad, but none of them good enough. Not when just a little more strength might have been enough to save them all. They had fought, she knew they had fought even if the memories were blurred, and far too painful to dwell on, but they’d held themselves back for too long and their strength hadn’t been enough.
She hadn’t expected to wake up. Maybe she should have. Clearly her imagination had been lacking. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. She was after all a Mist, and Mists lived on their own creativity. She had woken up to a whole new life, and a whole new world, and a whole new family, and if she hadn’t had six years of memories as Aburame Haru, to anchor herself to her new reality she didn’t know how she would have managed. She still didn’t know how Tsuna handled it, he said he’d remembered only two years in. He must have been so alone.
She hadn’t been sure quite how to handle the wild, twisted tangle, of feelings, and memory, and thought, that her past life had gifted her. So much grief, so much love. But if there was one thing both lives had taught her well, it was that logic, rationality, thought, could carry her through when her feelings were too chaotic to understand. And logic and rationality told her that everyone she loved had been reincarnated just as she was, and so there was no need to grieve. They had a second chance, and so there was no useful purpose served in dwelling on past mistakes. She would just have to do better, this time.
Kyouko, felt the same. Of course she did, she was Haru’s Sky, and that implied a certain level of compatibility. Kyouko said that this time there would be no holding back, this time they would g flame active, and there was orange fire in her eyes as she said it. Haru’s own Mist rose to meet Kyouko’s Sky, and for the second time Haru felt the steadying comfort of harmony. After that she spent every free moment clinging to Kyouko’s side just basking in the knowledge that she finally belonged. That she had nothing to prove, and no need to fear she wasn’t really wanted.
Her cousins thought she was illogical. They didn’t understand why she was so attached to someone she barely knew before the day she recovered her memories at the light touch of Kyouko’s flames. That was fine, they just weren’t in possession of all the facts. Over attachment was a perfectly normal reaction for a newly bonded element to a Sky. For a fairly extreme example she just had to point to Gokudera kun, by comparison she was being positively low key.
Of course she couldn’t tell them that. Tsuna said they should keep their flame usage quiet for the time being, and Tsuna was the boss. Besides, his judgement was usually sound, and she had to admit, it made sense to hold back until they were more sure of their own situation. After all, this was a whole new world and they were still learning the rules. So her cousins thought she was a little silly for an Aburame. That was fine, they just didn’t know she’d found her place in the world. If they could feel the way her kikaichu buzzed when bathed in Kyouko’s Sky, they would understand.
Her cousins thought she was silly, but Kyouko believed in her. Said she knew Haru was smart. And Haru wanted to prove her right. She was, she suspected, better at combining flames with jutsus to create new, and useful effect than any of the rest of their generation. She’d managed to adapt Chrome’s old trick with her organs, to nearly double the amount of Kikaichu she could support, and she’d worked out an interesting mist application, that forcibly evolved them in all sorts of interesting directions. The day she’d worked out she could use her insects to anchor illusions, even Gokudera (who was Nara now, she had to remember), had admitted he was impressed.
She was, she suspected, even better with the insects than Shamal, (who was her distant uncle now, and hadn’t that been a faintly disturbing development). Shamal had after all, in the end mostly focused on adapting his insects for medical applications. Which he was good at, but he had ignored so many possibilities. She’d developed an insect that could inject a target with a shot of mist flames, which would then lurk in their bloodstream for years, waiting to be activated by a genjutsu she cast. She’d taught Mukuro that one in exchange for his tips on making her illusions more solid. She suspected he might have used it on Danzo.
She couldn’t tell if Tsuna was impressed or alarmed by her, and Kyouko’s newfound display of competency in the art of really messing people up, but that was pretty much par for the course with Tsuna. He generally wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or alarmed by pretty much anything that anyone he knew did, including himself. Haru thought it was cute, and more than a little amusing. But Tsuna’s reactions, while entertaining, really weren’t the point. The point was that she had lost her Sky once before, died within moments of harmonising, and she was enough of an Aburame to frown on the illogicality of failing to learn from her mistakes. This time, she, and Kyouko, and Hana, and anyone else Kyouko saw fit to bring under the shelter of her Sky, would be strong enough for anything.