Author's Note: The summary is taken from the episode of the anime with Hatori's backstory, so I can't take credit for it. Also, since there seems to often be confusion on the subject, this really is the whole fic. On that note, enjoy!


When his hope for a happy future was destroyed, Hatori didn't blame Akito. He cursed his own naïveté and the fate that had made him on of the Juunishi, but not Akito. He was angrier than he could ever remember being, but not at Akito. He blamed himself because it had to be someone's fault, and it couldn't be Akito's.

The curse that bound the Juunishi and their "god" was far subtler than it seemed when one of them got hugged and turned into a cute little animal. It affected their personalities, their abilities and especially their relationships. In particular, as surely as the Cat and the Rat would never get along, none of the Juunishi could ever defy Akito.

They hid things from him, or tried to, and sometimes they even spoke badly of him, but they couldn't go against him. They feared him for that, knowing that if he chose to hurt them or the people they cared about they would be unable to stop him, and sometimes they hated him, but the vow of the spirits that possessed them meant that they loved him through it all.

So Hatori didn't hate Akito because it would only hurt him; Akito didn't care if any of the Juunishi liked him as long as they loved him. He rationalized it as best he could—Akito had only done what was necessary to keep the dragon close to him, as he was meant to be, so it was Hatori's own fault for trying to leave him—but in reality he just couldn't stand the pain of hating the person he loved even more than Kana when everything already hurt so much.

The truth was, he was a coward, trying to spare himself more pain, but there was no other way he could go on after everything he'd dreamed of had been lost. So if in some dark corner of his mind he was ever tempted to slip something in with Akito's medicine that would make it so he never woke up, he shoved the thought aside and reminded himself for the thousandth time that he didn't blame Akito.