FITTING PIECES
Chapter 2: Out of the Dark
"Quick! Lets get her inside," Hatori instructed.
He took Tohru's other arm carefully and, with Ayame retaining his own hold on her, guided her up the low steps and into the warmth of the darkened hallway in his small section of the Souma complex, closing the door after them. Worried at the way the thin arm beneath his hands trembled and was cold to his touch, he couldn't help but shoot a sharp glare at his long- time friend.
"What were you thinking? Letting her outside in this condition?"
Seeing his friend flinch, Hatori immediately regretted his harsh words. They'd been automatic, stemming from his own guilt and anxiety that he hadn't been doing enough to help the girl, for he couldn't help but continue to think of this delicate looking female in any other terms, in such a desolate time of their lives, terrible feelings that had only been augmented at the shock and surprise of suddenly seeing her in such a horrible condition. But knowing that didn't excuse him, there was no reason to take it out on someone who was going through just as much turmoil as the fragile creature shivering beside him.
"I'm sorry." Hatori softened his toned. "I had no right to say that. I know you'd never deliberately do anything to hurt her."
It was painful, Hatori thought, watching him try to summon up a smile that signaled acceptance of the apology even as dark shadows still lingered in that golden gaze. The expression of his friend was like a macabre parody of his usual cheerful countenance and Hatori felt a pang in his chest that he hadn't done more for Ayame either, leaving Shigure to do most of the comforting while he had attended to Akito. He felt the yawning darkness within the depths of his own soul widening further at this newest proof of how incapable he was in lending warmth and strength to another human being, like the cold of the approaching winter, completely unlike the abilities of the female before him.
"Tori-san!" Ayame's voice shook Hatori out from his brief thoughts, the desperate worry in his tone capturing his attention as silver locks of hair fanned out from a shaking head. "Tori-san, never mind about me! You have to help her!"
Hatori blinked at his friend in concern. "What's wrong? Did something happen?" He knew Tohru was cold from the shaking of her limbs and that they had to get her as warm as possible but if there was something more he needed to hear about her condition, some special knowledge that could help him treat her, he wanted it quick.
"By the.grave." Ayame was visibly upset as he tried to relate his thoughts, scattered from turbulent emotions. "We were.I don't know how long." He shook his head. "She collapsed suddenly!"
"What?!"
"I didn't know what to do!" Gold eyes, swirling with remembered panic, looked up. "I couldn't carry her! I would have.And I couldn't leave her!" His chest shuddered as he sucked in another breath. "I kept trying and trying to wake her.then when she.I brought her here.to you."
At the disjointed explanation, Hatori shook his head as he observed the flush on Tohru's face that he had supposed was either due to the simple effect of cold winds on warm skin or the beginnings of a fever. From her haggard appearance, he had thought that he wouldn't be all that surprised if she had been on the verge of falling sick. But Ayame's words only added more fuel to his earlier supposition. He felt a new urgency overtake him at the thought. If anything were to happen to her right after losing Yuki, the Jyunnishi really would fall into complete hopeless despair.
With new purpose, Hatori ushered them farther into the building, closer to his office. He motioned to Ayame to wait. He felt it might be more comfortable to Tohru to examine her with as much privacy as possible, something that couldn't be gained from two hovering males. And from Ayame's apprehensive appearance, Hatori had no doubt that he'd hover.
"Please, wait out here for a bit," Hatori requested. He gestured to the small waiting room outside his office, basically a hallway with a few chairs set up since his was mainly a small family practice. "I'll be out as soon as I finish examining her," he explained gently, trying to smooth Ayame's anxieties as he disappeared into his office, gently guiding Tohru before him.
Ayame gazed blankly at the door that was closed behind them, shutting him out and leaving him alone once again with the thoughts that continuously ricocheted in his mind and the black emotions that tugged and pulled at his very being. With no one but him in the shadowy cramped room lit by what little light from a still dark morning managed to penetrate through closed windows, the murky sentiments that had been trailing after him for so long gave free reign with no one else around to focus on, to distract him from the shades of darkness welling up within him.
His fault. His fault. His fault.
The words kept tumbling over and over again in an intense endless litany within his mind, within his soul, echoing as they bounced off all the corridors that made up his being. It was the truth. The very truth as he felt it to be, deep down inside, so hidden away that he only noticed it in times of such unbearable emotional distress, in the face of great suffering when the barriers he'd erected around it weakened and came tumbling down.
Like now. Like then.
He had often thought throughout the years that he was cursed with more than just the unlucky misfortune of bearing the sign of a Jyunnishi, being outcast from normal human contact. That there was an even darker, more ominous cloud that surrounded him, bringing misery to those around him as they were affected by whatever evil disease it was that he carried that turned joyous times into decay. It was his fault, a tiny voice in his mind whispered, his punishment for being such a horrible person, such a selfish being that even his own parents had been unable to give him the affection and attention that he'd craved. And then, he thought shuddering, and then he'd pursued his own path, ignoring the feelings of others, of the helpless child who had needed him and reached out for him. He'd turned his back on such a defenseless one, his own flesh and blood, severing the ties that could have been so much stronger had they been nurtured from the beginning instead of tossed away carelessly.
And then, when he'd tried to change, tried to think more about the feelings of others, to help the ones he cared about find happiness.even in that, he was a failure. He remembered encouraging Hatori, pushing him to find and hold on to the emotional bliss he'd found so briefly with Kana. He recalled his thoughts at that long ago time, selfish thinking despite well wishes to his friend, that if their relationship succeeded then the rest of them would have hope as well, including himself. But that had ended in tragedy and so much pain, agony that he had contributed to by supporting the affair despite the low-voiced warnings from Shigure to be cautious. Hatori's suffering at the violent hands of Akito was partially his fault for actively promoting the doomed relationship instead of preaching wariness, revealing to him how useless he was in the face of preventing pain from visiting the people important to him.
Now was the same. The brother he'd estranged and had tried to rebuild a broken relationship with was gone before the rift between them had been completely mended. It was his sentiments, his regrets that lingered, as he thought again how little he'd been able to do. It hadn't been him who'd been able to heal the fragile young heart he'd been partly responsible for wounding, he'd only seemed to get in the way. And then, in the end, seeing his sibling in those last moments, being incapable of doing anything once again to keep darkness at bay, he could only watch as the pale and broken figure had passed away into a place unreachable by the living. The one he'd started trying to make things up to for past grievances was no longer around for him to do so. And now, the blame for bringing illness upon the grieving widow was upon his shoulders as well.
Yuki would never forgive him.
The weight of the thought pressed down on him, almost smothering him in its oppressiveness as it swelled within his mind as it became all he could think of. So disrespectful, he thought, of the newly departed brother he'd so wronged all these years to lead the one he'd loved most in this world into sickness. As the older brother, it had been his duty, his responsibility, to care for the precious family that his sibling had left unwillingly left behind him.
Tohru.
Another person he'd wronged. Using her as a means for his selfish desires, his regrets, to put the damaged sibling relationship to rights. And not being there for her in her time of need, holed away and wallowing in his own roiling emotions while she was left to deal with the grief of losing a spouse. More failure on his part, especially since he was now most likely the closest relation she had being estranged from her own parents' families as she was. And then leaving her in the cold, taking comfort from her in the shadows of the graveyard, heedless of how long they'd stayed there when she should have been responsible and ushered her into the warmth of her room. If her condition worsened, it would be because of him, because she was too tenderhearted, leaving him to vent his sadness at the risk of her own health. Flashes of his brother's younger sicklier days, when there were times he'd been fatally sick and verged on passing away as a child, flooded his mind as the knowledge of how insidious a simple ailment could be cause renewed fear to wash over him as he thought about the woman he'd brought in, pale and shaking.
If his widow were to follow him into the next world, Yuki would damn him for all eternity. But that would be no more than he deserved, Ayame thought as terrible anxiety flooded his mind as he worried about what illness was overtaking the woman, such a precious bundle to the Jyunnishi, in the next room. Dozens of scenarios burst in his head, exploding one after another, ranging from bad to worse as horrible unease mounted within him, the bottled pressure growing and expanding until he couldn't take it anymore, couldn't handle the not knowing with the ominous possibilities looming over his head.
With a sudden frenzy of movement, he darted for the office door, throwing it open only to stop short at the frozen expressions of shock on the two pale faces looking back at him. The ball of fear that had been forming in the pit of his stomach grew colder and heavier at the look in those gazes that told of a shock greater than the suddenness of his entrance. Fearing the worst, he looked to his friend for an answer, needing to know while at the same time not wanting to. He steeled himself for the worst as Hatori gave him a look, as serious as Ayame had ever seen him, as he voiced the answer to his silent question.
"She's pregnant."
AN: Hehehe. A baby. That's got to make things a little happier, right? Well, you'll see in the coming chapters. (^^)
Chapter 2: Out of the Dark
"Quick! Lets get her inside," Hatori instructed.
He took Tohru's other arm carefully and, with Ayame retaining his own hold on her, guided her up the low steps and into the warmth of the darkened hallway in his small section of the Souma complex, closing the door after them. Worried at the way the thin arm beneath his hands trembled and was cold to his touch, he couldn't help but shoot a sharp glare at his long- time friend.
"What were you thinking? Letting her outside in this condition?"
Seeing his friend flinch, Hatori immediately regretted his harsh words. They'd been automatic, stemming from his own guilt and anxiety that he hadn't been doing enough to help the girl, for he couldn't help but continue to think of this delicate looking female in any other terms, in such a desolate time of their lives, terrible feelings that had only been augmented at the shock and surprise of suddenly seeing her in such a horrible condition. But knowing that didn't excuse him, there was no reason to take it out on someone who was going through just as much turmoil as the fragile creature shivering beside him.
"I'm sorry." Hatori softened his toned. "I had no right to say that. I know you'd never deliberately do anything to hurt her."
It was painful, Hatori thought, watching him try to summon up a smile that signaled acceptance of the apology even as dark shadows still lingered in that golden gaze. The expression of his friend was like a macabre parody of his usual cheerful countenance and Hatori felt a pang in his chest that he hadn't done more for Ayame either, leaving Shigure to do most of the comforting while he had attended to Akito. He felt the yawning darkness within the depths of his own soul widening further at this newest proof of how incapable he was in lending warmth and strength to another human being, like the cold of the approaching winter, completely unlike the abilities of the female before him.
"Tori-san!" Ayame's voice shook Hatori out from his brief thoughts, the desperate worry in his tone capturing his attention as silver locks of hair fanned out from a shaking head. "Tori-san, never mind about me! You have to help her!"
Hatori blinked at his friend in concern. "What's wrong? Did something happen?" He knew Tohru was cold from the shaking of her limbs and that they had to get her as warm as possible but if there was something more he needed to hear about her condition, some special knowledge that could help him treat her, he wanted it quick.
"By the.grave." Ayame was visibly upset as he tried to relate his thoughts, scattered from turbulent emotions. "We were.I don't know how long." He shook his head. "She collapsed suddenly!"
"What?!"
"I didn't know what to do!" Gold eyes, swirling with remembered panic, looked up. "I couldn't carry her! I would have.And I couldn't leave her!" His chest shuddered as he sucked in another breath. "I kept trying and trying to wake her.then when she.I brought her here.to you."
At the disjointed explanation, Hatori shook his head as he observed the flush on Tohru's face that he had supposed was either due to the simple effect of cold winds on warm skin or the beginnings of a fever. From her haggard appearance, he had thought that he wouldn't be all that surprised if she had been on the verge of falling sick. But Ayame's words only added more fuel to his earlier supposition. He felt a new urgency overtake him at the thought. If anything were to happen to her right after losing Yuki, the Jyunnishi really would fall into complete hopeless despair.
With new purpose, Hatori ushered them farther into the building, closer to his office. He motioned to Ayame to wait. He felt it might be more comfortable to Tohru to examine her with as much privacy as possible, something that couldn't be gained from two hovering males. And from Ayame's apprehensive appearance, Hatori had no doubt that he'd hover.
"Please, wait out here for a bit," Hatori requested. He gestured to the small waiting room outside his office, basically a hallway with a few chairs set up since his was mainly a small family practice. "I'll be out as soon as I finish examining her," he explained gently, trying to smooth Ayame's anxieties as he disappeared into his office, gently guiding Tohru before him.
Ayame gazed blankly at the door that was closed behind them, shutting him out and leaving him alone once again with the thoughts that continuously ricocheted in his mind and the black emotions that tugged and pulled at his very being. With no one but him in the shadowy cramped room lit by what little light from a still dark morning managed to penetrate through closed windows, the murky sentiments that had been trailing after him for so long gave free reign with no one else around to focus on, to distract him from the shades of darkness welling up within him.
His fault. His fault. His fault.
The words kept tumbling over and over again in an intense endless litany within his mind, within his soul, echoing as they bounced off all the corridors that made up his being. It was the truth. The very truth as he felt it to be, deep down inside, so hidden away that he only noticed it in times of such unbearable emotional distress, in the face of great suffering when the barriers he'd erected around it weakened and came tumbling down.
Like now. Like then.
He had often thought throughout the years that he was cursed with more than just the unlucky misfortune of bearing the sign of a Jyunnishi, being outcast from normal human contact. That there was an even darker, more ominous cloud that surrounded him, bringing misery to those around him as they were affected by whatever evil disease it was that he carried that turned joyous times into decay. It was his fault, a tiny voice in his mind whispered, his punishment for being such a horrible person, such a selfish being that even his own parents had been unable to give him the affection and attention that he'd craved. And then, he thought shuddering, and then he'd pursued his own path, ignoring the feelings of others, of the helpless child who had needed him and reached out for him. He'd turned his back on such a defenseless one, his own flesh and blood, severing the ties that could have been so much stronger had they been nurtured from the beginning instead of tossed away carelessly.
And then, when he'd tried to change, tried to think more about the feelings of others, to help the ones he cared about find happiness.even in that, he was a failure. He remembered encouraging Hatori, pushing him to find and hold on to the emotional bliss he'd found so briefly with Kana. He recalled his thoughts at that long ago time, selfish thinking despite well wishes to his friend, that if their relationship succeeded then the rest of them would have hope as well, including himself. But that had ended in tragedy and so much pain, agony that he had contributed to by supporting the affair despite the low-voiced warnings from Shigure to be cautious. Hatori's suffering at the violent hands of Akito was partially his fault for actively promoting the doomed relationship instead of preaching wariness, revealing to him how useless he was in the face of preventing pain from visiting the people important to him.
Now was the same. The brother he'd estranged and had tried to rebuild a broken relationship with was gone before the rift between them had been completely mended. It was his sentiments, his regrets that lingered, as he thought again how little he'd been able to do. It hadn't been him who'd been able to heal the fragile young heart he'd been partly responsible for wounding, he'd only seemed to get in the way. And then, in the end, seeing his sibling in those last moments, being incapable of doing anything once again to keep darkness at bay, he could only watch as the pale and broken figure had passed away into a place unreachable by the living. The one he'd started trying to make things up to for past grievances was no longer around for him to do so. And now, the blame for bringing illness upon the grieving widow was upon his shoulders as well.
Yuki would never forgive him.
The weight of the thought pressed down on him, almost smothering him in its oppressiveness as it swelled within his mind as it became all he could think of. So disrespectful, he thought, of the newly departed brother he'd so wronged all these years to lead the one he'd loved most in this world into sickness. As the older brother, it had been his duty, his responsibility, to care for the precious family that his sibling had left unwillingly left behind him.
Tohru.
Another person he'd wronged. Using her as a means for his selfish desires, his regrets, to put the damaged sibling relationship to rights. And not being there for her in her time of need, holed away and wallowing in his own roiling emotions while she was left to deal with the grief of losing a spouse. More failure on his part, especially since he was now most likely the closest relation she had being estranged from her own parents' families as she was. And then leaving her in the cold, taking comfort from her in the shadows of the graveyard, heedless of how long they'd stayed there when she should have been responsible and ushered her into the warmth of her room. If her condition worsened, it would be because of him, because she was too tenderhearted, leaving him to vent his sadness at the risk of her own health. Flashes of his brother's younger sicklier days, when there were times he'd been fatally sick and verged on passing away as a child, flooded his mind as the knowledge of how insidious a simple ailment could be cause renewed fear to wash over him as he thought about the woman he'd brought in, pale and shaking.
If his widow were to follow him into the next world, Yuki would damn him for all eternity. But that would be no more than he deserved, Ayame thought as terrible anxiety flooded his mind as he worried about what illness was overtaking the woman, such a precious bundle to the Jyunnishi, in the next room. Dozens of scenarios burst in his head, exploding one after another, ranging from bad to worse as horrible unease mounted within him, the bottled pressure growing and expanding until he couldn't take it anymore, couldn't handle the not knowing with the ominous possibilities looming over his head.
With a sudden frenzy of movement, he darted for the office door, throwing it open only to stop short at the frozen expressions of shock on the two pale faces looking back at him. The ball of fear that had been forming in the pit of his stomach grew colder and heavier at the look in those gazes that told of a shock greater than the suddenness of his entrance. Fearing the worst, he looked to his friend for an answer, needing to know while at the same time not wanting to. He steeled himself for the worst as Hatori gave him a look, as serious as Ayame had ever seen him, as he voiced the answer to his silent question.
"She's pregnant."
AN: Hehehe. A baby. That's got to make things a little happier, right? Well, you'll see in the coming chapters. (^^)