Author's Note: I was not expecting to write this story. Honestly, I can't even remember the last time that inspiration struck me so completely out of the blue. My fingers itched to write this and the plot even worked its way into my dreams. However, now that it is finished, I am very pleased to present it to you. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Are you serious? What would you do if I said I owned the Fruits Basket series? Sue me? Only if you can find me. Sadly, I don't own it, so the question is purely academic.
The Nine Lives of Sohma Kyo
When Sohma Kyo steps into The Room, the one where he has been condemned to spend the rest of his life, his first thought is, "Here I am again." His second thought is "But I've never been here before." He spends a lot of time thinking about this reaction. Time is one thing he will not run out of in this place.
It takes him three days to unpack his things, this not for lack of opportunity to do so, but for lack of interest. It takes him the entire time to give into the fact that he will be here long enough for unpacked bags to be necessary. Later, he will remember that early state of denial and be, almost, amused by it.
It is another two days before he willingly begins to explore the nooks and crannies of The Room. He would have taken longer, but that proverb about curiosity and cats has ever been applicable to him. In taking stock of his surroundings, he notes that the futon is new, as are the towels in the small attached bathroom, but that all the permanent furniture, the desk on one side of the room and the chair that goes with it, are old, very old, and heavy. He wouldn't be surprised to find out that they were placed when The Room was built. There are no light fixtures, only a desk lamp with a surprisingly bright bulb. The windows are shuttered and locked from the outside. He adds them to the list of Things He Will Not Think About, along with the large black stain on the floor, the set of seven shrines that take up the one wall uncluttered by doors or desks, and Tohru. The title of this list will eventually change into Things He Thinks of Incessantly, but for now his willpower is still strong and he is stubborn.
One week into his confinement he begins to get curious about the sets of heavy tomes on the shelf above the desk. There are twenty volumes in various colors, but they are all massive, each one a thousand pages long. There is a twenty-first book lying on the desk, waiting for him. They are diaries, perfectly preserved, the oldest of which dates from 1520, and the twenty-first is blank. He throws it across the room and spends the next several hours pacing furiously. He has not seen another living person since he arrived.
Three weeks in and he begins reading the diaries. He only does it because he is bored, or so he tells himself, and even he can only do his katas so many times. He starts with the oldest ones and works his way forward. They are the longest books he has ever read, but after the first few pages the sense of kinship with his long dead predecessors drives him to read every word with the same dedication that they were written. He discovers that Kyo is a family name, passed onto every male born with the cat spirit He is the seventh Kyo to be placed in this Room.
Kyo the first wanted very badly to be a warrior and had pleaded with the family to let him fight in the many wars occurring in his time period. Despite the fact that he was refused and locked away he still considered himself to be a samurai and was determined to live out as honorable a life as fate allowed. He lived in The Room for forty-nine years, wrote three of the diaries, and never dishonored himself with self-pity. When he finished the last pages of his diary, Kyo the seventh cried without knowing why.
Kyo the second also had three diaries to his name. He was the only Kyo who didn't really mind being locked away. This Kyo liked philosophy and reading, and the solitude of The Room became his safe haven in a world that despised him. He was a gentle man who could not find it within himself to hate the Sohma family or even to be angry with them. Kyo the seventh finds these kind and gentle words to be a healing balm for his own rage and turmoil, but there is one phrase that he will always remember "As long as I, who does not mind this curse, continue to live, then it does not have to be borne by another. Kyo the second wrote fifty-seven years worth of diary.
Neko the first was one of two women to bear the cat spirit and live in The Room. She was first locked up at age fifteen, a year younger than any of the others. More than anything else in the world she had wanted a family of her own, but no one would marry her. To ease her sense of loneliness she built shrines for the first two Kyo's. She finished her first and last diary at 35; on the last page was her death poem.
"The full western moon;
The white deer dream of freedom
Begging for pardon"
Kyo the third was an artist. Both his diaries are filled with sketches and drawings, including a self-portrait at the beginning of each. In the first he looks so much like Kyo the seventh it is scary. The last Kyo stares at the second portrait of his predecessor for hours, trying to imagine his face someday looking like that. Two-hundred pages before the last page of the second diary there is a painting of The Room drawn from the corner where the black stain is. The painting and the words below it are done in blood. The third's ink stone ran out and was not replaced; desperate, he created one last work out of his own life blood of the last thing he would ever see. Kyo the seventh says a prayer at the artist's shrine for each of the twenty-four years he spent in The Room.
Kyo the fourth grew to be a talented writer and poet during his incarceration. Even though he seemed to be a strong and determined individual at first, his inner thoughts became twisted by solitude and painful memories of his past treatment. The short stories and poems that he filled his three diaries grew to reflect the metamorphosis of his heart. The more the modern Kyo reads of his words, the more he is haunted by the weirdly twisted spirit in them. It reminds him strangely of his true form, with all its odd angles and ugliness. When he finally finishes all fifty-two years' worth of them, he spends the next two weeks curled up on the floor, miserable and retching, sick to his soul.
It takes him nearly three weeks to work up the courage to start the next diary, but when he finally does he regrets not starting them sooner. Kyo the fifth is everything that the previous Kyo had only seemed to be at first. His diaries are filled with forceful, bracing diatribes against the main house, the Jyuunishi, and his own fate. This Kyo tried to escape five times in the first three years. Each attempt earned him a horrible beating, but after the fifth one they broke both his legs and let them heal sloppily; he would never walk again. Kyo the fifth lived another sixty-two years like that purely to spite the main house. The final diary entry in the fourth and last book is spent mocking 'god' for his inability to break the cat's spirit.
In contrast, the second Neko was already broken when she got there. Her single diary is filled with mad scribbles in which she claims to speak to the ghosts of the previous cats who died in this Room. In particular, Kyo the fourth, with his dark creeping stories, seeped his way into her heart. Finally, more connected with the world of the dead than with the small dark room she lived in, she went to join her strange and vicious Kyo. She survived for just ten months in the Room, the shortest life span of all of them. Even after he stopped shivering in the wake of her diary, Kyo spent many sleepless nights nervously watching the shadows in the Room, looking for any sign of restless souls come for him.
Kyo the sixth's diaries are the last of the set. He lived fifty-six years in the Room and it startles the younger Kyo to realize that this man and the woman he writes about, Mayoko, are the grandparents of his own Shishou. He reads both of the diaries left by the man with great interest, stopping near the end in surprise when he sees a mention of Kazuma. It is very strange to see the connection between all these lives and his own existence. It leaves him with a sense of peace he has rarely ever felt before in his life. This is his place, here among these diaries and shrines, in this Room that smells of age and ink. Some part of him is still desperately trying to believe that he will someday leave this Room alive, but there is a new sense of understanding that even if he doesn't, that's okay, because his existence here is part of the universal harmony.
That night his dreams, which have been angry and uncomfortable ever since he arrived, instead soothe and calm him. The next morning is filled with a sense of tranquility that stays with him as he eats meals delivered by servants he never sees and opens the twenty-first book to the first blank page. He fills it with lessons he has learned from his reading. On the next page he begins telling the future about himself. It feels good to know that someone, someday, will know who he is. He also writes a request on a scrap of paper and leaves it with his empty tray. Two days later he receives the materials for an eighth shrine, which he sets up in memory of the man who is almost, sort of, his great grandfather.
It has been eight months since he first stepped foot into The Room and he no longer thinks of it as such; instead it has become Home and the books and shrines have become Family. He does not think about how strange this is or how much the Kyo who was determined never to even enter this room would be horrified by this, but convinces himself that this is a new level of maturity and that it is simply a necessary adjustment to his new life. He also finds that his hair has grown out beyond what is comfortable. He is not allowed scissors, too many suicides for that, but they have given him a dull safety razor for the sparse beard that tickles his cheeks and chin. He gives up attempting to use it on the wild mass of hair he's grown, instead he finds some old leather hair ties in the desk that he uses to control his mane. He thinks it looks a bit like an old Samurai ponytail. He thinks that the first Kyo would be pleased by the comparison.
Ten months in and he's stopped doing his katas, he has almost stopped moving altogether. Instead he reads and writes, prays and thinks; it doesn't bother him a bit that he's become almost a completely different person in the short time he's been kept here. He also doesn't mind that the only mark of the changing seasons is the hissing irritability of the rain and the rattle of the leaves outside his Home. None of the others care much for the rain either, it always leaves them sullen and quiet, and sometimes it is several days before they will speak to him again.
One year to the day since he first came Home and for the first time, the door to the outside is actually fully opened. This is different from the quick, even careless, movements of servants who want nothing more than to leave immediately; someone has actually entered His Room. Kyo stares in confusion for almost a full minute before he realizes who it is.
"Shishou?"
He is not the only one surprised; Shishou is staring at him as though he's never seen him before. As if he hadn't sneaked in here, with the help of Shigure and Hatori, expressly to see Kyo. There is another moment, after that first second of recognition as they both try to understand what they are seeing.
Kazuma sees a young man who is completely altered from the boy he knew. There is none of Kyo's fire in this stranger's eyes; there is no passion in that listless, weakened form. This is a shadow of Kyo, a ghost of vibrant life. He came expecting a certain degradation of spirit, maybe even a depression, but this… this he doesn't even understand.
Kyo sees an actual human being, living and breathing and moving with a purpose and life he had forgotten existed. Shishou smells of fresh air and open space, and he is painfully, unalterably real in a Room full of dusty shadows and hazy dreams. It only takes that moment, of basking in the presence of a being who hasn't been stifled by time and memory and the stinking cloy of death that The Room suddenly seems to be filled with, to relight the spark buried deep inside of him.
"Shishou…" He breathes, eyes wide, because he has never been so happy to see another human being in his entire life. His muscles and bones creak from disuse as he forces himself to stand and greet his adopted father. He is not expecting the punch that knocks him into the far wall, but he smiles as he stands up again because he had forgotten this. He remembers now that he and Shishou didn't communicate through misunderstood words and fragile paper, but through fists and feet. He has grown soft with sleep and forgetfulness, but that doesn't stop him from leaping at his Shishou and giving a proper greeting with his own punch and a wild grin. He doesn't quite dodge the kick that nearly forces him through the floor, but he also doesn't care. He never was able to beat his Shishou in a fight and that's the way things should be. He stand again, but does not attack again, there is no need.
Kazuma relaxes; he has done what he came here to do, invigorate Kyo and reassure him, that they haven't forgotten him. He wasn't expecting for it to be quite so violent, but then, there relationship has been like this ever since his almost son hit puberty. Now, he must go before the reason he had to wake Kyo from his apathy in the first place, arrives.
Kyo takes the box Shishou hands him without ever taking his eyes off the man. He is therefore surprised when there is a rustling sound and a soft mewling cry. There, on top of a towel covering a whole stack of envelopes and photos is a tiny grey kitten with bright green eyes.
"To remind you that you are not alone." Kazuma smiles, turns, and leaves. "His name is Yuki, make sure you hide him where no one can see. Akito is coming."
"What! You named a kitten you planned to give me after that damn rat!" But Shishou is already gone and The Room, which no longer feels like home, presses down on him. The kitten, Yuki, cries again, stretching out a tiny paw to bat at Kyo's chest. He is alone, but he has been given the strength he needs to survive; now it's up to him not to squander it.
When 'god' shows up Kyo is waiting for him. He's put on his jeans and t-shirt, instead of his usual pajamas, his hair is brushed and pulled back in a style more like Shishou's than an imaginary samurai's, and he is standing in the middle of the room looking at the door. Akito smirks and smiles and mocks him as Kyo's temper steadily rises. By the time 'god' leaves Kyo looks about ready to pop a blood vessel and he's certain that the entire complex heard him yelling. He smiles properly for the first time in over a year, let's his cat out of the closet and waits for dinner to be delivered, determined to catch a glimpse of the outside world in the split second when the door opens. It never does.
Apparently, Akito took their argument the wrong way and he's been cut down to a single meal of half rations a day. Most of that goes to little Yuki, and Kyo begins to lose the weight he put on while he was lying about contemplating the ceiling. Kyo actually doesn't mind because this gives him something to be angry about. Anger is good; it drives away indifference and gives him a reason to start working at his katas and exercising as much as he is able. He feeds it until the rage is a permanent sensation in his stomach and swears to himself not to write more than one page a week in his diary.
He has written five pages before Akito finally relents and begins sending him full meals again. However, dinner never arrives; he is only given two trays a day. Despite this, Kyo begins hoarding the food that will keep in his closet, just in case he makes Akito mad again. He also begins to gain weight again, this time, it's all muscle.
He, literally, saves the letters and photos inside the box for rainy days, when he is too weak to do anything except sit and pet Yuki, whose name he still despises. The letters are mostly from Tohru, about school, jobs, Yuki, Shigure, and the fish they had for dinner last night. She tells him how much she misses him, that she thinks of him every day, and that she still hasn't given up hope that he will someday return. Her words keep him strong when the water dampens his carefully cultured fury. The photos of her, of the sunsets he's missed, of the sky and clouds and trees. Other pictures are there to remind him that time still passes in the outside world, beyond this single room. There is a picture of her, Yuki, Wave Girl, and the Yankee standing with Kazuma beside a banner reading "Happy Birthday Kyo!" For some reason he is always surprised to see the rat standing there with them, but he shouldn't be. After all, he had purposefully sought out both Yuki and Momijiro before graduation, and asked, almost them begged really, to take care of Tohru after he was…gone. "Keep her safe and distracted; make sure she doesn't have time to think about me too much. She's got such a kind heart; she'll do something stupid like cry about me." Well, it seemed they'd failed at keeping her distracted, but she seemed alright otherwise, always smiling in all the photos, a real smile, not a fake one. He could tell the difference.
As his strength grows, so too does his frustration. He begins pacing, back and forth across the floor, Yuki's marble green eyes watch him as he goes. He wants out. He wants to get out of this room so badly that it doesn't even matter to him that The Cat inside of him is tempting him back toward that black hole of lethargy he only just escaped. It doesn't matter that some part of believes that he 'must' obey 'god' and stay put. He will either go mad, kill himself, or escape and he has to do one of the three before the Cat in his soul drags him back into emptiness. He gives himself six months. He has been in The Room a year and a half already, so that means that the new year will never find him here. This is his sworn oath to every memory of life he has ever had. He hopes that Tohru will forgive him for it.
Three, increasingly desperate, diary pages later, Yuki comes back to Kyo with a small roll of paper stuck through his collar. The paper holds a short description of a route through the Sohma compound, a time and date, and the name of a nearby park. It is not signed, which means either the person who wrote it didn't want to risk Akito knowing their name or it's from 'god' himself. Eventually, he realizes that it doesn't matter which one it is because he's going to try it anyway. He just hopes that if it is from Akito then they won't break his legs, his spirit is nowhere near as strong as Kyo the fifth's.
The day before his escape attempt, exactly one year, eight months and ten days into his imprisonment, he is once again visited by 'god' and this time Akito has apparently taken the time to prepare his verbal attack in advance. After all, no one was ever really scared of Akito's fists, not even Hatori; it was by his insight into their souls that they have all been destroyed.
"Monster."
"Murderer."
"Unclean."
Of course, just because Akito's words have always been his most dangerous weapons, doesn't mean that they aren't more effective when they're carved into his back with a whip. It takes Yuki's rough tongue against the slashes to convince Kyo to even think about moving the next morning. He suddenly finds himself praying to any god but the one who visited him yesterday that Tohru will not be waiting for him at the park.
That evening is filled with painful movements and harsh gasps as he does his best to move across the compound silently, his bag bumping agonizingly against his back and Yuki tucked securely in his arms. Three times, he thinks that they've caught him. His breath catches in his throat and presses himself up against a wall or down against a bush, trying desperately not to make a sound. He thinks that Momiji distracts the second servant a mere half second before he's almost stepped on by the woman. It is painful and difficult and the cat spirit in his soul is urging him to turn back every step of the way, but he finally slips through the hidden tunnel in one of the walls and begins a brisk jog, which is almost, but not quite, a run, towards the park.
It is only when he reaches the bare trees and the frozen over duck pond that he realizes it is winter and feels the sting of the cold on his bare arms. It is only when he sees Shishou, Tohru, Hatori, Shigure, and Yuki, waiting for him that he really truly believes he's going to actually do what no other cat, what no other zodiac member, has ever managed to do and escape. The rush of that thought is the only thing that stops him from reacting when Shishou pats him on the back, but even that is wasted effort when Kazuma's hand comes back sticky wet from the brief contact with Kyo's savaged back. He spends the next five minutes trying to keep Tohru from crying while Hatori, who apparently half-expected this, patches him up with gauze and antibiotic cream. He finally shoves Yuki, the cat, not the mouse, at her in an attempt to distract her. It works, mostly, and gives him an excellent excuse to fight with Yuki, the human, over the cat's name. It's just as well, he decides, that Tohru loves the little furball because wherever he's headed it's not going with him.
Three hours later, he is dressed in warm clothes, with another suitcase full of the same stowed away, and aboard a plane which will take him, his new identity, bought with Sohma funds, and nearly ten thousand dollars worth of Canadian money, safely to Vancouver, Canada. He finds himself trying to remember everything he knows about the English language to distract himself from the throbbing in his back and the almost overwhelming urges to turn around and worship 'god', which can only come from his cursed cat spirit. He gives up halfway through his flight and spends the rest of the time cursing Akito, the cat spirit, Yuki, Shigure, and everyone else who has ever even so much as annoyed him, except Tohru of course.
Six months of freedoms and he is wandering through…somewhere. He's found it useful to only have a vague idea of where he is at any given moment, after two close calls within the first few weeks he's realized that if he knows where he is then Akito does too. So he keeps things simple, no address, no home, no friends, and no permanent job. He carries only what will fit in his backpack, takes odd jobs when he's near civilization, and eats as cheaply as possible, or whatever he can find in the wilderness. He is eternally grateful to his Shishou for teaching him how to set a snare while they were out training on the mountain, along with a few dozen other survival techniques that make him wonder if his adopted father hadn't been planning for something like this the entire time.
It is difficult and often dangerous; there have been moment when the only thing that stopped him from dying in an alley somewhere with a knife in his gut was reflexes and training. Other times he has stood on top of a mountain after spending a week without seeing another human being and laughed with exhilaration at being free in the open air. Once, trapped in a torrential rainstorm, out of doors, he was too weak to stop himself from transforming and nearly froze to death. He has since learned to pay attention to his body's warnings of impending bad weather. He has only been truly frightened once, when he thought he had lost the picture of a laughing Tohru he always kept in his pack. It's the only tangible reminder of home he carries with him, losing it would be like losing himself all over him. Never again, he swears when he finds it. Never again will he forget himself like he did then. To do so would betray everyone who donated money to his travel funds, everyone who believed that he could make it on his own, and Tohru, who so desperately wants him to be free.
Two years since he last stood in Japan and he thinks he must have walked across nearly a quarter of Canada. He stays in the southern part of the country during these winter months, the weather is more clement and it's easier to survive. He knows, because he was a little too far north when winter hit last year and is lucky he didn't lose any extremities to frostbite. He also tries to stay in towns for these five months or so out of the year. It's more expensive, and more dangerous in some ways, but he finds he needs to be around people and the miserable weather is an excellent excuse to humor the urge, with the promise that he'll be back on the road as soon as it warms up a bit. Cats, for all their aloofness, are still social creatures, after all. The day before he plans to leave, he risks sending a postcard to Shishou's address, letting him know that he's still alive. It's worth it to reassure everyone back home, despite the fact that he spends the next week jumping at his own shadow, afraid that the long arms of the Sohma's money will finally catch hold of him. He knows it's ridiculous, but he doesn't slow down until he's three days deep into the wilderness with no idea which direction he's been going. It's dangerous to be as unaware of his location as keeps himself, but he'd rather risk dying in the woods than being caught.
The summer of his third year on the run, he is fishing for his lunch in a cold mountain stream when the world as he knows it, stops spinning on its axis. The achy, almost flu-like feeling, he gets before a rainstorm disappears, the horrible dead weight of a soul torn between yearning to be free and clinging to its 'god' also disappears. There is a moment of unbearable 'loss' when it feels like there is a hole somewhere in his being, and then an amazing sense of lightness spreads through him. With a shout he rips off the accursed, blood soaked beads on his wrist and lets them scatter where they will. He takes a moment to stare at his bare arm and then with a whoop runs to pack up his supplies. To hell with lunch, rainstorms, and Canada, Sohma Kyo is going home.
It is a pleasant surprise when he walks into his Shishou's house, completely unannounced, and finds Tohru sitting and having tea with Kazuma and Hanajima. It is distinctly less than pleasant to find that only Tohru is visiting; Hanajima, apparently, lives there. Once he gets over the shock and has been greeted enthusiastically by his Shishou with a fight that nearly destroys the living room, the first thing he does is walk right up to Tohru and hug her so tight she squeaks. They neither of them manage to say much beyond each other's names for the next five minutes, but no one minds except that fat grey cat who hisses at the unfamiliar male in his house.
Sixty-nine years after Sohma Kyo the seventh was locked up in a Room meant to hold him for eternity he dies peacefully in his bed. His wife had died nearly a year ago and now it is his turn. He finds he doesn't mind dying nearly as much as he thought he would when he was young and filled with enough fighting spirit to start a forest fire. He knows that he has lived a full life of joyful freedom and that Tohru is waiting for him. He is eighty-six years old.
The next day, in the Sohma compound, a Room that has been empty of everything but dust and the memory of pain burns to the ground. A very old man, his grey hair only a few shades lighter than when he was young, watches the smoke rise from his window. His eyes are blurred with age, but he fancies that he sees the shapes of half a dozen men and couple of women flying joyfully up into the autumn sky. They are, all of them, finally free.
The End
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