Let It Fall Down
By Keo Siph
Fruits Basket © Natsuki Takaya
And so I watched her. Dark hair had fallen, was not pulled back in some cute manner. Deep eyes were unfocused and dark. Slender fingers entwined. Mouth was tight.
Her Kyo orange cat sat contrasting in her arms.
The orange was the only color in the whole room. The paleness of her skin and the flash of her eyes could not fight the darkness brought in. I stood with the window to my back, the glazed light shifting through to me.
She spoke.
I could almost feel the darkness in her ebb as she shed her words. Rippling streams of it fell from her. She loved him. But she was also too like him. She shared the curse. She couldn't help. He had to be accepted by someone outside of the Zodiac. She left her love in the hands of Tohru. She left to Tohru her most important person's fate. She put her whole world in Tohru.
The rain continued outside.
I could only stare.
Why was I, Yuki Sohma, standing here? My … the person who knew me best, more than Shigure, more than Akito, more than Ayame…Is out there, bleeding to death. The first person to accept me is crying out there.
The first person to spill their heart to me and me alone is sitting behind me, searching for thread to sew her heart together again. She was bleeding and crying and gorging on needles. This beautiful girl had fallen from the outside beauty and let herself be stoned to death. Now, she was asking me to go out in the rain.
It's very wet outside. I don't like wet. But I was wet anyways.
She bandaged my arm. She had tied her hair back up. It rained still. The darkness wasn't, however, the all-encompassing thing it was before. She glowed like no other. Her fingers brushed my skin. She was out the door and slowly closing it when she spoke.
"Thank you."
Two words and a shut door were all I had of her. A strong, weeping willow in the midst of a hurricane, trusting the earth and dirt below it. Her life had been blown away. Kyo was with Tohru, outside in the living room. He was not with her. Her backpack sat in its orange, restored glory, button eyes watching me. I doubted she could wear it anymore. It would be the symbol of what she had given up in the storm.
But her thought was still grateful for having him at all.
I watched the grain on the door, the flow of it reminding me of her. Those deep rivers that delicately dangled around her face that had been cruelly tied back up. Later I would not know if this is what I was referring to, or to her herself, for she should be the one falling to her knees in defeat, not rejoicing with thanks. My mouth formed words my throat could not speak.
"Let it fall down."