An Alpha to Omega

Customary Disclaimer: I don't own Fruits Basket.

Rating: PG-13 – for the angst, violence, andslight language later on.

Alert! There will plenty of what I can assume are spoilers. Fic assumes a pretty good knowledge of the manga, but it's not necessary. Just have fun with it, baby!

Pairing: Yuki/Kagura.

Author's Note: I don't know Japanese. If I use a word or term incorrectly now or in later chapters, sorry. My school onlyteaches Spanish.

"So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen."

-Matthew 20:16

Shigure chuckled. The diary, at some point in time, had evidently been attacked by what he guessed was a small child wielding a very large permanent marker. The book itself, complete with romping kitties and singing flowers on the cover, was still distinctly feminine beneath the faded graffiti, but the artist in question had managed to squash out any of its remaining girlish charm. Nearly all of the orange kittens had little anger marks hovering around their heads, and one – bizarrely enough – had a thick moustache drawn over it's cute, smiling mouth.

He could easily believe that the owner herself had added the touch-ups. From its split bindings down to its many rumpled pages, the whole book reeked of a lifetime's worth of affection and abuse. Flipping through thin leaves of paper contained within, he saw that page after page, many of them glued together with a child's sticky fingerprints, were filled to the brim with bold writing that rose and fell perfectly at each enunciation, mimicking the author's speech. Shigure could practically hear her voice when he read it, and it was everywhere.

He thumbed a bit further to the front of her diary. The family novelist had never known his cousin to be an avid writer, yet somehow, she had succeeded in filling a thickly-bound journal through both sides of the pages, and their margins as well; still, it made sense when he saw her early writings, printed in huge, aggressive characters with awkward gaps between. She wrote with a broad and heavy hand as it was, but as a child, her script had taken seven pages to write what Shigure could comfortably draft onto one. Even her recent writing towards the back of the book was still quite large, and not nearly as beautiful as Tohru-kun's. But it wasn't exactly ugly, either. More so than the powerful rants and raves, her occasional contemplative paragraphs shone with an intensity and force that brought them quietly to the forefront, like the book was shouting a whisper. The woman's writing exuded not beauty, but character.

Kagura had never been one of Shigure's closer cousins, but he knew full well that the intensity she generated on her "Kyou-hunts" didn't just disappear when she was quiet. Her personality was incorrigible, and felt with a depth equal to its strength. Tracing his fingers in the minute grooves her pen had flushed into the paper, he couldn't help but smile. Kagura, it seemed, never really acted out of character even when she was surprising everyone around her. No one had ever pinned down what it was in her personality that gave her such intensity; what guiding passion in her life strung together each swift move from violent passion to subdued fervor, the expected and the unexpected. As far as he knew, no one had really tried.

There were plenty of people who could easily argue that Kagura just didn't feel remorse the way her cousins did. They were probably right, too. But it occurred to him that they might be right for all the wrong reasons.

It had always seemed impossible to Shigure that someone so incredibly loud could have flown so low under the radar for all these years. It wasn't so much a contradiction as it was an inconsistency: Kagura had never made her love for Kyou a secret; yet she had come out not only unscathed, but unbothered, after all these years. Even if she lived outside the Honke, and was last in the Juunishi's number besides, she was still a notable figure in the histories of both. It could not be ignored that in more ways than one, she was a senior – the two years she held over Yuki-kun and Kyou-kun allowed her a certain understanding of things they couldn't remember beyond a child's simple recollection - and as far as he had always known, she was the only senior without a blemish on her record where Akito was concerned.

Akito was very diligent about instilling whatever sense of urgent, pressing fear their instincts as subjects might fail to provide. Everyone had some kind of disquieting personal confrontation with the family head to speak of, when their relationship with their "god" had been established, and subsequently reinforced. Even Ayame had had his own private encounter that he still refused to recall out loud. It was almost a rite of passage. Under an order of power completely different from that of the world's, the Juunishi were forced to turn to each other for comfort and security. That fear was a binding force.

But the boar had never shown that fear; perhaps that was why she one of the least regarded of their members. Harmless, exuberant Kagura didn't have a messy history that people had to worry about. She didn't need to be handled with kid gloves. She didn't need to be figured into any balance of power because she had never even encountered one. It was what they had always assumed, and no one ever troubled themselves to think otherwise because it was a relief to have one more neutral character - one more step toward simplicity. There had always been rumors, but no one remembered. It was just easier to keep Kagura out of the equation altogether.

But nothing came easy in the Sohma family. The cold truth was that no one came into the Juunishi unscathed. The Juunishi god had only thirteen things to live for and to think about besides himself, and he had given himself plenty of time to kill before the bitter end. The more Shigure read that childish script, the more tangled and intricate her entries became under his eyes, the more it occurred to him that the explanation for Akito's discrepancy could be a very simple one: the family head had never made an exception in the first place. If it seemed impossible that Kagura had been able to escape notice all these years, it was only because it was impossible.

Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that in searching for something that he had never truly expected to find, the family's shrewd and clever dog stumbled upon instead what he hadn't even thought to look for…and he found it all in a tiny girl's journal. Somewhere along his cursory examination, his fingers had caught on the most wrinkled of the diary's pages, and then, instead of turning sheets of paper, he had opened up something else entirely.

Shigure pressed his hands to his face to stave off the familiar burning in his eyes. The girl penned sorrow like a poet.

It was easy to forget Kagura; reading the trembling script on those tenderly handled pages, he now knew that was why the boar had been able to continue doing what she did best for all these years, even while the world was rising and crashing to the ground around her. And no one was really aware that it was not only a strength, but a conscious effort as well. Her work wasn't noticed, so it really was what she did best. Even when she was surprising everyone around her, Kagura never acted out of character.

"We're all so good at keeping secrets in this family," he said, tracing her writing blindly, "but we're even better at making them." Shigure folded the little book shut.

"I wonder if anyone but myself could have thought it…"

Sewing came quite naturally to Kagura, something she was very proud of. It was much in her habit and skill as her tantrums - something she was not so proud of. Her temper had gotten her into a fair many scrapes in the past, and it didn't do much to gain the affections of anyone outside the members of her immediate family, who had the goodness and foresight to count her forceful personality as a sort of blessing in disguise.

Kagura herself didn't think it much of a blessing. She couldn't call it a curse - that would be especially petty, her extended family's unique predicament considered - but she couldn't say that she liked it, either. Most everything in her room had a touch of scotch tape somewhere as testament to the dubious odds of survival her belongings faced when pit against her frequent fits of anger, excitement, and elation. Some of her favorite china dolls had been patched up with slings and bandages while her clear craft glue mended them for good. Half of her childhood storybooks were split violently at the seams. Almost nothing was spared.

She had never broken things for the sake of breaking them - she was just a little too exuberant for her surroundings, sometimes. Maybe that was why Isuzu had refused to share a room with her from the get-go. When the horse of the Juunishi had moved in, Kagura's mother had been almost insultingly understanding of the new girl's predicament. So far, only a few of Isuzu's possessions had been broken in the bedroom she'd made of the old family office, but she seemed more inclined to take notice of the things that had been broken, than the things that hadn't. No one appreciated having their things mangled.

It was a comfort, then, that as much as Kagura could break things, she could also sew them back together with the occasional scrap of patience and so much thread. That was why she again found herself huddled over her small brown sewing machine, pulling cloth under the path of her needle with short-trimmed fingernails while her foot worked the pedal with rhythmic vigor. She had broken something again, and it had to be fixed - or else.

As a general rule, all of the boar's possessions received a lot of punishment, but her clothes in particular seemed to bear the brunt of her abuse. She had eventually learned through no small effort on her mother's part to either buy clothing that was especially forgiving, or reinforce a normal garment herself. Unfortunately, being part of the Juunishi meant that she was stuck with all of its bizarre exceptions, and this particular exception had ripped in three places before she'd even had a chance to put away the hanger - so to speak.

Kagura gave a lady-like snort. The Boar Ceremonial Dress was very handsome, and her mother had said that she'd even been the picture of innocent beauty when she wore it to the New Year's ceremony twelve years ago. But its layers of silk and delicately-wrought seams just shattered under her touch. Even when she successfully managed to put it on, one twirl in front of the mirror would provoke the all-too-familiar "snack" of bursting seams into the open.

If she didn't start practicing a little more feminine grace, the dress would begin to lose fabric from her repairs, and she knew as well as anyone that there was no room for visible fault - no matter how small - when it came to the New Year's ceremony. Akito had only been a child when she had danced last, but she could still remember his dark, glittering eyes raking over her body with that same flawless perception for error he still used daily to root out weakness, assess performance, and detect conspiracy.

His insight had always been god-like. Even into her adulthood, she had failed to banish the nightmares that hearkened back to the childhood years she had spent in his home.

Ironically, though, she rarely had nightmares about the New Year's Dances. She unerringly gave her mother full credit for this. Before Kagura's first performance, Mrs. Sohma had taken steps towards the girl's safety by teaching her young daughter how to mend clothes with a large child's needle. Kagura had taken a shine to the craft instantly, and willingly let her mother school her (if but for short periods of time) in the patience and prudence required for sewing, all for another chance at using the pretty silver needle. By the time of the dance, she had learned not only how to mend some of the simpler tears in her costume, but how to sit still as well. It had helped tremendously.

If the Kagura of the present was actually far more disciplined than the Kagura of the past, it stood to reason that she had been an absolute hellion before her little reform. Everyone seemed to remember her that way. But she'd never gotten in trouble with Akito for her temper – at least not enough to give her such nightmares. It had taken something very gentle, very different – "very un-Kagura-like," as they'd said – to give her the scars that simply wouldn't fade.

But, like the dress she was mending, Kagura had sewn up the tears in her soul and her skin with hurried stitches, and hidden the repairs where they couldn't be seen. Like the dress, she could never exactly be whole again, but it hardly mattered when she'd looked and acted so much the same after the fact. Every transfigured Sohma had done it before.

Maybe the difference was in how they were remembered. Even as far as secrets in her dysfunctional extended family went, hers seemed so strange, and so out-of-character to the few people outside of her immediate relations who knew it, that they'd had a difficult time believing it had happened in the first place. She had hidden her mending well, even if the stitches themselves weren't quite up to par.

Besides, there was something that Kagura did as well as her sewing - and it was easy to forget the last of the Juunishi.

She slipped a long, shiny pin from the fabric to place between her lips for safekeeping. She preferred pins with big, colorful heads in her sewing because more often than not she forgot to remove them if she used the tiny silver-tipped pins her mother was fond of. Her favorite pins, though, were easier to see (and remember) than the silver ones, so she had managed to remove them all on schedule, and make it through her half-formed ponderings to the last thirty stitches of her project without incident. A bit of backstitching here and there, some gentle tugs to fix the seams, and she'd be done! At one 'o clock in the morning, she was ready to call it a night.

It's never too late for a nice little incident.

When she eased her foot onto the peddle once more, instead of the familiar hum of the needle working up and down, she heard the high-pitched squeal of metal grating against metal, and her needle rose up out of the fabric empty.

Kagura froze. With trembling fingers, she lifted away the lid to the machine's undercarriage, and peered inside.

"Oh," she whispered. "Oh...OH…" Her fingers curled into fists. "OH-OH-OHH!"

The girl seized her sewing basket, and hurled it across the room, while her whisper finally threw itself into an ear-splitting crescendo: "Oh NO!"

Downstairs, someone pounded on the ceiling beneath her feet.

She hung her head. This was bad. That had been special thread – and now she was out. She'd been so careful about requesting extra from the Main House, too! She had counted on something like this happening, had made preparations for it, and she'd still gotten herself in trouble! She wanted to snap the empty bobbin in two.

Instead, Kagura stomped over to her sewing basket, ignoring the glass window rattling in its frame with each heavy step. To deal with this particular snag, she knew she'd have to make a choice between risks. She could either try appealing for more of the approved thread and chance rousing the Main House's suspicions, or defile the boar costume with her own thread and risk getting caught. In both cases, she would end up facing the same person, and her back tingled at only the thought.

Her fingers ran over her spilled equipment gently. She couldn't help feeling a twinge of remorse when she saw all her bobbins strewn across the floor as they were, like jewels tossed from a china box. Indeed, as she went about collecting them, she slipped some of the larger bobbins around her fingers like rings for safekeeping. It was one of her favorite games. Sometimes she imagined that the tiny spools of thread were puppets dancing on her slim fingers, or offerings from a secret admirer.

The clean-up went on in a similar fashion, until, with a sudden gasp, she dropped a pair of scissors in clumsy surprise.

"Yuki!"

In an instant, her palm was stretched out in front of her to inspect a small, but full, bobbin glittering in against her hand. She'd found him!

"I was so worried!" she cried, all her anger forgotten. "I'd thought I lost you!" The spool of thread shined under her attention. On its face, a small mouse had been carefully drawn with a fine-tipped permanent marker, down to the tiniest whisker.

There were other bobbins around her fingers and in her basket that bore similar markings. On a spool of beautiful gold thread, a tiger's black-tipped ears and slightly wavering stripes were just visible, while the outline of a dog stood out against a rich, deep purple. A little ways beyond, a particularly large bobbin of bright orange thread bore the image of a cat, complete with anger marks and a moustache. Her lip trembled when she caught sight of it.

"Kyo-kun…" The word was soft and reverent. "Kyo…G-gomen ne…"

A flash of sunlight burned in her mind's eye; the air in her lungs grew stale. She remembered that feeling, and her breath was snatched right away with it.

Kagura clenched her fists, willing herself not to close her eyes, because then she knew she'd cry, and the scent of her tears on her cheeks and eyelashes would bring it all back to suffocate her right there in the protection of her own childhood room. A sound, a touch…

She clenched her fists harder, and the bobbin dug into her palm's soft skin. She hissed in pain, and opened her hand. There, in its center, a little mouse looked happily up at her with winking eyes.

In an instinctual effort at modesty, her hand flew to her mouth to hide the smile forming on her lips.

"There will always be the good with the bad…" The words were muffled against her palm, a warm fluttering breath on her skin, but she still heard them well enough. She clapped her hands on her knees and shook her head. The burning light faded away into the gentle glow of her lamp's light reflected in the dark window. A deep breath brought fresh air.

"We all get our chance, Kyo," she said softly, and placed the orange bobbin in its basket with the others.

A few minutes of silence passed, and soon the rest of her equipment was nestled in the basket's soft cloth, arranged in comfortable order. There was only one small space left vacant, and she held its tenant in her hand. Her eyes darted to the unfinished "project" on her desk.

Kagura laughed, and clutched the little mouse bobbin to her chest like a child hugging her favorite doll. "Yun-chan!" she cried. "I only just find you, and already you're giving me another chance! Arigatou!"

Deft fingers unwound the little spool's thread, and stretched it out for inspection. It was just as she remembered – a beautiful milky silver that had a delicately opaque sheen infused at its core. To her, it looked someone had taken the real Yun-chan's hair and spun it with white silk to make this singularly exquisite line of cord that had grown to be her favorite in the years it had spent in her possession. She had never been able to bring herself to use it. It was too rare and strong to use in her homely projects, and it stung her heart to think of running out.

But now she needed something rare and strong, and her precious thread fit the bill. It didn't exactly fit the Main House's thread, but not for lack of quality. No one could say that it defiled her costume. It made it better.

Perhaps that was why she decided to take the chance of using her own material instead of approaching Akito directly. More than anything, it made her happy to think of the thread being put to use where it was needed. It seemed sad to her for a whole spool of thread to sit idly on a shelf, beautiful and intact, but useless. Thread was meant to be seen and tested and used. It was meant to become involved in a greater picture. So Kagura thought that as beautiful as it was in her hand, it would look a thousand times more magnificent in a project equal to it – and she had finally found one.

In the chaotic mess of her spilled tools, she had found a thread and a purpose to make everything fall back into place, and she couldn't ask for a better reason to use both.

A knock sounded at her door, and immediately it creaked open to reveal her visitor. Rin leaned her imposing figure against the doorway, watching Kagura swivel around in her chair with hooded and eyes and folded arms. She flashed a thin smile.

"You're still up?" the horse inquired tonelessly, gliding into the room.

Kagura nodded, and opened her mouth to form an excuse, but a wide yawn shoved the words back down her throat. She blushed.

Rin ignored her, instead turning her attention to bundle of cloth set at Kagura's sewing machine. The boar watched her finger the slippery silk with distaste. "What is this?"

Kagura covered a smile with her hand. Though her cousin still spoke with her usual clipped tone, her eyes were always just a little bit softer for Kagura when the two were alone together. It was a rare demonstration of trust and faith that Kagura knew better than to openly acknowledge, but nonetheless reveled in with as much caution as she could muster.

"The Boar's New Year's costume," she answered, casting a weary eye on the dress' ornate matching headdress situated in the corner. "I wanted to get it done tonight so I could finish patching up the crown tomorrow."

"You're not getting it done tonight," Rin said shortly. "From what I heard downstairs, you've messed it up again."

She rubbed her eyes, letting another yawn slip out. "G-gomen…it just seems that the more effort I put into repairing it, the more repairs I need to make in the first place."

"Why are you screwing up on this dress in particular? They send all the other costumes to you for repairs, don't they?"

Kagura nodded bleakly.

Rin wandered over to a small pink bookshelf in the room, and ran her fingers over the spines of the books. "Well, I never heard you whine about fixing the dog's dress last year. Why are you having so many problems all of a sudden?"

"I don't wear those costumes. They're all so cute and pretty – you would never know it because it's dyed so black, but up close, Kisa-chan's dress has some of the rarest silk around! It looks like a panther's fur, and all these hidden spots come out under the light-"

"-Beautiful, I'm sure," her companion interrupted, eyes still turned to the books. "But why do you never rip them? Just because you don't wear them doesn't mean you don't have plenty of chances to rough them up."

Kagura fiddled with the mouse bobbin in her hands, watching her cousin in silence. "Eh… I don't know, really."

Rin narrowed her eyes, but let the subject drop. "Hey – what's missing here?" She pointed to a gap in a row of neatly shelved hardbacks. "Isn't this where you keep your diaries?"

Kagura stretched her arms over her head, yawning out a "Hai." She smiled. "That's where I keep the ones I've filled up. I like to flip through them sometimes - so many lovely memories!"

"Where is it?"

"Ah, I took the pink one with me to Shii-chan's house the other day when I spent the night!"

"Why would you take a diary to his house?" Rin cried, clapping her hand on Kagura's shoulder. "We're talking about one of the most selfish, nosy-"

"Shii-chan's not like that!"

"He is. I can't think of a stupider move than to bring something more personal than a toothbrush within ten yards of that dog."

"I had it wrapped up in my pajamas! Sometimes reading that book helps me remember my visits to his house when I was little. It's nice…"

"It's stupid. Where is it now?"

"Ano… it should be in my overnight bag." Kagura picked up a large kitten-covered bag, and turned it upside down over her bed. Out tumbled clothes and underwear and a few other odds and ends, but nothing much heavier than the bag itself. She shook from the corners, but nothing came.

For a small, terrible moment in time, the whole room seemed choked with sunlight.

"It's not there, is it?"

Kagura clutched her chest, trying to absorb the evidence spelled out clearly on her bed. She wrenched the little bag open, only to see empty space, end to end. She gave it another disbelieving shake, but still nothing came.

"A-ah… Nani?" She was barely aware of Rin's discerning gaze following her as she began to tear through the contents of her bag, turning socks inside out and emptying pockets. When she found nothing, she frantically seized her underwear, and began to shake it over the floor.

"Kagura…it's not there."

She spun around and faced her stone-faced cousin. "How can you be so calm about this? It has to be here! Help me look!" Wrenching open her closet door, she threw boxes and piles of fabric over her shoulders in a maddening, desperate search for something she just knew she had only misplaced. It didn't matter that she had managed to rip the door from its hinges. It didn't matter that her china dolls were on the floor in pieces because she'd thrown a shoe the wrong way. And it didn't matter that she had never – not once in her life – simply lost her diaries. Against fact and fiction, Kagura could only choose to believe the impossible.

"Stop it! You're being an idiot! It's not like there's going to be anything in there that would surprise us. 'My Kyo-kun, my love! When we are married, we shall live in a little yellow house on a hill, and our children will be named-'"

"You don't understand!" Kagura cried, and she clutched at Rin's nightshirt with trembling fists. Tears began well up in the corners of her eyes, but she choked them down to face her cousin's dispassionate gaze.

"Kagura-"

"You don't get it! It's here! You have to help me look!"

"Look, I didn't want to tell you this, but you're already giving me a headache as it is… I went rummaging around in your room this morning-"

"Nani!"

"Shut up and listen! I was looking for money to buy lunch, and I didn't see your diary. If it was here, I would have found it. I know how to find what I'm looking for."

Kagura released Rin, hands clasped together pleadingly. "Then you've got to help me look for it! You could've missed a spot! Or it could be downstairs or in the bathroom!"

"Look, what is so important about this stupid diary of yours? I already told you, no one's going to care! If anything, it serves you right for carrying it around with you in the first place! The whole world doesn't work on the honor system, Kagura! I mean, look around you! You don't even hide it when you have it here! Anyone could just walk into your room, and then-"

She couldn't help it – Kagura turned away. "But…" She spoke, whispering the words through her hands. "But… I promised. I promised myself…" She nearly jumped when she felt hands on her shoulders, gripping the tense bone and sinew loosely.

"We'll look, okay? We'll look through the house, and if there's nothing there, we'll go to the dog's house tomorrow. I'll wrench it out of him." Rin gave her a reassuring squeeze.

Kagura laughed, and hugged her cousin gently. "No, no... it's okay, Isuzu. I don't think anyone could read my old handwriting, anyway. I'll go over tomorrow and ask Tohru-chan."

Rin snorted. "I'll bet that idiot found it in a room somewhere and gave it to Shigure. 'Look, Shigure-san!'" Rin squeaked, holding well-manicured hands to her chest in a sardonic semblance of Tohru's typical enthusiasm. "'I found this little pink book! Is it yours?' If you're going to go, you better haul your butt over there fast."

Kagura smiled shyly. "Don't worry…you know, I've always been good at finding what I'm looking for."

"Moshi moshi?"

"Haa-san! I've got a riddle for you!"

A Little Plate's Rondo: No. 1

Something to note: a lot of people don't seem to like this pairing, I think. Oh well. I hope you'll give it a shot, anyway.

So my dog did about a month in one of those obnoxious Elizabethan collars, and I still feel really bad for her. But she's already forgotten about it, so no love lost, I guess.

About this Fic: No. 1

I think the reason that getting fanfiction characters right is so difficult is exactly because they're often based on exaggerated moments, ideals, and simplified personality traits. I really do believe that in real life, most of the Sohmas would probably be far more dysfunctional than they already are. Kagura especially I feel has gotten the short end of the stick on this one. One moment we're dealing with a somewhat complex, self-aware entity, and all of a sudden she becomes an exaggerated, larger-than-life lunatic. The reality –in my personal opinion, mind you- is that most people can't be so seriously unstable and be happy.

So I kind of interpreted Kagura's character as a more grounded one, and tried to find a common thread to string it all together. I didn't think I could write a serious short story with a character that had no drive besides an undying love for Kyou. I mean, to adapt that behavior to real life and study the motives behind it, we'd probably come up with some very disturbing, unpleasant revelations. That is why I kind of toned down her rages and fights, and added a degree of introspection that the "real" Kagura probably doesn't make much use of. I wanted her to be relatively self-conscious and self-aware, so I could write for a character that wasn't always reacting instead of making decisions of her own. Simply put, I couldn't have her being ruled by her impulses 24/7, because she couldn't really be written in as a main character.

I hope I haven't offended. I don't claim to be an expert on anything, but I thought I'd stick out my reasoning for tweaking her character a bit to make it suitable for writing an in-depth fic. I have been trying to stay as true as possible to her exuberant nature, and I hope it won't disappoint. ;-)