Disclaimer: I hope the lawyers are happy when I commit suicide. YOU'LL ALL BE SORRY WHEN I'M GONE! But no, I do not own Furuba, or any of the other things I've plagiarized, which, again, you can get in full for the asking.
Dedication: Remains as constant as my heart.
All Through the Night
Part Two:
As the Moon Kindles the Night
VII. Haru
Akito wants to not get up. He's very, very tired and the fear has worn off enough, with these releases, that it isn't enough to keep him awake on its own. The remainder of it wears on him still, scraping his insides raw, but only serves to make him more exhausted.
But he's not even halfway done, not yet.
He crawls around Hatsuharu's legs and brushes Isuzu's hair aside to lie at the younger boy's other side a moment, and almost instantly an arm curls around him. Even in his nightmares, Hatsuharu thinks he can take care of everyone.
"There." I put another block in place and lean back to survey the work. "See? You can do it."
Rin's mouth twists. "It's not that easy for everyone," she mutters. Everything is black here, nothing but black where we float, sitting by the floor we're building of blocks for holding her up. Her hair undulates as if it's under water, blending with the nothing around us, floating in front of her face and making it look as though slices are going missing.
"Well, you could try," I prompt, and she shakes her head.
"I want you to do it."
"But then you won't be able to stand on it. I can't make it all or it'll be mine."
She looks at me and her lips pull back in a snarl. "Maybe you should –"
" – make one for yourself," Kyo finishes, since she's turned into him. "You're gonna look royally stupid if that cat's got one and you don't."
"After you finish," I say.
"Maybe I don't want one!" He leaps up, crimson eyes snapping. "Maybe I want to take the rat down with me like I promised!"
"Excuses," I say, standing up too. "But if you're going to waste my time –"
"What time?" Momiji blinks up at me innocently with eyes like milk chocolate. "You don't have any time, remember?" He pulls out a pocket watch. "You gave it to me." He twirls it on the end of its chain a moment, and then looks at me speculatively. "You can have it back."
"That's not part of the deal."
"Yeah." He smiles. "We'd fall then for –"
" – sure," Yuki finishes. He puts away the watch. "So are you going to help me or not?" His eyes are like ice.
"What if I don't?"
"Then I'll fall. You know you can't help Akito…" He shrugs. "You think I care?"
"No." I look at Rin, who's trying to fit a block in place. "It's upside down."
He smiles, one of those smiles that make everyone within viewing distance melt – or at least, they do me – and kisses my cheek. "Bye then."
He climbs on the floor, with Momiji, Rin, and Kyo. They've finished it.
I really never did take time to build one for myself.
They're laughing with each other while I fall.
These are not his fears.
Akito puts his head on the shoulder offered by simply being there and curls his fingers around the other boy's chin.
He feels the fear, sees the visions, makes them his, and smiles.
"You will not be unneeded," he says.
And Hatsuharu stops dreaming.
VIII. Isuzu
He can no more stop now than he could hold his breath until he suffocated. Too much momentum, too necessary. And still, for all that is behind him, there's too much to go, too many of them…
And they're never so pretty in the night, are they? They make such sparkling pictures in the light, so lovely you'd never think that they build their lives on him and Kyo, on what's higher and what's lower. They define themselves in such ugly ways. Not nearly so noble in sleep; every one of them fears something happening to their me, and they all boil down to secrets and loneliness.
He loves them that much more because he knows it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is it not? So he twists his vision and they're that much more exquisite when he's done.
He only wishes they could see what he sees.
The nightgown settles over yesterday's bruises and hides them completely, floating just above my skin. I feel better for it, even though I don't like pink. But the nightgown is blue, so that's okay.
Haru puts a hand on my shoulder. "Wake up," he says. "You're dreaming."
"Don't ever say that," I snap.
He blinks slowly. "There's only one liar that never loses its reputation for veracity."
I smirk. "Gure-nii?"
He shakes his head solemnly. "No, they know about me. They just let themselves believe."
I tighten my hand on the knife and it slices deep into my palm and fingers. It's a good thing my nightgown is white, I guess. It sort of looks festive, the blood on the feather-dove background.
"Give it me," Akito says.
I'm crying from the pain, but I shake my head. "I need it. Haru needs it too." And then I laugh, because this knife is my weapon against suicide and he doesn't understand; he thinks it will be the tool of suicide.
He frowns. "It's a thin diet."
"I never meant to live on it." I glare. "You took everything else."
"I want that, too. I'll take its place." He's pointing at the knife.
"You can't. I need to get back my parents with it. You won't help me."
"You don't need help. You need to go back to sleep."
"Haru, you don't understand!"
"Be careful, you're getting confused again."
"No, I – I know I need it… to help you! I'm going to make everything better!"
"No, Isuzu. You're not." His hands are on my face, fingers curling in my hair. "Now give it me."
"No." But my conditioned response is useless, ignored by my body, and I let Akito's spider-like hand slip it away.
I fall down and Haru catches me. I'm out now, sleeping forever, finally, finally…
"I could kiss her awake."
"There's no hedge of fire or thorns," Shigure points out.
Akito reaches out and Haru hands me to him. "There doesn't need to be. That's to keep away things that might wake her." He kisses my forehead. "She never will."
These are not his fears.
He does not want to move, and he wouldn't have to. He could just reach up for her, and he would be able to reach the head just above his without ever leaving Haru's side.
But if he does not move now, he doesn't know that he'll be able to get up. And he will not leave them to their terrors, because they're his.
So he pushes himself to his knees and cradles Isuzu's face in both hands, fingers curling in her hair, hair that he hates in the daytime, and kisses her forehead.
He feels the fear, sees the visions, makes them his, and smiles.
"You will not lose hope," he says.
And Isuzu stops dreaming.
IX. Kisa
He makes claws of his fingers and runs them slowly down his own arms. His skin is cold, and it makes the pain strange – an uncomfortable, unmanageable feeling, far more so than in the warmth of summer.
But it keeps his eyes open, eyes that not even the adrenaline coursing through his veins can keep for him much longer. Fear can only last so long before it fades or passes into terror, or into that nebulous, constant hum at the back of one's mind.
Things are quieter now, and he has much further to go. Still, he'll do it. He always does.
I remember something. Once, a while ago, I fell. I was standing on a stool to reach the cookies on the counter because Hiro-chan wanted some too, or I would have waited. I did grab one, but the others were too far back, so I turned around halfway and gave that cookie to Hiro-chan, only it didn't work that way. I leaned too far, and I fell over to the side and banged my head. I scraped the skin off my knee, too.
Mama came running, and Hiro-chan started crying. Mama yelled. It upset everyone a lot. And it hurt.
I remember something else. Papa was home – he isn't usually, but that time he was. He said something to Mama and she started crying, and he looked at her like he looks at his folders when he closes them with a snapping sound – like he's done, and happy.
That probably hurt Mama.
And now, when I fall off the stool, I scream before I even hit the ground, and Mama's already yelling, and Hiro-chan is already crying because they know I will be hurt.
And now, when Papa says that, he turns to me and bends over, and says, "You pay attention, all right, Kisa-chan? Sometimes there's no blood."
Mama looks at him with wet cheeks and says, "Sometimes we bleed inside, and tears come out instead."
He rolls his eyes and walks away. He's smiling when he does.
I'm on the stool again, and I hold onto the
countertop very carefully, because Mama and Hiro-chan are watching me
with nervous eyes.
I don't fall.
This time, Papa pushes me.
These are not his fears.
Kisa is sleeping in her parents' room. This is an annoyance, but Akito walks slowly, and he is almost certain that they will not wake.
He lovingly brushes the tiny girl's hair aside, combing it into place around her porcelain face.
Her simple, childish fears are almost a relief, so far removed from his own that they make nearly no addition to his burden.
He feels the fear, sees the visions, makes them his, and smiles.
"You will not be hurt," he says.
And Kisa stops dreaming.
X. Hiro
Perhaps out of solidarity – as the parents of the youngest juunishi – Hiro's mother and father have procured a room near to those of Kisa. Akito had been vaguely annoyed when he found it, he remembers. People going behind his back, trying to keep the children together as though they can understand each other better than he can understand them… He doesn't see Kisa or Hiro, useless children, walking about in the small hours of the morning to relieve the pressure on the creaking house, cold wind sneaking in through cracks that aren't there to wrap in eddies around their ankles, insubstantial fingers with force enough to drag them down forever…
No. None of them can understand so well as he.
And yet, right now, he's grateful. He doesn't know how much farther he can walk.
Kisa cried when her dad was mean.
Rin cried when her parents turned into monsters.
Kagura cried when Kyo yelled at her.
People think I don't notice because I'm so little, but I do. And it scares me when they cry. They're older than me, and beautiful and perfect, and everything shatters with them.
Kisa is sitting in the sand at the summerhouse, watching the waves roll in and out. "You wouldn't ever, would you?" She asks, smiling at me. "You're a prince?"
Rin turns sideways to look in the full-length mirror, and Haru-nii throws some sand at it. "Of course he wouldn't," she says.
Kagura-nee twirls with her arms above her head, sand spraying around her like sparkles, and she laughs, humming.
I know the words.
"As the moon kindles the night
"As the wind kindles the fire
"As the rain fills ev'ry ocean
"And the sun, the earth
"Your heart will kindle my heart…"
But my dad does. Says mean things.
Akito's cold hands close on my shoulders, lips brushing my ear as he whispers, "And you know there's only one way to make him stop. To protect your mother. You have to be stronger, better, smarter, faster, crueler."
No one else is paying attention.
"Can't just put one foot over," I whisper.
"Then don't," he says, and I'm falling.
These are not his fears.
He walks over to the futon, still with rollers around the edge to keep the three-year-old from tumbling the scant inches onto the floor in his sleep, and curls his lip at the pathetic protection. Still, his hands linger on it, as if he might be wondering if all it takes to protect you from the cruelties and vagaries of the world is a set of folded blankets around your bed and the care it entails for someone to have bothered with the simplistic, idiotic attempt at defense.
And then his hands wrap around the small torso lying curled and sweating in the cocoon, the warmth doing nothing after all to keep him sheltered from his own mind and family.
He feels the fear, sees the visions, makes them his, and smiles.
"You will not be cruel," he says.
And Hiro stops dreaming.
XI. Kagura
Akito stops in the hallway, leaning against the wall, fingers white with chill and tension. He presses them against the wall as well, as if he can take strength from the bones of the house, pull it from the shingles and carving, suction it away from the memories steeping the wood and metal.
And maybe he can. Maybe.
But there's only so much strength that can fit into him at once, and his head starts to ring. So he goes on, feet dragging, heart pounding, to the next room his spinning mind can lock onto.
"Do you want tea this morning, sweetheart?"
Kyo shakes his head dumbly, rustling the morning paper as if to warn me off. He's always grumpy in the morning, even though he's such an early riser.
"Okay!" I laugh, because he's so cute when he's grumpy, that little line between his eyebrows and pouty lip. "Well, I'm going to have some… Could you fill the kettle while I finish the eggs?"
He nods and stands up, picking up the kettle and putting it under the faucet.
The sunbeams spill in through the window like fingers pointing at him, glinting off red hair and orange eyes.
"Here you go." He hands it to me with a kiss I turn my cheek up for, but his lips are cold.
I look into the kettle, and it's empty. I look up at him with tears in my eyes.
"You said you would fill it." The rain smatters on the windowpanes like bullets.
"I did. It just didn't help."
I look into it, and it's heavy in my hands with water, but it's still dirty. I always thought that if he filled it for me…
"Maybe you should wash it yourself," he mutters from the table.
"I can't! I tried! Kyo-kun…"
I reach out, and he gives me his hand.
Mine drifts right through it without ever touching, and Akito catches it. He smiles at us both, putting a hand on Kyo's shoulder.
"See?" He says. "I told you."
These are not his fears.
He sits beside Kagura's bed, too tired to worry about her parents in the next room, too tired to risk lying down again.
She is wearing pajamas that look like Ritsu's, and he wonders numbly if that means she has borrowed one of the boys' for some reason or if Ritsu's were meant for girls after all.
Her hair is tangled and sweaty, and he trails his fingers through it over and over until it lies smooth and dry again, watching her eyes slow in their darting beneath their lids. It feels like velvet, her hair, warm and soft.
He feels the fear, sees the visions, makes them his, and smiles.
"You will not be forced to see," he says.
And Kagura stops dreaming.
XII. Hatori
He finally forces himself up, chanting over and over in his head that he's nearly done. He knows he should go to Kyo first, because he doesn't know that he'll be able to make his way back without their pain to pull him on. But he passes Hatori's room on the way, and he finds himself inside before he's thought it over.
Hatori, at least, has no parent hovering. No one else to bother them with their ordinary presence, and Akito clambers gratefully onto the Western-style bed, wrapping an arm around Hatori's own out flung limb.
Ayame runs the brush through his hair again, staring fixedly at me in the mirror, where I stand behind him. His eyes dart over my face almost desperately, and I ask, "What are you doing?"
The tension leaves his face like clouds scudding across the sky, abruptly transformed to a dazzling smile as he leaps up and throws his arms around me. "Nothing, Tori-san! What should I be doing?"
I disentangle myself quickly, stepping back to re-establish the boundaries he and Shigure are so eager to trample. "I don't know. It looked like you were trying to learn my face by heart."
"Silly Tori-san," he says. He looks so happy, but his voice quavers. "I've always known your face by heart."
I turn to look at Shigure, his notebook propped inside his textbook to hide it, so that it looks as though he's taking notes in the margins. "There's no one to fool," I point out.
He looks around, almost startled, and then laughs at one of us, though I'm not sure which one. "Ah, Ha-san's right. Old habits die hard, and all that." He gives me that look that says he's reading me like one of his books, memorizing each chapter while I'm still trying to decipher his first.
Still, it's further than most people get.
"You know me too well," he says.
I answer, "Maybe."
Akito, who is eleven now but suddenly looks no older than six, tugs on the leg of my pants with both curled fists, tears in his eyes. "Hold me," he commands (pleads), and I scoop him up.
"I'm special, aren't I?" He asks. "And without me, you wouldn't be, would you?"
I nod.
"So why –"
I'm standing behind Aya again, hands on his shoulders this time. He shakes his head slowly. "You don't forget something you've learned by heart," he whispers. "It would take some of your heart with it."
I put my hands over his eyes and there is a flash of light behind my own.
I'm kneeling in front of Shigure, who sets down his textbook, notebook, and pencil slowly. "Don't," he says, and there is no lie in his eyes this once, no veil, just fear. He has to know to be in control.
So I hide his eyes for him and there is another flash.
I'm holding Akito, whose lips curl back in a snarl. "If I don't know you, no one does," he promises before my hand covers his gleaming black eyes and a light that cannot reach far enough flashes.
All three of them sit together, Akito on Shigure's lap, laughing at something the older boy has said. Ayame pours tea and manages to flirt outrageously with both his best friend and a child without seeming perverted.
They're alone in the room now.
These are not his fears.
Part of Akito, the part that is nothing but an eleven-year-old, had been convinced Hatori of all people would wake and do something for him, make it stop. If even Shigure failed him, then surely Hatori would take his place. But he doesn't. He is, after all, one of the juunishi, or Akito would not have come to depend on him so in the first place.
A vicious circle, Shigure would call it.
He does sigh in his sleep, and turn to make room for the smaller boy even through the troubled tossings, the wrinkles lining his brow. And that has to be enough.
Akito puts one hand on his shoulder, and strokes the cold cheek with his other.
He feels the fear, sees the visions, makes them his, and smiles.
"You will not disappear," he says.
And Hatori stops dreaming.
XIII. Kyo
Kyo's room is the farthest away, of course. This arrangement makes sense in the daylight.
The wind has gotten worse, or maybe it's the thinner walls here – are there thinner walls in this part of the House? He can't remember now. It's been a long while since the last lightening that he saw, with all the shutters bound tight, but now there is this one through the glass windows in this hall. It makes him jump, turning the corridor bone-white for an instant.
Then it's only the thunder again, a near-constant growl that vibrates in his chest, building to a crescendo every five minutes or so. Maybe much more or less; time has become very confusing.
It is at the very end of this hall that the door looms, waiting.
Giving people what they want makes them happy, right? So, if I gave my dad what he wanted… he'd be happy?
The thing is, I can't picture him ever being happy. And part of me wants to see him get what he wants and know for sure that he won't ever be. He shouldn't be. Mom wasn't.
"These are the kind of thoughts that make it necessary to separate you from the other children," Mom says primly. She doesn't sound like herself at all, actually.
I shrug and walk away.
Haru bumps my shoulder with his. Damn brat's taller than me again, too… "Let's train," he says, kicking at the grass.
"Don't you have things to do with Momiji?"
"No." Haru's gone and it's someone else, my height, with gray hair and no face. "Of course I don't. I don't have anything to do."
"Cut that out! It's creepy."
"I thought you liked me better like this," the person says, but he has a face now, with big gray eyes and ears that almost stick out and lips so pale they're almost white.
"I don't like you any way! You're disgusting! Filthy, murdering rat! You killed my mom!"
"Oh… did I?" He smiles innocently and everyone believes him. I'm the only one who sees…
"It's just another mask," I spit.
"What of it? It makes people happy."
And then… we were fighting, of course we were… I know the rat doesn't take lessons, but he must have after all because he's good. Really, good.
Just not as good as me.
His left eye is swollen shut, lips cracked and bleeding, perfect little teeth stained with blood from the splits. Purple and yellow, green and red; he's bruised all over.
And that's not what bothers me. He's crying. I guess he felt it after all…
"I told you," he says, and his face is gone again.
"Yeah," I say, and stab down with the knife just as his face turns into mine.
Akito puts a hand on my shoulder, which is tiny and frail. My chest feels tight, like breath is a privilege, one that could be rescinded at any moment. My clothes are very clean and neat, something I automatically check. I push my hair behind my ear, because Akito likes it when I do that.
"The rat always wins," I say, looking at the red-haired corpse on the ground.
"Yes." Akito's hand slides down my arm to wrap around my wrist. He tugs me away as he continues, "So the one who wins must be the rat."
"It's sad though, isn't it?" I ask nervously, keeping my voice low. I don't want to upset him, and he doesn't like loud noises any more than he likes the cold. "He broke his promise."
I'll kill him and then –
"What promise?"
"Oh…" I look over the edge of the bridge. It's a long way down to the ice, bordered by green summer grass. "Never mind." And then I jump.
These are not his fears.
The room is nearly pitch black, and though he lingers in the doorway, this is not why.
He can feel Kyo's fear all the more clearly as it's almost the only one left. It isn't enough to debilitate him. He could leave it as it is.
The cat doesn't deserve any better.
But he finds himself at the edge of Kyo's pallet, one hand already out, reaching for the source of the hoarse whimpers. What he finds first, though, is not the small, wiry boy always yelling and spitting like fire in a hearth. Something solid and calm, something that makes him think of earth, a mountain. Long hair slides through his fingers and he flinches back as though burned after all.
So. The cat, the cat out of all of them… Kazuma, even through all this, the spell on the house, has moved beside his boy, his "son." He'll move back before morning, because Kyo does not enjoy the touch of others when awake, but right now he has someone who will hold him through his thrashing, sweating fear until he finally calms on his own.
Akito leans over, finding the wiry orange hair with his fingers as his dark eyes narrow. If Kyo thinks he can do this alone… that he can put Kazuma between them… then he can't let go of this fear. He and Kyo will feel it together.
Kazuma cannot do that.
He feels the fear, sees the visions, makes them his, and smiles.
He says nothing.
And Kyo keeps dreaming.
XIV. Akito
"What are you doing?" The question is not a baffled request for rationalization, but an honest enquiry. She wants to know.
Akito is sitting, knees to his chest and arms curled around them. He's cold and worn, empty, sore, but he can't bring himself to move. "I have no need to explain myself to you," he hisses.
Ren looks around the darkened corridor, occasionally washed with white from the lightening, vibrating when the thunder builds, as if she will see something to explain her son's presence.
"Visiting someone?"
He glares, but is too tired to answer.
"All right, you have your little secrets." Her eyes glint playfully, confidant that she will discover what she wants to know soon enough. They remind him of Shigure, those eyes, and that makes him nervous. "But you know, you're going to be sick now, wandering about in this."
She turns to go with an ostentatious shrug at his silence, the dim glow of resentment at the bond she can't touch in her eyes. At least, that is what Akito sees in the glow.
And he says, "Why are you up?"
She stops and says, without turning, "Someone has to watch them."
"I do that."
"You try." She turns back now, and stoops, arms outstretched. It's been two years now since she hit him last, and still he flinches.
For the first time in those two years, she ignores his reaction and lifts him into her arms, standing easily.
Akito thinks of everything she's done, and everything he's done, and that he should find out why she's doing this.
His eyes drift closed, and his head drops onto her shoulder.
Sohma Ren walks slowly, rocking the boy in her arms as his body goes limp with sleep, meandering through the halls toward his rooms. Somewhere, things went so wrong, she muses.
When she came to work in the Main House.
When she met Akira.
When she married Akira.
When their child was born a god.
Or maybe there's nowhere to put it, exactly, and there were a million possible beginnings she's let pass her by.
But right now, she can pretend.
So she walks, breathing the scent of the sleeping child, and humming.
"Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,
"All through the night…"
XV. Morning (Epilogue/ Alternate Ending)
Shigure stumbles out into the horrible, cruel sunlight of the porch and stops. The world is beautiful, as though overnight it's been transformed into the Ice Queen's palace. Ice coats everything, imprisoning the House, the trees, the wall, the plants in the garden with a sheen that glares in the morning light.
Yes, it's breathtaking. A nearly invisible, shimmering, protective prison.
He wonders idly how long it will be before the weight crushes the things it holds.
Hatori has come up behind him, and Shigure does not turn to face him.
They stare at the ice, dripping in the sun, and finally Hatori says, "Ayame's going to be up soon. He'll want you."
"Oh, Ha-san, everyone wants me. You have no idea what a burden it is."
Hatori made a disgusted sound in his throat. "You'd better be ready for him. Akito will be… interested in your company… soon after."
"One of those nights."
"Yes."
"Then you'd better be there when he wakes."
"Mm."
And the moment passes; they don't talk about those nights. They don't like what it reminds them of, or what they don't know to be reminded of.
Both boys turn to go in. Hatori waits to slide the doors shut; it's just the kind of thing Shigure would forget.
"So, Ha-san…" Shigure looks over his shoulder as they make their way to their respective posts, ones they will trade when their charges are ready. Hatori can tell by the gleam in his eyes and the curl in his lips that he is not, after all, quite ready to consign the night to the traditional silence which has served the family so well for the past generations.
"May I assume you had pleasant dreams?"
Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee,
All through the night;
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night;
Safe the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping,
All through the night.
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While the moon her watch is keeping,
All through the night;
While the weary world is sleeping,
All through the night;
O'er thy spirit gently stealing,
Visions of delight revealing,
Breathes a pure and holy feeling
All through the night.
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Hark, a solemn bell is ringing,
Clear through the night;
You, my love, are heav'nward winging,
Home through the night.
Earthly dust from off thee shaken,
By good angels art though taken;
Soul immortal shalt thou waken,
Home through the night.
AN: First and foremost, you all know what I must have. Come to me, my loves. Reviews – my anti-drug.
So! Yes, "Kindle My Heart."
I have the soundtrack to the 1995 version of A Little Princess – which is the movie Patrick Doyle recorded it for – and I can tell ya this right now: track 19, "Take My Heart", is not my favorite song ever in the same way that leprosy is not my favorite disease ever. However, track 28, the last song, "The Goodbye," has a version tacked on where Liesel Matthews, who plays Sarah, sings the song. She is not a singer, but she's more to my liking than Abigail Doyle (who sings the real thing), and she has a very distinctive voice. If you've seen the movie, you can't mistake it.