"Despite Fate"

By Starhopper

DISCLAIMER: If you don't know by now, I don't own a friggin thing. Quit harassing me, will ya?

". . ." – spoken

'. . .' – thoughts

Here is my response to the cascade of reviews I've received since posting Chapter 2: separate responses to all the reviewers! THANKS!

AnimeFreakVee52 – I'm happy that you love this fic, I love it too! I promise ALL OF YOU that Yuki will NOT be sad at the end of the story. He will actually enjoy recovering from his injury . . . thanks to a certain onigiri's attentive TLC. And as for me "outdoing" myself, I have only this non-ego-inflated thing to say: "I KNOW!" (hee hee hee) just kiddin. This is the most mature story I've written yet, save for my poetry, and I'm extremely proud of it.

Lily Avalon – Vishy-Vashy friend of mine, Kyou is going to recover . . . we all need a little heartbreak. Kitty-san will be featured like everyone else in this chapter. We'll get a peak into his psyche as he watches the two together. A sequel? Maybe. I was thinking about how everyone would react to Yukiru goodness. Haru? Thankful – I'm not going to finish, that'd ruin some idea I might use for the future.

puffin – I own the series and have seen the last episode 6 times. Why do you ask? Is there anything I'm missing? I know they didn't show who she ends up with, they give equal airtime to both Kyou and Yuki. But thanks for assuming that you won't spoil it for me by telling me cause I already know.

SilverYumeTenshi – I did everything I did for reasons known only to myself and plot twists. I wish I could just kiss his boobooed ankle and make it better . . . but it's not my place. It's Tohru's! (wink)

Aki-Shinko – Someone noticed the chapter-titles! I'm glad you liked them, I wanted to carry the concept of Fate over to the titles and tone of the story itself.

'suki saotome – I'm updating, I'm updating! Do you mean to damn my writer's block to hell? (Or yeah, go ahead, by all means, get rid of it) So, I'm guessing that you liked it if you want to know what happens. Maybe I should do cliffies more . . .

inuficcrzy – I was a little worried myself, to tell the truth. I assure you, Tohru will help him through it. I hope you were able to hang on for a time more before this update! Don't let go!

R Junkie – How will you make it better? Hugging him never works because he'll just pop into a rat and be even more depressed. A kiss is better . . . but that's Tohru's job! I'm extremely pleased to hear that you really like this story. I do too!

Again, please enjoy the story as much as Yuki will enjoy the ending. He sure deserves it.

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Chapter 3:

He Waits With Bated Breath

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"Are you sure?" It was an incredibly stupid question, but it was the first thing that came into his mind.

Tohru smiled reassuringly, patting his hand gently before grasping it firmly to make him let go of her shoulder. "Kyou-kun. Please try to understand, I never meant for any of this to happen, but it did,"

"I know," he smiled back at her. He was greatly wounded to be sure, but the action salved the stinging ache of rejection forming in his heart. "I just wish things had been different."

Her mouth twisted slightly, following the slow narrowing of her gaze and the soft move to back away. "I'm so sorry Kyou-kun, but I have to disagree." Closing her eyes, she pressed clasped dishpan hands to the base of her throat and continued. "Being in love like this, it's something I never expected, but would never trade away for anything in the world. I wake up and I'm immediately thankful for what I have, even if he doesn't know it. I only hope he feels the same,"

Kyou just stared at her for while, chewing at his bottom lip. Should he tell her, should he not tell her? Was it his place to tell her? Could he even tell her? All these thoughts and more ran wildly about his mind. Now that he knew, it was hard not to spray them with the hose and hope they'd all evaporate. He soulfully wished that he didn't have to ponder such things anyway. When he said he wished things could've been different, he meant every word.

'But they aren't,' he reminded himself, and at that realization, he really looked at the woman before him. "Geez, you really are that dense, aren't you Tohru?" a small grin at the corner of his mouth assured her that he was merely joking. "You don't even know what you have to do in order to make sure he feels the same?"

"Well," Tohru pressed the tips of her fingers together and looked down at the floor. "I always wondered how you'd take it, that I never really considered how I'd tell him,"

"WHAT?! You mean you were more worried about how I'd react that you nev – er,"

"I was more concerned about keeping a good friend,"

'Than making a lover out of him,' Kyou finished her thought, suddenly understanding her true feelings. Despite his maturity, despite his acceptance of society, despite his opening up to her, he had never had a chance. It had started with and would end with –

"Yuki-kun?" Shigure's voice wafted through the house, drawing the attention of the couple in the kitchen. Tohru immediately ran toward the hall to find the novelist shielding his eyes with a hand and scanning the rooms for any sign of his cousin.

On a curious turn, he met the hopeful face of his little maid. He smiled brightly, almost with relief and sighed, "Ah, there you are Tohru-kun. You haven't by chance seen Yuki-kun anywhere have you?"

Tohru frowned at him. He knew rightly well that she didn't, that she had been in the kitchen. To stress this fact, Kyou stuck his head out of the doorway and reprovingly growled at the dog. He might not be her boyfriend, but he'd always be protective of the girl and willing to stick his neck out for her.

"Ah, yes, that's right. I was going to take a walk with him, but then he just up and disappeared." Shigure continued to muse his way around the subject, giving Tohru ample time to summon some courage.

"I think I know where he might be," she whispered after a time, glancing back at the absent space in the door coverings. Kyou had long withdrawn from the conversation. She still shot him a smile of thanks before turning back to Shigure. He was holding her rain slicker in one paw and her water-proof shoes in the other.

"Better take these, I've heard from a very reliable source that it's going to rain soon." His "source" howled somewhere outside, but neither took notice of it.

Without a word, she grabbed the proffered items and took off down the hall.

But, as Shigure would later recall, the brightness of her eyes said everything that needed to be said. She was in love, and would make his whole world right again just as she did from the moment she stepped through the door of their house so many summers ago.

What a lucky man that Yuki was.

Meanwhile, half-hopping, half-jogging, the onigiri managed to get her boots on without missing a step in the direction of the garden. The past conversation replayed back in her mind, the expressions that had at first crossed angrily on her friend's face. As she explained, and he had gotten used to the idea, respect had slowly warmed the frown of rebuke to an agreeable smile.

She'd often wondered at how it would feel. Would it hurt to cause pain? Would guilt overwhelm a heart finally freed from innocence?

Her feet carried her faster than she thought possible. Indeed, it had started to rain as the house fell from her immediate sight. Not that she would have noticed. Her mind was roving and pressing through the darkness that surrounded the house to the light of realization beyond. He'd know in a matter of minutes. He'd know.

She was driven into a full sprint at this thought, ducking branches with a second sense and sidestepping the banana slugs lazily sliming along her path.

Let him turn into a rat.

Let him blush so red.

Let him love her back, oh please.

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Kyou didn't see Shigure standing in the hallway, looking at the ceiling as if he'd misplaced something up there, as impossible as it seemed. Regardless, he said in passing, "I don't need your sympathy."

Bewildered, his cousin merely stared after him. He knew he was because he could feel the dog's eyes boring into his back as he marched steadily up the stairs to his room. Stopping at the doorway, Kyou snapped back into place.

'What was in here again?' he muttered under his conscience. His red eyes, red from pigmentation, not from tears he'd long forgotten how to cry, scanned the crisp folded edges of his bed and the tatami mat it sat on. There was a fine coat of dust on the table banked against the far wall and the cat inwardly hissed at it. He liked the room to be kept up. Tohru should know that by now.

Without thought, he walked to the opposite doorway. This was the one thing his room could provide for him in his hour of not exactly need and not exactly want. He only wanted to feel himself moving on, from one transition to the next. With a shrug, he supposed it was symbolic of the healing he couldn't feel. Inside to the out, from hiding in the thicket to standing in the open field. His heart was vulnerable now as he stood, casting a long look over the front yard and he knew it for she'd touched it, cradled it, and politely handed it back to him with anything but remorse. Well, maybe that wasn't entirely true, she did regret that –

No, she regretted nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And that was why he couldn't leap for joy and set thoughts of the future on a glistening pedestal. There was no way in hell that he could ever be happy because she had come to terms with her feelings and had the care in thought to tell him directly. He'd have to see the product of her musings and reel in their effects as he had during their session in the kitchen.

And he wasn't angry, which was the most puzzling thing from the whole episode. In years prior, Kyou had imagined himself throwing a class-A fit, directing punches at the whole idea of happiness. Tohru would never get caught in the fray, nor would her intended, but they would see it and know, just by observing, what damage they had done by just being together. That was how it was supposed to be, but this frozen feeling was alien. For the second time in his life, the cat had fallen and not landed on his feet. The first being, of course, four years ago at the lake when the onigiri had appeared out of nowhere, anticipating his move to throw her and holding on in spite of her fear.

'She loved everything about me, but never me. She never lied, never said a bad thing about anybody in her entire life. She deserves better than to see me like this,' the thoughts drifted in and out of his head as he stepped up onto the low railing. 'How would I feel if I woke up one day and realized I was in love?'

It was like asking a little girl not to dream.

"Tohru," Kyou was surprised at how willingly his voice bent in direction to her name and coughed to clear the slate. "Tohru," he repeated again, more gruffly than before and shaking his head, clenched his fists loosely at his sides, tossed his head to the side, and screamed, "TOHRU!"

There, now that that was out of his system, he could settle into acceptance. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he allowed it to form only in a sneer. Little Kyou-kun with a hot temper the color of his hair was gone. In his place stood a mature man with an inkling that the world was a whole lot fairer than it appeared to be. The sweetest girl would have her dream.

'Prince and Princess.'

Kyou sniffed, chuckling piteously at himself before climbing the short distance to his perch on the roof.

He should have seen it coming from miles away.

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Shigure glanced out the window from the sitting room as the maiden's name echoed between the house and the forest. Kyon-kun was taking rejection far better than he could have imagined. But epiphanies were like that.

"Ha-chan,"

The other end of the phone-line was static, until the dour doctor cut in with a sharp twang.

"Shigure, what is it this time and do you need me to bring my bag?"

"Ha-chan, you know you can't mend a broken heart with band-aids alone!"

"Ah yes, I must apologize for keeping Akito last night, I knew you wanted to see him,"

The pencil in Shigure's fingers began to spin like a baton. "I didn't mean that, although I would appreciate some warning in the future that he's feeling more ill than usual. It's not a very pleasant feeling to know that your love doubles over in pain when he his touched."

A cough, "However, I'm rather busy at the moment, so if you could make this short, whose heart needs healing?"

"The question is whose heart – doesn't – need healing." Shigure now took to balancing the pencil on the tip of his finger, studying its slight wavering with one eye open.

"Shall I bring Ayame then?"

"No, Yuki will recover, it's the neko,"

The dog's eyebrows rose at the silence on the other end. Surely Ha-chan would know by now. Sketching out some zodiac animals, like the chicken, the seahorse and himself, the most handsome of all black dogs, the novelist bided his time.

Rushed movement flared to life on the other end and drawing was forgotten. "I'm on my way, and I'm bringing Ayame just in case,"

"Ah, midnight tea!" Shigure cuddled up to the receiver, curling his body around the phone line like it was his best friend and he was begging him not to leave. One more word, one more hug.

"Just like old times," Ayame's voice cut in without a transition on the same line, "What's like old times? Ah, Shii-chan is having us over? Perhaps I'll show Yuki how to sip at the cup like the lips of a lover. It's quite-"

The line went dead, but not before the sound of footsteps thundered down a hall and the slamming of an open door snapped Shigure's eardrum.

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"She's very much a part of me, apart of us,"

A petal blew by, lazily circling the tv antennae before making an approach on Kyou's nose.

He blew at it with strangled breath and watched it trounce off into the clouds.

'To be happy for her,' That would be too easy. He never thought it would be so hard. She had been through so much, and yet she'd worn her smile proudly.

"Okaa-san told me to smile and pretend that I never heard them talk," a memory as brutal as his mother's voice was sure to crack this ponder-some ice. At least he had hoped it would. But to his utter disappointment, he found it ground the present harder against his temple.

'Do you have your bracelet on?' At the thought, he glanced down at the wrist limply resting on his chest and sighed with relief. The sound was hauntingly familiar.

"If Yuki ever tries to hurt her, even thinks about it,"

A sudden grin overtook his mouth and Kyou soon found his canines viciously jutting into his bottom lip. The image of a cat prancing about the house with a rat clenched in its jaws flashed over his eyes and the smile broadened.

"It was her decision," Yes it was, seemingly so wrong as it was. "And I respect her," again the lightness with which he said, 'her' annoyed him. He had to break that habit fast.

The thought slowly began to form, but upon hearing her name from the dark thicket of woods, promptly lost it again.

Acceptance was proving to be the toughest enemy he had yet to face.

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A/N: NOT THE LAST CHAPTER! I'm working on the rest as we speak, but what was written had to be written and hopefully read. I'm so incredibly busy and excited for this coming school year, fanfiction has become a wonderful release for me.

THANKS TO ALL!

Peace and love to all,

Starhopper