Together

AH! It's my first Fruits Basket fic ever! I'm so excited!

This fic is making a lot of assumptions about Yuki, Kyo, and Tohru's pasts that I made through very obscure hints in manga volumes 1-11 (when Tohru realizes that Akito is the god and decides to try and break the curse). I haven't read beyond them yet (number 12 is coming out in December!), so if my conjectures are totally wrong, please don't hurt me.

Now, I'm building a tradition in which each of my new posts has a Japanese word (you can thank my Inuyasha obsession for that) that has something to do with that chapter/one-shot. So today's word is "zutto", which means "always" or "forever".

Disclaimer: As much as I would love to cuddle Kyo and Momiji and Haru (kinda hard to cuddle him though…) and Shigure and Kisa and Ritsu, as much as I want to tie Kagura and Yuki and Akito to bucking broncos for interfering with Kyo and Tohru, as much as I want to hug Ayame (GO SNAKES!) and Hatori, I'm afraid I cannot. Know why? 'Cause they're manga characters. And that manga happens to be written and illustrated by Natsuki Takaya. Thus, I do not own any member of the zodiac or anyone else who appears in Fruits Basket, and the only chance I have to cuddle them, etc. is in fanfiction.

Note: There are two chunks in the actual story that are italicized. You could probably figure this out on your own, but those are flashbacks. The regular font is normal time. Also 'single quotes' indicate thought, and "double quotes" indicate speaking. Please enjoy!

-- -- --

The little boy stared sullenly across the playground, over the sandbox, past the swings, into the trees shading both street and sidewalk. Yesterday had been his fifth birthday, but only Mommy had remembered. Daddy, of course, never showed up, and Mommy wouldn't let him have a party, so he only had one present. 'I didn't even get a cake,' he pouted, his brown eyes glaring reproachfully at the other kids, all so carefree in the company of their friends.

He inexpertly blew a strand of orange hair out of his face. "And I didn't get to play with my friend either," he complained. 'I haven't seen him in forever! Longer than forever! What if he has a new friend? What if he doesn't like me anymore? What if he forgot me?' The fear and unsurety that would normally have gripped a child his age at such a thought was absent. Instead, he looked gloomy and frustrated, as if such a thing had happened so often that he was used to it, but also tired of it.

He looked up at the sky, swinging his feet as he sat on the tall park bench. It was cloudy out, not helping his mood at all.

"Mommy," he had asked that morning, pouting up at one of the two people in the world who loved him. "Mommy, can I go to the park?"

"Oh, Kyo, it's too cold out, too cold for even a big boy like you," she had answered, shutting the curtains. "Not tomorrow…another day, sweetie."

He had frowned up at her. "But Mommy, I promise I won't hug anyone. If I don't turn into a kitty, I'll stay in my coat, right? And I'll keep my beads on, too, Mommy. Can I go, Mommy? Please?"

Then, she had looked at him with those eyes, those eyes that Daddy, Akito-san, all the others looked at him with. The eyes that said, "We don't love you. Go away." For a second, he was afraid that she would become like them, would turn her back and whisper, whisper and laugh, whisper and make those eyes again.

But suddenly, she was Mommy again. "Well…okay. You have to be very careful. Remember, any friends who see you change won't be your friends anymore. Hatori-san must make them forget."

Now, little Kyo leaned forward, avidly watching a game of hide-and-seek. 'If they forget, they won't make those eyes. But…' A cherubic frown shadowed his face. 'I want them to remember. I want to play.'

Suddenly, a grown-up sat down next to him. She looked a lot like Mommy; she was tall and had the same blond hair. "Hey there, squirt," she said, smiling at him. "What are you doing all the way over here, all by yourself?"

He recoiled. 'No one can see me!' Staring suspiciously into her gray-blue eyes, he scooted away.

To his surprise, she didn't leave, didn't look away. Instead, she scooted closer and brushed his itchy bangs out of his eyes. "You're lonely, aren't you?"

He shook his head and looked down at a squished, gray glob of old gum on the concrete. But the lady wouldn't take no for an answer. "I think you are. Tohru!" she called out across the playground.

Kyo didn't look up, but tensed up excitedly. Another boy to play with! (AN: I'm sure you all know that Tohru is normally a boys' name)

A pair of shoes pattered its way across the cement and stopped a little way from the bench. "Come on, Tohru, I'd like you to play with this nice boy," the lady said with a smile in her voice. "You want to play with Tohru, right?" she asked Kyo.

Still staring at the ground, he nodded. "Well, then, say hello, you two!"

His head flew up. "I'm Kyo Soh—" he began happily, when his voice stopped right in the middle. "You're…you're a girl!"

She grinned and nodded shyly. Her short brown hair had been braided into two stubby pigtails, tied with ribbons as pink as her sundress. "I'm Tohru Honda!" she giggled. "What do you want to play, So-san?"

He twitched. So-san? "Hey, my last name's Sohma, not So, and don't call me –san! I'm just Kyo!"

Her round face brightened. "Kyo-kun? Does that mean I can be 'just Tohru-chan'? Can we be friends"

He wrinkled his nose and turned away. "I don't play with girls. All they wanna play is dollies."

"But I wanted to play tag…" she pouted, scuffing the ground with her pink sneaker.

Kyo's head immediately whipped around. "Tag?" Should he play? But she was a girl! But he loved tag! But…

Finally, he snorted. "Fine, but only if I get to be 'it' first."

"Yay!" She rushed toward him, her arms stretched out wide. Quickly, he put out his hand, catching her in the forehead and stopping her before she could hug him.

"But I'm not gonna play if you hug me, got it?" he said furiously.

The lady moved, as if she wanted to pull Tohru away, but kept watching. Tohru also moved and stood back, looking at him with big, brown, confused eyes. "Kyo-kun doesn't like hugs?"

"Right," he answered, breathing hard. Her eyes had been so happy…he didn't want to see her making those eyes at him, too! "No hugs."

-- -- --

"Kyo-kun? Kyo-kun, class is over! Kyo-kun, wake up, or you'll be late to the dojo!"

"Nnn?" Kyo, now sixteen, raised his head. "Can you repeat the question, sensei?" he asked blearily.

A voice, further off than the first one, muttered loudly, "The fool. Falling asleep in class and then risking missing his own training that he so obsessively loves."

He blinked, and the room came into sharper focus. He was in a classroom, sprawled across his desk. A crowd of people, all wearing the same high school uniform, was pushing to get through the door.

He had fallen asleep…? Looking up, he jumped slightly. "Tohru!"

"You'll be late," she repeated, looking worried. "Are you all right? Are you sick after training so hard?"

She reached out to feel his forehead, but he gently brushed her hand away. "No, I just didn't fall asleep until pretty late last night…"

Instead of alleviating her worry, his explanation seemed to make her even more anxious. "Oh! Um, was it because of me? I was up late practicing my oral English exam, did I keep you awake?" She clutched nervously at her school bag, fumbling with its delicate golden buckles. "I'm so sorry, you didn't a chance to take class notes, you missed out on hours of important sleep, and all because of me!"

He was fully awake now, and recognized the signs of one of her all-too-common clouds of self-disgust and depression. "What are you talking about?" he said hurriedly. "I just had a lot on my mind, and besides, I had just gone into my room when you turned your light out. You couldn't have kept me up."

Tohru looked up hopefully, her unsure brown eyes twisting his heart. "Are…are you sure?"

"'Course I am," he answered off-handedly, pushing himself up to his feet. "Besides, Shishou's visiting an old student of his today, so no lessons. I told you last night, remember?"

"You…you did?" She wrinkled her forehead, trying to remember. "I…I must have forgotten." Suddenly, a look of horror crossed her face. "Oh no! That means I just woke you from your much-needed sleep, and all because of my own poor memory!"

"No, sheesh, Tohru, it really doesn't matter…"

The way things turned out, they had already walked halfway home by the time he had managed to disperse her guilty feelings. Suddenly, he noticed something off and looked around. "Hey, where's the dirty rat? He walks home with you, right?"

"Oh, Yuki-kun had to go to an informal Student Council meeting. As president, he had to sort out some conflict between the secretary and the first-year representative. Something about one stealing an idea from the other."

Kyo snorted. "Well, if they rip him apart in the fight, I won't be arguing with them."

He glanced sideways. There it was, that troubled, oddly closed expression of hers. For months now, she had done her best to avoid criticizing the two cousin's hate for each other. Of course, she barely hesitated when they threatened to start a real fight (he still hadn't forgotten last June, with her frantically swinging her arms around, completely forgetting the fact that she was holding a steaming iron). He sighed and looked back at the sidewalk.

She had been on his mind last night.

'Well, when is she not?' he thought dryly. No matter where he was, her name was always pounding in the back of his head, her face appearing on the backs of his eyelids whenever he blinked, her voice calling his name in every moment of silence.

But last night, it hadn't just been her. He had also been thinking of his cousin, Yuki.

Surprisingly, it had not been the hatred the two boys shared that he had brooding on. He had been thinking of something different. He had been remembering days when life had seemed less complicated, before he had been shown that the whole world was against him. That the whole world hated him because he so ruthlessly trampled on others' sacrifices. Before he had been shown that he was alone.

The remainder of the walk home passed in silence, each thinking his or her own thoughts. When they reached the house, Tohru turned to him and asked cheerfully, "So what do you want for dinner today, Kyo? Your decision, since you're home an extra day!"

'She's acting like a wife greeting her husband when he comes home from work,' he thought fondly, blushing slightly. He bent down to untie his shoes, thus hiding his face, and answered, "How 'bout some curry?"

"All right, curry it is!" Tohru quickly pulled her hair into a ponytail while struggling into an apron, at the same time depositing her schoolbooks and calling out, "Shigure-san, we're home! ACK!"

Kyo sighed. For a moment, she had looked so capable so in control, but the illusion had been ruined when she had somehow tangled the apron strings with both her hair tie and the strap of her bag. "Honestly, you've gotta pay more attention to what you're doing, idiot," he admonished, reaching for the strings and patiently extracting them from her hair tie and freeing her bag.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," Tohru sighed sheepishly, finishing her ponytail while Kyo tied her apron for her.

"Times like this, I wonder if we can really trust you in there with those stoves and sharps knives," he said with a grin. Then, he gently shoved her into the kitchen. "I'll be in my room."

As he plodded up the stairs, he sighed. 'Who ever would have thought…the little girl who played tag with me every Monday for a full year would appear again eleven years later, living with me, studying with me…and not remembering any of our very first year together.'

His hands suddenly clenched into fists, his nails digging mercilessly into the flesh of his palm. "And it was his fault! His fault that she forgot! His fault that for years I wandered, believing that I was alone, nothing but a burden, nothing but useless, a freak, a MONSTER!"

Growling, he made to punch the wall, then stopped himself mere inches away from the white plaster. Shigure continuously complained that his home kept getting brutalized, mainly by temperamental Kyo-kun. He didn't need to add another broken wall to the man's list of grievances.

But, more importantly, Tohru would hear and rush to worry and fuss. He couldn't deal with her now. Just like the day he had come to live in Shigure's house, when he had discovered who she was and had dug her dusty name out of an abandoned corner of his memory. He remembered her so well, but she hadn't responded at all. It had been all he could do later that night to not grab her by the shoulders and beg her to try and remember. "It's me! Kyo-kun! The little boy, tag, every Monday in the park!" he had wanted to scream.

But no, she would never remember. Hatori had ensured that those memories would never resurface, even if Kyo flat-out told her of their past. Yuki could be thanked for that.

-- -- --

"Kyo-kun! Kyo-kun, you'll never guess what happened to me!" Tohru panted, running up to her friend with a glowing smile on her innocent face.

He pushed himself off the usual bench and approached her. "What?" he asked excitedly, thinking that perhaps some great treat was in store.

"Well, on Wednesday, these boys were teasing me, and I got so scared that I hid all night!" she began.

His brown eyes narrowed. "What? They're still teasing you? Was it Kimihiro and Motoki again, Tohru-chan? I'm going to beat them up again!"

"No, Kyo-kun!" she exclaimed, grabbing his arm. "No, you'll get in trouble again! I'm okay! A boy found me and took me home. He was so nice, and he gave me his hat!"

"His hat?"

"It was red, and Kyo-kun, he said he knew you! He said it was yours! He said that…"

She suddenly faltered and looked away.

'My favorite red hat!' Kyo thought. 'I gave it to Yuki! So that's what happened to it! But why did Yuki say he lost it? I gave it to him so he could sneak out and play! If he told me he gave it to Tohru-chan, I could ask for it back!'

"What did he say, Tohru-chan?"

She looked up at him, and he saw that she was shaking. "He said you'd want your hat back…and before I gave it back, I had to…I had to…"

"What?"

She shook her head and changed the subject. "Why doesn't Kyo-kun like hugs?"

"Because…" His face darkened. "Because bad things happened when people hug me. But Tohru-chan, can I have my hat back?"

"No, Kyo-kun, I can't let you have it."

"Why? Do you want to keep it? It's my favorite!"

"No, Kyo-kun, I want to give it back, but I have to do something that I don't think you'll like first."

"Well, just do it, Tohru-chan, I want my hat!"

They stared at each other for a moment, both childish faces staring crossly at the other. Finally, Tohru looked away and murmured, "Okay, Kyo-kun. Okay."

And then, without warning, she launched herself at him, firmly wrapping her short arms around his waist. He had a split second to register the fact that her hair smelled like strawberry shampoo before they were both enveloped in smoke.

-- -- --

'And with that, our friendship ended,' Kyo thought bitterly, collapsing onto the pile of sheets and blankets that served as his bed. 'I changed into a cat, the whole park was in an uproar, Tohru was crying and so confused, Hatori was working for days to suppress all those people's memories…'

"Damn that Yuki!" he hissed. Unable to take out his rage on his cousin, he settled for his pillow. "Stupid, god damned, sonnuva bitch rat, rat, rat! He had to go tell her to hug me, just so she would forget and I would go back to being his best friend! Stupid, jealous, idiotic…"

Kyo rolled onto his back and stared accusingly at the ceiling. Furiously, painfully, he relived the millennia of pain that had come after Yuki's betrayal.

Akito's enraged tirade, Kyo's explosive first argument with his until-then best friend Yuki, the weeks of loneliness and withdrawal. So many people making "those eyes" again and again, until a cage had appeared around him, a cage and a sign around his neck, reading, "Ridicule and abuse the outcast cat." The subsequent years learning that the world had abandoned him, all but Shishou. The Sohma refrain constantly tearing at his heart: "Always taking, always grubbing, always trampling on others' lives." Worthless, freakish, a monster with nothing to live for. All because Yuki had been so childish and stupid as to destroy his friendship with "Tohru-chan".

"I hate him," he snarled at the ceiling. "He was the one who destroyed my life! It's all his fault! It's all his fault!"

"That may well be, but dwelling on past mistakes is pointless, and rather stupid."

Kyo gave start and sat up, facing the door. "What are you doing here?" he spat, glaring at his pale cousin.

Yuki stared coldly down at him. "I'm not surprised that you haven't noticed, but we happen to have lived together for over a year."

He jumped to his feet. "That's what I hate about you, you know that?" he bellowed. "Always so damn arrogant, looking down on me like I was the one who betrayed you—"

"I wasn't the one who forgot my only friend the moment a new one came along," came the response, as frigid as Kyo's had been fiery.

"You're the one who ruined our friendship beyond repair!" Kyo shouted back.

Yuki's face was still calm, but his voice held a barely detectable tremor of rage, and his eyes were hard. "Who was it who was too proud to accept an honest apology?"

"Apology? You took her away from me —from us— for ten years! For ten years, I was hated and ridiculed, reviled and ostracized, because I had revealed the secret to so many people! Because my mother killed herself out of humiliation! I lost my whole damn life because of you, and you have the nerve to say that I'm somehow to blame?" Kyo was shaking now. It was all so painful, so personal, yet, ironically,he could spill his guts to Yuki like he could to no one else. The blame, the guilt, the long-burning rage, all pouring out to swamp the skinny teenager standing in his doorway.

Yuki's hands had balled into fists, clenched as tightly as his cousin's were. He scowled into Kyo's face. "You think you aren't the only one who suffered? Who was it who Akito took his anger out on? Who was repeatedly punished for sneaking out of that sick torture room and helping a little girl? Who was it who paid for almost directly revealing the Sohma curse to an outsider? How can you have the nerve to stand there so righteously and hurl your life's problems at me?"

For several long moments, the two stood facing each other, panting angrily, fists balled threateningly at their sides. Finally, Kyo snapped, "How can you still defend yourself? If you hadn't been so stupid as to tell Tohru to hug me, none of this might have happened. God forbid, we might still even be friends. But no. You had to be so stupid, so childish—"

"That's right, I was childish," Yuki snapped back. "You forget, I was also a child, afraid that I was about to lose my best friend. But now, we hate each other'svery existence. Our friendship is beyond repair. It's been ten years; assigning blame is a waste of time. Think about that, Cat-san."

With that, Yuki pivoted and continued down the hallway, jerkily releasing the school uniform's necktie. Kyo glared at the empty doorway, still breathing hard. Before he could shout anything in the wake of Yuki's footsteps, Tohru pattered up the stairs and leaned into his room. "Kyo-kun…is something wrong? I heard you and Yuki-kun shouting…"

"It was just him being his usual arrogant rat-self," he said through gritted teeth, forcing himself to calm down. Upsetting Tohru wouldn't make him feel any better. "D'you need my help with dinner?"

But she didn't answer his question. Instead, she hesitantly stepped toward him and touched his arm. "Kyo-kun, you're really upset. Are you sure nothing's wrong?"

He stared down into her worried brown eyes. 'I lost her for ten years. But we still found our ways back to each other.' He glanced down at her hand touching his left arm. Even after ten years, it was still so small, yet still trying so hard to protect him. With his right hand, he covered hers. "No, nothing's wrong."

She glanced down at their hands with a blush. He saw her gaze lock onto the rust-colored and ivory beads encircling his wrist.

There was a smile in his eyes when he added, "As long as we're together, nothing's wrong."

(end)

-- -- --

So…there we go! I truly hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you'll forgive Kyo's slightly-OOC tenderness. And Yuki's equally OOC loss of temper.

Also, you may have noticed that I didn't really set up the story…I didn't really say why Tohru was living with them, didn't say who Shigure or Akito or Hatori were, didn't explain the significance of Kyo's beads, that kind of thing. Can you let me know if you like it that way because it's less to read that we already know, or if you'd rather have me just go through the whole story and introduce everyone and all that happy stuff?

Domo arigatou! Thanks for the time you've spent on my story!Please take another thrity seconds or so to let me know how you felt, and review!