A/N: Written for the Furaba Flash Bingo Challenge on the Fruits Basket Fanfiction Challenges Forum (link in profile), number 150: silence.

That Not-So-Quiet House of Shigure's in the Woods

It's strange, to hear the house suddenly quiet again. Even if Shigure isn't remaining there for very much longer, he's surprised to find he misses the chaotic scene it so often became.

Tohru and Kyo had left almost a week ago. He'd even gotten a postcard from them: shorter than he'd expected, but he suspected it would have been even less if Kyo had completely had his way. Even if it was the clipped writing he'd come to associate with the boy, he could see Tohru's gentleness buried in the words.

Maybe he'd be getting a longer letter from her soon as well. Or maybe she'd chosen to write to Yuki first; the three of them had been closer to each other than to him.

Yuki had left two days after Kyo and Tohru, moving in to the house Ayame had found and gifted to his younger brother. The squabble following that piece of news had been short and sweet, a sign that Yuki was touched by his brother's generosity, and simply had trouble admitting.

Shigure grins to himself at that, before the lips twist into a frown. That had been the last real bit of noise that had taken place in his house: the two brothers yelling the paper-screen door down. It's somewhat depressing, but soon he'd be gone as well, back in the main house with Akito. Then the house would really be silent and empty, all those memories created in it settling into dust until someone with a duster came away and swept it underground.

He chuckles, thinking of Tohru's cleaning spree when she'd agreed to stay on as their housekeeper. Tohru had been the unintentional cause of most of the chaos in the house, even if it was usually Yuki, Kyo or the visiting Kagura who did the actual damage. But now everyone had gone in their own directions, off in their own journeys of life, and he really did feel like a parent pining at the now empty home.

He had to keep reminding himself it wouldn't be his home for much longer, nor was he a parent in many capacities of the word.