Title: Persephone's Flight
Author: Tofurkey
Disclaimer: The whole stage belongs to Natsuki Takaya; I'm merely an actor.
Summary: He had to help her; of this, he was certain. She was the closest he had ever come to finding spring again, and he couldn't just let her wilt away in the winter. TohruHatori.
In my dark winter
lying ill, at last I ask
how fares my neighbor -Basho
Chapter I: "Cold Like Snow"
"I think it was the first snow that finally did it," Shigure said calmly, exhaling a hazy, pale blue cloud of cigarette smoke into the winter night air. Hatori watched the dense cloud float up into the dark, his eyes lifting up to the star-splotched sky, before they lowered to focus back on Shigure posed serenely on the bottom porch step, impervious to the freezing temperature.
"I don't have time to wax philosophical," Hatori replied impatiently in his most clinical voice, though he could hardly look Shigure in the eye and instead focused his gaze on his own hands, which clenched his medical bag with an unnecessary firmness.
"Where is she?" How curious, how morbidly fascinating his knuckles appeared tonight; he had never noticed how pronounced they were…perhaps he was losing weight…
"She's in the kitchen…where I found her" For the first time since he had hurried over to Shigure's residence in the dead of the night, he detected a crack in his friend's stoic disposition, a chink in his spotless armor, visible in the slight clenching of the jaw, an irritable crease between the eyebrows, a pause in rhythmic breathing, a glassy overtone of the eyes…
Finally noticing Hatori staring at him expectantly, raking in every minute detail of his appearance, Shigure momentarily dropped the façade and closed his eyes warily, inhaling deeply from his cigarette.
"Just go," He deadpanned, waving his hand dismissively towards the desolate house, which Hatori noticed for the first time had all the windows thrown wide open, looking strangely dilapidated in the moonlight.
"I can't stand the…smell."
Nodding slowly, unconsciously swallowing, Hatori bowed his head and entered the darkened house, which offered no more warmth than the winter surrounding it. To be honest, somewhere deep inside of him he had wondered if he would ever receive this desperate call from Shigure some anonymous night, and his imagination made it all appear sickeningly familiar to him; he walked through the halls of the home fluidly, dreamlike, as if he was merely just revisiting an acquainted nightmare.
"Tohru?" He called out softly upon reaching the kitchen, watching his breath puff dismally in front of him. No one; it was empty. Walking into the middle of the room, eerie merely for its precedence of normality, the smell finally hit him. In all his years as a doctor, he had never smelt burning flesh before, at least not to this degree, and he suddenly had a great sympathy for what he had previously deemed an excessive overreaction on Shigure's part.
Trying not to physically recoil along with the violent lurching in his stomach, Hatori steeled his thoughts and his steps, his cognizance logically following the forward motion of his legs: They all had been waiting for something to snap inside of her, ever since Akito had locked up Kyo in solitary confinement and threw away the key, as promised. Initially she had reacted well, as well as can be expected in such a contemptible situation, but after Yuki left for university, she was left cold in the far-from comforting hands of Shigure and more and more to her own grim thoughts, nurturing them in the darkness like weeds of the soul.
She was coping with the loss of a loved one…Kamisama knew he had been down that road.
"Tohru?" He called out cautiously, entering her empty bedroom, which could be observed only as a defiant burst of choking pink femininity, swallowed whole in a hole of testosterone. She really did live like a singular flower amidst a garden of men. On a whim, Shigure crossed the room and pulled back the curtain, the window overlooking the screamingly stifling snowy scene on the yard below.
However, as his quick eyes readily informed him, the peaceful backdrop was tainted by a brown head that appeared blurry through the foggy window. Hatori's eyes widened as they followed Tohru, clad in the arctic weather in only a thin white nightdress, barefooted, appearing by nearly all perceptions one with the snow. He instantly broke from this trance, however, when he watched her ghost-like form suddenly lurch and fall forward with a frightening finality onto Nature's bitter blanket.
His heart pounding madly, Hatori dashed clumsily through the barren household, threw open the back doors with a bang, and made his way laboriously through the brittle, unwelcome snow to where Tohru lay face down, unmoving.
"Tohru," He implored her gently, lifting her up easily by pulling on her nightdress collar. Shifting her deadweight in his arms while trying to avoid actually embracing her, Hatori could feel how bony and frail she had become in the months since he had seen her, a weightless lifeless rag doll in his arms, parading around in human skin and clothing.
All the awkward, jostling movement on his part must have startled her awake to some state of consciousness, because before he knew it, she was shaking uncontrollably in his arms, not from chill, but rather from the heavy dry sobs that started to rack her body in waves, making her speech barely decipherable.
"I-I'm s-s-sor-ry, Hatori-ii. It was ju-ju-sss-t the fire….it l-l-looked s-so m-much like his…ha-hair…and…I…I…d-didn't k-k…"
For the first time, Hatori's eyes strayed away from Tohru's wildly wide blue ones, swollen with tears, to her hands, which she was flailing around manically, pushing against invisible walls. His stomach, which had been doing clenching and twisting acrobatics every since the smell descended upon him in the kitchen, gave a queasy careen, and he flinched, swallowing down bile.
Her pretty little lily white hands, so delicate, so feminine, were swollen twice their normal size, a furious red, large and agitated blisters festering in giant clusters on the palms, even charred in some places, where sorry-looking yellow flesh shone through. It was a horrifying sight, and his repulsion must have shown somewhere in his face, for Tohru began to resist him with distraught shrieks, before finally going limp in his hands once more.
Hatori stood still for what seemed like years, letting out low, rattling breaths to calm his harried nerves, Tohru's weight agonizing in his arms, before Shigure, presumably drawn by Tohru's screams, came up behind him from the house. Silently, Shigure took off his overcoat and wrapped it around Tohru's shoulders, before the two men simultaneously exchanged a look and lifted her as one, Shigure with her feet and Hatori cradling her head against his chest.
Hatori's back was against the biting wind and against the direction they were heading, and never did he remember feeling so cold and so blind.
Hatori's eyes rested heavily on the sleeping girl curled in the backseat of his car, her body wrapped now in two thick woolen blankets, her hands wrapped in two heavy white bandages. Shigure stared over his friend's shoulder solemnly to look into the car, sucking thoughtfully on dead cigarette stub.
"Are you sure you want to do this? Take her to the summer home?" Shigure began in a low, gruff voice, his wolfish eyes locking on Hatori. "You're a physician, not a psychologist."
"Do you think me incapable of helping her?" Hatori replied with uncharacteristic defensiveness, aware that the bite in his voice wasn't a sign of anger, but indicative of the desperation he felt, they both felt, bordering hopelessness. Shigure, intuitive as always, picked up on it flawlessly.
"Not at all," Shigure hastened unapologetically, "but I just don't think there is anything you can do for Tohru. You should know, Tori, you said so yourself: 'A broken heart never heals', and it has become quite the coin phrase amongst our family members. Time and care are the only things that can do any good for Tohru, and you're—"
"'Cold like snow'?"
"What?"
"Just another phrase thrown around between family members," Hatori deadpanned, recalling Akito's rare moments of accurate perception in the middle of his normal muddle of insanity. He couldn't explain, not even to Shigure, why he had to do what he had to do. He had to help her; of this, he was certain. She was the closest he had ever come to finding spring again, and he couldn't just let her wilt away in the winter.
A/N: I know I should be working on my other story right now, but this persistent muse was just begging to be written. Please tell me what you think. I apologize for this chapter's brevity, but it just serves as a prologue, of sorts. The M rating is right now for gruesome level, but knowing me, it will later be for strong language (what can I say, I have a foul tongue?) and possible adult content.
-Tofurkey