Disclaimer: None of it's mine. Natsuki Takaya owns everything from Fruits Basket.
He Smiles
Most people would tell you that Akito Souma is not a pleasant person to be around. This is true in most aspects, Akito thinks. Much of the time he feels like breaking things and screaming at people…hurting them, even. He tells himself this is because his own body is aching with so much pain, fatigue, and nausea—nearly every day of his life—that he has very little patience to deal with the petty problems of healthy, unsatisfied people.
If he were to be perfectly honest with himself though, he would have to admit that the overwhelming feeling of loneliness and despair plays a large factor in how he treats people. He wishes frequently that someone would see him as a person and not a god—someone with needs for affection, attention…humanity. Things that gods do not receive because they do not need them.
Gods need nothing. From no one. Gods are nameless, faceless beings that inspire terror and humility.
Akito is tired of being god. In the back of his mind, he's decided that he'd rather be dead. Rather be dead than dying or wishing that he was dead. He'd never admit to himself that he feels this way though. He covers it beneath many layers of rage and indifference, because to admit that he is caving in, clinging to the hope of his undoing, would be to admit weakness.
Akito knows, in his heart of hearts, that he is not God. But he is not weak, either. No, never that. If he is weak, then he will collapse under the burden of being a god. He will die. And he longs to die.
And the viscous cycle goes on…Strong and lonely and cruel and hurting.
But even gods receive blessings.
When Akito was four years old, his best friend gave him a teddy bear as a gift for the New Year. His best friend's mother helped him pick it out since his best friend was too young to know much about giving people presents—she (the mother) was very eager to make a good impression on their Head of Family.
While other people were showering him with lavish gifts of gold and jewelry and costly linens, his best friend gave him a cute, cuddly teddy bear. A teddy bear that the sickly child could hold close to his agonized body and seek comfort from, its softness so soothing. And while the cancer drained his tiny body's resources, crippling him for years to come, the bear was there, providing an object to hide his tears behind.
Even as a small child, he knew that gods do not cry.
The tears of agony and rage and everything that children shouldn't know soaked into the fur of the teddy bear, wearing away its softness and color. And Akito loved it all the more, for being sickly like him.
He left the expensive gifts that others had given him tucked into drawers that he never opened. And he hugged that bear to him like he was dying. Ha. Ha.
As the years passed, Akito grew into an angry child. He regained enough of his strength to learn how to walk again, and was assaulted by new illnesses that sapped that dwindling strength. Pain settled around his heart like a blanket that brings no warmth; the very thing that should have caused him to feel, sucked out his feelings with razor-sharp teeth until the only thing that was left was the occasional flash of fury that allowed him to feel alive.
Akito taught his best friend about agony and rage and all of the things that children shouldn't know. He starved and beat him during the day, and held him close at night whispering how much he loved him and kissing his tears away. When his best friend left, the bear was left behind and Akito hugged it close and pretended that the bear was his best friend.
He made the bear promise to never leave him. And then felt foolish because he was seventeen years old, and he was god, and he was talking to a stuffed animal.
The bear did not reply. But he never left, and that was good enough for Akito. Every day Akito would die a little bit more and struggle to hold onto a life that he wasn't sure he wanted. He would hurt the people he loved and he would hurt himself, and he would wish for it all to be over.
Through the worst of it, his bear sat by his side, smiling at him. It was always smiling. Its eyes were bright with an emotion that appeared to be real joy. Its little mouth curved upward and remained in that position no matter how loudly Akito screamed, or how many things he threw at it.
He took a pair of scissors and cut off all of its limbs once; he couldn't bring himself to remove its head—that would have seemed too final. He left it lying on the floor, torn with its stuffing falling out, for two very long days. At last, he returned to it in a fit of remorse, attempting to sew it back together, pricking his fingers and making them bleed. His blood soaked into the bear's fur and he cried, because in the end, he knew, he would always leave blood on the bodies of the ones he loved.
Clumsily, he succeeded in sewing his precious bear back together. One of it's arms was on crooked, but he was afraid to try and redo it, for fear of making it worse.
For a while, there was peace between him and the bear. He cuddled it at night and coddled it during the day, whispering words of endearment.
One day, not long after Akito's best friend went away, Hatori announced that he wanted to marry his cousin Kana, and Akito erupted. How could Hatori even think of giving any of his attention to that woman who wasn't even part of their lives, when Akito needed all of his attention so badly? He hid his hurt behind rage and without meaning to, ruined Hatori's eye. Overcome with guilt, he blamed the incident on Kana, sealing Hatori's fate with a lie.
That night, the night after he hurt Hatori, Akito took his bear in hand and ripped out it's eye. He screamed at it, smothered tears scraping his throat raw as he raged. "It's your fault!" He told it. "It's all your fault!"
The bear was silent and lay there smiling up at him, one-eyed, as calm and happy as ever. Akito rolled into bed that night, meaning to sleep alone. But the thought of his damaged, neglected bear lying there alone, in the dark, brought tears to his eyes. Sighing, Akito got up and retrieved the bear, returning with it to bed. He held it tight and cried himself to sleep, letting tears of guilt and self-hate seep into his bear's fur. Mourning over the loss of its eye that was all his fault.
The next morning, Akito sewed his bear's eye back on. He locked the door to his room and refused to let anyone in. He told the bear once again that everything was its fault, and was somehow pacified by it's answering smile.
Two years later, Akito ran into his best friend during Parent-Teacher Conference Day at Kawaiia High. His best friend was very frightened of him, remembering all the things that Akito had taught him. Akito smiled and teased him about it. He let his best friend know that he was still in charge. He felt good then. But the happy feeling only lasted until he got home and sat by himself, staring at the spot where his best friend used to sit.
He kicked and punched his bear and called it names, and when hurting an inanimate object wasn't satisfying enough, he made some nasty phone calls and threatened to hurt people because they hadn't respected him enough. He sent back every meal that the servants brought to him, calling both the food and the servants themselves disgusting. He raged and screamed and slapped a few people until he was convinced that they knew he wasn't happy.
Later, after the adrenaline of anger had left his body, he hugged his bear and said that he loved it even though it had been a very bad bear that day. He wouldn't say he was sorry, though.
Gods did not apologize.
A few months later, a girl named Tohru Honda, who had been trying for a while to steal his best friend, said some things that scared and confused him. He pulled her hair and told her that she didn't know anything. He made her cry. He felt satisfied for a moment, because it seemed that he finally had control of the situation…she was being put in her place. Once she learned where it was, she wouldn't be a threat to him any longer.
His family would love him more than they loved her.
After he hurt her though, she smiled at him and said nice things. He was surprised by that. He didn't think that real people knew how to smile through pain. He didn't think that anyone besides a bear could smile at someone who had just hurt them.
He let her go with a warning. "Get out." He'd said. She had obeyed him, but his best friend had left with her and Akito felt so empty at that point that he didn't even care. Her question assaulted him, danced in front of him no matter how tight he closed his eyes…
"You're alive, aren't you?"
"I don't know." He'd told her.
And it was true. He didn't know if he was alive or not. It had been a simple question that should have had a simple answer, but it was the only thing that the god Akito didn't know. Was he alive?
Perhaps he was dead.
Puzzled, he spent many days in the solitude of his bedroom, eating light meals that were quickly vomited as still another fever came upon him. In the haze of his sickness, Akito cuddled his bear close and whispered to him that everything would soon be alright. Soon the good little bear would feel no more pain. His illness would pass.
Faithfully, the bear smiled at him and Akito loved him. He loved him so much he felt that his heart would burst. He missed his best friend, who had gone home with the Outsider, and he missed Hatori, who was in the room right next to him, and he missed his mother who had hated him, and he missed himself.
Where had he gone and when had he lost himself? He didn't know, he didn't know.
He gritted his teeth and breathed deep. In and out, in and out. Gods didn't cry. He squeezed the bear tightly—so tightly that its arm twisted behind its back, and Akito smiled because he knew the ones he loved would always suffer because he would always be suffering.
He smiled because he couldn't cry.
The bear smiled back.
"I love you." He said. "I'm going to take care of you."
He made many promises to his bear, but the one promise he never made was that he wouldn't hurt him. He knew better than to make that promise. He had made that promise to his best friend once, right before he got jealous and lost control and beat him unconscious. That made his best friend very sad, and it was the last straw too, because that beating had nearly killed his best friend and he was removed from Akito's presence for his own safety.
Before he left Akito, his best friend looked at him with tears in his eyes and whispered, "You promised you wouldn't hurt me."
Akito's best friend was Yuki Souma. Yuki would be his best friend until the day that Akito died, and that probably wasn't too far off now. Sometimes fear of dying caused Akito to shiver, with the effort of suppressing his tears. His humanity. Other times, he let the tears go, crying because he wanted to die so badly. And he always wanted Yuki with him, whether he was crying or not crying.
But Yuki was gone. Akito had broken his promise. He had lied.
Gods don't lie.
He never made that promise again. He told people that he would hurt them, so that they knew. He hurt them and he hurt them and he liked it. He did.
Akito missed Yuki. He named the bear that Yuki had given him after Yuki. So the bear's name was Yuki too. The real Yuki was gone, but the bear Yuki had been left behind for Akito to hug and kiss and watch over.
He hurt the bear Yuki and then he healed his wounds, sewing him back together one piece at a time. Because the bear Yuki could be sewn back together. It was just that easy. With a few drops of Akito's blood, drawn from the pricking of the ever-vengeful needle, the bear Yuki could be healed of all the wounds Akito had inflicted upon him.
And the proof that he was better lay in his smile that never faded.
That smile was the only thing that wasn't damaged on bear Yuki. His arms and legs were sewn on crooked and backwards, the stuffing was coming out of his stomach and the top of his head, and the color on his once-brown nose had nearly faded to grey from where Akito had kissed it so much.
But his smile was perfect, flawless. It showed no hurt. Only love, and forgiveness, and more love.
Akito is not a very pleasant person. He likes to hurt people and he likes to be alone and he likes to cry when no one is watching. He thinks that perhaps the greatest blessing he's ever received from the real God who is out there somewhere, hurting him but maybe loving him too, is that, at the end of the day, no matter how wrathful and right and justified Akito has been, Yuki will still be smiling at him.
No matter what, he smiles.
He smiles.
The End