A/N: Hello again. Chapter Seven is here- I'm kind of surprised myself, heh. But anyway, it's a longer chapter than any of the previous ones, and I worked really hard on this one, so, once again, I hope you like it.

Thank you to everyone who review- R Junkie in particular, for your very fair and honest critique, some points of which I'm definitely bearing in mind. I'm aiming to correct the ways characters address each other- I have been trying to stick with the anime/manga, but I obviously haven't done enough checks, so that's my fault, and I'm planning to do something about that. Though I'm sticking with each character thinking of others without honorifics- I tried it with them, but it all seemed too cluttered and unnatural, which was why I took them out. Your point about Shigure and Tohru getting together… Well, it says in the summary that this is a Gureru fic, so yes, they are a couple in this story, and that's not going to change. I agree Shigure has been a little too preoccupied with the situation with Tohru, though I don't think he's unaffected by Yuki's death. It's simply that, even in his thoughts, he doesn't want to face up to his real feelings about all of that. Though I am planning to develop and reveal that further throughout the story- same as I'm planning to reveal more of what exactly happened the day Yuki died, and the days leading up to it. And yes, Ayame, Hatori and Haru are all going to get more attention as the story continues.

Thank you for your feedback, it was genuinely appreciated, and I'm glad you're planning to continue reading this story.

So, without further ado, here's the next instalment.

And The Snow Falls

Chapter Seven

Still As Clear

"Doctors make the worst patients you know, Ha-san," I chided Hatori cheerfully, as I hunted in a drawer for the cotton pads and antiseptic wipes.

The doctor merely grunted as he stepped over, pushing my hands aside and getting the materials out for me. I let him take charge for a moment, standing back and watching his profile, void of expression but for a small frown of preoccupation with his task.

Smiling and laughing was so easy; putting a brave face on things, acting like nothing bad had ever happened in the history of humanity, let alone the Sohmas. It had always come naturally to me, but every now and then, something like this would happen, and the instinct, or talent, or desire, or whatever you want to call it, would be pushed further into me and made stronger, so that the next time, it would be even easier to do. And there was always a next time, obviously.

Obviously.

Practically ignoring me, Hatori walked away, going through the open doorway to the small reception room beyond, and standing in front of the tall mirror there. He didn't stop to look at himself, only lifting his hands to his head.

I'd trailed after him, and at that moment, seeing the complete lack of emotion in his face as he moved to deal with himself so clinically, I inserted myself between Hatori and the mirror, blocking his view completely.

"You said I could play doctor today, Ha-san!" I cried petulantly, shooing his hands off as he'd done to me moments earlier.

He frowned ever so slightly, but obeyed, looking away from me, focus lost somewhere beyond the wall over my shoulder.

"Your hair's in the way," I complained. He held it up out of the way without a word, and I accepted his help without comment.

The bandages were fixed expertly, and I could imagine him doing them the night before, alone and silent, fingers moving deftly over the point of pain. He'd been doing them by himself most of the time since the wound was inflicted, except the day it happened.

I didn't want to think about that. So I smiled as I unwound the cotton carefully from Hatori's head.

"It's getting somewhat better, isn't it?" I said brightly, as the last of the bandage came away, and I gently, very gently, lifted the pad of cotton from his eye.

Beneath the bandages, which softened the visible effects of Hatori's injury, was outraged flesh, originally black and red with bruising, now faded to sickly purples and browns, and around his eye were dark scabs, a few thin and small, one particularly ugly one across his eyelid. His eye still hadn't opened yet.

I remember how crusted with blood his whole eye had been, and how a part of me, that part that is unemotional, almost inhuman, about everything, wondered how much it would sting when he cleaned it, and whether the healing of it would itch terribly.

It was like a fascination- almost identical to that same interest that makes children show off their various injuries to each other in the playground, a whole group gathering excitedly around to see the mess hidden beneath the bandages, making disgusted sounds even as their faces light up with enthralment.

That could have been me, when I hounded Hatori down in his office that night. He didn't even have to say Akito's name. I knew. It was so incredibly obvious, I could have laughed. Only it hurt.

I don't want to think very much about how much it hurt, to see Hatori the way he was that night.

It wasn't just the physical injury, and that was horrifying enough, the crimson blood dripping between his fingers as he clutched defensively at his face, and the abuse his hand couldn't hide; it was what I knew it meant. His happiness had been stolen. And I knew I couldn't get it back for him. I'm clever, but not in the way Akito is.

Ayame was there, of course. I wondered if he'd seen it coming, somehow. For someone so relentlessly optimistic, he always seemed to sense the clouds on the horizon before most people. That hadn't stopped him smiling at Kana and making her feel welcome with the rest of us, back when it was almost believable that she and Hatori could live happily ever after.

I saw a side of Aya that night that I'd never seen before. I saw how his eyes looked when they were wide and dark with fear, and he actually cried when he finally managed to coax Hatori's hand away from his eye.

There were no dramatics, no speeches that could gloss over or outdo this situation. Hatori's blood drowned the hope in all of us that night, and, remembering it, all I can see clearly are the silhouettes of the two of them, Ayame bending over Hatori, a hand clutched at his stomach as if he were in physical pain himself, the other hand tentatively reaching to cup Hatori's cheek tenderly, fingers colouring with darkening blood, and Hatori, his head bent, shoulders stooped, shaking slightly, whether with pain or grief I didn't know. Kana, not really in my picture, had been sobbing in the corner, somewhere in the shadows, according to my memory, but I'm sure my recollection was becoming stylized and characterised by emotion rather than fact by that point, as all memories do.

And, half-invented or heavily exaggerated though it may have been, that image stayed with me for the longest time. It's still there, stark and sharp in the back of my mind.

It was behind my eyes as I surveyed Hatori's wound in the watery daylight of the reception room.

Maybe that was why I didn't want him to see his reflection. I wanted to save him the trouble of a similar image cluttering up his mind. He already had the image of Akito's rage to live with. And Kana's pain, which my friend felt to a depth I didn't wish to grasp. It was too similar to what I'd already felt before, myself.

Hatori accepted my ministrations without a word, as I took the antiseptic pad from his hand and wiped the injury gently, careful not to get too close to the sore, slightly swollen line of his closed eye.

Only once I'd re-covered the wound and stepped away did he look at me again, and speak. Glancing at his reflection, he settled a dissatisfied stare on me.

"You're terrible at wrapping bandages, Shigure," he said flatly.

I laughed at him as he re-wrapped it himself, feeling relieved that he left the cotton pad in place over his eye.

I didn't want him to look at it. He didn't need to see what Akito had done to him.

I'd already seen it for him. And though I knew that wasn't enough, I wanted it to mean I'd saved him, just a little bit.

If you can actually save someone just a little bit. Because I don't think I'm capable of saving anyone completely.

I blinked and came back to myself at the sound of the door opening.

Perhaps it was the renewed ties with old friends that brought the memories clamouring back that day. Perhaps it was the feeling of abandoned sensibilities within me, which had been growing quietly for so long, that wanted to suddenly rebel against my internal demands for nothing but trivialities and peace.

Either way, it was coming back to me more clearly than it had in a very long time.

"Ahh," Ayame sighed loudly and blissfully as he settled himself next to me, stretching luxuriously as if he hadn't had a moment's rest in weeks. "It's so truly wonderful to see you, Gure-san! This great adventure called life, with all its turmoil and demands, has kept you from me for so long! I began to think you'd forgotten me altogether. Don't tell me someone else is keeping you satisfied in my place?" He turned to look at me askance, cocking his head slightly with a suggestive grin.

I let the customary sly smirk slide onto my face, glad to know nothing had really changed. "Never, Aya," I assured him, letting his dramatics catch onto me as they always had. "I need only you, you know that, mon cher."

Aya laughed, an impossible mixture of flattered suitor, delighted child and victorious competitor. I loved him all over again, the way I had done since early childhood; it was his mass of innate contradictions that caught me, and the way he distracted me so completely from life in general.

We'd set aside the day to spend some time together, and I was happy he'd demanded it. Somehow, I couldn't bring myself to bridge the strange gap that had appeared between us, lacking the blasé disregard for circumstances that was one of Ayame's many talents.

"So what did you want to do today, Aya?" I asked, smiling.

He lifted a hand to his chin, grinning smugly and posing shamelessly. "I was planning to remind you why you can't live without me, Gure-san, darling, but now I know that Tohru-kun is residing in the next room, I can't bring myself to damage her innocent ears with the sounds of our most mutual pleasure," he announced charitably.

"There will be another time, Aya," I intoned, and Ayame's eyes sparkled at me, as pleased as ever with our game, knowing I was the only one who'd play it with him. We'd always had a healthy respect for each other's inner child.

"Did you have any other ideas, then?" I prompted with amusement.

"Un," he smiled, "I thought we could visit Yuki today."

Something in my face seemed to go numb- it felt as if the muscles around my mouth had frozen up, and my chest constricted.

"Are you sure?" I asked, all silliness chilled to heavy concern, weighing deep in my stomach. I didn't like it when Ayame was serious about anything. It contradicted my understanding of the universe.

Ayame nodded. "Of course- when have I ever been unsure about my cute little brother?" He was acting as if it didn't mean as much to him as it did- as if it didn't pain him the way I knew it had to.

Trying to ignore the foreboding in my still too-tight chest, I gave in, standing up and offering Aya a hand.

"Come on, then," I said, trying to smile.

"My dear Akito," I greeted him, dropping easily to kneel in front of him, watching him watching me. The slatted windows let in bars of weak mid-afternoon sunlight, which fell pale and wan over Akito's softly patterned clothing, his clean, untrimmed hair, his ivory skin.

"Am I so dear to you, Shigure-san?" he asked, his voice a silver-edged promise of thunder, strung out thin in the air between us. The bitterness was more apparent in his voice than usual, defiance overshadowing it; he was always defiant when he did something that completely crossed yet another line.

Hatori was little more than just another line to him, and any regret he felt at trampling over that line was superficial and meaningless- as meaningless as my constant half-wish that I would someday tell Akito what I thought of him, knowing that I never would, my own self-judgement left as disregarded as it had always been.

That was how I could move closer to him, and reach out to smooth his hair with a touch that was almost like a lover's caress. I could pretend to the rest of the world that I was still content; I could pretend to myself.

"Of course," I said softly, seeing the expected shift in Akito's features, still only able to guess at its meaning.

Could he even feel satisfaction?

"How is his eye?"

The question fell clumsily into the quiet, surprising me. Before I could think of an answer that wouldn't provoke him, Akito said abruptly, "I don't care. I don't want to know. He deserved it anyway."

Just like that, he drew back from me- not suddenly, as if I were something disgusting to him, but slowly and deliberately, as if I were simply not important enough anymore. His whole body rejected my presence, turning away and curling in slightly, hair dropping forward to hide his eyes from me.

"Go away now," he said.

I bowed and obeyed.

It was something I excelled at.

Ayame's robes swayed half-heartedly in the light breeze as he walked two steps ahead of me. I could feel a heaviness in the air that was familiar, almost as if it had always been there and I'd forgotten about it for a while. I didn't try to find excuses to laugh. There really wasn't anything to laugh about at that point.

The cemetery was just as I remembered it from the funeral; the trees as bare, the shadows possessing just the same watery, hesitant quality, trailing from the gravestones and the sad old trees.

All over again, the desolation rose up and stole over me, just as it had then. Only this time, I didn't have Tohru's hand to hold onto.

There was a light frost around the edges of Yuki's name, etched deep and clear into the new-cut stone. That name, which was all that remained of him. That, and a handful of people who wouldn't forget him.

It hadn't seemed so completely unbelievable, before.

Hadn't he been in the hall only yesterday, asking Tohru how she'd done on her maths test? Hadn't he been sat with us at dinner only last night, that quiet, meditative presence I'd always wanted to stir up? He'd always had his past hanging over him, a dark cloud I could never seem to lift, and it had always bothered me. The same as Tohru's innocence, and Kyou's wretchedness. It all bothered me.

Ayame didn't say anything for the longest time.

The sky was thick with pale clouds, and the wind grew more and more chill, wandering through the cemetery with a low, mournful whine that got under my skin and depressed me.

Stood there, facing the reality of what Yuki had become- a memory, and a stone- I could do little to ignore the crushing weight of responsibility.

I didn't want it. I'm selfish, I've never excused or denied that. Why should I ever have to feel guilt? I told myself I never would. I'd do what I wanted, and achieve everything I knew I could, and I'd never look back, and never feel any guilt.

That's what makes me the worst of them all. Worse than Akito. I'm very content with that position in the family.

"What happened?"

Ayame's voice was quiet, and there was no laughter to it. It was barely even his voice.

I knew what he was asking. It was the question everyone wanted to ask, the one I'd wanted to avoid forever. The answers were all there in my head, not in words ready to be conveyed easily, but in a fragmented mess of images, emotions and colours I still hadn't made complete sense of.

There was Kyou, sitting with his head in his hands in the waiting room… Walking past that, a nurse with a regretful expression, shaking her head and saying something I could only define as bad, the words, 'Nothing we could do' sticking out in my memory, exactly the way she'd said them… Hatori, just looking at me, such an unreadable expression, face half-shadowed by the diminishing daylight from the big windows behind him… The corridor, long and smelling of antiseptic and bleach… The open doorway, and through it, Yuki, lying on the bed, face turned away from me so that all I could see was the tousled hair in that particular shade of purple that was only him. And Tohru, half-sprawled over him, shaking so much it looked painful, her arms around him with a desperate sort of protectiveness. The way I stood staring for a moment, waiting for Yuki's chest to move with his next breath, that single, clear sign that he was alive. The way he never moved.

The rush of grief I'd never, ever wanted to feel.

And again, once again, there was that instinct, pushed so deep inside me, to ignore it and pretend it didn't affect me. It doesn't affect me.

"He died," I said finally, my voice sounding careless even to me as I spoke those two simple words. "That's what happened."

Ayame rushed into the foyer, and I was already waiting for him, leaning against a pillar, feeling my whole body sag against it with a deep-boned tiredness. He saw me almost immediately, and his eyes caught mine, that one instant telling him all he needed to know.

He shook his head at me as he ran to me, his face unnaturally pale and eyes afraid.

"Yuki?" he demanded, clutching at the front of my kimono.

"He's…" dead. I didn't want to be the one to say it. Had anyone actually said it yet? Would I have to be the first one to say it out loud? "He's upstairs. Room 27, third floor. Hatori's already up there."

Ayame just looked at me a moment longer, as if frozen in place, before his fist unclenched, releasing me, and he moved, hesitated, and moved again, stepping past me towards the elevators.

I turned my head to watch him go, but he didn't look back.

I was glad he didn't. His expression was disturbing to me.

As I let my glance slide away from him, a movement caught at the corner of my vision. I turned to look, but there was nothing there; only the full-length glass doors, sliding open to let a couple walk out to the car park.

I still felt as if I were being watched.

I waited for the moment when I'd feel a little less ashamed.

"Gure-san… You really are cold. You're so cold, Gure-san," Ayame repeated, and I knew he truly didn't like me for that moment.

But it wasn't my fault. He knew that I was selfish- at least one person had acknowledged that. He'd love me again soon enough, surely.

"Little brother," he said quietly, affectionately. I guessed he was having some kind of inward conversation with Yuki, and I felt detached, unnecessary. But Aya had wanted me there, so there I was, even if he really didn't like me just then. Watching the back of his head as he thought words he wasn't saying out loud, that I wasn't permitted to hear, I accepted it without regret.

I looked up at the dull sky. Would it snow this year? A ragged brown leaf skittered past on the breeze, drawing my gaze. The garden surrounding the cemetery looked so empty and grey. Were there any flowers in spring, or couldn't this place ever wake from its sad dreams?

"It's terribly cold, Gure-san," Aya said suddenly, turning to look at me, his face normal again. "I think we should have some tea."

"Indeed, Aya," I agreed readily. He couldn't dislike me for long.

We left quietly, the frost resisting our footprints, no sign remaining to suggest anyone had been there.

The brown leaf crept across the path, pushed haphazardly by the strengthening breeze; its brittle edges crackled and scraped against the cold stone, a noisy accompaniment to the low, barely-audible moan of the wind.

I shivered, and walked faster.