Fandom: Fruits Basket
Title: music without words.
Pairing: Hatsuharu x Yuki
Rating: PG
Description: (Au-ish) Yuki has finally told Tohru how he feels about her, but how is Hatsuharu going to handle it?

Disclaimer: Yui doesn't own FruBa.

music without words.
by miyamoto yui

Chapter 16 – all this time…

"And the little Honda girl still wins." Akito chuckled arrogantly as he cocked his head to one side to look at me. "It is settled then."
Sighing, he lifted up my chin again with his fan. "I wish we didn't have to go through all this trouble."
I looked at him with nothing else to say, but I nodded slightly in compliance.

"It is now time." Akito put my chin down while looking at Hatori.
I gave them a curious, worried look. My stomach began to turn over in fear as I watched them talk silently to one another.
Akito folded his arms, waiting for Hatori to come to the front of the room. Yuki and I looked at them quietly. Actually, Yuki was glaring at both of them when I glanced at him.

Akito eyed Yuki while Hatori pushed Yuki's shoulders down to make him kneel in front of him. Then, he stood in back of Hatori, saying, "And we'll erase you from Yuki's memory."
My heart stopped beating entirely as I held my breath.

All this time I was preparing myself to die, but not in that way.
No…Not that way….

Anything but taking Yuki's memories of me!

I looked on in horror as Yuki turned to me with a slight smile. "Trust me, Haru. I'll remember."
I wasn't breathing as he intensely watched my face.

His eyes appeared so sure that I got confused all over again.

Yuki then turned over to Akito as he began to give that mysterious, dark smile that made my skin crawl. He only gave this look and tone whenever he was royally pissed off.
With defiant eyes, he boldly said, "I'll remember, Akito. Over and over again, I'll remember Haru."
His tone became an octave lower. "Then or now. Isn't that why you're so eager to get rid of him?"

My eyes opened widely as I looked at the both of them. I watched Hatori taking a deep breath.
And it was then that I felt so sorry for him…

How much he would do for Akito because he cared for him…
It was disturbing, yet sweet though.

"Then or now?" I asked in bewilderment. "Yuki…what are you talking about?"
But he kept his eyes steadily on Akito's wrath-filled ones.

"I said I will not forsake any of them, Akito." He took a deep breath. "You and Hatori know more than anyone else one of the reasons why I've gotten 'punished' so much."
Slowly, he got up with clenched fists. "I never needed 'to fall in love' with Hatsuharu or this stupid challenge you've given because you knew, Akito, that I had loved him ever since I first saw him when he was little."

"The legend will always say that the mouse rode on the cow, but why? Why must that be? The cow admired how small and cute the mouse was, thinking he was ugly and fat. He admired the mouse so much but couldn't say how much he loved her.
"What the cow didn't know was that the mouse admired the cow for being big and able walk in the light. He always had to walk in the darkness because people feared him. But a cow? No one's scared of a cow unless you tick them off."

I blinked at Yuki with nothing to say, but my admiration of him was growing even more.
The very thing I had always thought of him as was his own dilemma. He was looking at me the same way I had watched him all these years…

I continued to blink at Yuki in shock, I couldn't believe what he was saying while I breathed slowly with tears wanting to slip from my eyes at the impact of it all.

"Akito, you know Haru was given to me when he was one year's old. That's the part of the legend you're trying so hard to push away, by masquerading it that we can't be together because we're both male."
Akito looked away as I gave Yuki a weird look.

"'Kawaii onna!' I stupidly said, right?" He began to cry with frustrated tears. "'I want.' It wasn't mama or dada or Akito, I looked at Haru and said, 'I want.' And I said it while he was in his cow form when I was two and a half!"
"So he's mine!" He shouted as if finally letting out a secret he'd kept inside for so long. "Haru is mine, dammit!"

Slashing his hand through the air and stepping forward as Akito watched him with hateful, yet pained eyes, Yuki continued, "I'll always remember as long as it comes to Haru. When he first spoke to me, even though you erased his memory. When he used to sleep in my bed. When we once played together. When he first gave me a drawing that you crumpled in front of his eyes, right?
"I have watched him and you kept on erasing our memories of one another. You even spread that rumor of the cow being a fool so that he would hate me, but you were wrong!"

Yuki had loved and cared for me all this time…?

I began to see my tears on the wooden floor. And then, I turned to Yuki again.

"Haru's life belongs to me," he said, still standing tall and elegantly while tears were falling from each side of his face.

With his entire body shaking, he shouted with his whole heart,
"He's mine. He's always been mine, but you always kept him away.
You took him away from me!"

Tsuzuku…
-
Author's note: That was really fun. ^_^ I know I should have just combined both the last chapter and this one, but I just couldn't resist being cruel. My friend Winnie the Pooh always gets mad at me for torturing my characters, but it's because they're my favorite! ^^;;; I'm weird.
I just love reactions whenever I do things like that. Hee. What's fun about a singular plot?

Well, one more part and we're done guys. ^_^ And yes, promise it's a happy ending. I planned that from the beginning, but it's no fun if I say it. :p