Kiss Kiss
By Lady of the Ink
Pairing: Kyou and Kagura Sohma
Fandom: Fruits Basket
Theme: # 10 - #10
Disclaimer: I don't own Fruits Basket, but you knew that ...I hope. But I do own this story and all the twists that it takes.

Kiss Twelve: This kiss is the fourth chapter of a multi-chapter AU story, with each chapter fulfilling a different theme.

The Life For Me
Chapter Four
Consequences


Kyou had been in a lot of strange situations during the course of his life. More than half of them had come about because of Shigure or another family member. Some of them had been annoying, some painful, some embarrassing, and some almost funny in hindsight.

Not a one of them beat his current circumstances.

He wasn't exactly clear on what had happened before he woke up; his memory was a little foggy and a pounding headache wasn't helping any. All he did know was that he's been having what he'd thought was a wonderful dream about a brown haired siren luring Shigure, Momiji, and Hiro into the sea, never to bother him again. The blissful images had been shattered by Shigure's voice, pulling him back into the present.

Surprise was too tame a word to describe his feelings when he realized that the dark eyed girl he'd pictured dressed in waves was still in front of his eyes. It took a minute for the other details - their location in the room, on the bed, and stacked on top of one another – to sink in. Once they did, he was quick to take action. He grasped the girl's shoulders and pushed her in one direction while sliding his own body to the opposite side.

It was just his luck that he picked the wrong way. The girl landed on the free stretch of bed while he wound up on the floor. His eye started to twitch as he eased himself into a sitting position to the sound of snickering from the doorway. A glare silenced the laughter but did nothing to lessen his irritation.

"In about thirty seconds," he began in a tight voice, "I'm going to get up. I'm going to go to my cabin and I'm going to have the drink that I really need right now. By the time I'm finished, there had better be a damn good explanation waiting for me." He saw Shigure's mouth start to open and jabbed a warning finger in his direction. "Not. Yet."

With as much dignity as his bruised ego and aching head would allow, he stumbled to his feet and towards the door without a backwards glance. Proving that they did indeed possess some level of intelligence, Hiro, Momiji, and Shigure moved to allow him passage. There was absolute silence as he stalked down the hall and towards his own room. Knowing that the pain it would cause wasn't worth the effect, he managed to keep from slamming the door.

Regardless of what he had said, Kyou stormed right past the glass fronted liquor cabinet. His temper was too close to bursting free of his already stretched restraint to risk adding alcohol to the mix. Never a big drinker in the first place, seeing the effects it had on other people had made him even more cautious of imbibing at the wrong times.

On the other side of the room sat a small stand with a removable basin built into the top. Directly above it was a small, oval mirror, securely attached to the wall. Bracing his hands on the edge of the stand, Kyou bent to examine his face. The swollen and discolored area around his eye drew his immediate attention and he probed it gently. The skin wasn't broken but he knew it would be a painful nuisance for some time to come.

Exhaling in annoyance, he backed away from the mirror and raked a hand roughly through his disheveled hair. A curse spilled from his lips as his fingers hit yet another injury, this one in the form of a bird's egg sized bump on the back of his head. His temper flared again at the new discovery. Before he could even think about confronting the problem waiting down the hall, he needed to get a handle on it.

Dropping into the closest chair, he took a few deep breaths and thought back. He remembered being on deck and hen heading to the galley to get something to eat. The conversation that he'd overheard there was a bit hazy but he remembered enough to explain why he'd gone down the hall. He had memories of checking doors and coming across a locked one. After that, there was nothing before waking up with that girl sprawled all over him.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that she was the guest that Momiji had been talking about, not some animal like he had assumed. That left the pressing questions of who she was, why she was on board, and what he was going to do about her. Ideas for what he was going to do to Shigure, Momiji, and Hiro were already floating through his mind.

Kyou got to his feet and headed to the door, confident that he would be able to control his anger until the time was right for him to let it out. He walked slowly down the hall feeling calm and ready to get some answers. He found grim humor in wondering whether the occupants of the nearby room were ready for him.

As it was, the scene he walked in on made them seem more than ready; they looked completely at ease. Hiro was sitting in the corner closest to the door with his legs stretched out across the floor in front of him. Shigure was between him and the bed, his back flat against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes strayed to Kyou for just a second before returning to their original focal point of the two figures on the bed. Momiji knelt on the edge of the bunk, all but bouncing as he tossed questions at the dazed-looking woman across him without giving her time to answer any of them.

For the first time since becoming aware of her existence, Kyou got a clear look at the center of his relatives' latest escapade. He was fairly certain that he'd never met her before. Her hair was a deep brown, showcasing a pale, clear complexion and wide gray eyes. He would put her age close to his own and judging by the quality and design of her rumpled dress, her family's standing was obviously in the upper class.

His eyes found the vivid bruise marring her forehead and he suppressed a wince. It had colored more since he'd last seen it and so he could only assume that she'd acquired it around the same time as his black eye. He paused and bit back a frown. He hoped that nothing he'd done during the still unclear span of his memory had caused the injury. No matter what she might have done to him, it was an unacceptable breach of his self-imposed moral code to ever raise a hand against a woman.

Kyou cleared his throat, drawing the attention of everyone in the room and finally silencing Momiji. Placing his hands on his hips, he eyed them all with a stern expression. "This is what's going to happen: I'm going to start asking questions and you're going to give me the answers to them. There will be no lies or excuses, just a quick, concise response. Am I understood?"

Hiro rolled his eyes, Momiji nodded energetically, and Shigure, with the most innocent of expressions imaginable on his face, quietly voiced an affirmative. The woman scooted further back on the bed until she was pressed against the wall. She wore a look of mixed apprehension, curiosity, and anticipation. He got the oddest feeling that she was as interested as he was in what they had to say.

Shaking off the sensation, Kyou got down to the business at hand. Counting each one off on his fingers as he reached it, he started listing off the most pressing questions on his mind. "Who is this girl? Why is she on my ship? Why is she locked in this cabin? How long has she been here? How much trouble is her being her going to get me into? And whose brilliant idea was this, as if I even need to ask?" he finished, looking directly at Shigure.

He decided to wait for the answers to his first round of questions before adding any more. As Shigure took a deep breath and started explaining his scheme, more questions piled up in Kyou's head.

Question seven: How had he never noticed that Shigure was completely, absolutely insane?

Question eight: Why hadn't he given into his repeated impulse to lock the idiot up whenever he wasn't around to make sure he stayed out of trouble?

Question nine: What had Momiji and Hiro, who he had been so certain knew better, been thinking to go along with anything Shigure came up with?

And number ten, a question he had asked himself many times before but never as fervently as at that moment: Who in this world had he pissed off to deserve his life?

x

The library, once one of Yuki's favorite rooms in his spacious house, was now a place that he dreaded to enter. Since Kagura's disappearance hours earlier, he had been in and out of it several times. Each visit showed the situation inside becoming worse and the news – or lack of it – that he brought wasn't helping. Every time he looked at Tohru's tortured face and heard her racking sobs another painful tug tore at his heart.

His hand faltered an inch from the knob as he returned from yet another fruitless meeting with the investigator. With night falling quickly, he had promised to step up the search while strengthening his warning that the outlook wasn't good. While Yuki appreciated his attempts to prepare him for the worst, he was tired of hearing bad news. He just wanted Kagura home safe, her captors caught, and everything back to normal.

Knowing that he couldn't put it off any longer, he pulled open the door. The sound of an argument immediately flowed to his ears and he lost the battle to hold in a sigh. Yuki carefully closed the door behind himself to gain an extra moment to shore up his patience before dealing with the situation.

Haru, Rin, and Arisa, unsurprisingly the source of the yelling, were huddled around a table to one side of the room. Several large maps were spread across its surface and they kept pointing to different locations in between rude gestures toward each other. At his entrance they paused but the small shake of his head sent them right back to their "discussion".

Yuki knew that they were setting up for their own search, which he had thankfully managed to have them delay until the morning. He hoped by then either Kagura would already be safely returned or they would have calmed enough to not destroy the city as they searched it. He had more than enough trouble trying to keep up with the usual problems from the family businesses he managed while dealing with the issue of Kagura's kidnapping. The thought of those three running wild in the middle of the night was more than he could – or wanted to – imagine.

Suppressing a shudder, he turned his attention to another issuing weighing heavily on his mind. Off to the left of the would-be posse sat a small couch, angled toward a cheerily burning fire. Tohru was huddled at one end with a silent Saki at her side. Her tears had been replaced by an even worse motionlessness. The gentle, animated face that he had fallen in love with was a still, slack mask devoid of color and emotion.

Yuki had taken only a single step in her direction before Saki rose gracefully to her feet. With a regal nod that he understood to be a sort of passing of the torch, she moved to join the others across the room. He slowly sank into the spot she had vacated, turning slightly sideways in order to have a clear view of Tohru's face. She had made no move to let him know she had even noticed his presence.

Reaching out to take her hands, he was slightly startled by the coolness of her skin. Unconsciously rubbing them between his own, he tried to think of something to say. All the words of encouragement he had spoken over the past hours had done no good; all the detailed lists of what was being done had had no effect. No matter how sincere he was, all his speeches had rolled right over her head, leaving no change in her mood. He was quickly finding himself at a loss of what to do for her.

Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close and closed his eyes. The exhaustion he had been fighting all day was pressing even more strongly on him, draining what little energy he had left. 'Kagura has to be all right,' he thought sadly to himself. 'I don't think any of us will be able to take it if she isn't.'

x

When the orange-haired man that she had knocked unconscious had left the room, Kagura was awash with conflicting emotions. The fact that she was within striking distance of the man that had gotten her into her current situation was at the top of her mind. It was only the fact that there were witnesses that kept her from unleashing the full force of her anger on him. Her lengthy imprisonment had given her a lot of time to come up with several interesting forms that her revenge could take and she was looking forward to carrying them all out.

Bravado aside, she was too honest not to admit to herself that she was scared. While she had known that there had to be a number of men working on the ship, actually putting faces on some of them made it all seem too real. Even though the two examples in front of her were little more than boys, she knew that there was no way she could stop them from hurting her if they chose. For that reason, she hoped for the fourth man's quick return. He, at least, had seemed as clueless as her about what was going on. He'd also been none too happy about it, if his gritted words and tight expression had been any indication. She could only hope that his irritation would mean her quick release.

"Hi!" The bright voice was accompanied by a jounce of the mattress as the blonde haired boy plopped onto the edge. "My name is Momiji. That's Hiro and you already met Shigure. I hope that he didn't scare you too much. I wanted to come along this morning but he wouldn't let me. He said that I would talk too much and ruin the image but then he let Hiro go, which I think was really unfair. Don't you think it's unfair? I'm older so I should have been the one to get to go …"

He continued his one sided conversation at a pace that Kagura was hard pressed to follow. She was concentrating so hard just to catch the basics that the return of the orange haired man that Momiji identified as Kyou caught her off guard. His commanding tone brought silence to the room and finally pulled everyone's attention away from her.

It was only by chance that Kagura caught the satisfied expression on Momiji's face before he turned to face the doorway. It made her wonder if the stream of innocuous commentary had been delivered for a reason other than puppy-like friendliness. As unlikely as it seemed, she had to wonder if maybe he had set out to keep her mind too occupied to worry. Even if he had been in on a plot to kidnap her friend, he seemed too childlike to mean real harm, so it was entirely possible that he might have been looking out for her.

It was only Kyou's demand for answers that kept her from pondering the question further. She scooted back against the wall as she waited, almost jittery with impatience. She mentally checked off items from her own list of inquiries as Kyou named them, feeling satisfied as he hit all the big ones. Then she settled in, as anxious as anyone to hear the explanations.

Shigure took the lead, unsurprisingly revealing himself as the mastermind as he dropped his casual attitude for an earnest one. Moving into the center of the room, he paced like a lawyer before a jury, pleading his case with more heartfelt sincerity than could possibly be genuine.

"Well Kyon-Kyon, we've all noticed how frustrated you've been recently and we wanted to do something to help. You've been trying to get a meeting with the head of the Sohma family for years now and nothing you've done has worked. It just seemed like maybe it was time to try something other than the polite society methods if we wanted to get results.

"So the last time that we were in town, I asked some questions and did a little snooping. It turns out that the man running the majority of the Sohma businesses is just about your age – Yuki, I think his name was. Anyway, an old friend of mine let me in on the secret that he was getting married soon to some darling little girl from a less prestigious family. He said she was too sweet to believe, cute and friendly and the best cook that he'd met in a long time, and he has some pretty high standards, too. I made him my famous spicy stew once and –"

"Shigure!"

The dark haired man was startled from his memories by the enraged shout and wisely, Kagura thought, decided to get back on track. "Like I was saying, he had a fiancé. I started thinking that maybe she was what was keeping him too busy to meet with you, since you know how those young girls can be." He wiggled his eyebrows before giving Kyou a careful once over. Pursing his lips, he recanted his last statement. "Well, maybe you don't, but I do."

The effect of crimson eyes lit with a burning rage was almost too much to look at head on. Kagura felt a little singed and she wasn't even the one it was directed at. The lack of reaction from the others in the room, including the intended recipient, made her think that it was a more common sight to them and therefore not as powerful after repeated exposures.

"So first I thought that maybe if we kept her out of the way for awhile, he'd have enough time to see you. But then, of course, I realized that if she went missing, he'd probably be out looking for her. And that's when inspiration struck!" He swept his arm into the air and paused with a veteran actor's flair for suspense. "If we kidnapped his fiancé, then Yuki would have to come to us. You would get your meeting and he wouldn't be able to say no to anything you wanted. It would be sort of like holding her for ransom except not really since we're not actually kidnapping her; we're just borrowing her for awhile. So we went over there this morning and that's what we did." He beamed.

If Kagura hadn't been sitting down, she would have collapsed on the floor. The plan that she had just heard had to be the stupidest, most childish thing that anyone had ever tried to pass off as rational. There were more holes in it than in a storeroom full of Swiss cheese and too many possible repercussions than could be named in an hour. The man behind it all had to be a complete –

"Idiot!" The thundering shout snapped through the air, causing Kagura to cringe. If Kyou had been angry before, he was downright furious now. His hands were clenched into tight fists and his face was turning an alarming shade of red. "Do you have any idea what you've done! The whole point of this was to re-establish friendly relations! Friendly! Now you've turned us into kidnappers! They could have us arrested! They could … We're going to … Argh!"

His words trailed off as he turned and slammed his fist into the wall. With his back to the room and his head bowed, all Kagura could see were his heaving shoulders as he obviously fought for control. No one else moved as minutes inched past and his breathing slowed. Without turning around he straightened, his voice coming out with a hiss that made it clear he was speaking through clenched teeth.

"The three of you …are going to go back …to your normal duties now. I do not want to see you until I call for you. We are going to discuss what you've done and what's going to be done to you in return. Go. Now."

Kagura watched in amazement as Momiji, Hiro, and Shigure filed from the room as obediently as children. No matter what else might be said of them, they obviously knew when not to push their luck.

It was only when the sound of their footsteps had faded that Kyou turned to face her. His whole body was ramrod stiff, making his movements seem almost wooden. He bowed his head in her general direction without actually making eye contact. "I apologize for all of this. I promise you that I'll sort everything out and we'll talk. Just not yet. I need some time to …absorb all of this first."

He turned and slowly walked out of the room, leaving Kagura to wonder exactly what sort of ship she'd found herself trapped on.