Chapter Text
Leone was infuriated.
The amount of scars the kid had was… a sight. His whole back was covered in several layers of them; some old that had scarred horribly, as if they hadn’t been treated and then opened again, several times. The most recent ones, though, made him want to hurt the bastard who had dared to inflict such damage on a child.
He wasn’t new to having to tend wounds. Police training aside, his Nonno has always been clumsy. Nonna always reprimanded him, and Leone would watch as she made sure the injury was dealt with, sometimes letting him help so that he could know basic first-aid. Just in case, she would say. That way, when Nonna wasn’t at home, it would fall on Leone to tend to his Nonno.
Haruno’s injuries were from days ago, but the state they were in… The kid obviously couldn’t clean injuries on his back — those were next to impossible to treat alone —, still, someone would-
No, his mind couldn’t go through that route. The chief had been clear that Haruno was being neglected — if not downright abused, as he had witnessed with the scars on the kid’s back — by his parents. It was obvious they wouldn’t care to clean and dress the wounds they inflicted on the child, even less when they kept trying to abandon him — though they succeeded on that, with Leone refusing to allow the kid to go back to such a place. Italy was already rotten at the core, so while it was not kidnapping per se, he was illegally taking care of a child he found.
What a cop he was, doing illegal stuff when his mission was to enforce the law.
The scars explained Haruno’s behaviour around adults. When the kid started having a very silent panic attack in the bathroom, Leone started suspecting things were worse than what he had been told. If he had to be honest, he never expected to have to sit down with a child and do breathing exercises, gently guiding him until the air was reaching his lungs as it should. He had the training for that kind of situation, and he had dealt with people going through panic attacks while being interrogated — some of them guilty, others were innocent people who had seen too much — or when bad news had to be delivered to families of victims. But to have to go through that with a seven-year-old child…
Dealing with abuse victims was never easy. And when those victims are kids, things are worse. Children are growing and learning; going through traumatic stuff and not receiving any kind of help could shape them in unexpected ways. One can never know what’s going to become of them: it could go from drug addiction to outright suicidal tendencies. Anything to stop the pain and to run away from those who kept hurting them, twisting and turning a child into an empty shell.
Obviously, that was not the case for everyone. Some abused children matured into decent people without getting direct help. Yes, they had a lot of trust issues and other problems, but they survived and didn’t fall into destructive habits — or, well, some coping mechanisms they developed as kids are harmful, so Leone didn’t even know what to think anymore.
The situation was so fucked up his own thoughts didn’t even make sense. He was starting to overthink everything. Hell, he knew he wasn’t cut to take care of the child, but the other option…
No, he was doing the right thing. Haruno had looked so small when he tucked him in his bed, leaving a lamp turned on when he noticed how nervous he was with the idea of the light turning off. He stayed there until he was sure Haruno was asleep, quietly making his way out without closing the door to the couch — it would be a rough night for him since it wasn’t the most comfortable place to sleep, but it was temporary, only until he fixed the other room for it to be lived in.
So there was Leone, laying on the couch with a blanket draped over his body, seething because of the damage a kid he had met hours ago got from the people he was supposed to call parents, letting his thoughts spiral in different “what if”s and scenarios he had to survive.
He had been so glad to find that his Nonna had left him lots of containers full of her homemade food, even more when he saw some zuppa di pomodoro, guessing that fresh tomato soup would be the best thing to introduce the kid back to food — Leone had seen the interior of the kid’s bag when Haruno got his change of clothes from it, unable to pinpoint a single piece of food in there — after a long time without.
Haruno had stared at him for so long when he set the plate of soup in front of him, Leone thought the kid had fallen asleep with his eyes open — he had been sleepy after the bath and having his injuries treated, but he had to make sure the kid ate something before bed: no way he was going to allow him to miss meals —, being proved wrong when he felt Haruno’s intense gaze trying to analyse him.
“You can eat; the soup is for you.”
As soon as he said those words, whatever spell Haruno was under broke, and the kid grabbed his spoon with some hesitation. At first he went slow, expecting something to happen and, when whatever he expected never came, he picked up the pace — enough for it to seem normal, which was good, kids needed to eat — until his bowl was empty, a small but satisfied smile on his face.
Leone wasn’t sure why he did it, but he gave the kid some chocolate pudding too — not the best idea when his stomach might be getting used to the weight of having food in it, but there was something in Haruno’s eyes that made him want to give the kid a treat, a little extra just to see how he would react.
Once again, the food was eyed with caution. Though this time all it took was one spoonful of pudding for Haruno to brighten up and devour the sweet treat, noting down in his mind to buy more of that cheap dessert if only to make the kid happy.
After that, it didn’t take long for the kid to get sleepy again. And if someone were to tell Leone that he would spend half an hour arguing with a seven-year-old who struggled with his Italian about where said child was going to sleep, he would have laughed at the person and called them insane. But he had done that, making sure of waiting for the kid to gather his thoughts whenever he needed to, insisting in the kindest way he could that, no, he was not allowing a kid who spent several days sleeping outside to spend another bad night on a couch and that, no, he didn’t mind letting him sleep on his bed and that, as the adult, he would take the couch.
And then he had guided Haruno to his room, tucked him in and waited until the kid fell asleep to leave. Now he was thinking too much about everything, plus he knew his thoughts were going wild, but could someone blame him? His grandparents raised him when his parents died in an accident, and the police doing nothing to solve the case became his drive to be a cop. What’s more, here he was now, a cop, taking care of a kid with no idea of what to do or how not to fuck it up by accident. Hell, he was caring for an abused child and didn’t even think twice about it when he had been asked, even when he knew he wasn’t cut for the role, that he would end reminding the kid of the ones who were supposed to care for him at some point; also, how the hell had he remained so calm and nice for so long?! Leone was a lot of things, but he knew his personality was shitty at best and unbearable during the worst days — he still wondered how Matteo, his partner, could stand him with how he is.
He knows his thoughts would have spiraled out of his control had it not been for an almost undetectable noise coming from his room. Opening his eyes to peek, he saw Haruno sneaking towards the kitchen, looking away to check the time on the clock his Nonna bought for him and put on his wall: it was a little past two in the morning. He had put Haruno to bed at around ten, so why was the kid awake?
Moving a little as to pretend to still be asleep, he paid attention to the noises Haruno would make, getting a small gasp of panic and then complete silence. His guess was that the kid was figuring out if he was awake or asleep to continue on his little mission, so he let him believe he was asleep, a sigh of relief coming a few minutes after, and then the footsteps resumed — they were too quiet, trying to not make his presence known, and the situations his brain conjured for the kid needing to learn to do that made his anger grow, wanting nothing more than to beat the shit out of the adults who hurt the child.
The moment he heard glass breaking, Leone bolted to the kitchen, worried that Haruno would hurt himself with the broken glass, and the sight that greeted him…
Haruno was still as a statue, looking through him with unfocused eyes. That was enough for Leone to know the kid’s mind wasn’t there with him, so he moved, slowly, talking about different things that came to his mind while getting a broom, carefully sweeping the glass as far from Haruno as he could without stopping his verbal nonsense — he didn’t even know what he was telling the kid, it was related to his Nonna but he wasn’t paying attention to his words, only to how Haruno would react.
It took a while, but he noticed the kid was coming back with him when he started the breathing exercise he told him about in the bathroom — four in, hold for seven, eight out; his Nonna had taught him to do that whenever kids would be mean to him and Leone wanted to punch them to oblivion, and then while training to be a cop he learnt how it helped with several things, always bringing a calming effect. Knowing that Haruno was now conscious of what was happening around him, Leone exaggerated the motions of sweeping all the glass into a plastic bag, tying it and then throwing it into the trash bin.
“Broken glasses happen all the time.” He had a feeling that Haruno had terrible experiences with broken glass, so he spoke before the kid could say anything. “I used to break them a lot as a kid, thinking that I was big enough to do things on my own. Nonna would always scold be for breaking her glasses, but she would just sweep it all, ask me if I didn’t cut myself with the glass, and then pat me on the head and let me go play or do what I was supposed to do. It’s not a big deal, Coccinella. Whatever they told you or did to you because of a broken glass? That won’t happen here, okay?”
“… Okay.”
“Hey, hey, look at me.” He crouched to be at the kid’s eye level, not touching him, but his hand was in middle ground, an offer for Haruno to hold it if he needed to, blue-green eyes shyly peeking at his face. “I told you, remember? I’m gonna take care of you, and a silly mistake like this won’t make me change my mind. Now, are you thirsty? I can make us some tea, or would water be enough for you?”
“I like tea.”
“Then tea it is.”
He kept talking about Nonna while making tea to keep Haruno distracted — the last thing he wanted was for the kid to work himself into a panic attack again, even though talking was not his thing —, the anecdotes coming out easy and working on having his full attention. Once the tea was done — chamomile, it wasn’t his favourite, but Nonna insisted he always had some for those nights he would struggle with falling asleep —, he sat down and slid Haruno his teacup, warning the kid of it being hot and for him to wait a little before drinking.
That’s when his brain-to-mouth filter stopped working, because what he said next was:
“Your eyes are mismatched.”
It wasn’t noticeable at first, but when he was helping Haruno through his panic attack in the bathroom, he kept looking at the kid’s eyes to assess the situation. His left eye was a gradient of blue from the top to green at the bottom, while the right eye was the other way around, with the green coming from the top to end in blue. It was subtle enough to be unnoticeable unless you were purposefully and intently staring at the kids' eyes and, in a way he could not explain, he knew it fitted the kid to have curious eyes.
“Mama didn’t like them.”
“Well, I say they look good on you, kid. And that woman is dumb for saying that.”
“… You think so?”
“From someone with weird coloured eyes to another, we gotta stay united, don’t you think?”
Haruno stared intensely at his teacup, a smile starting to show on his face and his eyes taking a sad look that soon changed into something more akin to happiness as he turned to look at him.
“Yes… I think so.”