As always, comments, constructive criticism, and praise, however faint, are all greatly desired and will be appreciated.
Fruits Basket belongs to Takaya Natsuki and Hakusensha; English-language versions by FUNimation (anime) and Tokyopop (manga). This piece of fiction is in no way approved or endorsed by any of the copyright holders.
~:~:~:~:~
As the train carrying Kyou and Tohru pulled out of the station, Yuki realized just how much they all would miss her. Tohru. She had seemed very happy when yesterday, he had dropped all formality and called her by her given name for the first time.
When he'd first met her, his family was like an old, worn tapestry, full of gaping holes, ugly rents, and unraveling threads. Tohru had trusted in the goodness of each and every one of them; and with that thread of trust, she'd moved skillfully among them, mending a hole here, reattaching a thread there, unconsciously weaving them all together into something that was, quite miraculously, beginning to look whole and new and almost beautiful again.
Some of the original threads of trust had not needed mending – the one between himself and Haru, and the one connecting Shigure, Hatori, and Ayame, had always held strong and true. Others had still been attached, but they had been stretched and frayed almost to the breaking point – the ones between Haru and Rin, Hiro and Kisa, and apparently, Shigure and Akito (although Yuki was still shaking his head in wonder over that last one). Still others had never been attached properly in the first place, such as the one between himself and Ayame. Tohru had reinforced the threads that held, and mended the ones that needed it.
And then there was Kyou. The Cat was a jagged piece, cut from the tapestry so long ago that none of them realized it belonged there; but Tohru had found the hole, picked up the missing piece, and woven it into the tapestry so skillfully that now none of them could imagine it without him. The edges of this piece of mending were still new and rough, but Yuki knew that with time and age and Tohru's loving influence, they'd smooth out and become barely discernable.
Not all of the holes were mended, of course, for even one as skillful as Tohru couldn't mend something that appeared to be beyond repair, or that needed work by someone else. Yuki didn't know as if he'd ever be able to fully trust Akito, but the fact that Tohru did took the concept out of the realm of impossibility.
In the end, Tohru had, quite unconsciously, handed Yuki some of her threads of trust, and had taught him how to weave his own piece of fabric, which extended outside the family and included Machi and Kakeru. She had given him many gifts, but teaching him to trust others through her example was perhaps the greatest one.
He would miss her. They all would; but the threads of trust and love that she had used to weave them together would hold, and extend to wherever they might go, and would eventually pull them back together.