Make Me Strong
By Katia-chan
A/N: It's random...like everything I've been writing lately.
Disclaimer: Fruits Basket isn't mine, there would be a second season on DVD if it were.
If you like it, there is this little button at the bottom, and it will take very little effort for yall to click it and type things that include criticisms and comments and no pointless flames. In desperate authoress speak, that means: Review please! I like to feel loved.
Enjoy!
She knew she would have misery, everyone does. It was a fact of life that if you lived, you would feel pain and fear, that you would cry. She knew that all along.
But now she knows it for sure.
Suffering comes in many forms, and as she holds her baby, and he isn't her baby any longer, she knows what form her misery will come in. The child, who isn't really hers, the thing that came from her body will be her misery and the misery of the rest of his family. He will be shunned, and it will be her fault. She caused his misery and hers, and theirs.
As he grows she puts everything she has into pretending. It's like a game. During the day she can play the perfect mother, loving and sweet and protective. During the day he can play the perfect son, content and happy. It's a game they both have down to an art. When the sun is up and she checks his beads he can play that the fear in her eyes doesn't hurt him, and she can pretend that she's happy with the way things are, that she enjoys playing the games.
But at night things get harder. He goes to bed and she sits beside him, stroking her fingers over his soft little boy hair and little boy skin. At night he isn't something she has to pretend to love, and when it's dark she can see how wrong her charade is. When he sleeps he isn't the monster anymore.
The time they spend together is torture for both of them, because she has sworn to protect him, and all the rest. He is a blight on their family, someone who doesn't belong and will therefore hurt them all, and he is her fault. So she promised to watch him, tend him, because he is her responsibility, her sin. She likes to pretend also that he doesn't know, that he can't see the fear in her eyes or the shaking in her hands, or the stiffness in her smile. He plays the game too, ignoring the fact that she never lets him out of her sight. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, and of motherhood.
So when he sleeps she watches over him like a proper mother should, no fear, no hatred. She touches his face and she cries. All she wants is to be strong, to be able to give her son the strength he will need to survive his tormented life. Praying for strength is all that consumes her at night, because she hates the thought that he will be like she is, to fragile to survive the smothering blanket of the family. If just saying it would work, if she could just stand outside and scream "make me stronger," then they would be alright, if she could find a hidden pool of power somewhere and absorb it they would survive to the end.
But she couldn't.
Her son is alone now, smothered in the very blanket that suffocated her, and yet he still lives. He still breathes and screams and runs even without her.
Perhaps that was all she could give him, the will to be not like her, to be strong like she never could be. That was her only gift to him.
And maybe that was all he ever needed from her.
TTFN
Katia-chan