Chapter 7 – Sisters

A/N: Well, didn't this one take a while? Sorry to everyone for the cliffhanger. I had to deal with exams before I could write this chapter. It took a lot of thought! Hope you like it! Thanks muchly to all my faithful reviewers! I love you all!

Akito came towards me, smiling, arms open wide.

"Sister dear!"

I blinked as she embraced me, cognitive functions unresponsive. Far from hugging her back, I couldn't even think. Akito looked at me, perturbed.

"Oh dear," she said, her voice dripping with false honey, "don't tell me you've forgotten." Yuki looked at me with outright fear in his eyes. The limit had been reached. He would not believe anything else that happened. He needed an explanation, and he needed it now.

Unfortunately, I could have used that explanation, too. If I had been capable of speaking, I might have tried to say something to reassure Yuki, but at the moment I was content with the fact that my brain was working.

"You have forgotten, haven't you?" Akito asked again. A rhetorical question, as it turned out. The family head put her arm around me in what she pretended was a jovial and friendly manner, and led me away, leaving Yuki to stand, blinking, overwhelmed with the anomaly that had suddenly dropped into his life. Akito began talking almost immediately as she started moving, so that even if I had the capability to answer her question, I wouldn't have been able to. So I kept silence, trying to get my brain up to speed with the enormous ramifications of Akito's simple greeting.

"When Shigure came to tell me about the girl he had discovered on his doorstep," Akito was saying, "it seemed almost too good to be true. My dear sister, returned after all these years? Of course, I had to be sure. So I requested that you be brought here, so that I could have a look at you. Shigure's description matched my sister's perfectly, and here you are! My sister indeed."

I had recovered sufficiently by this point to phrase a simple sentence.

"We are sisters?"

Akito sighed with exaggerated patience.

"Yes, of course we are, Kokoro, what do you think I've been telling you all this time? It cuts me to the core that you don't remember a thing!"

"You… you know my name?" My brain was simply not processing the information any more. How could Akito know my name? It was a pseudonym, nothing more. I had chosen it from my limited knowledge of Japanese because it sounded nice!

"Of course I know my own sister's name, even though it's been almost ten years. I haven't forgotten, unlike you. Why, I'd be surprised if you even knew as much about me."

"I do. I do know your name, Akito."

She raised her eyes to the heavens in mock supplication. "Heavens above! At least she knows that." She turned to me, a sly smile on her face.

"But we are sisters, and I can prove it to you. You've been living in Shigure's house for a few days, right?" I nodded – there at least was something I knew. "Well, that's more than enough occasion to hug or be hugged by one of the less… human occupants."

I hesitated, knowing how jealously Akito guarded her males. If the family head had somehow gotten wind of my extended relations with Yuki, her favourite, I could end up like Rin. Having no particular desire to tumble from a roof again, I had to tread carefully. But I also wanted information.

"Yes, actually. It was an accident. I fell off the roof. Sohma-kun caught me." I decided the honourific would be prudent here. Akito seemed to accept it.

"Ah, yes. I happened to hear of that little incident. Well, did you happen to wonder why nothing happened to the boy who caught you?" Akito seemed to have already quite a bit of information about my sources. Then I stopped, despite her guiding arm.

"You mean…"

Akito smiled, showing teeth but no emotion. "Now you understand. That is my proof. Is it enough for you?"

Of course. It made a twisted amount of sense. Yuki hadn't transformed because I was (technically speaking) related to God. And of course, God didn't transform. It was a stretch, but certainly enough to back up Akito's claim.

But I already had parents! And a younger brother. I had been with them as far back as I could remember. There was just no way.

My own thoughts incriminated me. As far back as I could remember. For all I knew, I could have been living in this world before I remembered.

"Still not convinced?" We had started moving again.

I shook my head. "I must admit, the story is sound." Akito chuckled in triumph. I decided to take a chance. If Akito knew that I knew what I knew, then there was no point in hiding it.

"But…"

"Yes?" This time, it was Akito who stopped. The word had a hint of danger in it. I was treading on very thin ice.

"Well… that is, I just thought… Akira-sama passed on long before I was born." I tried to put it in as delicate a way as possible.

A tiny frown line appeared between Akito's dark eyes. I held my breath, waiting for the form her response would take. I was, however, unprepared for her laughter. It was more than a little wild, and I was even more afraid that if she had thrown a fit.

"Of course, you wouldn't remember," she said, face under control again, even if her voice wasn't. "Yes, it's true that father died before you were born. But that woman," and here I knew she meant Ren, "being the madwoman that she is, was wracked with grief. Wracked!" She cried, before getting her composure once again. "She locked herself in her room for years, refusing to talk to anyone, languishing in the dark, nearly mad with grief. Mad! Mad enough to convince herself that one of the male servants was my father! The servant was a bastard. He encouraged that woman's delusion, even going so far as to share her bed! In the morning, of course, the game was up, but it was too late for that stupid woman. She was already conceived!" Akito laughed at the obscene comedy. I looked down, face burning with shame. It wasn't true. It wasn't. I wasn't born like that. My mother and father – my real mother and father – loved each other very much. This was just some bizarre parody. Now, far from thinking myself lucky to live in the world of the Sohmas, I wanted nothing more that to get out – get home.

"So you see, we are bound for life, you and I – by the loins of that woman. Of course, once you were born, you had to be kept secret. No one could know about that woman's shame. So we hid you, never spoke of you, but always kept you in our hearts. " I highly doubted that. "And then one day, ten years ago, you disappeared. I have been waiting, Kokoro Sohma." She accented the last name as though she knew of the one I had taken upon myself. I had to admit that, in another reality, I would have killed to be called Sohma. But not now. Not until the curse was lifted and the shame exorcised. Until then, I would have to stay out of this world.

"Now, of course, that we know it's you, you will stay here, with us, in the Main House, as befits the sister of God. And you will be treated with reverence by the Juunishi, and you will treat them as they deserve, as befits the cursed animals." I knew what she meant, that I was to torment and torture the Zodiac as she did. But I wouldn't. I didn't want reverence from the Sohmas, either. I wanted friendship. I wanted to go home.

The darkness of the Main House pervaded my soul. It only took a few days there before one became depressed. And always in the back of my mind was the shame, the terrible, undying shame of Akito's tale that made me wonder if I would ever be able to hold my head up in the presence of others again – even Yuki. Especially Yuki.

I was dressed in the traditional kimono garb of the high-ranking Sohma family, and given a room of my own, in which I spent as much time as I possibly could. It was a pretty, simplistic little layout, and was the perfect place to escape the stares of the servants. Trying not to get depressed in my self-enforced solitude, I kept the blinds open, coaxed gardeners to bring flowers to the window, and spent hours pouring over old Japanese romances. Out of all the older Juunishi that were regularly at the Main House, only Hatori came to see me. He would bring me meals when I was unable to face the scrutiny of the family at mealtimes, and he could always spare a moment for me, even when I knew he was desperately busy. His kindness was another thing that kept me from succumbing to the feeling of despair that invaded my spirit. He also did whatever he could to keep Akito's thoughts safely away from me, for which I was eternally grateful.

All in all, I had just started getting used to my new routine as Kokoro Sohma, when my luck ran out.

Akito could not be deterred forever, and now she wanted me with her, at all times. She called me into the main room. Momiji was there, and I could tell she had just been tormenting him. The look in his eyes told it. Momiji had always been one of my favourite characters, and I couldn't bear to see him in pain. I crossed the room quickly in a rustle of kimono to kneel down beside him. The poor boy didn't know what to expect, and I had to reassure him.

"It's all right, Momiji-san," I said softly. "My name is Kokoro. I'm not going to hurt you." I put my arm around him, my river of hair cascading in a waterfall I was too pre-occupied to stop over his shoulders. Momiji, still very unsure but deciding that my soft-voiced comfort was preferable to Akito's cruelty, moved marginally closer to my protection.

"Of course you're not going to hurt him," Akito said, her voice still dripping with malice and cruelty, "you, as the sister to his God, are going to tell him the truth, as is best for him. For his own good," Akito re-iterated, as Momiji looked up at me with tear-bleared eyes that were full of fear.

I stroked his sunny mop of hair and shook my head, leaning in close to whisper into his ear. "All that means is that you can hug me without transforming," I said. "Don't worry. I'm not like Akito." I kept myself from saying her at the last moment. Even when I was feeling outright hatred of the family head, I would not betray her secret. Momiji, ever irrepressible, took that as permission to wrap me in a huge embrace. "You remind me a little of Mama," he confided, and I smiled. How could Akito possibly find it in her to hurt this charming little boy?

But Akito knew now that I had gone against her wishes. The hug showed obviously that what I had whispered in the rabbit's ear were not words of discouragement. She frowned.

"I said you were to tell him the truth. About what a useless and abandoned creature he is. That his life means nothing without me. That everyone else hates him because of what he is. That is the truth. He needs to accept that before he can grow up!"

"He's plenty grown up right now," I said, surprised at my own defiance. I knew I would catch it later. "He needs his childhood, or the childhood he would have if you let him alone!" Now I had done it. Akito would not let this go unpunished. But hopefully now all of her rage was directed at me and not Momiji.

The rabbit scurried to hide behind me as the head of the family bore down on me, a looming shadow too furious for words.

"Lock her up!" She growled, almost unintelligible. "You know where," she sneered to me. "It's somewhere very dark."

A/N: Yes, I know, another cliffhanger - just less agonizing than the last one. The next one should be up... when I write it.