Disclaimer: Fruits Basket isn't mine. : (
A/N: Just my attempt to answer the question of how Kazuma's grandfather managed to have children when he was kept confined his entire life.
I.
Sohma Kaori is sixteen when she's first assigned the duty of bringing the Cat his meals and cleaning his rooms. An honor, everyone calls it. A great, great honor to be given such an important task. Her parents are thrilled.
Kaori is petrified.
The Cat is a monster. Every Inside Sohma knows it. Mothers use the threat of him to get their children into bed on time and to get them to eat their vegetables. Eat your peas or I'll send you to the Cat! Is an oft heard phrase in Kaori's house while she is growing up.
She eats her peas.
They send her anyway.
It happens in inches, slow and sudden all at once.
The Cat is monster but Kaori is sixteen.
It's the perfect age for impossible loves.
II.
She is terrified at first. He is her childhood boogeyman, the monster under the bed, the thing that goes bump in the night. All her life she's been warned not to go near this house and now she's being ordered to walk right in.
It's not fair.
She goes in anyway.
III.
He doesn't look like a monster.
Logically she'd known that he wouldn't, that just like the other jyuunishi he would look human most of the time, but there is knowing and there is knowing.
Now she knows.
She knows that, on some level at least, he is just a boy a little bit older than her. A handsome boy.
It takes her a long time to realize it. Not because his looks are understated, no one could ever call them that. Not with that bright, flame hair and those sharp red eyes. It's because she never looks at him for more than a second at a time, just quick snatches and glimpses when she thinks she can get away with it.
Kaori is a good servant.
She keeps her eyes on the floor.
IV.
Like all good servants Kaori is silent.
She speaks only when spoken to and the Cat never speaks.
He watches her though. The whole time she's there he watches from his seat by the window, never stirring, never making a sound, just staring at her day after day after day. It isn't that she's particularly interesting or lovely. She's not. But she's there.
She's there and he's lonely.
It drapes around him like a heavy quilt in the summer. Stifling. Suffocating. It's etched into every feature she catches in her split second perusals.
It occurs to her one day that she's probably the only person he sees on a regular basis. No one else works in the tiny house in the woods and no one ever comes to visit.
She is all he has.
V.
It takes her two months to smile at him.
It's a small, wobbly, spur of the moment affair that makes its appearance for a few brief seconds after she sets his dinner tray down. She doesn't say anything and the look on his face, utter shock mixed with heartbreaking gratitude, hurries her out the door.
She stands on the path outside for a few moments before the fragile silence is broken by the sound of sobs. They chase her all the way back to the Main House.
VI.
The next day she smiles at him again.
VII.
Things get easier after that.
He begins to smile back and eventually he begins to speak. At first it is nothing more than thank you and hello. He observes the niceties and she observes them in return. His voice is rusty with disuse.
Eventually the conversations evolve.
He does all the asking. He wants to know everything. What is her family like? Does she have any siblings? What are her dreams? What are her goals?
She answers truthfully, reveling in the novelty of being interesting to someone.
Speaking with monsters is much easier than she'd ever thought it would be.
VIII.
The first time she touches him it's to stop him from crying.
She's been ill for a week, a bad fever, and she hopes that whoever was sent to replace her hasn't let the tiny house grow messy in her absence. The chores take longer now that they're broken up by speech and she doesn't relish the thought of giving up their talks so she can get caught up on housework.
She'll do if she has to, of course. Kaori is a Sohma and duty always comes first. But she doesn't want to. She's missed his face and voice, far more than she should really, and the thought of what that could mean thrills and scares her all at once. Her fever dreams had been full of him.
All her worries of mess are happily proven groundless. The house is as spick and span as ever. The conversations can continue uninterrupted.
But he doesn't seem to want to talk that day and after a few pleasantries she gives up and goes about her business. He watches, silent and lonely, just the way he used to. There is something hovering in the air that makes her feel uncomfortable, as though she is standing on the edge of a cliff, there are currents in this silence that she cannot see.
Lunch passes. Dinner is eaten. The chores are finished. She gathers her things to go.
"I didn't think you were coming back." His voice is both heavy and thin, as if it's just waiting for a chance to snap and crush him beneath its weight.
She turns around. He is staring at his hands. "I had a cold."
"Oh." She steps closer at the word, part acknowledgement, part sob. She can see his fingers clench and his shoulders shake. This is not the conversation she wants to have but it's the one that she's got so she supposes she can make do.
She takes her cue from the fever dreams and kneels at his feet.
Her fingers threading through his own gets a gasp. The hand stroking his face a sob. She reminds him to breath and finally snares a laugh.
IX.
He is hungry for contact.
From almost the moment she walks in with breakfast in the morning until the instant she leaves in the evening they are touching in some way. Sometimes it's a big way, like the long, slow kisses that have replaced many of their conversations. Sometimes it's a small way, a hand brushing across her back as she walks by or a feather light kiss on her ear while she's dusting.
The only thing he never asks for are embraces.
Accidents happen, of course. That can't be helped. But he never tries to hold her intentionally and she respects his unspoken wishes by returning the favor.
She never, ever tries to touch the beads.
In the end he guards his monstrosity so closely that she almost, almost manages to forget about it.
X.
Days pass. Weeks and months follow. She turns seventeen in haze of stolen kisses and forbidden touches. Cobwebs take up residence in the corners and some days he's obliged to help her clean when they've spent too much time on other activities for her to get everything done herself.
The weather is perfect and the house is safe and he loves her and Kaori forgets about being a Sohma and lets duty fall by the wayside. It all seems too perfect to last.
It is.
XI.
She is with child.
His child.
And she is afraid. Afraid for him and for her and for the baby not yet born but already doomed. He tells her not to worry. He will take care of them, both of them, forever. They'll find a way, they'll escape, they'll run away and be free and happy and everything will be alright.
It isn't.
XII.
Sohma Kaori is seventeen when her affair with the Cat is discovered. A disgrace, everyone says, a horrible scandal. Her parents are ashamed.
Kaori is petrified.
The Cat is a monster. Every Inside Sohma knows it and by loving him Kaori becomes a monster by default. They don't kill her like she half expects though the shame is so great she welcomes the idea. Instead a marriage is quietly arranged to a low-ranked Outside man who is willing to ask no questions and take her as she is.
She begs them for a life of solitude.
They send her anyway.
It never happens, not slowly or suddenly or any way at all.
But her husband is a good man and Kaori is seventeen.
It's the perfect age for reality.
A/N: This was my first Fruits Basket fic so please tell me how it worked. I generally don't write things this long in present tense so this was a bit of an experiment for me.
Reviews, especially those with constructive criticism, are both appreciated and adored.