Late that night, Rika found herself curled up under the covers of Hatori's blankets with the man himself lying beside her. Her heart was a beating drum. A siren call. There was a new element to their interactions that came from being in his room. His bed. He'd found her a sleeping robe. A spare toothbrush. There was no expectation in the action of her taking a place in the bed beside him, merely just a longing to not lose sight of one another. After so much had happened, neither was willing to give up the other just yet.
"Hari," She murmured sleepily, one hand tucked beneath her head, "Was everything okay at the main house?"
"Just Shigure causing trouble." His voice was just as faint and she tucked her feet against his shins for warmth. Found little of it. "He's got a lovely bruise."
Sniggering filled the room, the sleep deprivation beginning to hit them both with gusto.
"I still can't believe you punched him." The laughter infectious, she had to work at stopping herself from giggling long enough to suggest she maybe out to apologise to the man.
"No. No he deserved it." That surprised her. "You know I don't condone violence. I'm a doctor, it goes against my ethos but Shigure – he, well let's just say I warned him that someday it would be a possibility."
"He's certainly…" She searched for a word that could encompass Shigure Sohma but none came to mind that wouldn't get her told off for rude language. Hatori beat her to it.
"A shithead." Rika burst out laughing, smothering the sound with her palm. She'd long ago grown to adore Hatori's quiet properness but it was moments like this where he excelled. The snark that lived just beneath the surface waiting to breach. Another proclamation of love was on the tip of her tongue but was hastily swallowed down when Hatori began to speak again. "Rika, may I – can I explain something to you? Something that I should've done a long time ago."
When he saw her nod, the man took a steadying breath. Her teeth came down either side of her tongue to hold it in place. It may have been three in the morning but with the sudden shift of mood came knowledge that whatever he needed to say was important.
"I still have reservations. About how deserving I am of this after all I've done because for a very long time, I've opted to not feel anything. Neither guilt for wiping the memories that came before you nor pain at what this curse has meant for me. Shigure said to me once that the bond turned sour for me after Kana but it started long before that." The house was silent, the only noises filled by the soft breaths of the couple. "Once, Akito called me snow and so that's what I became. Cold. Detached. Except with you, and then – then I had to take away all the parts of me that I had loved because of you and it was easier to feel nothing. After I met Kana, some of those pieces of me thawed. She was kind. She made me feel forgiven."
Rika swallowed harshly, what little light that filled the room revealing moisture in his eyes. She wanted to kiss away those tears. To tell him that he wasn't snow, or heartless or cold. Not when it came to the things that mattered. The reminder of Kana ought to have made her jealous but instead it was a comfort. To know someone had reached him when she couldn't have.
"I spent a long time afterwards idolising this image of her. A long time convincing myself that there was nothing in my chest besides tissue and bone. Then you walked through the door of Shigure's house and this little flicker of hope started. I kept my distance at first and then your father…" Blowing out his cheeks, the man's hand lifted as if to cover his face. Rika snagged it on route and claimed it between her own. Startled by the movement, he faced her. The lines of his face softened.
"I want you to know I never felt like it was duty to look after you then. I did it because I couldn't bear the idea of you alone or leaving you when you were so broken. Somewhere in the middle of all that, the snow I thought I was began to melt and I faltered. None of this has been easy, or simple, or straightforward and I have done a million things wrong in how I've navigated this thing between us because I don't know how to navigate it. Rika, I don't expect forgiveness from you for taking your memories but neither do I feel like that we have future together if we spend our time feeling guilt over past actions. Of course, what complicates things is the bond -," He clucked his tongue, head shaking as if the words were lost. Rika's heart picked up pace when he turned to her. "I can't promise this will be the path most travelled, or that I will always make the right or obvious choices but if you let me – I would like to find my redemption by your side."
She rubbed at her eyes. Allowed his request time to breathe. Finally, more awake than ever, Rika curled her hand around his neck and found the space her fingers fit in the soft hairs. Details. It was the details she loved. Of how they slotted together. Kyo might fit her rib to rib but Hatori was the little piece of her soul that had gone awry. With him, she felt rounded. Whole. He encouraged her to be better. Braver. She inspired him to feel. Pressing her lips to his nose, his closed eyes, his mouth, her thumb drew away the last of the moisture that lingered against his cheek.
"I can't imagine anything I'd love more than figuring it out with you."
/
She woke with a violent jolt. It had been her first night's sleep since the lake house that had been unbroken, a large component of which she suspected was Hatori's presence beside her. They'd slept nose to nose, having spoken until neither could keep their eyes open any longer. A thousand and one things still needed to be done but in the early light that poured through the gap in the curtains she allowed herself to examine how far they'd come.
A year ago, she'd only just met the man again. Was rediscovering what it meant to live in Tokyo. Have friends she trusted with more than the surface level emotions that lived within her. Arm tucked under her head, she wanted to bask in the perfection of the moment.
How their legs tangled, and their hands remained linked. The way his mouth slightly parted as he slept just as it had when they were kids. The utter sense of calm he emanated even when he wasn't trying to. Hatori's heart had always been his greatest strength, no matter how frozen it had felt to him. In his arms, she had been content.
Until she'd woken.
Hand lifting to her chest, Rika tried to place the feeling. Something was amiss. Wrong. She slipped from the futon and grabbed her clothes along with an extra shirt of Hari's to dress in. Her own had fallen victim to the teriyaki chicken of the night before.
Downstairs, the feeling didn't ebb.
It wasn't quite pain, but more, a lack of it. A missing piece. She stepped out into the garden with a mug of coffee and a hope to catch her breath. To settle the strangeness. Instead she heard voices from the adjoining garden. Momiji she quickly recognised, and… Akito? Dampening down the old lick of panic in her veins, Rika waited until silence fell before squeezing her way between a gap in the shrubbery.
She couldn't have explained why it felt imperative to knock on Momiji's door until the moment he opened it and she realised. Her coffee mug slipped from her grasp, clattering to the floor and covering them both in hot water.
"Crap. Sorry!" She tried to dab at the spill with her socks until Momiji told her to stay put while he fetched a cloth. The mess cleared; the teen drew her towards the living room. Asked the maid to fetch them both some breakfast. Rika moved through the motions until they were alone, waiting until her own hands had stopped shaking long enough to reach forward.
Capture his face between her hands.
"Is it true?" She could feel it. The absence of him. It made her feel elated and terrified. "Momiji?"
"Did you come from Hari's this morning?" Colour flooded her cheeks, Rika nodding as the teen flicked his fingers gently against the collar of the shirt she wore. "Good. I'm glad he has you. We all need someone when this is done."
"Momiji..." The words wouldn't come. Fear was a pulsating rotten beast within her stomach. For months now when she had been in his presence, she felt an enormous sense of calm. Comfort. It wasn't quite gone per say, but now it was a dimmed candle. The flame still burned but only faintly. Too strong of a breeze and it might quaver and disappear.
"I haven't figured out how I feel yet Ri-Ri," He said finally, the look that crossed his face making her heart hurt, "Except lonely. I feel very lonely all of a sudden."
Breakfast arrived on two trays; Rika unable to stop the whimpering noise as it rose along her throat. The maid looked at her in alarm as she retreated but Momiji remained silent. Head bowed. Sad. He looked so impossibly sad.
Was this what it would be like when all was said and done? Would the bond just vanish and take with it all the things that she held dear? The logical part of her mind said surely not, but logic wasn't at the table right then. What was there was the little space in her heart that had once been filled by the teen in front of her. She loved him still. She knew that much. It just felt muffled. Far away.
Momiji had been in her life since childhood, but he hadn't been the same as Kyo was to her. As Hari was. If, when, this happened for them how would she feel? How would they feel? What would it mean? The night before she had been elated. Ready to start considering all the things that had been put on hold because of her memories. Because of university.
Now...
Now she was terrified.
Which likely paled in comparison to how Momiji was feeling.
She shifted in her seat to pull the teen into her arms. To tuck his head below her chin. Murmuring soft promises that she was still there. That she always would be. He wept against her, body shaking with a million things unsaid but the most potent one of all hung between them like a blade from the sky.
What now?
/
After Momiji left for school Rika returned to the adjoining house and found Hatori standing at the kitchen counter. Her mug, splattered with the remains of her coffee, was left into the sink. It was the first time she regretted her graduation. The fact that she couldn't take the boy's hand in her own and walk beside him that day or check in on him between classes only heightened her misery.
"I thought you'd left." He frowned, the disapproval only lifting when he looked at her properly. "Is that my shirt?" Swiftly followed by, "Wait, have you been crying?"
Moving to her side his expression turned to outright concern as Rika tried to swallow down the roaring confusion in her head. Dropping her head against his shoulder, the woman felt defeated. What good was acknowledging that she loved any of these people if some day it was going to vanish into the ether. She felt like an idiot, crying in front of him again but try as she might to stop, the tears kept coming.
The sobs weren't loud, roaring things. They were pitiful gasping breaths that worked their way up from deep in her chest. Burned her eyes. Her throat. Her lips. What she felt was grief. Inconsolable, uncontrollable grief. It was like mourning all over again. It hadn't hurt this much when she'd lost her mother. Not at first. At first, she'd only been angry. Spiteful. Refusing to return to school, to eat. To live. So much of it had been guilt. For not fighting her father more when she'd noticed the symptoms. For the unnamed beast in her gut that existed whether she wished it to or not. Reliving it after her father's death hadn't made it any easier. It was simply a different wound.
This wound was different again. A loss she hadn't even known she could feel. Worse was the unfairness of it all. Momiji had lost his mother. His sister. All because of the curse. Now it was gone and what was he to do? There was no way for Hatori to restore those memories without causing someone pain in the process. Which left a teen, arguably one of the kindest she had ever been blessed with knowing, looking down a chasm of inexplicable loneliness.
When there were no more tears to be spilled, she was frogmarched into the living room, Hatori ordering her to sit while he left to get tea. The few moments alone allowed her to pull herself together. Wipe away the tears. Hatori's return brought with him a new set of bandages for her cheek and a fresh shirt. He crouched in front of her, hands rested on his thighs.
"Do you want me to call Kyo?"
Rika shook her head, bowing her forehead to his arm. Kyo here would only make matters worse. Would knowing the bond had weakened help or hinder him, she wondered. With the bond broken, he'd be free but how long until it happened? How much more pain would he have to endure. Which was worse. The hope? Or the fear that it might not come true? Hatori's palm grazed the top of her head, tension written into his fingertips. "Rika, what can I do to help?"
He tilted her head back to him with the side of his index finger. She couldn't hold his gaze. Fear held her in its grasp but locking herself down would achieve nothing. Fix nothing. Hiding was what had gotten them into such a complicated mess in the first instance.
"Hari." Her voice sounded strained to her own ears. Raspy. "What happens to us when the bond breaks."
He leaned back on his haunches, running a hand over his face.
"If it breaks."
"When." She countered quickly. "That's why I'm here right? A fracture in the spirit. A divide. I've weakened it somehow."
"We don't know that." She scoffed, leaning an elbow on the table beside her for support. The man's agitation was growing to match her own. "What's brought this on?"
She didn't know how to tell him.
Instead, she spat out the doubt that had been lingering at the back of her mind.
"What happens if we choose each other and five…ten…twenty years from now we wake up and the thing that bound us is gone?" All that time doubting. Worrying. Waiting. Could they carry that spirit without it eating up everything that had drawn them together in the first place? It was one thing to seek redemption together, within one another. It was another to always carry the burden of the curse.
"Rika…"
"Don't say I'm being irrational. I know that love is a choice. I've chosen to love Tohru and the others. Chosen to be a Sohma. But at seven I also chose to be Akito's whipping girl. A normal person doesn't make that choice Hari. Not without doubting it and when the doubt and blame came to be saddled, I pointed it at myself." She pulled air in sharply, through her teeth. "I know better now because I've been out of the circle of lunacy. Away from Akito. Except how I feel about you, about Kyo, about the others – that's still the same so I'm asking you – what happens when the bond is gone?"
He curled his fist beneath his own chin, hand then flattening to curl around his neck. She could feel his discomfort, the sensation as palpable than her own.
"I don't know." Hatori answered finally. "I wish I had an answer, but I don't."
"I want to choose us Hari." Rika swallowed roughly. "I want to imagine our lives creeping out ahead of us with lazy mornings and furniture shopping. Holidays and nights together beneath the covers. I want to think about our kids and you and I, hand in hand, when we're finally old and grey." Tears had welled again and Rika brushed at them roughly. "But every time I do, I can't help but think of how every little piece falls apart if all that brought us together was the bond. If it's all that is making me love you like that."
If it falls apart, what's left?
"If it breaks, it won't be like slowly falling out of love. It'll be instant and I don't know if I can bear the idea of waking up some day to find you looking at me like you never loved me at all."
"Then what do we do?" His voice was soft. Strained. Rika didn't have the solution. Didn't know where to start. When she lifted her shoulders in a hesitant shrug, Hatori dropped down beside her, the man grabbed the supplies he'd brought earlier. Asked her to sit still while he fixed on the new bandage.
Terse silence filled the air between them, swelling until her spine was too rigid and Hatori's expression had closed down. She hated that. Seeing how far away he was while still so close. Rika excused herself to change her shirt. Deposited the old one into the laundry. Examining her face in the mirror revealed red rimmed puffy eyes. Rika leaned over the small sink; her knuckles turned white against the porcelain. A solution.
That's what they needed.
Why did it seem to be so damn far away?
Returning to the living room, Hatori had poured tea. Handed her a cup.
"Previously," He patted the space beside him and she lowered herself cross legged to the floor, "We agreed upon a year before. Time for you to figure out what you wanted, for us to find equal footing."
Rika swallowed, leaving her cup back to the table.
"We did. Are you suggesting what I think you are?" A nod.
"We renegotiate that. A year. No slip ups or…"
"Flirting." Rika finished for him, mouth tight. It hurt to think it, but it was an answer that made sense. A year felt impossibly long, but it was also feasible that the bond would crumble further within that time. That before too long they might have an answer to this unsolvable problem. "And our friendship? Can we keep that?"
"You think I'd give that up?" He seemed hurt by the insinuation and Rika reached out to claim his hands. Squeezed his fingers between her own in tandem to the constriction of her heart.
"No." Her smile was wry. "I don't think I could give it up either."
"So for now, we remain friends."
Rika closed her eyes, hating every second of this. Hating the doubt. Except it had been there from the moment she'd learned about the bond and asked him if he had to do what she said. When Momiji implied that he couldn't say no to her. Rika had already seen how detrimental the curse could be on her own life, of how isolating it could be even when surrounded by thirteen zodiac and a god. Was it success then, to acknowledge it and find a way around it? Or loss, to give up on the very thing that set her nerves alight and made her feel at home just in case – someday – it would all disappear?
When she opened her eyes, the woman forced the agreement past the frog in her throat.
"Friends."
/
"Do you remember the first time I transformed in front of you?" Rika's laughter was sudden, vibrant, hands reaching to cover her face.
"Oh no, please don't." She could recall it all vividly now. The cold that had struck during one of her extended stays in Hatori's clinic as a child. Or rather, his father's clinic then. She had been at most seven, and Hatori in his early teens but it had been during a fever the man had had. Unlike the panic Kana and Tohru had shared (that Hatori had told her of earlier with just the faintest traces of amusement), Rika had held a more pragmatic approach. She'd simply picked up the little seahorse and deposited him into the fish tank. Which had worked out spectacularly until he had changed back, and she'd found herself staring at a naked, soaked and very fishy smelling teenage boy amidst a collection of broken glass and writhing fish.
His father's face when he'd come to investigate the noise had probably been one of the scarier moments of her life. After that, there'd never been another fish tank in the house.
He was laughing at her embarrassment, the action soothing some of the still lingering ache in her chest. Hatori had insisted she stay the night again to check on her various lingering injuries from the lake house. Truth be told, most of the bumps and scrapes picked up in the forest were beginning to fade but Rika knew it wasn't her physical self that had the man so on edge. No, it was the wretched weeping she'd done that morning that had unnerved him. The fragile state of her mind.
She could see the concern in the twitch of his mouth. The early lines that framed his eyes. Truth be told, she wasn't quite sure how she was meant to be acting. Things had felt more stable the day before when the bond had been easy to write off as a superfluous thing. It was just background noise. Losing the connection to Momiji had thrown her off kilter. Made things starker. More jarring.
Sitting in his office, Rika had pulled her legs below her chin, the man himself leaning back almost comfortably in his chair. He'd started off doing paperwork but as her boredom had grown (and all the various jobs and cooking she'd done to fill the time dwindled away), Rika had sought him out and distracted him.
Not that he seemed wholly averse to the distraction. She found she liked that too.
"My mom," She said after they had sat in companionable silence for a while, "What was she like when you knew her? Besides the -" Her hand waved, trying to encompass the details she'd been sifting through since getting her memories back. The darker side to Kimiko that had been masked and confused by their departure to Okinawa.
Hatori sat up straighter, mouth disappearing into a straight tight line. The last few months had shown her how to read the man better than she had ever managed as a child, and rather than try to take back the question she simply waited for him to decide how he was going to answer it.
"She was kind. Impossibly so, just like Akira was." There as a shift in his expression, something that might have alarm at dredging up that memory but Rika's attention was focused on his words alone. Akira was a topic she still struggled with, even with the truth now unlocked in her mind. He'd been her uncle. Sweet. Giving. Just as damn complicit in all this hell by not leaving her mother a means to survive in the wake of his death. "She used to bring chocolates back from every trip she took to the store for Ayame, Shigure and I. Even when we'd become teenagers and it was no longer a quaint thing, she did it all the same. As children she used to read to us in the main house."
A pause. Another consideration.
"Sometimes I think Shigure became an author because of her. The way she spun and weaved the tales was as though she was creating worlds before our very eyes. I've never told him, but those silly little novels of his that he writes on the side always reminded me of you both. There was something, comforting, in his prose within them. In how the tales are structured. I never noticed it until he made me read the first one.
"Kimi used to tell us that the Sohma curse was just a bump on the way to our futures, that we couldn't let it hold us back. Of course, that was all rather easy to say when we had the money to do whatever we wish with our lives but sometimes it was hard for us to see past what the curse's effects did. How it impacted things like intimacy or connection." Something that had been even worse as Ren's constant abuses of Akito had driven their god to possession over them all, pushing away anything that threatened the status quo. Hatori didn't say this, knowing that forgiveness wasn't yet in Rika's heart and she appreciated it. He wasn't going to force her to resolve all issues with Akito just yet.
"It was easy to forget she wasn't one of us, but then - she had grown up with the curse already. Your grandfather had been the tiger, and while it was rare for families to share their condition across generations, after your grandmother passed away, it had been inevitable for him to have to tell her." Rika's hands had migrated to hook beneath her legs, holding her knees to her chest. Each new nugget of information was another key to a lock she hadn't realised she held, allowing her to shift through memories that were familiar but distant.
"I miss her. I miss them both." Rika's voice was quiet and when she looked up, she saw Hatori moving towards her. He dropped a hand over her shoulder, crouched so they were at eye level. It was dangerous, this connection. She knew it. Yet, even with their agreement, the instinct was there to allow herself to be held close and inhale the familiarity of his skin. Her head dropped against his chest and she felt a sigh from deep within his lungs. Rika had a flash of a fragmented memory, the feeling of his hands curled into her hair. His mouth on her neck.
Just this. It's all I want.
Her grip tightened as she tried to fend it off and he seemed to take it as grief and an opening to ensnare her within his arms, whispering against her ear.
"I do too."
After a long beat, she pulled back.
"Hari, I'm afraid." He lowered himself onto the table, sitting opposite. "Of this."
"Of which part?"
"Loving you this way. Knowing it could end just like this." She snapped her fingers, the sound making her flinch.
"Me too." Hearing him admit it soothed the agony in her chest another fraction, but not enough to make any of it bearable. "I'm terrified."
Swallowing hard, she took his hands into her own. Ran her thumbs over the lines of his palms. After her memories came back, Rika had been fuelled by anger. Hurt. Often it was difficult to see the truth through emotions like that but she was glad she had. Trouble was, it wasn't just human emotion that connected them. Which left them an almost impossible choice.
They'd agreed on a year once before making a move, choosing to puzzle out their feelings piece by piece. Except what if a year wouldn't get to the root of the problem. Was what they felt created by trust and honesty and love? Or did it only exist because of the bond.
What if they made the decision to try and then ten, fifteen years from now the bond shattered and suddenly nothing existed. Would that be fifteen years of wasted time? Could they even come back from that? Her heart ached at the idea of it. Love, at its core, was a choice rather than a feeling. The decision to keep coming back to one another time and time again. It was leaving the doorway memory of origami in her mind when picking away the rest and offering a dragon as the key. It was her turning to him for each study session, for each hurdle knowing he would be the one most likely to offer her truth. It was even the coffee she left on his desk as he worked through his files.
Love, this love, felt infallible in its human form but what would happen the day that the spiritual side of it broke? Would he look at her and have regrets? Worse than hatred would be to see emptiness. Nothing. The right thing to do would be to leave. To stop cycling through her endless collections of panic and fears. Instead a soft keen left her throat.
"I'm so very in love with you." Rika's voice broke. "How do I live with that and the bond? How do we pursue this knowing it might all be a lie? That someday, soon, it'll break and then we won't feel these things anymore? How do we live with that?" Hatori met her eyes, expression tortured. He reached forward and pressed his lips to her forehead. Sniffled.
"I think, we simply have to give it time."