"Despite Fate"

By Starhopper

DISCLAIMER: Would I really want to own the entire Fruits Basket, Akito and all? (Considering it) You bet I would! But I don't, so so much the woe for me. Oh woe is me!

Hee hee. AND WARNING: spoilers for both anime and manga.

First of all, a big bear-hug thanks to everyone who's been reviewing or has reviewed. You've all made this story my fastest-review-turn-around yet. Here's some personal thank-yous:

SilverYumeTenshi – I am cruel aren't I? (Evil Giggle) but you see, it had to happen that way . . . or you will see. I promise.

puffin – thanks for your continued support, I hope this "turns out" just as everyone (including me) expected.

The Dark Muse – It is, it is! I could not see Yuki or Tohru for that matter ending up with anyone else!

Inuficcrzy – Shout away, I'm happy to hear ya! I'm pleased with the style of this piece too. I think it's fitting for such an event that many fans have pondered over for years.

AnimeFreakVee52 – did I scratch that itch with my update?

RabbitTsukino – Thanks for your praise! It's hard to capture Kyou's personality, so I'm relieved that my attempt was successful.

LilyAvalon – Yesssss, it's a cliff of a cliff-hanger. No errors? I hope this chapter meets your approval as well HUG!

s.l. chanco – "weird but in a good way" . . . I guess that's good . . . (sweatdrop)

". . . " – speaking

' . . . ' – thoughts

- . . . - – memory

Chapter 2:

The Scissors Are Sharpened

– A boy stood in the middle of the Sohma compound's yard. The laughter had unassumingly died, hadn't drawn the attention of a young mind. He was still running, even though it was clear he only chased wind.

"Where did they go?" he asked each adult, their identities now blotted out of his memory through quarantine. His pallid face was darkened by confusion, anger, and sadness as the different emotions twisted over his features. It may have been his own mother who answered him with a frown and some flippant remark. Or was it his father?

Again he looked to the left and then to the right, hoping for the bright eyes of a child who looked nothing like the Sohma line. Someone different. And yet, someone inexplicably familiar.

Even then he knew it was possible.

Still he crept from his room and dared to wander across that damnable yard again. He stopped just before the high wall that separated this world from the outside. Wordlessly, he looked up its height until his pewter gaze settled at the corner where it met the sky. He nearly fell backwards, but caught himself, still staring at the ceiling with lolling white clouds.

'If only I could jump that high,' he thought over and over again until his head began to hurt. Whether it was from the position his neck was in, or the futile idea itself, he'd never know. But it was at that moment, that he started to think of such a masterful escape that would solve all his problems.

He began to walk, keeping a tiny hand on the wall as he walked its length. All the while, his neck was craned to stare at the sky. Other children may have feared the dark, even the imaginary monsters in their closets. But he had always been terrified of an idea. Imprisonment, usually such a hard subject to comprehend for children of his age, was his boogieman. It bore its fangs in that blue sky, roared at him as his fingers dragged along the stucco wall. And, like most children at the tender age of seven, he could do no more than try to be brave.

He had to disprove its existence.

But unlike his friends he could not turn on a light or have their parents check the closet for any signs of monster-activity. His fear was completely tangible and terrifying in its reality. He was trapped, as he had been at birth. For when his mother held him, she cupped him in her closed hands, begging someone to "take this creature away".

No, he had to treat his fear as a mirage created by a mind lost in a desert of hopeless relatives.

Soft fabric, a sudden jolt of his body weight, and a voice would not make him any braver.

"Hello Yuki,"

The young boy stopped, pausing a moment to press his other hand into whatever he'd bumped into. Grey drifted down from sky to come almost eyelevel with unhappy blue. Swallowing, he started to explain why he was out here when he should be resting in his room. He was "very sick" afterall.

But the unhappy blue eyes did not tear or wane in their intensity. They remained locked onto not only his own eyes, but on the whole quivering mess he'd quickly become. Here he had clumsily walked into the head of his family and he had absolutely nothing to rely on except apologies.

After the seventeenth grovel, Akito broke his thin mouth into a short smile that did nothing to soothe the other boy's nerves. Putting a sleeved arm around his shoulders, the clan head bent his head slightly so the "sick" boy could hear him.

"Yuki, I heard what happened today," the silky pre-pubescent voice offered no comfort whatsoever. It was obvious he was in trouble. BIG trouble. "I agree with you that it's unfair,"

His spirits brightened at this admission. Little did he know, that it was Akito who had orchestrated the wiping out of his friends' memories. And it wasn't because they had seen him transform.

No, it went much deeper than that.

"I agree that from where you stand, it's unfair." His hand suddenly tightened around his shoulder. "But it makes perfect sense to me that it is fair."

His happiness was snuffed out like a candle. Nails digging into his skin assured him that the spirited glow was to be crushed beyond rebirth. "You know Yuki, I can't have people thinking something that I don't. It causes problems. And we don't want problems, do we?"

He shook his head furiously as he wrapped his shaking arms about himself. If he squeezed his eyes just right, the one-time feel of his mother's embrace could impress itself on his senses. It was her holding him now, keeping him safe from harm like his cousin's mother always did.

"That's why I'm going to re-educate your," the pause foretold of everything to come, "thinking." But stunned in his fear, as he was led into the main house, away from any means of escape, he could do nothing against the monster lurking at the back of his mind. From that day on, it had become a living thing that breathed only to make his body and mind ache. Ache for a stop, ache for a voice that didn't lash as the whip did. Between beatings, caresses, and mental torture he could only dream of an end.

An embrace.

Arms that would hold him instead of walls.

A heart whose beat would murmur his strength.

A person who would turn on his mental light, throw back the doors of his closet and show him that his fear existed no longer.

A warm person. Even then he knew it existed. –

'What keeps me from believing that it doesn't?' Yuki angrily questioned as he shoved his left foot into a rain boot.

He wasn't exactly angry. Just . . . confused and frustrated at his confusion. What was there to be confused about? Who was he supposed to be angry at? Tohru for asking Kyo if he wanted to talk with her, or Kyo for accepting? And then there was that annoyingly quiet third party. It wasn't Shigure, though he seemed to watch the whole exchange at dinner with a little more than curious interest. He had seemed to – avoid attracting attention to his own expressions.

'I'm angry at myself. . . aren't I? For not saying anything when I could have so many times before.'

Yuki paused at the self-inquisition and looked to the ground, his body still moving to its own inner-calls. As he pounded the toes of his right foot into the left shoe, he suddenly realized that he was wearing both golashes on the wrong feet. This did nothing to temper his anger, and kicking them into different directions, stormed out the doorway in his bare feet. It felt strangely freeing as he felt the pebbles tear at his heels. At each twinge of pain, he knew he was still in the present, and finally achieving a dream of escape.

He continued down the front path at such a fast pace that he didn't know where he was when he heard Shigure's voice. The stupid dog was mumbling some nonsense about sheets and thread count, but Yuki didn't bother with the details. Instead, he trained his sensitive ears on the tones undulating through his cousin's voice. All were low, and guided. Nearly apprehensive and drawling, they were the tones of man who was attempting to talk his way out of situation, or dissuade his pursuer from taking chase.

Yuki took a breath and looked up into the starry night sky. Good. So they weren't talking yet, as evidenced by the dog's abrupt conversation with Honda-san.

'If he could only keep the discussion from happening,' the prince slowed to a walk, occasionally drifting over grass, then back onto sadist rock. 'I'd be eternally thankful,' Yuki smiled with a faint trace of hope at the thought, but continued to walk away from the house to drown out his rival's voice.

Shigure had stopped talking. And that could only mean –

He had to get away.

He couldn't hear it. Whether or not she wanted to say it, he couldn't hear it. Not from her lips. Not from her voice.

But as he rounded the corner of the kitchen, he was blinded by the scene playing out like a bad soap in the window. His thoughts shattered into fragments of sanity and went flying, like his troublesome boots, into every direction at once. Yuki found himself suddenly rooted as audience to Kyou's first kiss.

'No, no, no, no, no,' his eyes widened with each frantic shake of his gray head. At last he found his footing and bolted in the opposite direction of anything that had to do with her voice and – his - ; with any voice at all.

Tearing through the underbrush, hands held far out ahead of him to break a fall into a broken wrist instead of a broken neck, Yuki could only see one thing in his mind. It wasn't the picture of Tohru kissing Kyou back. It wasn't even the bloody mess of a dead cat hanging by his tail. His escape was to one place where he could collect his faults and summate his failures. It soon appeared ahead of him, floating among the grayscale of a possible summer storm.

Tripping over a loose root, Yuki went tumbling head over heels into the strawberry patch where he lay with his head buried in the soil for a good ten minutes before he wanted to summon the energy to get up. It was then that he heard rather than felt his left ankle crack at a strange, not to mention forced angle. He'd managed to wedge it between his sitting rock and yet another damnable root trailing the outskirts of his garden. Swearing painfully under his breath, Yuki carefully teased his ankle free from its confines and set himself at the base of his rock to do anything but hurt himself like that again.

"Serves me right," he rasped, finding that his lungs were nearly burning with each breath he took. There was only one thing to do in a situation like this . . . lie down and try to calm down.

'How can I calm down?' again that anger bit at his mind as he relaxed his body into a propped position against the rocky pillow. 'She's in there with him, when she should be with me,'

But that was impossible. He supposed it was inevitable. That his anger, that his tracheal tubes, that everything would burn when his Honda-san would fall in love. When they were younger, the concept had seemed so faraway. She never dated, never even shared secret crushes among Uo and Hana-chan. Her ignorance of love or at the very least like-liking then had made the moment when she did fall in love all the more painful for him. That moment was now and it felt like his heart was being torn out of his chest. The fact that it was with that baka neko made the entire situation sit ill in his stomach. Of course, Kyou had been the one all along. As fate had dictated, so Kyou and Honda-san's past had duly followed.

As much as he hated to recount truth, Yuki found it the only solution. His garden had provided no sense of relief. That was all he was asking for, just a sense of protection for cruel reality. Just a mirage of safety from voices and admissions was all he was looking for in this tranquil setting.

But as he gazed about the clearing, all he could see was the past. Their past. Honda-san helping him to tack down the beans against the rain for the first time, Honda-san planting the strawberries he had purchased especially with her in mind, Honda-san standing close to him as he faked her out with a smile in the sunshine. She stood at the tree, knelt with trowel in hand to separate weed from tasty leek. Like a forgotten imprisonment from long ago, reminders of her existence were everywhere, boxing him into a broken ankle and an unwilling mind.

Now, as he sat there pitiful and alone like never before, he wondered how he could have been taken by surprise like that. A hat entered his mind, a small red one that would fit easily over two pigtails sprouting from a soft brown head. That hat had been found by a boy restlessly roaming about the streets. Quarantine hadn't kept him from escaping the Sohma's iron clasp. Nothing could collar him at seven, not even a firm talking to by Kazuma-sensei. And look where it had thrust him: into the arms of Honda-san.

A first brush with the cat was something she could and would never forget. Could she have understood that she had met the cat from the zodiac? Yuki clearly remembered Honda-san talking with Shigure about the sign she was born under. She was born dog, (a fact Shigure would silently gloat over when he was alone) but upon hearing the story of the cat and the rat, she had immediately sided with the poor kitty who'd slept through the banquet. From that point on, she was determined to live as one who was born under the cat. Honda-san had even recalled the story on several occasions to repair the neko's pride after losing (once again) to his rival.

His pride wasn't the only thing she had bandaged like new again. His faith in being loved was long assured at the lake on that rainy morning. Beast, rat, and onigiri. Together they had pulled him down, forced him to listen, but it was Honda-san who spoke with the words he needed to hear. She could always do that no matter how horrible the individual felt. Honda-san had been given the most precious of gifts. One that she didn't know was cherished by the rest of the world.

-"Sohma-kun, come play with us!"-

-"I don't think you're 'cute' at all. You're quite handsome."-

-"Yuki . . . kun."-

-"Let's go do something fun!"-

By the smile on his face shedding tears, he was convinced that he held it dear most of all.

Each event could foresee, even to a blind dormouse, the indelible outcome. But to this rat, fate's end stretched far and wide. So far and wide that he walked in it, ignorant of the fact that he balanced so precariously on an edge sharper than fate . . . the edge of hope.

Now he could feel himself falling.

Closing his eyes, Yuki snuffed out the Honda-san flames that dotted his garden. Instead of their past, he tried to focus on his past, the time before her. How had dealt with this type of torture before?

-"Let me out! Please someone, let me out!"

There was only one thing that could possibly ease the transition. He didn't even want to consider the option of bottling his emotions for another ten years. Taking a deep breath, Yuki closed his mouth with all intentions to let it out in a placating sigh. It erupted in a scream. Frustration grated at his vocal chords as the last breath left in his lungs was released. He wanted to keep screaming, but the rational Yuki silently shook his head. Yelling about his situation would never help him. Hell, keeping to himself wouldn't help the situation. There was only one thing to do.

"I have to see her," at that raspy whisper, a raindrop dripped onto his forehead. Then another, and another. By the time he had righted himself on his feet, he was chilled and trembling. Suddenly he wished his emotions hadn't gotten the better of him when he had tried to put his boots on. Without some water-proof protection, he stood on a numb stump. The other leg felt like it was on fire.

Leaping forward on what he hoped was his "good" right foot, Yuki found himself a step further away from the rock than before. Thoughts scurrying about his head, the prince decided to keep going. At this pace, everyone would be asleep by the time he hopped into the house. He'd confront her in the morning, or meet with the neko that night.

"I wish I could talk to her now," he moaned miserably, taking a great hop and praying that he wouldn't transform with the exertion and cold. There was no way he could outrun a stray cat in this state. "She'd probably know just what to say,"

He could picture her squeaking at his appearance, rushing him with a blanket, then merrily drying off a rat in her hands. The image brought a forlorn smile to his lips. But he covered the intruding visage of his grinning cousin tossing her an extra towel with another imagined reaction. Her eyes growing wide, she'd leap from her seat, and in that frantic, breathless voice question his name as if pondering his drenched existence.

"Yuki-kun?!"

Yuki paused, shook his head, and heard his name again. Although this time, he wasn't imagining it.

Standing to the edge of the clearing, he could make out a figure silhouetted by the mist on the path. It approached through the soft curtain of rain with relieved and certain footing. Holding his hand out at arms length the figure stopped. As he brought his arm back to his side, it crept closer until the figure's shadow was shed.

To reveal a very worried Tohru.

A/N: Hacha! Another chapter down! I hope this proves to you all that this story is indeed a Yukiru as advertised. For those who don't know me in real life, I assure you, I will defend that couple till the end of the series, even if Tohru ends up with someone else. They're perfect for eachother and that's just what's right. No one else could complete Yuki as Tohru does, and the fact that they both hold their true feelings in gives them something to mature on. It would take something like this to get them to live in a more mentally-healthy way.

I could use some reviews so I can end this story just right. And yes, next chapter is the last. I've enjoyed writing each and every paragraph though, it's been so much fun to look forward to this story each time I turned on my computer. But it ends with a very fitting title and MAYBE an epilogue of sorts.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed for Chapter 2. I hope you all checked back and enjoyed chapter 3!

Starhopper