Disclaimer: Fruits Basket and all Fruits Basket characters and things like that belong to Natsuki Takaya and Hana to Yume comics. Everything else you don't recognize, like Adriana Aziz and the plot, (There's a plot? -.-) probably belong to me.
Ela Squawk: Adriana's birthday is very near. This'll end soon.
The Stream's Winter
By Ela-chan
Chapter Six
Sharing isn't always caring
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'All right, boys, line up.'
A fierce glare caught him around his neck like a broken fisherman's net, imprisoning his fear together. He started violently, flinching back as though scalded by an icy flame. Those eyes pierced through his mind like a rusted spear wrought to kill, whipping into him a reapproaching thought that he should not have missed. His slanted, watery eyes darted to her slender hands, both balled into twin fists of annoyance. With a half-anxious, half-apologetic look, he corrected himself, inclining his head slightly.
'Err – my apologies, Miss Aziz. Y'see, I'm not, as of yet, accustomed to having a female member in my Martial Arts class. Pardon my mistake.' He straightened himself, attempting to shake off the coldness emanating from Adriana.
'Boys, and girl, line up.'
Adriana's glare still had not melted. The teacher withered like a burning rose under her stare.
'P – Please?'
There were fifteen students – fourteen male, the other female – in the Martial Arts class – the only class of its sort – in Kaibara High, and it was one of their first lessons with this teacher. Most of them were fairly well acquainted with the other, having chatted companionably in the corridors concerning the upcoming lessons they were to have during the rest of the year. There were only a handful of people who chose to play a more silent, yet active, role in the lesson, and Adriana was not one of them. She stepped from the crowd of male students, and walked until she was barely metre from their coach.
'It's not very hard to remember that there is only one girl in your class, teacher,' Adriana intoned sweetly, like raw honey dribbling from a hive. 'I would appreciate it if you did not forget again.'
The teacher chuckled nervously, loosening his collar.
'My – my apologies again, Miss Aziz. Please, join your peers and I shall begin today's lesson.'
He gestured gracelessly to the wide space between Yuki and Kyo, who were both firmly insisting that they suffered mercilessly violent allergies toward the other, hence the distance they put between them. Adriana heard Kyo saying he had only of recent time been terribly ailed by a sneezing fit, claiming that he was 'allergic to bullshit', all the while not-so-discreetly glowering at a certain lavender-haired boy, who muttered something about 'brainless mother fuckers' in the most dignified of ways.
Nevertheless, despite the irked mumbles beneath their breaths, Adriana walked cattily from her stationery place from the teacher – who quaked at her presence –, and toward the space between the two boys she had grown to tolerate over the last week. Once there, however, she opted not to stand like every other normal person, but settled herself quite comfortably on the cushioned floor, legs considerably apart, and elbows resting lazily on her knees. Many of the boys down the line almost literally crawled over each other to watch her hungrily, seeing as she wore the same thing as the rest of them: shorts cut to come quarter way through the thigh and second-skin-esque for maximum movements, and a sleeveless, almost transparent shirt, made from a material akin to silk and very thin wool.
'Everyone settled? Excellent!'
Kito rubbed together his long hands, grinning toothily, an abnormally manic gleam in his eyes. He walked down the line and up, careful to avert his eyes from Adriana's provocative sitting position, who coolly and nonchalantly watched as he went past her. The older man inspected them for quite a while – though not so thoroughly for Adriana – and walked back to the place he had commenced, hands clasped behind his back.
'We have some raw talent here, lady and gents,' he said, like a cannibalistic clown gleefully contemplating on which part of the human body to consume first. His eyes glittered in a strange, eerie, almost alien-like sort of way, and Adriana rolled her own, crossing her legs together and resuming position Indian-style. Collective disappointed groans and sighs of relief came quietly from certain young men after her move, but Adriana was oblivious to it all.
'I see that all of you are aware of your God-given talents, and I can also see the futures that most of you might have.' Approved hisses scattered through the line like sparks from a wild fire. Kito walked, like a sergeant inspecting his soldiers. 'But what I cannot see is the determination that you can channel the skills you have into a beautiful thing: that is, the beauty of Martial Arts, and how this certain trade can mould the human body into the most supple, the most beauteous of things.'
'Jitsuko,' he said flatly, suddenly, jabbing a long thumb toward the open space in front of the class. 'Get up there. I'll be giving you some prompts, and you are to dance for us.'
Taj Jitsuko, a tall, lithe young man of seventeen, openly stared at him, half-begging Kito to burst out with a 'Ha, joking. Gotcher arse, didn't I?', and half-inwardly saying 'Not until Aziz does a strip tease, teacher. And we all know that's as likely as both the Sohma guys kissing each other's arses.'
'Jitsuko, we're waiting.'
The younger jerked, appearing to have been startled out of a reverie, or some sort of forbidden fantasy. He scrambled to the assigned place and stood there, straight-backed, alert, and looking completely lost. A subtle wave of hearty and humorous sniggers surged through the classmates gathered, and even Adriana had to suppress a smile threatening to expose itself.
'Good. Reassuring to know you can follow a simple command, Jitsuko.' He allowed another wave of sniggers to crash about before resuming, settling himself on the only stool in the whole of the gymnasium reserved for them for each lesson they had. 'Now, Jitsuko, adapt defence stance.'
The boy obliged, uncertainty dripping from his eyes like fresh blood from a wound.
'Good. Now, with the use of your punch and kick, dance for us.'
Jitsuko's stricken expression was almost laughable. One of the boys, most likely one of the few who could risk it to talk without exploding into embarrassing snorts, spoke up, albeit with amusement written all over him like a vandalised mural.
'Uh, teacher? I don't think it's safe for Jitsuko to do that.' Then, as an afterthought: 'I don't think it's safe for the rest of us, either.'
A pause.
'So be it. Jitsuko, go back into line. Yuki Sohma, Kyo Sohma. Up you get.'
Fourteen pairs of eyes blinked, seeming to be caught off guard by the sudden alteration. The other pair, however, merely rolled themselves, resuming a somewhat amused light. A whiff, a shadow of a smile could just be seen at the corner of her lips, indicating the amusement she felt trickling through her like lazy rain on a hazy day.
'I better not have to do anything with that damn Yuki,' growled Kyo, eyes flashing with a danger that even made Yuki slightly uneasy. He stomped to where Kito was indicating with his head, looking utterly unhappy with the arrangements, as slightly opposed to Yuki's composed strides. As they walked, Adriana sat up a little straighter, and became a little more attentive.
'Dance, gents.'
Kito didn't seem to be taunting them in the slightest, but Kyo's inexorable paranoia (according to Adriana) seemed to kick in almost immediately, contorting his face.
'I told you I'm not doing anything with that damn ass, much less some pansy jig!'
Yuki sighed, crossing his arms like a mutinous four year old.
'And do you think I'd like to do anything with you, resident moron?'
Kyo rounded on him, fingers curling like the spindly legs of a black widow spider.
'Oh, I'm sorry. I missed the part where I asked you a damn question!'
Yuki sighed, mock patience lacquering his every word.
'One: You should be sorry for everything you do. Two: You didn't ask anyone a question. Three: Stop acting like a child and just follow the instructions given.' He threw the orange-haired boy a condescending look, the corners of his lips turning up. 'Or are you afraid of getting beaten in front of the entire class, even during a dance?'
A tense pause, a tightening throat.
'Oh, that's it, pansy boy. You're on.'
The words squeezed through Kyo's clenched teeth, and Adriana's brows furrowed. His tone was much colder than usual, colder than hot ice, and it did not sit well with her. She knew that such rage should not be channelled into one's fight from experience, as they led to irreversible injuries, to one's own self, and those around them. As this thought drifted across her mind like a summer day's lone cloud, a hand instinctively went to her stomach, where a set of long scars criss-crossed, making a remote image of contorted thready pattern.
'Just don't hurt yourself. I wouldn't want to be the one who has to clean your blood.'
And with this last hanging threat, like a lightening indecisive on whether to kill, Yuki blocked a stealthy punch lashed out by Kyo, a steely glare settling over his face like the darkness steadily consuming the earth. As his arm absorbed the shock of the blow with no emotion, Yuki curled the nimble fingers of his other hand around Kyo's upper arm, and hurled him behind his back, eliciting a gasp from almost every mouth in the room. Three guesses who merely watched disapprovingly.
Kyo's sunset hair sailed through the air like falling rose petals, and he landed on the floor roughly, the impact sending colossal shock waves surging through his body, up his spine and across his senses. His mind reeled violently, as though he had been spun a thousand times against his will, before he shook himself thoroughly, coming back to his senses. His burning rage withered a little, like a doll's hair set alight by a little girl, invaded by tendrils of humiliation and pain. He made an about-face so fast that his hair swished and slapped him across his eyes. Bee sting-like sensations assaulted him, and he growled, standing stark still, awaiting Yuki, who stood a short distance away, watching him carefully, calculatingly, and with more than a little contempt.
'I've told you countless times to keep your guard up. You never listen.'
Something frayed inside of Kyo, like trickles of a ribbon wrought of water being burnt.
'Why should I listen to someone so worthless like you?!'
A smile, full of dark memories that should never have been remembered.
'Because you're just like me. Worthless.'
The ribbon within snapped, cracking through the air like a blood-stained whip. Kyo recoiled involuntarily, stung by the mere words. Whether Yuki was serious or not, he could not help but feel the eerie sense of foreboding boil from somewhere in his ears, and drip into his system slowly, poisoning him to a death most inevitable.
Yuki watched him for a long while, and for a moment, his aura seemed to alter to that of Akito; cold, unforgiving, stubborn, unyielding, as though he achieved some sort of masochistic pleasure through emotional murder, by snatching away the remaining sanity in one's own tormented mind.
The poison within Kyo was brimming now, and memories stabbed him from all directions. The incessant accusations and falsehood he knew they said to put him down rained on him like metal bullets, piercing, drawing invisible blood, and black words tore from his constricting throat like stained paper being ripped to a million shreds.
'Liar! It's not my fault!'
With that, he threw Yuki one last look, one that was of betrayal, and fled the room, leaving everyone in his wake ogling with a sense of awe and confusion.
Adriana glared at Yuki intensely.
That was uncalled for.
The lavender-haired boy turned to her, seeming to have felt a gaze on him, and mouthed a quiet sorry, more to himself than anyone else. Without acknowledgement that he had looked at her, Adriana darted out of the room and after Kyo.
Yuki watched her go, sad eyes following her slowly. When she was gone and only the sound of slamming doors stung them, he fell to his knees hard, hands clawing violently at the cushioned floor, oblivious to the tears that fell.
--
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Adriana ran, faster than she had ever in her whole life. Her feet were mere blurs of blurs as she sprinted after Kyo, who was around a hundred metres ahead, chanting that it wasn't his fault. An emotion most unfamiliar was swirling rapidly in her chest like unsorted thoughts in the mind, locked away, but now untimely released. She didn't know what it was that made her come after the orange-haired boy, but whatever it was, Adriana did not hate it. Right now, the only she could hate was the motivation Yuki felt to crush Kyo as he did.
Her feet slowed as his did. She watched him expertly clamber onto a roof, and even from here, she could see him shaking. Once, he lost his footing, and hung onto the gutter half-heartedly, dangling very high up like an action figure held over the window by a child, looking as though he had not the desire to correct himself. Adriana watched him, surprised that she felt apprehensive. Kyo, it appeared, came to his senses once again, and hauled himself up, resting on the roof on his knees, hands pasted on them, looking resigned.
Adriana slinked back into the shadowed shelters of the building across Kyo's, and there, she waited.
--
--
'It's nice up here, isn't it?' Adriana called out softly, standing on the roof uncertainly. A dying rose was grasped in her hand, one that she had plucked from one of the school's many rosebushes. It lay still in her hand, petals dancing a ritual to the breeze picking up around them. It was beginning to snow, but the coldness in her eyes was much, much more frigid. They held hidden secrets and memories, ones that were safer to be locked away and never looked at again. But, sometimes, no matter how much you did against something, it only pushed you nearer to it, shattering your hopes, and making them bloom into reality.
'What are you doing here? I didn't say I wanted company. Especially from you.'
His tone was not even close to leering, but quite the opposite. He sounded like an orphan being offered for the first time a home not only full of strangers, but full of offered love and a secure future. Adriana cautiously, but determinedly stepped toward him, and let out a tiny breath, relieved that he did not leap away from her, offended.
'Think what you want. I'm only here to watch the sky.'
Kyo's eyes darted to her – sure that he was being mocked But as he caught the expression she wore, like a mourner's veil, something within him deflated, like the air being snatched away by a first kiss. He surveyed Adriana with a careful eye, still slightly suspicious of her motives.
'Do what you want. I don't care anymore.'
'I never said you had to.'
A pregnant pause. An uncharacteristic promise to himself being broken.
'You never said I couldn't.'
It was as though an old penny wrapped in silken material fell between them like curtains cut down, allowing some light to fall inside, like rain on a serene pond. They both looked at the other, and shared the faintest of faint smiles, so faint, that it was almost impossible to see, almost invisible to the human eye.
Almost.
Adriana sat a little ways away from Kyo. Her form was tense, and she felt as though she were walking on shards of glass, afraid of letting her skin being pierced, afraid of breaking the fragility of it. Her breaths were coming in slowly, in shallow strips, indicated to her own mind that she was half-way calm, and half-way afraid.
'Afraid of what?' she thought, annoyed.
'See how ugly Yuki is. He's not all that everyone makes him out to be. He has an ugly side just like everyone else. But his is much darker, much more poisonous. He's human after all. Isn't he?'
Adriana did not speak, but only listened.
'He's been trying to say that to me for a long time now. I just know it. He's only been saying fragments of it every now and then through the times when he beats me. And, damn it all, I thought I would be prepared when he finally said!' He buried his head in his arms, willing his fears to be covered in much the same way. 'Shows how strong I really am.'
That pulled at Adriana's heartstrings, pulling them taut and stretched, so much so that she winced.
'I don't understand a damn thing right now!'
He let his fist bang unceremoniously to the roof, cracking a tile. It was silence before that, and it silence again after it.
'When he said those words to me, I tried to think of Tohru's words … about her acceptance of me. But, no matter how hard I tried … no matter what I did … memories of my mother just kept on … killing me. I don't understand it. I thought once that I've forgotten about her …'
A pause, like the interval between each second of the clock.
'You can never forget about a person, even if you wanted to so badly.'
'Stop it!' Kyo suddenly yelled, scrambling away from her as though she was a disease. His breaths were coming to him heavily, as though the very air in his lungs had been stolen away from him, and held high above his nose, just beyond his reach.
Adriana was silent, passive and thoughtful. She looked at Kyo, her eyes brimming with misery, and, for a split second, Kyo thought he saw something flash, as though he had just witnessed a memory flick through her mind like the pages of a book. A shudder went through him, and he found himself shivering. Snow fell around them like the tears of God himself, but the two did not notice.
'You know,' Adriana said carefully, bringing her knees up and resting her chin on them. 'There are a lot of things in this world I don't understand. Just like you. Like when my sister died. I didn't know her, much less meet her. She was a miscarriage before me, around a few months older, I think.' Her fingers played with the sole thorn on the rose's stem. 'Mum told me about her. I still don't know why, but I cried. Yet … and this is the part that really, really gets to me; how can you cry over someone you don't know? How can you mourn a loss you never had the victory to gain in the first place?' She pricked her finger on the thorn, and blood leapt from the tiny wound. Her eyes held many emotions, but the pain swirling in them had nothing to do with the little wound she had acquired. 'I didn't understand how I felt, so I just cried even more.' She stopped, and a lone tear escaped her eye. A tired smile was on her lips, and she swiped away the tear, sighing.
'But, ah, why am I telling you this, anyway,' she muttered, moving to get up. A thin curtain of silken brown hair concealed every emotion flitting across her irises, barring Kyo from what she felt. 'Like you said, I should stop, before I say something I'll regret.'
She got up, and had just taken a step, before she felt her hand being grasped. Adriana looked down, and saw that Kyo was now standing beside her, still looking to the far distance, but now had his hand grasping hers very firmly. Her brows knitted, and she shivered.
'Stay,' he whispered, and Adriana did. Both sat beside the other, this time just a little bit closer, so that their shoulders touched. He didn't let go of her hand.
It was amazing, that when two humans shared such painfully raw memories, when they bared even a fraction of their inner self, their true self, that they could weave embroidery so intricate, it was almost magical. With their feelings connected like that, bared like that, they formed some sort of contract under a law still unfound by the oblivious human being.
It was something both were very, very new to.
Kyo didn't know why, but he found himself trusting her, more so, in fact, than he trusted anyone else. It was confusing to him, for the few minutes she had spoken from her heart, how much different she could be when she was like this, how much deeper she was, so deep, that she was nearly at his level in the well of despair, just there, to keep him company.
'My mother died when I was five,' he began, voice devoid of all emotion. 'Her name was Sakura, and she was known to be the most beautiful woman in the Sohma family.'
Adriana sucked in a deep breath.
'She wasn't killed, if that's what you're thinking,' Kyo continued in a low voice, finally breaking his gaze to look at her, a challenging glint in his eye. 'She committed suicide.'
'Go on. Feel pity. I dare you' his eyes said, and Adriana looked in them, sad and understanding.
'People blamed me for her death, saying that I was the cause to all her suffering. They all say that my mother couldn't take it anymore, so she killed herself. My father was the first to point the finger.'
He kept his eyes trained on her, unyielding; but no matter how hard he tried to keep the tears in, one fell. It trailed from his tear duct, down his nose, to the tip, and landed on his lip. Adriana gazed at it serenely, and brought her lips to his, kissing it away. It was the more natural thing that she did it. It was more natural feeling that made her do it.
Kyo did not move. When Adriana had pulled away, his eyes were not ungiven anymore, but instead, full of life, and shining with a brightness she had never seen before, on herself, or on anyone else. She found herself smiling, and Kyo smiled back. They nudged up some more, and watched the snow fall until sunset.
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