Disclaimer – I do not own or profit from Fruits Basket. So stop pretending you think I do – your friends no longer think it's funny.

Rated M for things that still aren't happening yet. A slash story. You have been warned. ... Again.

I apologize for how long it took me to upload this – I'm afraid work, various other stories, and most of all, illness, kept me from writing this in a timely fashion. Again, I apologize.

Anyway, enjoy. Peace, all.

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Kickout

Part Three – ...'Til Someone Saves Me

by Ghost Helwig

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Kyo managed to wait a lofty grand total of twenty-three hours before visiting Yuki again.

He hadn't intended to go visit that damn rat again, but when he woke up, it was all he could think about – it took all his restraint to not blurt out to Tohru over breakfast, when she commented sadly on the fact that she'd made Yuki's favorite foods and he wasn't there to eat any of it, that he could take rat-boy some...

After all, it would only hurt Tohru to know that Yuki would accept his visits and not hers.

Besides which, he... wanted this for himself. God only knew why.

So he worked quietly at the dojo beside his Master, met Tohru and her friends for lunch (both he and an obviously upset Tohru very pointedly not answering Uo's increasingly concerned and Hana's obviously knowing – or at the very least suspicious - questions about Yuki's whereabouts when they hadn't seen him since graduation), went through the rounds of having a life – but all the while, his attention was elsewhere.

It wasn't until he was sneaking out again that night that it occurred to him that somehow, someway, he too had managed to become caged.

-X-

When he reached the cage, Yuki was already standing there, arms resting on that too-tiny ledge, face upturned, towards the moon. Kyo stared for a full minute before Yuki turned to him, and the very faint smile that passed over Yuki's face made that horrible ache start up all over again.

He wished the moon and stars were darker, so he couldn't see.

"You came back."

Was that a question, or a statement? Kyo couldn't even tell.

So he responded (retaliated) with anger. It was what he was good at; what he knew.

Especially with this new version of Yuki before him, he needed very badly to hold on to what he knew.

"So? You got a problem with that, rat-boy?"

For just a moment, he could feel Yuki bristling, and it was just like back home, when they fought over the smallest, stupidest things in their lame attempts to feel alive...

But then Yuki backed down, without even a scathing remark in reply. And that was new. Unwelcomely so.

"You're different," Kyo said without thinking. Yuki's eyes, already dark, seemed to darken further – though perhaps it was just a trick of the light.

His voice, when he spoke, was a whisper, yet it cut Kyo to the core somehow.

"How would you know?"

And that... that was true. But it pissed Kyo off all the same.

...maybe because it was true. He didn't care to figure it out just then.

"Yeah, I just lived with you for years," he snapped. "How could I possibly know anything about your princely self?"

Yuki's gaze snapped onto him, and in the darkness like this, Kyo felt like he was going to drown just looking into those fathomless eyes...

"You don't know me," Yuki said, and the whisper this time was as harsh as icicles. "You never bothered to know me. Just like I never bothered to know you. The cat and the rat is all we've ever been to each other."

Kyo thought a moment, staring at that delicate, delicately shadowed face, and something inside him fell away.

"Yeah, well, I'm here now," he said casually, sitting on the ground just far enough away from the door that he could look up at Yuki without having to crane his neck too much. "What do you want to know?"

The look on Yuki's face was absolutely priceless.

-X-

And so it began. Kyo wasn't sure quite why, still, why Yuki allowed it or why he did it, but just about every night, near midnight, he visited Yuki. And the nights that he couldn't get away to see the rat somehow wore on him more than the nights that he could.

He napped often, never sure when he'd get the chance to do so and so taking every opportunity to gather his reserves. If anyone but Tohru thought this odd, no one mentioned it to his face; and she was so accustomed to seeing him nap on the roof, and so distracted by her worry for Yuki, that all he had to do was tell her he'd had trouble sleeping the night before and she'd leave him alone.

It was two weeks into their new set-up when Kyo came to Yuki's cage only to find that the rat wasn't there.

He waited until just a while before dawn, calling quietly in the window, skulking a little outside the rest of the compound hoping to stumble onto some sort of clue. But Yuki was just gone.

And the hell of it was, he couldn't very well ask someone what had happened. He doubted Yuki was really encouraged to have visitors-

And Kyo especially would be frowned upon (and commented upon, freely and in disgusting terms, by Shigure and Ayame). He wasn't even allowed in the place, let alone allowed to visit the condemned rat.

Not that he'd been explicitly forbidden to visit, but who would bother forbidding the cat to go where he was forbidden and see the rat that he so hated?

If they only knew.

But he couldn't ask, because he wasn't supposed to know, and frankly he still didn't want anyone knowing about his visits with Yuki. It was none of their damn business what he did with his time.

But Yuki – where the fuck was Yuki?

-X-

Kyo practically ran to Yuki's cell that night, which disturbed him greatly – why did he care if the rat disappeared? Good riddance!

...but he didn't believe that anymore, and he knew it.

It was the guilt. He knew it had to be the guilt. Whatever happened to Yuki from here on in would be on his shoulders, because Yuki was living the life he had been meant for, been destined for...

It was a relief when he saw a glint of silver-gray inside Yuki's cell, not only because it meant Yuki was there, now, but because it forced him to stop thinking.

He stopped at his usual distance away and hissed at the window, knowing full well that it made him seem even more like a cat and not caring.

"Get your ass out here, rat-boy. You need to explain something to me right now."

There was a brief rustling sound, then silence. Kyo was about to snap again when a face appeared between the bars.

It was Yuki's face, but for a full minute Kyo just stared at him, not recognizing him at all. Yuki didn't have such shadowed eyes. No one ever got close enough to bust his lip open. He did not possess such a smile, so sad and small and bittersweet that it looked like heartbreak turned flesh.

"I'm sorry, Kyo," he said softly, before Kyo could even recover enough to find his breath. "I... I couldn't..."

His facade of easy, calm composure faltered, finally vanished. Kyo couldn't even name the look that took its place.

"It's alright," he said gruffly, when it was anything but. "You don't have to explain." Which was a blatant lie, too, because he needed things explained, needed to know why the locked-up rat had been gone from his cage for a whole night (at the very least; Kyo had no idea when exactly he'd disappeared, or when he'd returned). He needed to know what in the hell was going on.

What, exactly, was the fate he saved me from?

An uncomfortable thought.

But then Yuki smiled, just a little, just a wry, relieved upturn to the corners of his lips, and suddenly it really was all okay again...

For a little while.

--End Part Three--