Title: Kyou, Caged
Day/Theme: 21st September/"A secret, unlit room"
Series: Fruits Basket
Character/Pairing: Kyou
Rating: PG
He didn't know how long it'd been since they locked him up; here the days turned into nights and the nights turned into days with no real sense of the passage of time. Every so often he would feel weird – tired, his memory supplied him with the word, tired, like he'd been doing something – and he curled up in the foetal position with a sigh and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, it was cold in his cell and the iciness brought him to not full awareness, but something close. His head ached and he tried to sit up – tried – he slid back down whenever he attempted it. His head was heavy, painful; he rubbed his eyes with his fists and winced, it felt like he was grinding needles into his eyes.
"Are you all right?"
The voice was small and timid and came from outside. He didn't reply; it was bad enough being in here at all without going crazy. It went away after a while and he was alone again for several short brightnesses. The pit-patter on the roof came and when he woke, the light was dim.
"Hello?" The voice was back, sounding tentative and scared. "Cat-san?"
He twitched involuntarily at the honorific and replied, his vocal cords scratchy with disuse, "Don't call me 'san'."
"Oh! I'm sorry, Cat…kun?"
It was funny that the voice in his head sounded like Tohru. He'd never have wanted her here, so deep in the compound. He cleared his throat. "Just 'Cat' is fine." Going nuts would give him something to do, anyway.
"Okay!" He'd really missed her. He pressed his cheek against the cool metal of the door and breathed in deeply. The voice came again. "My name is Sohma Kyoko!"
Then again, occasionally people did come by to see him, to gawk at the evil cat. She'd probably been dared by a friend. "Oh, yeah?" If he didn't get up and look through, he could imagine that it was Tohru.
"Yup!" Tohru would be nodding her head and smiling innocently, maybe bouncing a little. "I was named after my grandmother!"
He didn't remember anyone called Kyoko, but maybe someone had married outside – hah, like hell – because if Tohru had the sense of a gnat, she'd've got the heck out of the Sohma household as soon as she graduated. He tried not to think about Tohru being, well, Tohru.
"Yeah?" he repeated. "You like her?"
"Oh, I never knew her! She died before I was born – not even Papa knew her, but he says Mama told him all about her and that she was very nice." If he were talking to Tohru, this would be the part where she started worrying that she was talking too much about herself and began to panic about it. Sohma Kyoko seemed not to notice. "Mama died when I was born, but Papa says she was the most wonderful person in the entire world."
He began to struggle to his feet, using the wall as a crutch. Kyoko continued, her voice incongruously cheerful. "Mama was very happy, but my cousin said she was always sad, too, so I asked Papa why, but he wouldn't tell me. My cousin said it was because of the cat, and I thought that was strange! Because there aren't any cats in the whole compound, I went looking, but I couldn't find even one. I asked where the Cat was – um, you – but no one would tell me, so I started looking for secret hiding places and I found you!"
He took hold of the bars and looked at the girl on the other side. She couldn't be more than ten, with long brown hair and big brown eyes that he remembered from before his eighteenth birthday.
"Tohru," he said, his voice hoarse. "Tohru."
The girl smiled brightly and it was just like then, too, because Tohru had shone even in the dim light. "That was my Mama's name!"