* - * - *

Everything felt strange. She felt strange. Here she was, sitting on the shore of a lake that she'd believed was only a legend, recounting her mother's story to an adorable silvery-white mouse that spoke and acted like a human, while all around her were the sights the very same story had described in exacting detail. The crumbling remains of a once-grand palace. The imposing black lines of the tallest tower she'd ever seen. The jagged blue peaks of the northern mountains beyond the lake. There was a chill in the air that not even the pallid sunlight could dispel, and a silence that owed nothing to the gloom of the forest or the vast emptiness of the lake. The bleak atmosphere pressed upon her like a heavy, stifling hand, as if the memories of death and destruction had not only remained to haunt this place, they had been allowed to fester like an open sore. There was so much horror this wounded land had known…

…and still remembered.

"It was a peaceful time for the kingdom, and everyone was happy, except for one thing: the king and queen had no child. And so one day…"

Her voice remained steady while the rest of her floundered, struggling to adjust to the shifting borders between truth and fantasy. Strange that she was still alive, she thought, that she managed to live through a demon attack, sickness and starvation in the Deadlands, the cursed forest, the Sun Stone's fury. Strange that she now found herself in a world she had never imagined still existed, let alone that she would actually see with her own eyes. Strange that, just when she'd lost every friend and companion she had in this world, she would meet new friends in this unlikeliest of places and in the most unexpected circumstances.

But strangest of all, Tohru thought as she met an unfathomable violet gaze, was Yuki himself.

A mouse! He was a mouse! She remembered her reaction when she realized what he was, and could have kicked herself for her rudeness. He'd looked so surprised, so pained, when she told him that she'd thought him human, and she felt a rush of shame at hurting him, however inadvertently. There had been a momentary flash of disappointment that the breathtakingly gorgeous boy she'd seen in her fever-induced dreams—a boy she'd believed had been waiting for her to rescue him, she recalled, squirming in embarrassment—turned out to be precisely that, just a dream. But then he spoke to her, and his voice was as gentle and comforting and elegantly polite as she remembered—her dreams hadn't lied about that, at least. And he was so kind to her, patiently enduring her impulsive affections, even going out of his way to make her laugh.

A part of her though clung stubbornly to her little fantasy, reluctant to admit that she had been utterly, mortifyingly wrong about him. True, there were some similarities between Yuki and the prince in her dreams. They both had the same graceful, unconsciously regal bearing and the same eyes. Those eyes were probably what had confused her in the first place. Such incredible eyes, the color of moonlight shining through amethysts. Eyes that made her feel oddly breathless whenever she gazed into them, even though said eyes peered out from a little pointy face with silvery whiskers and a tiny pink nose. She sighed. Kyo was right. She must have been completely delirious to mistake a mouse for a boy.

Then again, it didn't matter what shape a person was, did it? Yuki had saved her life twice now. He'd taken care of her when she was half-crazed with fever, had stayed with her when her grief tore her apart. He was there when despair had nearly broken her, and he brought her back from the abyss and spoke words that gave her strength. During her darkest hours, he was there for her to hold on to. Somewhere between her discovery of his real form and his endearing attempts to tickle her worries away, she had ceased to care that Yuki wasn't her prince, or even human. Yuki was Yuki, and his being a mouse did not alter her impression that he was one of the most beautiful creatures she had ever met.

And she was still hurting him, she thought in dismay. Yuki's gaze slid away as her story wound to its tragic conclusion, and Tohru realized too late that what was just a childhood tale for her must have been far more real to him. She trailed off and bit her lip in an agony of uncertainty.

Again, it was Yuki who sensed her distress and took pains to ease it. He smiled reassuringly at her and thanked her for the story. "Unbelievable," he murmured. "It's only a fairytale now?"

"Yes," she said. "The version I read in one of Shigure-san's history books was different, but my mother's story seems to be closer to the truth."

He shook his head. "No, not just. That's almost exactly how it happened."

"You mean you remember all of it?" she asked, horrified. Surely after two hundred years, some degree of healing forgetfulness should have already taken place.

"Time moves much more slowly here," he explained, sounding as if the idea was just as new to him as it was to her. "So yes, I remember it."

So much pain, she thought. Nothing in his expression betrayed his emotions—he was, in fact, the most self-contained being she had ever met—but something inside her seemed to resonate with him, although he himself seemed to be unaware of their connection. "Who are you, Yuki-kun?" she blurted then blushed when she realized she had let her curiosity drive her to the point of rudeness again. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—you don't have to explain—but then if you wanted to explain, that's fine, too—" she babbled, dreadfully aware that she was only making things worse.

His furry little body had tensed up at her question, then relaxed. "It's all right, Honda-san," he said with a hint of laughter in his voice. "I was wondering how long it would to take for you to ask that." He sat beside her and stared out at the lake. "I wasn't always like this. I was born human. I grew up at the palace, and I was only a child when—all this happened. Besides me, only two others survived. Another child a year younger than I, and Akito."

"Akito," she breathed, her eyes wide. "The dark sorcerer, Akito."

"Ruler of this realm," he said expressionlessly. "Akito's power is what keeps the cursed forest alive and the barriers up. Creating this realm had weakened him, but his power grows stronger as time passes." He glanced up at her. "Very few survive in this realm, Honda-san, but you have. The only explanation I can think of is that Akito allowed you to live."

She shivered. Yuki had expected her to be dead. In truth, she had expected her to be dead. She didn't understand how Akito's power worked, but it certainly explained the oppressive sense of controlled devastation over this place. It was Akito's presence she was feeling. "You said two others survived," she said quickly to keep from thinking about the dark sorcerer's possible reasons for keeping her alive. "Who was the other one?"

"Are you wondering if your fairytale prince is alive?" His whiskers flicked back as he slid her an inscrutable glance. She blushed guiltily, unable to help herself. "The prince did survive," he went on, "but lives under a curse. A half-life, so to speak. You asked about the cat earlier," he said abruptly, making her blink at the change of subject. "Kyo is an anomaly, like you, Honda-san. He doesn't belong here any more than you do, but Akito captured him and put him under a similar curse, although I wonder if that hotheaded fool has figured this out yet," he added edgily.

"A curse?" An image of the cat flashed through her mind. "Then Kyo-kun—the cat—?"

He nodded. "An animal in the daytime, and a human being at night. Kyo is bound to Akito, and Akito will never set him free, no matter what that idiot cat was led to believe."

"But why?"

"Why?" He tilted his head to the sky. "Because Akito needs him. Everything in this realm exists for one purpose only: to serve Akito. Anything else is destroyed."

His voice was almost clinically detached, his eyes flat, and Tohru could feel the chill radiating from him like an invisible wall. Her surroundings seemed to fade as her mind was suddenly filled with the imprints of his emotions, flashing through the strange connection she shared with him. In her mind, the desolate years yawned before her, year after year of the most barren existence, of a life filled with constant fear and hatred and soul-shattering loneliness. Her breath lurched back into her lungs, and she slowly turned to her little companion, seeing him with different eyes. "What about you, Yuki-kun?" she whispered as her world tilted on its edge.

He flinched ever so slightly. "This is my curse, Honda-san. To be a mouse with the mind of a human during the daytime."

"And at night?"

Silence. "I become a monster."

And she knew, oh gods, she knew. Tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her cheeks as her heart broke for him, for everything that had been stolen from him, for everything he had had to endure for so very long. He had lost everything—his family, his future, his very identity—everything, and had been forced to live in this poisoned realm that had once been his home in a body that wasn't his own, never allowed even one moment to simply forget. Oh Yuki…

"Honda-san?"

She bit her lips together, but her sobs came out as little wet coughs anyway. Stop crying, she ordered herself sternly, you're scaring him. He wouldn't like you to cry, not when he tried so hard to hide it from you, to keep it all locked inside. Somehow, the thought only made her cry harder, and she finally gave up, crammed both fists against her eyes and bawled her heart out.

"Honda-san!" Oh gods, he was worried about her! "Honda-san, what's wrong? Please don't cry, I'm sorry if I said anything to upset you—"

She whipped around, scooped him up and cradled him against her chest as her body was bent forward by the force of her sobs. When she realized she was probably smothering him, she lifted him and pressed her forehead against his back as her sobs subsided enough to let her make a coherent explanation. "I'm s-sorry, it's just that—you've suffered so much, Yuki-kun, and I—it hurts to even think about it, and I can't imagine how you've endured but somehow you have—"

So much for coherent, a voice inside her sighed. She straightened when she felt him squirm, and held him out in front of her. His face was blankly astonished and his whiskers quivered as if he wanted to say something but was having trouble getting the words unstuck, but it was the roiling confusion and naked vulnerability in his eyes that shook her. She doubted he'd ever been as completely staggered in his life. "Honda-san…are you crying…for me?"

She nodded and wiped at her nose with one hand. A tear stood on her eyelash and dropped, and his gaze followed its downward course on her cheek as if it was the most riveting thing he'd ever seen. "I understand," he said in a strangled voice. "It's kind of you to feel sorry for a weak, useless mouse, but—"

"No!" she gasped. "It's not that. You're not weak or useless, Yuki-kun. You're beautiful!"

His eyes snapped up to hers. "Beautiful?"

"Beautiful," she said firmly, then giggled at the look on his face. "Mother once told me that a person's soul tends to take on the colors of the world around him. Little things, like flowers by the roadside, or the sound of children laughing, or the way the sunlight feels on your face—and the bad things too, the ugly and cruel things—you may not notice them, but your heart remembers, and your soul takes on the colors of those memories. Sometimes it happens that the bad things crowd out the good, and a person's heart become dark and cruel. But sometimes you find a soul with the strength to keep true to its own beauty, so that what you see in a person is not the colors of the world being reflected back, but the light of the soul shining through."

He stared at her.

"Ack!" she yelped as embarrassment washed over her in waves of red. "I'm sorry. That sounded so strange. All I meant to say was—was—" Her shoulders sagged as a sigh escaped her, and she smiled, letting all the respect and warm admiration she felt shine through her eyes. "Yuki-kun, don't you see? All these years you were surrounded by darkness and cruelty, but you didn't let it touch your heart. You could have let your past turn you into something hateful, but you're not. You're kind and generous and strong and—well, you saved my life, even when you didn't have to. I was just thinking a while ago how beautiful you are, and now I understand why."

"Even though I'm a mouse?"

Her smile deepened. "It's your soul that makes you beautiful, Yuki-kun, not your body."

Their eyes met and held. Her breath caught, and warmth unfurled from the vicinity of her heart and spread outwards through her body. She was blushing again and she knew it, but if the earth had split apart at that moment, she wouldn't have been able to tear herself away from that compelling gaze. "It's funny," Yuki finally said in a husky voice that caused an odd fluttering in her stomach. "I was thinking the same thing about you, Honda-san."

"Th-thinking the same thing?" she stammered, feeling distinctly lightheaded.

"How beautiful you are."

Oh! Her face burst into flames, and her lips formed themselves around the startled syllable. The way he was looking at her and the gentle timbre in his voice were making her head spin. Seriously. She planted a hand on the ground to keep the world from swaying. "Anoo, Yuki-kun?"

He grew instantly concerned. "Are you all right?"

"I—I think I need to lie down for a while."

"Oh!"

They both turned at the sound of the voice. Tohru stared. A pretty girl dressed in a rather worn-out maid's uniform was standing on a raft, with the pole she was using to push herself to shore still thrust into the lake. Her long, light brown hair fell past her shoulders, and her soft, brown eyes were wide with a mixture of surprise and relief and, oddly enough, guilt. "Y-you're alive!" the girl exclaimed. "He's not d-done it yet!"

"Eh?" was all Tohru could say to that inexplicable remark.

Yuki's eyes narrowed, but Tohru's vision swam again and she couldn't stop a soft moan from slipping out. She heard Yuki speak her name, but what really got her attention was the guttural cry that cut through the silence. She blinked. The girl must have sprouted wings and flown off the raft, because she was suddenly crouched near Tohru, her entire face contracted in a ghastly wail, brown eyes burning with homicidal remorse.

"Y-y-you're swooning with hunger and it's all my fault! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm so s-s-sorry!"

Tohru tried not to wince at the auditory assault. "What? No! It's not your fault! Really!"

"H-H-His Highness asked me t-t-to bring food hours ago but I was late! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

"It's all right, Ritsu," Yuki muttered, jumping down.

He jerked back when the girl beat her fists on the ground. "I'm worthless! I'm worthless, a w-worthless little m-monkey! I'm sorry, sorry, sorry!"

"No, you're not worthless! Please, stop!" Tohru moved to catch the flailing fists before one of them pounded Yuki into the ground. At her touch, the girl seemed to turn into a block of wood, and the two of them froze in that position, with Tohru holding the girl's wrists above their heads in a sort of dance, if one could dance while twisted up like licorice on the ground. The silliness of their predicament soon got the better of Tohru and she started to laugh, then laughed harder at the bug-eyed expression on the other girl's face. "I'm sorry," she chortled, releasing the girl's hands. "We just looked a bit funny then. My name is Tohru Honda."

"R-ritsu," the girl said faintly.

"I'm glad to meet you, Ritsu-san."

"'Rit-chan,' T-Tohru-oneesama," the girl corrected shyly. "'Rit-chan' is f-fine."

"'Rit-chan' then." Tohru smiled brightly, then with a sigh sank into Ritsu's startled arms. Through waves of dizziness, she could hear Yuki speaking to Ritsu, then she was helped to her feet and brought her back to the cave. Ritsu went to retrieve a sack she'd left on the raft, from which she produced a loaf of bread, a hunk of rather tough cheese and a couple of plump, red tomatoes. Despite her ravenous hunger, Tohru was almost afraid to touch the food after losing her first decent meal to nausea. But her bout of sickness last night must have purged her of the last of the tainted water of the Deadlands, because she managed to keep down most of the bread, both tomatoes, all of the cheese, the leftover rice and several sweetberries besides. Her gluttony appalled her, but Ritsu was tearfully flattered that she'd liked her baking—Tohru hadn't the heart to tell her that the bread could have been used to hammer stakes with—and Yuki seemed pleased that she'd eaten, and the food did get rid of the dizziness. They made more tea out of the flowers, and although the tea wasn't as wonderfully soothing without Kyo's enchantment, it helped bring down the slight fever she still had.

The thought of Kyo made her smile and glance upward at the orange paw peeking out over the roof of the cave. Unknown to them, Tohru and Yuki had had an audience; Ritsu told them she'd seen an orange bundle streaking back into the forest the moment she arrived. A few times during Tohru's one-sided meal, the cat had wandered around the perimeters of the cave, tail and head held high with such studied casualness that she'd wanted to laugh. He would catch sight of Yuki, hiss angrily and bound away, only to return a few minutes later as if drawn helplessly to the solace of the clearing. By his fourth appearance, Yuki had glared at him and quietly swore to kill him if he came any closer. Tohru waved her hands and babbled something placating, a little disturbed by the flash of ice in Yuki's amethyst eyes. Under ordinary circumstances, she'd have found nothing too alarming about the rivalry between a cat and a mouse—it was almost traditional, after all, although the virulence of their animosity did overstep tradition a bit. But then, the cat and the mouse in question were far from ordinary, and every instinct warned her that an open confrontation between Yuki and Kyo would be…bad. She was gradually getting used to a world where everything was turned upside down and nothing was what it seemed, but there were a few things she did not want to find out.

The cat soon found a way to stay nearby without having to suffer his smaller adversary's glacial hostility. Ritsu confirmed it when she glanced up. "K-Kyo-sama's up there," she said as if doubting what she was seeing. "He usually hates b-being around you, Y-Your Highness."

Yuki's eyes darkened warningly, and Ritsu fell silent. Tohru stared at him. For some reason, Yuki and Kyo brought out the worst in each other. Tohru remembered Kyo's angry invectives against Yuki. He'd accused Yuki of being a—she furrowed her brow—a "lying son of a bitch" and a "damned conjurer," neither of which made sense to Tohru. Akito was the conjurer, not Yuki. But then, she didn't think Kyo would lie about something like that, either.

She was distracted from her thoughts by something tugging on her skirt. Ritsu was timidly holding out a brown bundle of cloth. "I—I brought you something, Tohru-oneesama. I th-thought you might want to change a bit."

Tohru took the bundle and shook it out. It was a smock similar to the one Ritsu was wearing. "Oh! Thank you! Thank you so much, Rit-chan. This is so kind of you."

The younger girl flushed, taken aback by Tohru's heartfelt gratitude. "I-I-I'm sorry it's such an ugly dress—"

Tohru shook her head. "Oh no, of course not. It can't be any uglier than what I'm wearing now, and I have been dying to take a bath. I'm probably covered in—well, never mind what I'm covered in," she said, laughing, before turning to Yuki. "Um, do you mind?" she asked shyly.

His warm gaze settled over her. "Not at all, Honda-san. We promise not to look."

"Eh?" For some reason, her eyes strayed to Ritsu, who was deeply engrossed in plucking at the loose threads on her skirt. "Ah, Rit-chan could join me if she—"

"Definitely not." Steel slid behind his voice.

Something was a bit off here. "It's all right, Yuki-kun. Rit-chan's a girl, after all."

Ritsu made an odd, spluttering noise. Yuki winced. "Ritsu's not a girl, Honda-san."

Tohru gaped at Yuki, then at Ritsu, who was peeking up at her through her lashes, somehow managing to look both innocent and guilty at the same time. "But—but—" Something went ping in Tohru's mind. "I'm sorry, Rit-chan. I didn't know you were cursed, too."

"Cursed?" both Yuki and Ritsu echoed. "Ritsu's not cursed. Besides you, he's the only one here who isn't," Yuki explained. "Ritsu's just…complicated."

Ritsu nodded. "C-complicated."

Tohru's head felt as if it were spinning in complicated circles. Then she recalled some of the stories Haru and Uo-chan told her about some of the denizens of the Outer City, and her confusion cleared. "Oh, I see. Like the Three-Petaled Flower Ladies," she said, feeling inordinately proud of herself. She might have spent her life tucked in some obscure corner of Mizaka, but she was still a city girl at heart. Haru and Uo-chan would have been so proud of her.

Her heart twisted. She missed them so much.

She realized that both Yuki and Ritsu were staring at her, and she rushed to explain. "They were men who dressed as women, and very lovely and graceful women, too. Like fairy queens, Hatsuharu-san and Uo-chan told me. They lived mostly in the Coral District of the Outer City. I've never been there myself, but I'm sure it's a nice place." As much as anything could be termed "nice" in the Outer City. When no reaction was forthcoming from her audience of two—three, counting Kyo, who was looking at her as if she'd just sprouted another head on her shoulders—she blushed and mumbled a "pardon me" before fleeing to the lake for her much-needed bath.

When she came back, wringing the water out of her hair and dressed in Ritsu's smock that hung a little too loosely around her, she found the three…boys still frozen in the same positions she had left them, their eyes following her every movement. Hiding a smile, she sat down beside Yuki and waited.

"The Outer City?" said Yuki.

"Th-Three-Petaled Flower L-Ladies?" said Ritsu.

"Mrowr?" said Kyo.

Tohru couldn't help it. She laughed. "I really don't know where to begin. There's so much to tell. Two hundred years, you know."

"The beginning would be a good place to start, Honda-san," Yuki deadpanned, and she could tell he too was trying not to laugh.

She met his gaze, and she and Yuki shared a smile. Then she tucked her knees underneath her chin and took a deep breath.

The alien sound soon filtered through the forest and drifted across the lake, filling the remaining hours before twilight with its own unique magic: the sound of happy chatter and bright, golden laughter.

And deep beneath the bowels of the earth, darkness stilled its eternal raging and rumbled in savage satisfaction.

Soon. Very soon.

Author's Notes:

One week, and this is all I have to show for it. Sigh.

Thanks, thanks, thanks again, Clymene (you don't know how much your words comfort me ^_^), Saki-chan, PikaChan, Merei-chan, Anee, Alexandra-Kyoko, LovethatHimura and everyone for reading and reviewing. And thanks, Quantum. I saw what you meant (I think). Yeesh, how embarrassing, it sounded like something straight out of a cheezy melodrama. I tried fixing it up (to everyone else, it's Chapter 22), but I don't know if I made a dent in it. And to CB, thanks for pointing out that slip-up. I accidentally deleted some parts of a sentence that caused the confusion. (Excuses, excuses.) I fixed it up, too (Chapter 23), so I hope it helps. I'll have to do a more thorough clean-up later.

Also, I don't have the episode where Ritsu appears, so I can't remember how exactly he calls Tohru. I just made a wild guess. I hope I'm not too far off the mark.

Um, I did say the fic is a Yukiru, right?

Again, thank you so very much for reading! You guys make my week(s). ^___^