AKITO SPOILERS
I'm sorry this took me so long to finish - it was hard for me to write, despite desperately wanting to.
I do not own Furuba, however, it does own me.
Oh, and at this point, Akito is out of the "It's a girl! Whodathunkit?" thing. So she's in the open about her gender.
"Why?" she whispered, voice filled with all the warmth and kindness of a rusty dagger. "Why are you actively trying to destroy me?"
Akito's aqua eyes were met with two dark pools of firey hate, burning their way through her skin. Rin's long, thin, pale legs unfolded underneath her, lifting the horse far higher in the air than Akito herself. Akito flinched away, correctly recognizing this movement as an act of defiance. Rin's hands clenched, her expression one of absolute disgust. The repulsion in the air was thick enough to cut with a butter knife.
Akito threw the door open, her small frame highlighted in the fading sunlight, her eyes burning with fear and distrust. Before her, Rin was curled under a blanket on the ground, head in Haru's lap, Haru stroking Rin's sweat-soaked, fever-heated forehead with a gentleness rarely witnessed in this world. Akito's lip curled contemptuously. She padded quietly, calmly, almost sanely downstairs, where she came across Kagura's father chopping vegtables in his kitchen.
"Have Rin visit me when she's over the fever, please," Akito told him. He looked suprised, but nodded.
Akito left the house, fuming. Rin would have hell to pay for seducing her Haru like that.
Rin had long, shiny, dark black hair and a tall, elegant frame. Akito's eyes blurred - Rin's snarl melted into a sneer. Her firey eyes turned snake-like. Something inside Akito's well-guarded heart uncurled, lashing out at her feelings as Akito herself lashed out at Rin. Her accusatory finger drifted like a needle on a compass, always returning to point at the same two people.
"You!" she spat. "You and your -"
Rin startled her by speaking. Her voice was one of a frightened child, shocked and scared out of her wits, tinged with the taint of madness. "No - don't! Why - you - we were...it, it w-was just a qu-question..."
Akito's snarl deepened. What's this bitch trying to pull?! However, before she could start yelling at Rin again, the girl started sobbing again.
"Wh-why?! W-why was i-it all f-fake?! Why d-do you h-have to...Haru...Haru...wh-why is sh-she so mean t-to me, Haru?" At this, Akito started foward, snarling, but one word stopped her dead in her tracks.
"Mom..."
Mom. Mom. Mom.
"Wh-why don't you l-love me? Mom..."
Mom...Mom...MOM! MOM! "WHY ARE YOU DOING THESE THINGS TO ME?! NO, NO! JUST KEEP AWAY FROM SHIGURE! KEEP AWAY FROM HATORI! KEEP AWAY FROM ME!" The memory-echo inside Akito's head forced her to her knees, holding her head tightly in both hands while Rin writhed on the ground in pain and fever in front of her.
Something else. Something not normal. What was she doing? Why was she feeling this way? What was she feeling? Akito's hands found their way to Rin's forehead. She was stroking Rin's silky hair, wiping the sweat from her tortured face, calling for a glass of water from one of her servants. She was speaking. What was she saying? "Shh...shh...it's okay...I don't hate you..." She was kissing Rin on the forehead, and Rin was falling asleep in her lap. She was numb, she was cold. She was like ice, but how could she be like ice when Rin was so very warm on her freezing legs?
Akito's shoulders twitched. She wanted this repulsive, needy girl off her right now. Rin's warmth, combined with her own icy coldness, coupled with her own health, or lack thereof, brought a wave of nausea, forcing Akito to set Rin on the floor, run to the bathroom, and throw up. Akito washed her face vigorously, brushed her teeth, changed her kimono, and even brushed her hair. She felt dirty, contaminated, yet she had to return to her own room. It was as if there was a dark, slimy spot in her little black room, and that spot was named Isuzu.
"Is she awake?" Akito snapped at a passing servant.
"Wh-what? Who?" The confused boy replied, and Akito realized that he was merely a messenger, here to pick up her letter to Shigure.
"Never mind. Not important. One minute." Akito shook her head to clear it, and darted into her room, hardly glancing at the shape curled on the floor, grabbing a slip of paper, and returning to the thoroughly-confused messenger. He left, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Rin was still curled on the floor. The servant had been taking too long, so Akito got the glass of water herself. She set it down next to Rin's face. The girl was sleeping peacefully, unriddled by the usual fever-dreams.
"Lost in the dark
Searching for love
Tormented by feelings
Or lack thereof
No one to hold
Streetlights are out
Dark and despair
Are what life's about...
So, what do you think?" 12-year-old Akito asked. Shigure just shrugged, caressing her cheek.
"I think you are beautiful, my Akito."
"No, Shigure! The song!" She snarled, putting down her guitair with a sharp movement filled with anger.
"It's lovely. Like you," Shigure murmured offhandedly. Akito's frustration boiled up inside her. Would no one understand how she felt, not even her adorable Shigure? He wouldn't listen to her song, only flatter her with meaningless words.
"Did you write that?" The sleepy voice asked dreamily. Akito jumped. Had she been singing that stupid song she'd written on a whim as a twelve-year-old?! Oh, God, please say it ain't so! She turned around. Rin was sitting up, blanket draping off her frail frame. "It's quite -"
Rin's eyes widened in horror. She recoiled throwing the blanket off her person with a fierceness, her tense frame quaking. "Oh no. Oh no. Oh, God, no! I thought you were Yuki!" She gripped the slippery wooden floor with claw-like fingers, backing away from Akito, recoiling. Akito suddenly, in a rush, felt as though her heart was breaking in two. She dropped to her knees, rent from inside out. She despised her own body's weakness, and she despised Rin for witnessing.
Starbursts danced in front of Akito's eyes - she could not tell whether they were open or closed - giving her the dizzying sensation one gets when one has eaten too many bags of cotton candy, and yet still insists on riding the Silly Silo five times in a row. Akito was not sure whether she ever threw up, only that she had collapsed to the floor, and that she was hot, burning up, and yet frozen to the bone.
Akito was not sure, either, how long she writhed on the polished wood floor, only that, eventually, her sweaty forehead was wiped with a cool washcloth, someone brought blankets, and she was laid to rest, and that someone was watching her as she slept - usually Akito would not sleep, eat, or relax in front of anyone except Kureno or Shigure, and sometimes not even with them, but this felt natural, not as though she would be murdered in her sleep. Only once was Akito brought out of the dark calm that had surrounded her only once, to see a tall woman with black, silky hair sitting next to her, watching her solemnly. ...Mother...?
And so she slept, deeper than she had in a long, long time.
"Did...Rin...what?" Akito mumbled, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Shigure smiled, thinking how very sweet and child-like she looked right now.
"You look very sweet and child-like at this moment in time," he told her daringly. He could A) be thanked for the compliment, B) be blown off, C) have his ass whooped for such an risky comment, or D) all of the above. Thankfully, Akito was not awake yet at that moment in time, so Shigure got off easy, with only a murderous glare and a promise to stab him when she had the time. "Well, yes, Rin came out. What...?"
"Nothing," Akito snarled, her alarm clock named annoyance working quite well. She turned around, and slammed the door in Shigure's face as well as anyone can slam a sliding door in Shigure's face.
"Come in, al-frickin'-ready." Akito snarled. A good day for her it was not. A spear of shock drove it's way deep into her muddled, depressed, pancake-loving, insane brain when Rin's pale, precise face peered around her door. "What are you doing here, bitch?!" Akito spat.
Rin responded with a toss of her glossy mane and the words "Shigure told me you weren't done talking to me.". Akito was caught off guard for a moment, and Rin pushed past her into the badly-lit visiting room, taking a seat on a maroon mat. Akito, unused to being out-bossed in her own enviroment, stood around warily for a couple moments until her feet began to hurt, and she, too, sat.
"Okay," Rin began once Akito was seated. "Shigure didn't really tell me to come back - and before you kick me out," Akito had been about to do just that. "I just wanted you to know..."
Akito winced.
"We're the same. You and me..."
Her eyes widened. What was the delusional slut talking about now?
"...we both withdraw..."
Rin kept talking calmly, as though she did not notice Akito's furious psycho-killer glare.
"...we both have hidden lovers..."
Shigure. Haru. No, no, no, NO! Why did this demon girl have to speak these lies?!
"...we've both been hurt..."
Truth and lies. Lies and truth. What was the difference? What did it matter?
"...we are both hate each other..."
Okay, that at least, was a truth Akito knew to be correct.
"...I hate you because you do the same things my mother did to me..."
What?
"...but, why, if we're so similar, do you hate me? You have no reason to hate me more than Kisa or Kagura."
Akito shook her head violently, clenching her hands into the mat. When the strain became too much, she reached out, a searing heat burning down her shoulder, as though carried by the veins, heating her muscles, extending her hand and index finger. With that single, sharpened fingernail, she dug deep into the pale, soft flesh of the underside of Rin's forearm. She kept it there, trying to siphon off that horrible, bloodlust-heat. Her finger dug deep into Rin's flesh, but Rin made no move to shake Akito off, even when a trail of blood splattered Rin's whore-shorts.
"Ren," Akito finally managed.
"Yeah? I'm right here," Rin replied, mesmerized by the blood slowly dripping down the side of her arm.
"No...Ren. With an eh..." Akito trailed off, unsure as whether to go on or not. "Ren...that's why I...well...despise every inch of your filthy person...Ren. You look so much like her...my mother."
"So that's another on the list of similarities: we both have a really weird mother complex." Rin added, but Akito was not listening.
"She would tell me all these things, dress me up as a boy, but then later, she would get out all my nice kimonos, she told me I didn't matter, she told me I was the most important person in the Sohma family, she told me I was precious, she told me I was better off dead, and she would say it all in the same sentence, and I...I would just sit there...I had no idea what to believe...she would rant and rave and h-hit me, and cuss, and work herself up into a big storm, and then that night she would take me out for mochi..." It was all pouring out, like a flood. Akito couldn't believe it - her mouth was working and sound was coming out, but her brain was doing nothing to control the process. Rin was just sitting there, in front of her, bleeding, and holding her hand. She was like a little kid. This had to stop.
"It is a curse, isn't it? This confusion...I would feel like I wanted someone to hug me, to comfort me, to make it all better, but she was the one who caused it. I would run, find somewhere quiet, I wouldn't know what to think, because all that time I'd thought so different than what I was being told, and I would just cry, cry, cry my heart out...I would cry until I transformed, and then some, only I don't think horses can cry...can they?"
"I don't know, Isuzu-san, I don't know..." Akito murmured, finally releasing Rin's hand. "So I guess we've finally realized we're in the same freak-boat?"
"I suppose we have...and I'm so glad I can talk to someone about this."
"It's like a weight off your shoulders."
"Totally."
"Um, one minute," Akito muttered, feeling sweaty and stiffled. "I've got to...use the bathroom."
Once in the bathroom, Akito wiped her sweaty face with a rag. She was breathing hard, her heart rate was heightened. It was as though her hate-accustomed body could not deal with the kindness of her enemy. She was weak, stone-solid, cold as ice, burning up. In the mirror, her hair was perfectly in place, her shoulders were regal, her lips chiseled-perfect and pink, her eyelashes dark and mysterious, her eyes...her aqua eyes were burning with a fever-light, oddly alive and warm and yet cruel at the same time. Unhealthy. Insane.
Got to stop...
Got to end this...
This era of understanding...
It's twisted.
Like me.
"Rin?" The voice came from deep within the shifting, muffled shadows. Rin looked up, startled - she had not seen Akito return. Shadows of a chill crept up Rin's spine - something felt wrong.
"Yes, Akito-san? I'm -"
Her voice broke off suddenly in a horrible, choked, gurgling gasp. Akito pushed the girl's mangled, bloody body away from her in disgust, pulling the bloodstained dagger out of Rin's back with a sick squelch, blood splurting grotesquely from the wound. Rin's body collapsed, sprawled, on the floor, her eyes wide in shock, forever frozen and empty. She was no longer Sohma Isuzu - there was no Sohma Isuzu for her to be. She was merely a regret of the past.
"That's what you get, bitch," Akito spat disrespectfully at the corpse's feet, eyes hidden by a curtain of dark hair, fading away into the shadows.
Owari