Author's Note: Well... I have no excuse about this. I haven't written in over nine thousand years. Hehehe. Well, enjoy this chapter. I liked it in the beginning, but then it just dies at the end. Meh, live with it.
Disclaimer: I do not owned Fruits Basket. Grah.
The Wolf and Lion: Predators of the Zodiac
Author: T hea R ea
-
Tell Me I'm Real
"We're home, Shigure!" Yuki's call rang through the house as he entered with a frustrated Kyo traveling behind him.
After returning to homeroom they each got their own detentions for somewhat different reasons, such as Kyo's hit and run and Yuki for leaving class going after Kyo. They both tried to explain the incident, but were changing the stories between themselves and just ended up making it worse. The only thing that the teacher got out of the whole incident was that Tohru was going home and something about Kyo getting mad at Yuki. Sighing, the teacher just handed them each a detention for the same day a half hour apart. She sent them to their next class with her hopes of Tohru getting better. Neither had the guts to say what really happened.
Yuki removed his shoes, once more calling into the house, "Shigure!" He didn't dare say Tohru's name, he didn't want her to feel obligated to apologize or even come down the stairs if she was in her room.
On the other hand, Kyo didn't feel the same way, "Tohru, are you there?" He was still sore on the butt from his fall, but that wasn't the only reason he called out to her. He also had her bag in his hands and he wanted to return it to her.
"Stupid cat," Yuki hissed, sending a glare in his direction.
"What?" he growled, walking out from the doorway and further into the house.
Yuki shook his head at his cousins either ignorance or complete lack of sympathy. Following him inside, their footsteps made little sound on the wooden floors. Grey eyes glanced around, searching for someone in the house. It seemed void of life though, not a single whisper or breath, with the exception of their own. Yuki felt as though the air was stale, so blank and strange.
"Tohru! Shigure!" Kyo continued to call, cupping his hands around his mouth as he called out into the empty space. His voice echoed back at them, his words lost in the empty air.
"This feels weird," Yuki commented, touching the counters as they came into the kitchen. "Why does it feel so empty in here?"
"Something smells weird," Kyo replied, his orange eyes narrowed, his nostrils flaring as he breathed in this unknown smell.
Yuki didn't smell much at all, just the stale air and the faint kitchen-cleaner that Tohru had used in the morning. Yuki felt a small, sad smile fall on his lips. That morning everything had been different. That morning the air had smelt sweet and fresh, that morning Tohru smiled and laughed with them. Yuki closed his eyes in reminiscence, trying so hard to find what they had lost in between those hours of school.
He could hear the obnoxious laughter of Arisa, the quiet and dark chuckles of Saki as she quietly joked along with them. They were gone, and so was the expression of happiness that they had always left on Tohru's face when she saw them. When he saw Tohru in the nurse's office he had been scared because she looked so sad. He didn't know what to do with her when she was like that. It had always been him who was weak he never had to comfort her before. It made him feel smaller then he usually did. He couldn't protect the strong. He was the one who needed to be protected.
There was nothing he could do for the wounded Tohru, he couldn't comfort her. Kyo couldn't comfort her. Who could comfort her? Who?
Yuki opened his grey eyes to see Kyo's vibrant head just turning the corner as he moved up the stairs. His footsteps were faint to Yuki's ears, far away. He didn't know what to do; he didn't think he could stop him. Yuki knew that they shouldn't interfere with Tohru, or at least, he knew that he couldn't interfere with her emotions. Helping her was out of his ability, and he hoped that it wasn't completely out of Kyo's ability. Someone had to save her.
"Kyo," Yuki's voice was soft, weaker then it had ever been.
"Yeah…," a voice trailed out from up the stairs, Kyo's voice.
"Please… help her," Yuki pleaded in the same tone, his head downcast and his eyes foggy. "I can't do it. So please, help her."
"Stupid," the voice scoffed before the sound of footsteps once more rang as the cat moved about upstairs.
-
Kyo had smelt the salt when he walked into the house, but didn't mention it to Yuki. He only said something smelled weird. It was tears, most likely Tohru. She usually was so loud and obnoxious when she sobbed, but he couldn't hear here at all. Maybe she went out, perhaps she left again. When they had walked into the kitchen, Yuki went into some kind of daze, and Kyo had stalked around, looking for a sign of her. Her shoes had been in the doorway, but that was the only sign that she had been here at all. Deciding that it would be best to check if she was in her room, Kyo slowly began to walk up the stairs. Two reasons to do it so slowly and quietly; he preferred if Yuki stayed in his trance and he didn't want to alarm Tohru with his usual stomping.
Just as he turned the corner to get up the next three steps the sound of Yuki's voice caught him and he silently swore to himself. Why couldn't he be as quiet as a mouse? And then Kyo swore again at that very stupid pun.
"Kyo," Yuki's voice sounded pitiful, and Kyo held back a sigh.
"Yeah…," he wanted to get along with his conversation. He needed to see if Tohru was here, crying. He didn't have time to mess around with Yuki's sadness.
"Please… help her," Yuki voice begged him in the same quiet level. "I can't do it. So please, help her." Kyo rubbed the top of his head in exasperation. He was just about to do that, Yuki always making things so much longer and dramatic. He was probably crying again.
"Stupid," Kyo remarked, both in a teasing and soft way. He didn't have the patience to listen to Yuki's waterworks, so he continued to climb up the steps.
He stalked silently towards Tohru's door. It was shut completely, though that was unusual. Even though she lived in a house full of boys it hardly was every closed. There was always a crack of it open, or just a sliver. Never closed. Kyo placed a hand on the door, another grasping the doorknob, but he ended up being unsure of what to do. The events from earlier played in his head and suddenly his face heated up in a red flame of embarrassment. How could he have been so violent towards her?
He recalled himself grabbing her arm so forcefully, lifting her into a standing position. She must have had bruises from that! That was why she didn't want him to touch her because he was hurting her. Oh god, how could he have been so damn stupid?!
"Tohru," he weakly called out to her, hoping that she was in there.
Nothing was heard in response.
"Tohru," he called again, this time his voice a bit stronger, not to the extreme of forceful though.
Still nothing was heard that could be called a return to his call.
He sighed, banging his head on her door before twisting the knob and entering. As he set foot into Tohru's room, he felt his breath enter him in a short and painful gasp. Tohru's usually neat room was torn apart, clothes scattered and one of her dressers flat on the ground, mirror shattered. His eyes traveled to her bed which was next to the window, and saw her staring blankly at him. He froze and shuddered. Her eyes weren't watering, but he could see the faint shimmer of the past dampness on her cheeks.
"Hello, Kyo-kun," she said cheerfully. She tilted her head to the side and smiled blankly. "Do you want to play with Uo-chan, Saki-chan, and me?" She looked to the left and then the right, her empty smile still on her lips.
Kyo stepped forward, the crunch of glass faintly heard beneath his feet. No shards pierced his skin as he came closer to where she sat. He felt something inside of him feel a faint fear. He had never been afraid of Tohru before. She was so sweet, out-going, kind. She never would have thrown her dresser on the floor and the rest of her clothes as well. She never would have given him that blank smile with those large eyes so void of their usual sparkle. It was as though the life was out of her.
"Tohru… what are you talking about? Arisa and Hanajima are dead," he carefully spoke, walking forward as he did so.
"Kyo-kun, that was silly. Why would you say that?" she laughed. It was cold.
He was at the edge of her bed, and she was on the other side. She looked at the empty spaces beside her and laughed. She talked to the nonexistent people, smiled at them. Each smile concealed her sadness. Each laugh was to keep herself from screaming. Kyo knew that and he disliked it. He didn't want to see Tohru like this. He never thought she'd fall so far as to make up her friends. He never thought that she would be so lonely.
"Tohru, they're not real. Arisa and Hanajima are dead," Kyo said with a bit more force. She turned her head away from him, smiling at the space beside her, joking and laughing. He could tell she was screaming inside, yelling at him to go away, to leave her in peace with those whom she created. "Tohru— Tohru! Look at me. They are not-- LOOK AT ME!" He yelled at her and she winced, slowly turning her eyes towards him. They were pained, but he was glad. At least they were not blank. "Arisa and Hanajima are dead. You created these things to comfort you like a little kid creates an imaginary friend because no one loves you. But, everyone loves you. You have a lot of friends who are real. I am real. Tohru… Tohru. Look at me, and tell me that I am real and imaginary friends you're talking to are not. I am real, those are fake." Kyo had stalked across the bed, and was holding her wrists in his hands, tight.
She was shaking her head, but no words were falling. She was staring at him with those large, hurt blue eyes. Her lips were quivering in an attempt to not form a sob. The wrists he held in a constricting grip were shaking like crazy beneath his fingers. She didn't look into his eyes, but trailed the area around them, his eyebrows, his nose, his lips, anything but his glowing eyes.
"Look at me, Tohru. Look at me and tell me that I'm real," he hissed in a low, low tone that revealed his anger.
Tohru whimpered, her head turning away from him and shutting her eyes. "K-Kyo, please stop… You're real… but so are Arisa and Saki. I don't understand what you're trying to say," her helpless tone wavered and she was on the verge of tears.
"Torhu…," Kyo whispered hopefully, lowering his tone to make her relax. "I need you to realize that those two imaginary people who you are talking to are not real. I am real. Yuki is real. Shigure is real. Those two things are not real." He released her wrists and examined with his eyes the red prints that showed the sensitive skin where he gripped at her. "Tell me I'm real. Tell me that I am more real that then those imaginary… things."
Tohru cowered back, pressing herself full against the wall and the window. Her blue eyes turned on him and so much pain was twirling inside. He could almost taste it on his lips, it tasted like tears. She ducked her head into her arms, pulling her knees up to her body and cried. She cried, and cried. Her sobs were horrible, high and hoarse from her earlier crying. He sat back and sighed, incapable of doing anything to help her now. The deaths of her friends had driven her up a wall and she was so far he could not reach her. He could not bring her down. When his fingers touched her, she went up farther. His words were pushing her away.
He couldn't really read her blue eyes with the exception of the sadness that was within them, the screaming at him to go away. He didn't know what she was really thinking about, what torments her mind was really going through. He wasn't there with her to experience everything that she had experienced. How did her environment help maintain her mental status? All past relationships were shattered and she was left with only the new faces she knew, she had no one left to fall back on. No one was there to hold her anymore. He knew her before, when she was happy. He didn't know her now, her reactions were out of his comprehension. This was different, he knew nothing of it.
He bent his head to touch her knees with his forehead and he blindly hoped that she would react. He hoped that she was scream, or become embarrassed, or something. This crying without really saying what she meant scared him. He wanted her to say what she wanted to like always. He wanted her to be like she used to be. It frightened him when he looked into her eyes and saw both that sadness and that splash of helplessness. He wanted to help her, he didn't know how.
"Kyo… Kyo… Kyo…" she sobbed against her legs, her head buried deep within her clothed thighs. Inside she was screaming, she was throwing her fists against his chest and yelling, "Don't break me! Don't break me! Please don't break me! Let me see them, don't break me!"
"I know…," she suddenly whispered, turning her head up to see him pressing his face against her shins. "I know that they aren't real… I know. I want them to be real. I want to see them again. It all falls to, if I am real, they are real. If I am alive, they are alive. I want them to be alive, so they will be alive. I know. I know. And I don't accept it. I refuse. I reject it. I know."
This was a view into the inner workings of her mind, but he only glanced upon the words briefly. She knew, yet she didn't want to believe what she knew. She rejected the very idea of death, especially if the idea was used with those whom she loved. Would she also refuse to accept such a death if he died? If Yuki or Shigure? Was she so desperate to have them back that she had to imagine them? Did her refusal of such knowledge carry her that far into mental madness?
Kyo's throat felt hoarse as he gazed upon her blue eyes, once more growing emptier. The screaming behind them faded into whispers, pleads, before it was nothing more then her mouth moving the words. He pulled himself back, defeated, and then he rocked forward and slowly kissed the side of her face. His lips grazed her skin for one moment, pleading her to come back through the softest of brushes. He rocked back and she was still blank. She had turned back to that lifeless puppet, he only cracked through the first layer before and it had already frozen over again. He stared into those void, glass eyes, her vacant smile, and angrily threw his fist through the window pane behind her. The glass shattered around his hand, small shards digging right into his skin.
No reaction.
"Tell me I'm real," he whispered, head lowered onto her knees, hand stinging from the shards imbedded into the skin. "Oh god, tell me I'm real."
"What are you talking about, Kyo-kun? Of course you're real."
-
"Kyo… I heard yelling and then something shattered. What happened?" Yuki demanded as Kyo walked down the steps with his head down.
"She has imagined that Arisa and Hanajima have come back to life," Kyo muttered, raising his orange eyes that held that tainted bitterness. "I got mad and I slammed my fist through the window just next to her head. I'm bleeding. It hurts."
Yuki looked down at his cousin's right hand and sure enough it was dipping blood right onto the wooden floors. Sighing, Yuki pulled at his strands of silver hair before turning into the kitchen to get bandages, tweezers, and something to disinfect the wound. As he walked into the kitchen he heard the second footsteps of Kyo following him, no noise coming from the usually irritated cat. Yuki gathered the items and placed them next to the counter that Kyo had hopped up upon, throwing his legs about in front of him.
"How bad are her imaginations?" Yuki queried as he took Kyo's injured hand gingerly in his own. He dabbed them with water at first, clearing the blood from the wound to examine the shards of glass that had gotten into his fist.
"She can see them sitting next to her. She talks to them and laughs," Kyo answered, wincing as the glass pieces were removed from his knuckles through the use of tweezers. "She has a completely blank look in her eyes, nothing is there. Not pain, happiness, anger. Nothing."
"Mm," Yuki made a curious noise in his throat before applying rubbing alcohol to the wound. Kyo jerked his hand at the sting, causing drops of blood to come back out. "Don't struggle. You've already made it bleed again. Anything else?"
"I got to her for a second. Then she started crying again. She told me she knows that they are dead but she refuses to believe and act like they are," Kyo relayed to Yuki, narrowing his eyes at the sting of the disinfectant as it was pressed in while the bandages were placed.
"I think we should get Hatori to look in on this, don't you agree?" Yuki said, glancing up at his wounded cousin.
"I suppose… but, when? Now? Tomorrow?" Kyo questioned, his eyebrow raised.
"Today would be good. Getting to know what exactly the problem is quicker is the right thing to do," Yuki nodded his head and stood up, moving towards the phone.
"I already know what the problem is! She's freaking out because her friends are dead and she doesn't want to believe it," Kyo pointed out with an annoyed huff.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Yuki said dismissingly, taking the phone in hand to start dialing. Just as he was about to dial the first number, the annoying voice that everyone knew and hated rang through the house.
"Greeting, children! Uncle Shigure is baacck! With special guest, Hatori!" Shigure burst through the back door, running into the room with his hand on Hatori's collar, dragging the doctor in with him.
"Hatori! We need you right now!" Yuki announced, completely ignoring Shigure, who he pushed out of the way.
"Why? Where is Honda-kun?" he asked out of the blue, his purple eyes not able to spot the house-maker in the area.
"That's the problem," Kyo muttered from his place on the counter, examining the bandages that had been placed on his hand.
"What?" Hatori inquired, his eyes narrowed at the two boys. "Did you two do something idiotic to her or something?" He walked farther into the house, looking at Yuki and Kyo with equally annoyed and curious looks.
"No. Today it was said that Saki Hanajima and Arisa Uotani, Tohru's two best friends, died. She has gone into denial, already. She has imagined that they exist and is talking to them in her room," Kyo said from his spot, poking the bandages with indirect curiosity. He was more into what Hatori was going to say or do.
"What?!" Shigure announced from the floor with utter disbelief. "That can't be possible! How could either of them die? They were both scarier then most teenage girls I've met!" Shigure scratched the top of his head in wonder of how those two could end up dead or even injured.
Hatori, on the other hand, had taken on a more serious expression. His eyes were clouded with thought. He was thinking just how much Tohru would be affected by these certain deaths, and it only hit him now that they were the only two connections that Tohru had to her past before the Sohma's with the exception of her Grandfather who was already old enough. There would soon be no one left in Tohru's life that could relate to her in the past, and that was what frightened her.
"Tell me every interaction you've had with her since the news," Hatori suddenly demanded, his face turned to Yuki and then Kyo. They looked a bit miffed for a moment before turning back to Hatori and explaining their encounters with the newly depressed Tohru.
Hatori examined these with his mind, running over the things that she had reacted too. It was only until Kyo's second encounter that everything seemed to go down. "Wait…," Hatori said at the end of Kyo's story. "She didn't have any expression until you actually yelled at her?" His purple eyes were narrowed, questioning.
"Well, she had that creepy empty smile, but that was all I could see. She was laughing with this kind of freezing voice, and it sounded like she was…," Kyo stopped, scratching his head as he thought back on what he was thinking then. "Well it sounded like she was trying too…."
"Trying to mask something," Hatori finished him with a sigh. "Tohru is suffering from denial, yes, but I think its developing much faster then normal. Usually loved ones don't start denying it until a few days later. Usually it has to sink in. But then again, it is Tohru… Still, I don't believe that she didn't have any reaction at all from you slamming your fist two inches from her face."
"Well, it's true," Kyo sighed, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand.
"What can we do to help her, Hatori?" Yuki questioned with sorrowful eyes, clouded by pain for the poor girl who was slowly going insane upstairs.
"I don't know… she has gone so far in such a little time," Hatori sighed, blinking with a silence that was scary. Since when did Hatori not know the answer to something?
Thump. Thump.
Someone was on the stairs; there was only one person who could be. Tohru.
"Oh, Hatori, sorry I haven't prepared anything! I've had my friends over, so I didn't know you were here," Tohru's wide blue eyes stared out at them. They were glassed over with the same emptiness that Kyo had seen before. He winced away from her gazed and hid his face in his shoulder. "I'll go out and get something right now with Arisa and Saki!" She smiled and then looked behind her and said something softer then the rest.
Hatori was looking at her with calculating eyes, trying to decipher what exactly he was going to do to get her back to normal. It was so very strange to watch her stand there and pretend to be happy. He blinked and she was next to Shigure, saying something to him in a low voice with that lost smile on her face.
"Bye, bye!" she waved her hand and then skipped out to the front of the house.
"Hatori…," Shigure looked at him, and his eyes read worry. "She said that she was going to go spend the night at Saki's house."
"What?!"