Title: With Every Breath (III)

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my hopes and dreams and the moths that flutter in my empty pockets, etc.

Author's Note: This is the conclusion. Really.

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The arch of Yuki's spine as he sailed through the air was a perfect, graceful line– as if even when falling, perfect was all he knew how to be. Kyou wanted to suspend that moment in time– so that he might stand there forever– still resonating from the impact of the roundhouse kick, tracing the perfect curve of Yuki's back and shoulders with heavy-lidded eyes, and feeling that soaring sensation in the pit of his stomach that was part adrenalin, part anxiety, and part hope. But between the space of one heartbeat and the next the moment was shattered, and Kyou mourned it as he watched Yuki tumble to the grass and send up spatters of muddy water.

Silence fell like a blanket over the clearing, so complete Kyou couldn't even hear the hiss of rustling clothes from the ring of Juunishi that stood around at the borders of the clearing within the inner sanctum of the Sohma residence. All who knew of the Curse were there– even Tohru Honda, because it amused Akito to have her see this fight between two boys she was meant to have cared for– to have changed. She did little witnessing, however– for most of it she clung with a death-grip to Shigure's hand and buried her face against the sleeve of his jacket to hide her tears. The rest were as statues– a ring of sentinels set here to witness his fate. They were supposed to be his family. . . but not one of them could save him from the cage should the favor of the match turn against him. So they watched– faces set in sad, solemn expressions– because they couldn't look away. Because watching was all they could do for him now.

Having eyes for his opponent only, Kyou spared no glances for any of them.

The rain– as it had done since the night on the roof, when Yuki had agreed to this fight– came down in a drizzle that was more maddening than an outright downpour would have been. It seemed to soak the very air around them, seemed to come in on every breath and absorb itself into his skin, till Kyou felt cold and clammy and sick with it. Weather like this made him feel he was everything he disliked being: tired, weak, and helpless. If he lost the bracelet now, he knew he was gone– the beast would come out and he wouldn't be able to hold back the change and it would all have been for nothing, all of it– every single fucking thing that had mattered to him.

But for now– for now, such a brief, fleeting thing– Kyou was winning. For the first time in his life, he was besting Yuki Sohma at something. He'd known he would. And known he could (if subconsciously) ever since relinquishing the hatred he'd felt for the other boy. It had been like the tide receding, like blinking sand out of his eyes– for suddenly he could see, he could see every move that Yuki made, could counter it, return it– and suddenly Kyou was the fighter he'd trained his whole life to be.

He wanted to feel exhilarated, thrilled, jubilant– but all could feel was the accelerated beating of his heart, pounding as if it would at any moment burst in his chest. And although watching Yuki struggle to his feet every time Kyou laid him out brought the taste of dismay to his dry mouth, it did not lessen his determination.

That last kick had been a powerful one. Kyou had automatically moved back into a defensive stance, feet planted as firmly as possible on the slippery turf. Watching Yuki heaving with arms that trembled slightly to pick his exhausted body up from the ground, Kyou had to suppress the unwanted urge to gently take Yuki's elbow and help the other boy get up. Because Kyou wanted nothing of gentleness anymore– it had done nothing in the past to alter him from the path he was now treading. He wiped moisture from his face with his dampened sleeve, and held his ground.

Yuki managed to sit up, though hunched over, knees drawn up underneath him. His fingers were digging into the muddy ground, and only Kyou was close enough to see his jaw was tightly clenched. Blood trickled from cuts near his temple and the side of his face; his hair was matted and filthy; his clothes were torn and spattered with mud– in short, the boy had never looked more unlike himself. There was also a wild, haunted look in his eyes that Kyou had sometimes glimpsed when they were trading blows; and seeing it, he knew Yuki had meant everything that he'd said the other night.

Kyou's condition wasn't much better– Yuki was a damn good martial artist, after all. The fight seemed to him to have lasted so long that he could barely remember a time when they had not been here, like this– fighting and standing and falling and hurting and breathing and bleeding and never speaking a single word. Kyou was also filthy, bedraggled, exhausted– but he was the one standing, and Yuki was not.

In some ways he felt distant from the fight– as if it wasn't real, or perhaps he wasn't real. Though he'd often dreamed of what winning would be like, he had never imagined the fight itself. . . he had never seen himself beating Yuki Sohma- - never until that exact moment, when it happened before his very eyes. Yuki tried to gain his feet– but slipped, falling heavily to his hands and knees, panting and shaking. He held that position for a minute, while Kyou felt as if he couldn't have drawn air into his lungs for the space of that minute even if he'd tried.

And that was when Yuki, with his eyes hidden beneath the dirty tangle of his bangs, shook his head slowly, as if the movement pained him. Kyou recognized it at once, having felt it before himself: it was the look of defeat. Defeat without resignation– but still defeat, all the same.

Akito was the first to say anything to shatter the crystalline stillness that had fallen. "You have failed me, Rat," he hissed, his eyes narrowed and mouth grim. Yuki did not move, did not speak, did not look up.

Before realizing it, Kyou had taken an involuntary step forward. His head was still in the fight– his body was still pulsing with adrenalin, his muscles still poised on the edge of action, his world still so focused and concentrated that time seemed almost to move more slowly. In the place where he was, he didn't think about the curse or Akito's position– he only wanted to hit Akito, to hurt him, to tackle the reed-like body and wrap every one of his fingers around that reed-like neck and squeeze.

Kazuma stepped forward, almost in the same heartbeat as Kyou, arm thrown out to forestall him. "It was a good fight, and a fair one," the older man said, and Akito's eyes darkened to black, but he did not deny it. He did nothing to acknowledge the truth of it, either– did not even glance towards the Cat, or remember his promise out loud.

But looking to his Master's face, Kyou knew it did not matter, because joy was dawning there like the sun and it finally hit him that he'd won the match. He'd won, and he was free. Time snapped back into place with a snap, and it hit Kyou that he was shivering from over-exertion, drenched in mud and cold sweat, and that his fists were still raised and ready. Lowering his arms, he felt as if he'd misplaced himself somehow– someplace else that was not here, because here was impossible: here was a defeated Yuki Sohma; here was freedom; here was his family, the Juunishi, coming to congratulate him and pat his back; here was Tohru clutching her hands together and bursting into fresh tears while Shigure rubbed her back comfortingly and beamed from ear to ear at Kyou.

And here was not. . . right. Something was wrong. Something was. . . missing.

Searching over Tohru's head, he saw Yuki being helped to his feet by an anxious Hatsuharu. He saw Yuki shrugging the hand off his shoulder while leaning into the hand on his elbow because he needed its' support. He saw Yuki trembling as Kyou was trembling, but likely for entirely different reasons, as Akito had moved to stand right in front of Yuki and cup Yuki's slender face in his hands, lean in to whisper in Yuki's ear. Whatever he whispered there made his ebony eyes gleam and Yuki try to turn his head away, eyelashes like silver glitter against his dirty cheeks because he had them shut tight.

Kyou's body seemed to move without commands from his brain, because his brain was preoccupied with dark thoughts and dark places and dark realizations of the cause of Yuki's fears. He tore away from the useless, anonymous, congratulating hands and walked– carefully, so carefully, for his skin might come apart at the seams if he moved too quickly– to where Akito and Yuki were standing. The dark stormcloud of his thoughts must have shown in his face because Haru backed away from them, and Akito redirected his concentration from Yuki to Kyou. He released the other boy's face, and immediately Yuki's legs folded underneath him and he sank like an autumn leaf drifting from a tree.

"Come to play, Cat?" Akito murmured, and Kyou wondered that he should still hear him over the buzz of static in his ears. "Come to win a position in my favor now that you've earned the honor of being in my sight?" Before he could object, Akito had captured Kyou's face just as he had done to Yuki, the icy touch of his fingers causing Kyou to tremble like a bird under his hands. In that moment, his once distant and almost nonchalant fear of the head of their family became suddenly and painfully acute.

Akito whispered into Kyou's ear, his soft breath and voice as icy as his fingers. "Will you be as good a pet as my Yuki? Will you scream and strain and cry for me, my Creature? I think I should like to see that," his fingertips trailed along Kyou's rigid jawline, "For in spite of being a monster in human's clothes, you are still a beautiful thing." His lips grazed Kyou's neck just below his ear, and Akito laughed very quietly at Kyou's shudder. He wanted to move, but he felt frozen in place, as if his feet had set roots into the ground. He wanted to scream his revulsion, push Akito away, do all the things to him he'd imagined doing earlier– but it was as if Akito's very voice was hypnotizing, and as long as he spoke, Kyou was powerless to do more than listen to him.

"Poor Yuki," Akito murmured, his voice now loud enough for the subject of his words, who was still huddled over himself at their feet, to hear. "Look here how he cowers at the thought of being replaced by you– perhaps he's finally understood just how lost he is without me. . . my poor, beautiful Yuki. . ." The black-haired young man let go of Kyou to half-kneel at Yuki's side, his silk robes pooling gracefully around him as if he posed for a painting. "But perhaps," Akito continued in his quiet, icy voice, and there seemed to be a seductive warmth around the edged of his words now. His right hand went to Yuki's back, his fingers tracing lazy patterns there against the wet, muddy cloth of his shirt as it clung to his skin. "Perhaps if Yuki is very, very good, we shall let him join us in our little games. . . wouldn't you like that, my Creature?"

Kyou watched Yuki flinch ever-so-slightly at Akito's touch, hearing a memory echo in his mind as if from someplace far, far away from where he was now: being worthy of Akito's notice is the only thing in the world worse than being beneath it, and god, this was exactly what Yuki had wanted to save him from, wasn't it? Maybe Yuki had wanted it because he'd never been able to save himself– or because he was too good to let anyone else suffer– or even because of the same impulse that had made him kiss Kyou that night– the point was Yuki had tried to warn him, and Kyou had been too stupid to see it wasn't an exaggeration, or a misjudgment, or an irrational fear. The truth was, the fear was real. And it was breathing and it's eyes were lit with quiet fires and it was touching Yuki still and it had haunted him like a shadow for his whole life.

Kyou blinked, and his hand was gripping Akito's wrist, and he'd lost a bit of time somewhere because he didn't remember moving, but that was probably because he was so angry it was burning him up from the inside out and all he wanted to do was fucking. Make. Akito. Bleed. Fuck the Juunishi and fuck the Curse and fuck everything he had thought he wanted because that was nothing, it was a speck of dust compared to how much he wanted Akito to never be able to touch Yuki again.

Using his fierce grip, he forced Akito to his feet, till they were standing toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye and that's when Kyou decided to make himself perfectly clear. "You don't fucking touch him," he hissed, voice cold like winter morning. They were the first words he had spoken to Akito since accepting the deal all those years ago. There might have been gasps of astonishment from somewhere behind them, but Kyou didn't hear because somewhere along the line he had forgotten anyone else was there.

Akito's eyes widened with pure shock for a moment, but he regained his composure and they narrowed to black slits. He jerked his wrist free with a surprising show of strength. "You forget your place, Cat," he hissed back, venomously. No Sohma ever disobeyed. Ever.

Kyou couldn't have given a damn if he tried. "Yeah," he said. "I do." Then he was crouching next to Yuki, looking into lavender eyes and Yuki was looking back, and something unnamed passed between them which might have been courage or strength or friendship or love– or all of these. Or none of them, and something else all together. But they both felt it, regardless.

"Kyou," Yuki was whispering, barely audible, and Kyou was succumbing to an urge he'd had for a long time and brushing Yuki's hair off his forehead with careful, deliberate movements. Even beaten up, muddy, bruised, and exhausted– Yuki was still so beautiful that Kyou had a hard time finding his next breath. When he did, Kyou used it to kiss him, to press his lips to Yuki's softly, slowly– in case the kiss from that night had been an accident, or a mistake. But Yuki was kissing him back, passionately and fiercely, and Kyou had a moment to be glad he needn't be gentle because he wasn't good at being gentle, before he was soaring, every molecule of him flying and kissing Yuki Sohma at the same time.

Someone who might have been Tohru Honda was whispering triumphantly that she'd known it all along, before her words converted to a muffled squeak as someone who might have been Shigure laughed and then kissed her; and there was more laughter as well as few worried whispers because, after all– disobeying the head of the Sohma family just wasn't done, and nobody knew what would happen next, not even Akito, who– at Kyou's defiance and the rest of Juunishi's refusal to intercede– had retreated into the dim interior of the house. Undoubtedly, he wouldn't be silent about this for long.

For now, Kyou still couldn't care less. He didn't care about where they could go or what they could do or what others might say. All he knew was that he finally had what he wanted– and what he wanted was more than he'd ever even thought to ask for; and it was kissing the boy he used to hate with every breath and it was flying and it was freedom and it was home.

--- fin —

(rather repugnant frippery, yes, but in this case probably necessary.)

Author again: First of all, I want to thank everyone who read this, and especially those of you who have left such kind reviews. They were the encouragement I needed to give way to the machinations of the plot bunnies and sit down to write this conclusion. I'm so happy that I did– this is the first semi-lengthy fic I have finished in. . . well. . . ever, I guess! So, yes. Go me.

Also, I have a request of all of you: I'm on the lookout for really GOOD, epic Yuki/Kyou fic. I've only read a few short pieces, and I'm curious as to how other Yukyo shippers view their peculiar little relationship. (Plus, I'm like, so out of my depth when it comes to writing smut.) So, yeah, if you have a spare moment, please drop me a few links! You'd be on my Gratitude List forever.

I have no idea if I shall ever write Yukyo, or even Furuba fic ever again. The Plot bunnies are so devious. I have no idea what they'll be up to next. Oo

Anyways— again: Thank you all so much!