Life goes on, but I'm gone

'cause I die without you

- Jonathan Larson -

"Without You"

-/-

Without You

By Ricchan

-/-

- Chapter 1 -

It was late one April night in the Sohma household, shortly after the graduation of Yuki, Kyo, and Tohru from Kaibara High School. Shigure sat at his desk, typing on the computer for his latest novel; his best inspiration often came at night and thus caused him to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, only to sleep until well after noon. Yuki and Kyo had fallen into a restful sleep after the fantastic congratulatory party with Tohru and her two friends. All he could hear was the sound of his computer's humming and the slight breeze outside, which led him to believe that Tohru was asleep as well. But he was wrong.
"Shigure-san...?"

She stood there in his doorway, clad in her pajamas, a hand held at her collarbone, the other poised at the edge of the sliding door.

"Tohru, what are you doing up at this hour?" he asked.

"I'm...I'm here to say goodbye, Shigure-san," she said. "I'm leaving tonight."
He adjusted his glasses; needless to say, he was shocked.

"Leaving? Tohru-kun...what do you mean?" he asked, barely a hint of nervous laughter in his voice.

"I'm going to leave the house tonight," said Tohru. "After all... I...said I planned on leaving the Sohma house after I finished high school and supporting myself."

"Well, this is certainly unexpected," Shigure commented, leaning back in his seat, his face as nonchalant as ever. "Tohru-kun, how long have you been thinking about this?"
"Quite some time. Several months now, if I think about it," Tohru replied. "I've secured somewhere for me to stay and I'm not in need of money. I've been too much of a burden to the three of you already and I've caused so much trouble and-"
She stopped and bit her lip.
"Tohru, you don't need to do this; it's not like you," Shigure said. "You aren't a burden to any of us; if anything, you're a big help."
Tohru was quiet for a moment, then spoke.
"Yes, I know, but it's what I think is best," she said, smiling a little. "I've been thinking and...really...it's what I think we all want."

"Tohru..."
"I'll leave you all something for breakfast tomorrow," she said quickly, as if to get away from the subject. "And don't worry about where I'm going, I've already figured out what I need-"

Shigure's eyes grew warm and downcast, causing Tohru to stop in mid-sentence.

"Tohru..." he said quietly. "Do...you want me to tell Yuki and Kyo...that you left this early?"

"...no, if you can. I don't...want them to feel hurt. You do understand, don't you...?"

"...yes. Tohru...we're going to miss you dearly."

"I know..."

"Are you going to come back and visit sometime? You know we'd welcome you with open arms."

"No. I...doubt...I'll ever see you again," Tohru said. "Shigure-san, you've shown me so much kindness, and I'm grateful for that. But... I believe my welcome has been long overstayed, and I must leave."
Shigure was silent for a long while, staring at his desk, the monitor of his computer reflecting an eerie light onto his glasses.

"I understand," he said, finally.

"Goodbye, Shigure-san. And thank you."

She slid the door behind her, and he listened to her slippered footsteps softly padding on the wooden walkway.

It began to rain.

The next morning, as she had said, Tohru was gone.

There was a breakfast prepared and waiting, the table set and the floors clean; her room was neat and tidy as if untouched, as usual. But Tohru had disappeared, as if she had never existed.

"Guuuwaaahhhhhh...morning, everyone," Kyo yawned, passing into the kitchen and smelling the tantalizing scent of grilled fish. "Mm...Tohru, what did you make today? It smells- Tohru...? Tohru?"

The cheerful girl was nowhere to be found, but Kyo just suspected she was in the bathroom and served himself some rice from the cooker. Judging from the slight snoring coming from the direction of Shigure's office, the author was sound asleep, no doubt bowed over his desk, his glasses askew. Slow, sleepy footsteps were plodding down the stairs; obviously Yuki.

"Yo, Rat," Kyo called. "Is Tohru up there? I haven't seen her."
Yuki leaned against the doorframe in his robe, rubbing his eyes.

"Nope, I don't think she is. She's not in her room...because the door was open and..." he yawned. "...I didn't see her in there."
"Huh," Kyo said. "Don't suppose Shigure's seen her either, he's asleep."

Yuki yawned again and opened the fridge for something to eat, when he noticed something taped to the outside.
"Kyo, what's this?" he asked.

Kyo glanced over his shoulder at the note written in Tohru's familiar hand and shrugged.
"What does it say?" he asked.
Yuki rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and silently read it, but his hands began to shake and his eyes grew wide with astonishment and disbelief.
"Well? What does it say?" Kyo repeated.

Yuki slowly handed him the note, and he turned his back to Kyo as Kyo read the thing.

"Dear Yuki, Kyo, and Shigure,

The four of us have spent three wonderful years together, but all things must come to an end and I feel this is best. I left your house for my own reasons, ones which I don't feel a need to explain. Truly, if I ever told you, I don't know if you could share my point of view.

Please don't be surprised if I never see you again.

This is painful for me as well, and the thought of not being able to share the same house with you makes me feel extremely sad, but I have thought over my decision for a long time and I feel it is best.

I made a pot-roast and started cooking it for you; it should be complete by 5 this evening.

Please don't look for me.

I love you all.

- Tohru."

Towards the bottom of the note, the paper was blotched by spots of what appeared to be tears. As Kyo shakily finished reading the note, he noticed that Yuki was crying, leaning against the refrigerator.

"What...what is this?" he said, looking at the note again.
"She's gone...she's gone..." Yuki said, repeating the phrase over and over, each time more frantic and in varying degrees of loudness.

"She's not gone!" Kyo snapped back. "She's not-"
"I wouldn't be so quick to believe that," Shigure said, suddenly appearing in the doorway; he had calmly been observing the scene.
"Shigure! Do you know anything about this?" Kyo asked frantically.
"Absolutely nothing," he said. "She did seem to have something on her mind lately."
"Yeah, right!" Kyo said, having not noticed a thing different about Tohru as of late.
"She's gone! She's gone...gone goh-haaahhhnnn!" Yuki wailed, sinking to the floor and sobbing.
"Pull yourself together!" Kyo demanded, but Yuki refused to do so and continued crying on the kitchen floor. "Shigure, you know something about this, don't you!"
"Only as much as you," he replied, kneeling down to Yuki's level. "Yuki, you need to calm down."

Yuki shook his head and sniffed loudly, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve and curling into a ball.
"Why would she do this to us!" Kyo angrily wondered aloud. "What did we do wrong?"

"She said it was her decision, and we wouldn't understand," Shigure said, placing a hand on Yuki's shuddering back and looking up at Kyo.
"Oh, so you read it, did you?" Kyo said nastily.
"Of course I did," he replied. "It was the first thing I saw this morning."
"But you were sleep-" Kyo began.
"Only taking a nap," he said, but the tone of his voice suggested that it wasn't important. "Kyo, we need to get Yuki to the Main House, there's something wrong with him."

His statement was proven doubly true as Yuki howled again, his mental health dripping away like water from a faucet with each passing moment he lived knowing Tohru was gone.
"I'll call Hatori," Kyo replied stoically, carefully folding Tohru's note and putting it in his pocket.

Hatori was there within minutes, after Kyo described how he was acting and held the phone up so he could hear.

"Get him into my car, quickly," he said, picking him up with Shigure. "Kyo, you come too."

Taking the shivering mass of Yuki to the car, they sped to the Main House and disappeared with him into a room near Hatori's offices, where they gave him a sedative and let him rest for a while until he was considerably calmer. Kyo stood passively on the stone courtyard that linked all the houses, fingering Tohru's note in his pocket.

"What use is it anymore...?" he asked himself, retreating his hand and hanging it limply at his side. "She's gone and...and..."

He clenched his hands into two angry fists, then sighed.
"I give up," he told nobody. "I just...give up. There's nothing for me here."

He lifted his head towards the sky; it was that dull, steely gray that always preceded a thunderstorm. Thunderstorms that always left him weak of body and spirit, the way he felt now.

Devoid of any feeling, he walked along the stone avenue and made his way towards Akito's room.

The next day, the Cat had taken his place in the Sohma estate, and sat behind a latticed wall in the far corner of the gardens, fully content with the empty life he was destined to lead.

-/-

Years later, Yuki found himself in a grocery store, staring down the rows of milk cartons.

It had been six long years since Tohru had been virtually erased from his life, leaving him only her memory; the nervous breakdown it had caused him took a full week to recover from, but he had healed quite well and was anything but instable now.

Six dances had been performed, six banquets that reminded him of who he really was.

But while that alone had stayed the same, so much else had changed in his life.

Akito's health had taken a turn for the worse in recent times, and Shigure left Yuki his home in order to better serve their master. The once vengeful head of the household seemed to be a much gentler being as of late; he had approved of Hatsuharu and Isuzu's affection for one another, and even declared he wished to see them married soon. He was less apt to throwing tantrums, and would often embrace Yuki warmly and ask how he was doing, whenever he paid a visit to the Main House. In fact, shortly after Yuki had broken down, inconsolable by anything but Hatori's sedatives, Akito was the first person there to hold and comfort him; although he was mostly silent while in the room, no words were needed. And for the first time in his life, Akito's prescence was soothing, rather than frightening to Yuki.

Kisa and Hiro were no longer children, attending college together, Kisa in her 2nd year and Hiro in his 1st.

Hatori still practiced medicine, and recently had struck up a relationship with Mayu, Yuki's old homeroom teacher; they were engaged a year or so after he graduated, but a wedding date seemed to be a far-off proposition, at the moment.

Ayame and Mine were still together, and their cosplay shop was still doing its thing, selling costumes that got more and less elaborate with the orders they received, but still remaining popular. Yuki occasionally stopped by on an odd weekend for a cup of tea and a chat, perhaps even help hem a dress. As he was no longer a teenager, Ayame found it easier to get along with Yuki; years of practice had made him quite skilled at holding back his boisterous personality, and Yuki, in return, had held back his natural introversion to be warmer and friendlier.

Ritsu found a soulmate in Mitsuru, Shigure's frantic ex-editor; he caught her on a bridge outside the onsen one day, after she left her job and posted a long, dramatic suicide note on Shigure's desk. Over a coffee, they discovered a fascinating connection between them, and began dating shortly after. Suprisingly, their nervous tendencies seemed to cancel each other out when they were around each other, which turned out to be extremely beneficial for anyone viewing the situation.
Upon Kyo's confinement, Kagura decided to stay in the Main House, so she could leave gifts for him occasionally outside his room, even though he rarely spoke anymore and hardly dared venture from the shadows on the walls. She sewed plush dolls and sold them as a hobby, but always saved the best one of the year's crop and left it for Kyo on her way to the New Year's Banquet. Whether or not he accepted them, she didn't know, but they had always disappeared from his front stoop by the banquet's end.

Momiji still chose to live "Inside", not needing a job for his source of income. The violin became his sole passion, constantly playing for the invisible audience of his home; the sweet melodies could be heard all throughout the Sohma estate, however. The masterpiece he had promised Tohru was incomplete, but he never gave up on it, determined to make her a melody. Secretly, he had been allowing Momo, now a young woman of 14, into his room for private violin lessons, going as far as allowing her to call him "niisan", rather than "sensei".

Kureno had been pardoned by Akito and allowed to dwell "Outside" on the night of his last dance with Shigure 2 years before, and was gone the next morning; he rarely returned to the Main House, only on New Years and strange little occurances where he would show up unexpectedly and spend the afternoon alone with Akito, chatting pleasantly and laughing.

Ren had all but disappeared from the house of Sohma, banished by Akito not long after Tohru's disappearance. Yuki suspected, after learning of her sinister influence on her son, that the reason Akito had calmed down so dramatically was due in part to her abscence.

Yuki himself had changed significantly. His face had matured during his four years of college, where he studied biology. He allowed his hair to grow out, where it lightly brushed his shoulders and was often pulled back in a ponytail, as it was now. Aside from the color of their hair and eyes, he and Ayame had grown so close in resemblance, they were practically identical.

Given Shigure's house, he planted a large garden in the courtyard and tended to it daily, and sold flowers in a shop he had leased in town. He had finally learned to cook a decent meal and launder his own clothes, with all the free time on his hands he had aquired. Tohru's room had been left undisturbed; aside from the occasional dusting, he didn't touch a thing, as Shigure had done, leaving the room exactly as she had left it. Why he didn't just put everything away, he didn't know; perhaps, in some small corner of his mind, he ached for her to just show up unexpectedly with her same, adorable smile, and live with him again.

But that was nearly impossible, he reasoned, choosing a carton and moving on to his next errand.

However, fate had something in store for him, that ordinary October day.

He accidentally bumped into a woman in passing, knocking both of their groceries to the floor.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" the woman said, dropping to the floor and recovering her package of cookies. "Gosh, I'm just so clumsy! Forgive me?"

She looked up at him sheepishly, an embarrassed smile on her face.
As Yuki looked at her, he found himself too astonished to speak or pick up his milk and cereal. The woman didn't seem to notice, picked up his food, and got up with it.
"This is yours, right?" she asked, offering it.
Yuki's throat had gone dry, but he managed a nod.
And then, inevitably, something slipped from his mouth.

"...Tohru...?"

The woman looked at him with her innocent brown eyes, a confused expression on her face.

She was Tohru, without a doubt.

Her hair was tied loosely at her back, though it was somewhat shorter now; she wore a warm yellow blouse with a pattern of flowers on it, and a dark blue skirt; slung over her shoulder was a large messenger bag; and on her cheek, shining faintly as the light hit it, were the scars left when Akito had scratched her, seven summers ago.

Yuki's heart fluttered like crazy inside his chest, but the words she spoke just moments later made his stomach drop like a lead weight.

"Huh? How do you know my name?" she asked.