"Hatori."
Hatori didn't look up. He knew that voice. For so many years he had longed to hear it. But then he had locked that desire away, and quietly picked up the pieces of his life and moved on.
"Kana…" he said quietly, still staring at the ground. He who had always held himself tall and proud, was now sitting at the bench at the cemetery, slumped over, drained of energy…eyes fixed firmly on the rocks and pebbles and grass, as if they held the answers to all the questions in the head.
She was the last one left. The Sohma clan had been hovering, but Tohru, ever perceptive, had quietly pulled the last ones away to leave Hatori alone.
But he wasn't alone. Now he was with Kana. For the first time in years.
Kana didn't say anything else. She didn't offer words of sympathy, like so many others at the funeral already had, from people whom Hatori knew loved him but whose condolences fell on deaf ears.
Strange, Hatori knew that of all the people at the funeral, any words of condolence from Kana would be from the heart. But she didn't offer any.
Hatori half expected her to tell him one of her cute sayings. Kana had a knack for that, he remembered, for being the eternal optimist. That was what he had loved about her.
Once loved, he corrected himself. That was a long time ago, he thought.
Kana sat down next to him on the bench, and he felt his world shift. He could sense her presence. He could hear her breathe.
He continued to stare at the ground.
And Kana began to talk. "I'm so sorry I was unable to go to your wedding," she said in a normal tone of voice, as if she was just an old friend that he hadn't seen in a long time. "At the time, I was out of the country."
Hatori did know, in fact. He and Mayu had unconsciously, or perhaps consciously, planned it that way.
"I missed Mayu-chan so much. And I missed seeing you. But I am happy that you both found happiness together. That two such good people, two such wonderful people found each other." Kana's voice was filled with emotion, and genuine warmth. Hatori felt a little ray of it enter the core of his heart, and for one moment he basked in it.
Then reality intruded, and he remembered where he was and why he was there. He looked up, straight ahead. He knew Kana was looking at him but he couldn't bear to look at her. He was afraid of what would happen if he did.
"Thank you, Kana," he said quietly. Try as he might to make himself sound cold and formal, in Kana's presence he could not do so. "Thank you."
Kana stood up. In the corner of his eye he could see the folds of her black skirt, her hand calmly at her side. He had still not looked her in the eye.
Kana quietly said, "My husband died two years ago in a car accident." Hatori said nothing. He had known that already. She continued, "I was in the car when he was driving." Hatori still said nothing. Without a tremor in her voice, she said, "I lost our baby because of the accident."
And with that, Hatori looked up at her, and was shocked at what he saw.
