Control
A Fruits Basket fanfic by Rabid Lola
Disclaimer: I don't own Hatori or his power to erase memories.
The hardest thing he'd had to learn in erasing memories was control.
He remembered the first time he'd erased someone's memory. He had been a child, so young…five years old? Six years old? Ironically, he couldn't remember that.
He remembered it had been a woman. A maid, working at their house. At that time, he had been a timid, awkward child—living in the same house as a bad-tempered, abusive Jyuunishi god had certain effects on young children. He remembered standing over the remains of a broken vase—no, not his mother's favorite vase, his father's favorite vase. He remembered the maid looming over him, and she had threatened to call his father.
"No!" he'd screamed, clinging to her arm with sudden tight, blind fear. "No! No! No!" His mind had surged with panic like a distraught bird.
His eyes had bored into hers for a frantic, turmoil-filled moment…and so he'd seen her face go frighteningly, suddenly blank.
He had released her arm, scared. "What's wrong? Hey!"
Her face had turned to him, distant and abstract. "Who are you?" A rising note of panic had entered her voice. "Who am I?"
"Who am I? Who am I?!" Her screams and his own had brought his mother, and then his father running. The beating that had followed that incident was another set of memories he couldn't forget.
Only years later did he comprehend what he done. His first uncontrolled memory-erasure had pushed the maid far past the brink of madness. Until he understood his power, he had been forbidden to touch people, not only hug them—had been forbidden to even look them in the eye.
Poor dragon, locked in a cage. He remembered that once, not long after, he had screamed at his father, hating him for laying these restrictions on him. His mind had surged with the same forceful power…but the god had merely smiled mirthlessly, cruelly, and hit him hard across the face.
Control. Strict, rigid control. It was the god himself who taught him this, who taught him how to expand his power, to probe and aim for different parts of a brain, to erase partially or erase completely, to alter, to manipulate, to keep his talents flowing in a strictly-developed path. Reserve. It had affected him, so that by the age of eight he was expressionless and deadpan, distant and aloof.
And the only thing that had saved him from becoming completely cold and heartless were his friends, his almost-brothers. Shigure and Ayame, who held all the light and the craziness and the laughter that had been stolen from him when he was young.
They were most possibly the only bright—albeit unquestionably annoying—part of his childhood.
He remembered the other memories he'd erased. Kana. Momiji's mother. Yuki's friends. More. Many more. Too much, too much… Akito asked for his services too often, too ruthlessly.
And control, always control. The power in him was always there, always ready to devour each time he touched his fingers to another's temple; each time he focused on another's mind. Destroy, it always rumbled, seeking every brain cell, every neuron. He had to rein it in, continuously—to bring it sharply under his control.
Yuki's friends had been hard. The power in him had jumped at the young minds, wanting to destroy them entirely. Kana…ironically, his grief had given him strength, strength enough to totally control the power so that it cut cleanly and swiftly like a surgeon's knife, no more than he had to, no more than what was needed. The hardest had been Momiji's mother. His anger and rage had almost made him agree to assist his power in reducing her to a helpless vegetable.
Control…and the one aspect of his dark talent, that he could not control at all, was the fact that sometimes, these people's memories came back to him. In all their sharp reproachfulness, for tearing them away from their owners.
Sometimes, this self-control slipped enough for him to do rash things, stupid things. And that was how he found out, and wondered endlessly why, the only memories he could never erase…were his own.
…--EnD--…
I think I've got it right that Hatori's dad was the god before Akito. I don't know if he was abusive, though. As I have also not encountered a five-year-old Hatori, I can't tell if he's OOC here.