A/N Hi! This chapter is for FBFan- I hope you enjoy it! It's a little more depressing than the others, but that happens when you're writing about Akito, I suppose. By the way, I decided that I'm definitely open to requests- I have a master list of what just might be every Furuba pairing possible, but if you review and mention a favorite, I'll be sure to do it sooner rather than later! Oh, and also- though I use the masculine pronouns when describing Akii here, he *could* be a woman. It's up to interpretation.
Thanks to... FBFan & ScarredStar
Disclaimer I don't own Fruits Basket or any associated characters, events, etc.
III. BLACKBERRIES & ONIGIRIS
God was merciless. He had the power to crush the world with a flick of his finger, a tilt of his chin. He could order people to do whatever he may wish, kill them for the slightest offense, force them to worship him and strike fear into their hearts with ease.
What he couldn't do was make them love him. He tried, oh, he tried—tried with Kureno, Shigure, Hatori, even Ayame. But, in the end, no one could love a monster. No one could even understand a monster.
No one bet her.
She, the one who loved endlessly, sympathized without limits. She, whom he had berated and tormented as much as any of the others, perhaps more than. She, who wouldn't ever lat that stand in the way of her constant optimism, beauty, perfection.
They all loved her back. All of them. That's what love was for the Zodiac, a sort of material that the very air was thick with, enveloping them, penetrating them, connecting them.
And she was in the center.
Her.
Tohru.
Akito pressed his forehead against the cool, damp glass above the window of his too-big, too-empty bed. Rain dashed across it, fracturing the world outside.
He curled his long, pale fingers into a fist.
I can have everything I want.
Everything.
But that wasn't his place. He wasn't meant to be among them. They were his subjects, not his friends. He pressed the fist against the window, letting the cold leak into his skin.
Everything except for her.
And she's all I really do want.
The fist dropped, and he slumped to the bed, defeated, defeated. Reduced to curling in a heap on a pile of bed sheets because of a stupid, naïve girl.
Tohru.
I love you.