Hatori nursed his third mug of coffee, a jittery edge to his hands and heartbeat. It was technically his day off, a chance for the man to escape the Sohma compound without Akito's presence looming over his shoulder. He hadn't expected to spend it with Rika in a quaint little cafe, flicking through textbooks and sharing knowledge. They'd split lunch. Then dessert. Ordered enough to continue to claim their table, neither willing to give up whatever bubble of calm they'd found. Neither mentioned that it was their third week in a row to meet like this.

The revelation about her career aspirations had hardly been surprising, but the man hadn't dared to tilt her opinion in any direction based on his recollections of the girl he'd known six years ago. Knowing that she was still interested in healing and science ignited something else in his mind. It reminded him too easily of their youth, the girl obsessed with any level of scientific knowledge she could wrap her mind around.

Even now that same desire to solve every mystery that crossed her path lingered on and when she pushed her dessert away from her, it was to fix him with a careful eye. As he looked at her the man was still trying to reconcile the child and the woman before him. She was headstrong. Stubborn. Soft too. Even so, he could read the tension and nerves in her body before she could sometimes and it was there now, just below the surface.

Hatori steeled himself for whatever was coming.

"How close were we? Really?" The rest of the cafe fell away in the wake of her words, Hatori still unprepared for how it shifted his world off kilter.

For as long as he'd known her, the man had offered her impossible promises. At one point, he'd sworn to always give her the truth if she asked. Ever since her return he had attempted to live up to that promise, whether she knew he was bound by it or not. This offering of honesty was more difficult because it not only had the potential to trigger her more painful memories, but his too.

"We were friends." He hazarded after a long-stretched silence, Rika nodding but not looking away from him. She didn't quite meet his eye either. As though she couldn't meet do so without feeling the same things he did. A ripple of electricity beneath the skin. Tightness in the chest. A racing heart. Hatori had always put it down to the bond. Once, as children, Shigure tried to suggest it was something more but he had quickly rebutted him. Rika had been hardly more than a child when they first met. She was still a high school student now. Not for long if her intentions were to see fruition but Hatori had never been the type to look for something that surely didn't exist. Whatever Shigure had seen there, it didn't exist.

That said, even he couldn't deny how much older she'd become. Wiser. In the last few months alone, her demeanour had changed. Filled itself out at the edges with surety. Kazuma told him she spent her free time at the Dojo looking after younger classes when Kyo was otherwise engaged. Picking out the kids that had fallen behind and working with them one on one until they were more confident. Anyone would have had to be blind to not see the way she worked diligently towards repairing her relationships with Kisa and Kyo.

Too many facets of the woman served to blind him in her presence and when her fingertips brushed his, he felt the heat of her skin. A summer sun. He'd clung so steadfastly to his icy heart. To the winter that lived within his chest. The more she smiled and found her path without any of them to lead her, the greater the heat she exuded.

He felt the crackling shift of ice beneath his ribs even as he denied its existence.

"Did I -," She seemed to be struggling to voice what she wished to say, her jaw taut with emotion and he watched the way the muscle rippled when she finally released it, "When I left, did I abandon you without an explanation too?"

This time he had reached for her and nearly toppled her empty mug off the table in his haste to stop himself. Grabbing it, the man set it back upright. Cleared his throat. The immediate urgency of his movement fading, Hatori looked downwards. Studied the grain of the table top as though it was the most interesting thing in this café. The pretence couldn't last for long. He knew she was aware he was the one that dabbled in memories but he was equally capable of recognising that she didn't mean the extraction of her Sohma connections. There was a wretched edge of sadness to her tone and he wanted to take it and smooth it away like he had for her when she was younger.

"I was there, when you chose to leave. You didn't - you don't - owe me any kind of apology. If anything, I owe it to you."

"Why?"

The answer caught in his throat, Hatori sitting back in his chair and letting his jaw work out what he was going to say. He knew her well enough now to recognise she wasn't trying to smear salt in the wound by asking for an explanation. She just wanted clarity. The one damn thing he still couldn't give her. Not yet. It didn't mean he couldn't at least offer her something. When his eyes lifted, her gaze was serious. Unwavering. His exhaled breath was heavy.

"Because I let you go without fighting."

It wasn't what he'd meant to say. He'd meant to say that he regretted taking her memories. That she had had to leave and suffered through her mother's death alone, unaware that there were people in the world that loved her and wished to support her. Somehow it seemed he still managed it, the image of her wiping at her eyes from the corner of his own making his eyes itch uncomfortably.

Not fighting Akito for Rika was one of his greatest mistakes. Hatori knew that. From the night she'd left to the night he'd seen her again in Shigure's house, a piece of him had been absent. For a while, he had filled it with work. With Kana. With grief. There was always some new emotion to consume him until he found a way to crush it back down. To freeze it and file it away until he could focus on the next step forward.

Since Rika had come back, those steps had been a cautious reach rather than a confident stride. He had to feel out each one so it might support his weight, discarding those that wobbled too precariously. Hatori disliked uncertainty. Rika was a world of it, from her invasive questions to the truth he still couldn't share with her for fear that it might unravel all his careful work in reintegrating her back to the Sohma's without destroying her mind in the process.

More than that, it dredged up old feelings. Once, he'd put them all down to the bond; Now he knew there was more than that. He liked spending time with her. Watching the way her mouth curled at the edge when she was about to utter something inappropriate or surprising. That sharp narrowing that existed on the cusp of her anger. Hatori filed each micro expression away a little at a time, storing them up - for what, he didn't know.

What he did know, was that it was dangerous. To grow too close and risk losing it all again.

Somehow, that knowledge didn't help him keep her at arm's distance. If it did, he wouldn't have been sat across from her in a café, body frozen still at the feel of her hand as it closed over his own.

"Your skin is always cool to the touch." She murmured; her own expression uncertain. As though she'd been affected more by his admission than she wanted to admit or knew how to process. He could relate. He was still processing it himself.

"Yours was always too warm." He countered. "My father used to say you were a nightmare to treat until we figured out that most of the Sohma's run at strange temperatures."

"Most of the Sohma's, or the Zodiac's?"

"The Zodiac's."

Rika pulled her hand away, brow furrowed. He knew what question was coming next but this time, he was resigned to it. Hatori wouldn't have opened the pathway for it otherwise.

"I'm not a Zodiac." She spoke sharply. "I don't change into an animal."

"Neither does Akito."

"I'm not Akito either."

"No," He agreed, "You're not."

"I don't understand. Hatori, what am I?"

"You're you," He saw her lips twitch with impatience, "Something different to the status quo. Something new. In all the generations of the curse, this is the first time someone has been born into the cycle that was immune to the effects of it." Mentioning the bond was too far, but this. This felt right. Honest. Rika puffed out her cheeks with malcontent and he could detect the curl of her mouth before she'd even spoken.

"Your cryptic answers are going to be the death of me some day."

"I certainly hope not. I'd hate to have to do all that paperwork."

Her laughter bubbled up loudly at his morbid joke, the sound spilling over from an overfilled cup and Hatori - Hatori felt another hairline fracture tear its way down his chest.

/

Hatori trudged after Shigure, digging sand out of the curve of his ear after his friend had decided he needed to become more acquainted with the beach. Summer times at the Sohma residence were best spent flitting between the sand and water, even if their days of sandcastle construction were a little behind them. At least, that's what he was trying to claim for himself. His twelfth birthday had just been and gone, Hatori affecting a new air of maturity that was surely expected.

His father had already begun talking about apprenticing him to the family memory skills along with some cram schools to keep him on track for his eventual medical degree. Not that Hatori needed such things, but it was good to be prepared. The boy didn't note how similar that voice in his head sounded like his father's more than his own.

Even better preparation, today, was to lob a sloppy ball of wet sand at the back of Shigure's head in retaliation.

"Tori!" There were shrieks of laughter as chaos unfolded between the boys, the game expanding out amongst various cousins and even Kureno. At the beach house, it seemed easier to forget their curse. Not because it vanished or any such luck, but simply because here - Akira's ill health didn't hang over them like a weighted sword. Here, they were free to be kids for the sake of being kids. None of them could have put such things into words but they all knew the importance of it.

A towel flung over his head signalled the end of their game and Hatori took the steps back to the house three at a time to beat the others to their lunchtime table. For once, fate was on his side and the boy gave a triumphant grin as he alighted into the garden and looked back to see his cousins still flagging at the bottom of the steps.

Squeals of laughter piqued his curiosity and the boy shifted his attention from the house to the garden of the next one over, reserved for the family head. Finding a gap in the dividing fence, Akito was easy to recognise as she darted between trees. In and out, shadows and light. Entranced, it took him too long to realise there were two girls creating the effect. His gaze fell to the other curiously. A blonde girl with her head turned away from him, her laughter effervescent and contagious as she attempted to catch Akito. Whomever she was, Hatori had never seen them together before. He'd never seen Akito like this either. Carefree. Innocent. A kid.

Maybe that was just the effect of summer.

Adult voices came from the top of the garden and it was Kimiko's he recognised first. She was walking arm in arm with Akira, their bodies close and heads bowed near to one another. There was nothing secretive about the volume they spoke with but it was the casual intimacy that had Hatori turning away. The girls were gone from view. Shigure and Ayame were calling from his porch and he was going to miss out on his favourite foods if he didn't move quick enough. By the time he had finished eating and returned to the sea, the peaceful little moment he'd observed was long forgotten.

Shigure sat with his back to the table, Akito's weight a familiar presence against his legs. With her body thrown down that way it was hard to envision her as a dangerous woman, but even the prettiest flowers could bear the nastiest thorns. Still, no matter how much she made him bleed, he found it hard to forget loving her.

Her body turned, eyes gazing up at him through long dark lashes. Such expressions were calculating. Malignant. They took his breath away.

"I know you've had a hand in all this." She spoke finally. He raised a slim brow.

"A hand in what?"

"That girl. Her coming back. Remembering."

"Nothing I've done has been without your approval Akito." Which was true. Before he'd ever dared move Rika to his house, he'd asked. That didn't mean he hadn't muddled the truth for his ends, but he was affecting innocence.

"It won't work." Akito said, rolling so she stared at the ceiling. He found himself entranced by the curves of her face. The shadows thrown by the evening sun through the closed doors and how they tugged her into sharp definition. The fear he could see that twisted the corner of her lips into a half hidden grimace.

"What won't? She's already here Akito."

"When she remembers the deal she made, she'll leave again." You sly thing, he thought affectionately. He'd known Akito only agreed to suit her own ends, but the full extent started to unfold before him. Akito had made some deal with Rika as a child. Pieces clicked into place and Shigure formed a narrative. Akito wouldn't look the way she did unless if Rika were to fulfil the terms of that deal, she would shatter all of those she'd touched since her return. Break herself too. The zodiacs would crumble. Kyo. Kisa. Hatori. Hiro would rally against outsiders once more. Rin's tentative steps towards hope would be crushed. All of it was a ploy to bring each member of the zodiac back into God's arms. Funny, how quick Akito forgot that what drew them to her was also what drew them to Rika. Was what brought Rika back.

Akito refused to believe in a severed god spirit. Why would she? It undermined her role. Created competition. Rika never even knew her suspected role. So she'd loved them all without prejudice or expectation. Was it any wonder that those Akito had spurned with the most venom had found solace elsewhere? Any wonder that Rika had picked up the affection of those strays and tugged them to her chest like children.

As a teenager, he'd been envious of what he had seen emerging between Hatori and Rika the most. Rika, because she dared not ask for or expect that kind of love, received it in spades. Hatori, loyal to Akito but burned from the weight of duty on his shoulders, encouraged a bond of a different kind. One that defied his own comprehension, even now.

Shigure had known for years. He'd spent the time chasing that same passion. Desire. Love. It was natural that he could pick it out in someone else so quick. He knew to recognise the signs. Resented the ease with which the bond had developed while he was left scrambling for his reciprocated affection.

"If you say so." He answered because it seemed she was expecting a response, running a hand over Akito's hair. Relishing in the closeness. Their comfortable isolation. "You know what you're doing."

But oh, how wrong you'll be.