Not My Mother's Hair:

A Series of Vignettes from the Diary of Akito Sohma

A Fruits Basket/Furuba Fanfiction

DISCLAIMER: WARNING, MANGA SPOILERS AFTER CHAPTER 98 IN THE DISCLAIMER! "Fruits Basket/Furuba" in its anime and manga formats are the creation and property of Takaya Natsuki and I in NO WAY claim ownership or profit thereof.

RATED PG FOR SWEARING AND MATURE THEMES (DEATH, CHILDHOOD TRAUMA).

This story lightly explores Akito Sohma's change-of-heart in the manga and her subsequent possible attempts to make amends with various family members. It is told from Akito's POV. If you still dislike her even after the manga brilliantly illustrates her personal pains and makes her a sympathetic character, take your cold heart elsewhere and don't bother to read this story, LOL.

If you do not believe that positive regard would ever occur between Tohru and Akito, you have only to acknowledge that THE MANGA ITSELF proposes peace and new friendship between them, in chapters 120-130 (released in Japan only as of July 2006). Don't flame me for sticking to CANON.

In this fanfiction, which will be comprised of SEVERAL SHORT CHAPTERS, Akito Sohma's gender is FEMALE, in correspondence with MANGA CANON POST-CHAPTER-98. The story depends HEAVILY on the MANGA as opposed to the anime.

This story takes place AFTER THE EVENTS OF CHAPTER 131 OF THE MANGA: Therefore the Sohmas are FREE from the Zodiac Curse and Akito is no longer dying.

WARNING: I SHIP CANON ONLY, WHICH MEANS I SHIP SHIGURE X AKITO, TOHRU X KYO, AND KURENO X ARISA. If you do not appreciate these pairings, refrain from reading this fanfiction and do not waste your time flaming me.

While I will probably never have time to revise this story, PLEASE ENJOY, R&R!

Chapter 11: My Cat's Acceptance Part II

Everywhere I turn, I hurt someone
But there's nothing I can say to change
the things I've done
Of all the things I hid from you
I cannot hide the shame
And I pray someone, something will come
to take away the pain

There's no way out of this dark place
No hope, no future
I know I can be free
But I can't see another way
I can't face another day

Tell me where, did I go wrong
Everyone I loved, they're all gone
I'd do everything so differently
but I can't turn back the time
There's no shelter from the storm
inside of me

There's no way out of this dark place
No hope, no future
I know I can be free
But I can't see another way
I can't face another day

I can't believe the words I hear
It's like an answer to a prayer
When I look around I see
This place, this time, this friend of mine

I know its hard but you
found somehow
To look into your heart and
to forgive me now
You've given me the strength to see
just where my journey ends
You've given me the strength
to carry on

I see the path from this dark place
I see my future
Your forgiveness has set me free
On and I can see another way
I can face another day!

I see the path, I can see the path
I see the future
I see the path from this dark place
I see the future

I see the path, I can see the path
I see the future

-Phil Collins

My final and ultimate test came barely three days after the grocery store confrontation.

Tohru Honda and I went out to lunch. She and Kyo were to be wed within the following six months, and she wanted the blessing of the Head of House—which was, of course, freely given. Even more so, she wanted help deciding which house on Sohma Estate would be furbished with the accoutrements of a very small, but very traditional, marriage ceremony, clearing the schedule of my many kinsmen and cousins to reserve that building, and getting the news out to guests. I informed the Sohma Rice Ball that I knew an excellent tailor—a bit less…colorful…than dear cousin Ayame—and that I would take her to my personal favorite designer's shop to help commission her wedding kimono. All very hush-hush from Kyo, who was not to see the pattern before the wedding day itself.

And Tohru had another favor to ask me, one that reddened her ears and her cheeks every time she mentioned it. Something to ask me in confidence, quite unrelated to the wedding. Something about her paternal grandfather, of whom I had become fond.

A simple task, right? It would have been if not for a cruel intervention, which kept Tohru from ever asking me that favor—at that point, at least. But then my change of…heart…no, more profound, more all-encompassing—my change of whole selfhood—would not have been validated, would not have mattered in the least, without this most difficult of trials.

The sound of a music box languishing in tempo, slowing down more and more until the beat crawls to a halt, has always depressed me deeply. I almost became like a music box in this manner, on the day of my final test. I almost became my old self, spiraling backward and downward to darkness and bitter silence once more. But, for reaping allies with my many attempts to redeem myself, I evaded such a self-inflicted trap.

Narrowly.

It began because I brought my cell phone with me to lunch, at the place where Arisa Uotani had once been a waitress, and had met Kureno. I remember the saltiness of the miso soup, the juiciness of the shrimp and avocado sushi, the sweetness and tang of the ginger leaf. Because of the company, it was the best meal I had eaten in years.

Tohru was in the middle of trying to figure out her tip, a bit flustered, when the device tinkled urgently in my handbag. The caller ID flashed the number of Main House.

I answered my phone laughing, endeared at Tohru's mathematical fumbling. Laughing, like I had that right. Laughing such a stupid clumsy child laugh, with a candor that broke through the calculated cold chuckle that I had used for so many years. That was when I heard the woman's voice on the other end.

"Akito-sama! An…accident! The maids…Your daughter!"

The world went numb and still. My extremities tingled. "What?"

My daughter.

My daughter?

Why was the word suddenly so hard to register, and yet why so very significant, like my very soul?

I cupped a cold, trembling hand over the mouthpiece. "What happened to Kyoko?" I demanded into it. I heard the brusqueness, the feral snarl, that I had not used for a handful of years. It billowed forward full force, like angry hot air from a furnace.

Tohru jolted in her seat across from me. "What's the matter?" she mouthed at me, but I couldn't keep my wits enough outside of that tinny, hysterical voice on the other end of the line to respond.

"Come quick!" the maid's voice shrieked. And then there was the awful stomach-heaving sound of disconnection. I was irrationally furious at the phone for doing that.

But somehow I was already out of my seat and at the door. I don't even remember standing. Tohru was right behind me, stammering apologies at the waiter and thrusting incorrect change at him. I think I heard her mention something about Arisa once working there, to vouch for our honesty in paying the lunch bill. But it was only when he saw my face that the restaurant manager at the door just let us leave. I don't even want to know what white-faced, gorgon horror my expression must have conveyed.

"Kyoko…" I said, in a weird tremulous soprano that was not my own voice. "Something's wrong! There's been an accident…!"

"It…it'll be fine..!" Tohru's breathy whisper was not entirely convincing, as she tried to steer me down the street. God forgive me, I tore free of her, viciously, and bolted for the nearest taxi. To hell with walking home.

I didn't wait for Tohru to get in with me, but somehow she managed, lugging both our purses. Her enormous, alarmed lapis eyes watched as I flung money, credit cards, everything at the front seat of the cab and gave directions in one of those voices that is "controlled" but is so shaky and taut that it is clearly the alternate to hysterical shrieking. In my humming head, deep down somewhere, I was rather awed at my ability not to break down sobbing and whining for help as I always had, under duress, in years past.

"Take it EASY, lady," the cabbie bemoaned.

"But her daughter—an emergency...and..!" Tohru began fruitlessly with clenched fists, trying so hard to mediate.

I cut her off by screaming a filthy suggestion at the driver, my eyes already hot and wet, and smacking the back of his leather seat. "GO!" I concluded, and apparently he was convinced. We lurched out of the parking space.

Every moment of that ride was agony. The urges to faint, throw up, hyperventilate, and curl into a ball were nearly impossible to keep at bay. Every tree, street, stupidly grinning and blissfully unaware pedestrian's face that we passed infuriated and maddened me. I wanted them to all fall down, rot, weep, suffer too, know my pain and whatever pain my child was now facing. I was spiraling, regressing downward and inward to the terrified and bitter little girl that I had been for over twenty years, at a vertigo-inducing speed.

If I lost Kyoko, it seemed like none of my efforts to mend a broken household would be worth a damn anymore. It seemed like my family should be chained by the grief and purposelessness that I would feel again. Like the cabinets I had made for the Jyuunishi should be splintered into firewood.

My own selfishness came back to strangle me.

At last we pulled into the front drive of Sohma Estate. I leapt from the car, again abandoning Tohru and my purse and all my credit cards, stumbling out of one of my sandals, just running, running with one barefoot across the painful gravel of the drive. I clanged open the wrought iron gates and kept running. I did not hear Tohru behind me, and I expected she was still in the cab dealing again with the practical matters that I had left for someone else to clean up. But I didn't care, not right then. Kyoko…!

Main House rose with a strangely ominous aura before me, and I tripped inside.

So silent.

No Kyoko.

Why was there no Kyoko?

Why was the world still functioning?

"KYOKO!" I exercised my lungpower to maximum capacity. The noise was bloodcurdling even to me. Lost and abandoned, hurt and afraid, keening. I looked around wildly, but couldn't see her.

I tore apart every room, oxygen trapped at the base of my throat, gurgling like I was drowning. Kyoko's bedroom, the kitchens, the master bedroom, the guest rooms, the tea room, the back porch, she was nowhere. No signs of a burning, a cutting, or any other plausible household accident.

Nor were any of the maids present. Had they all gone to the emergency room with my daughter?

And where was Shigure?

I should call Shigure.

And go to the hospital looking for her. He was probably already there with her.

Wait.

Why hadn't HE been the one to call me? I wanted suddenly and truly to kill my husband, for not calling me first—no one loved Kyoko as much as I. I would hurt him, yes. The primal urge to accomplish this task almost overwhelmed me.

I stumbled into the bathroom to pull myself together. When I was done hanging over the toilet, I flushed it and rinsed out my mouth. Then I teetered into the room with the cabinets whose handles I had carved for the Jyuunishi. Somehow my cellphone was still in one of my hands. I flipped it open and began to dial his number.

"What's up, beautiful?" His voice like dark clear calm water oozed in from the other line.

He was calm. Not the pretend-calm when something was actually wrong and he was covering it like the master charlatan that he was. No, the real calm.

Nothing—nothing that he knew of—was wrong.

"Shigure…!" Suddenly I was bawling. "Shigure, Kyoko…Kyoko?!"
"Woah. Easy, wha..? Akito, what's wr…"

"You fell for it."

Another voice.

Not my voice.

Her voice.

That woman with the oily hair.

Ren.

My god-damned "mother."

"How pathetic." She dared to keep talking, as she slunk out from behind Tohru's cabinet. She dared to keep moving, breathing, with that oilslick hair and that oilslick heart…! "You didn't recognize my voice. You're that desperate, are you?"

Shigure's voice kept buzzing with transparently concerned queries on my cell phone, but I hung it up. This was my fight. "…you inconceivable bitch. You made that phone call? For WHAT purpose?!" I felt my body propelling towards her, with animal lust for blood. " YOU…! WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!"

My mother laughed at me. Her perfect pale face contorted in a sneer, with very red lipstick, like an over-bloomed rose ready to start rotting. She dodged my lunge and then she did something so fast and so painful that I wasn't sure at first where it came from. But I was lying on my face, flat on my face, and there was an incredible sharp pain in my back. And when I looked up, she was standing over me with a fire poker.

"How dare you banish me from Sohma House, and then let your own daughter fellowship with the Cat?" Ren giggled in the middle of her own furious tirade. "I will punish you once and for all for that, daughter. I will silence your foolish judgments for good! It's all clear to me once again…! All very clear!"

I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Cat…Kyo? Kyo was here?"

"You call it by name now, do you? Clever." She struck me again, on the arm. It was the pinnacle of cruelty, the way she waited for my muscles to relax just a little bit, before dealing more damage. "You call the abomination by name, but you don't let your mother onto the grounds that Akira once walked."

"You don't know how to treat my family," I started, cautiously. "Neither do I, but I am learning. Ren, I told you to stay off the grounds for everyone's good…I offered to pay medical bills, for you to seek help…"

"I don't NEED help!" This time the white-hot blow came across my mouth. I lulled onto my side and curled into a ball as she continued to scream somewhere above me. "Not from the person who stole Akira from me! Not from the person who cheated in our bet, and won the Honda girl, the Jyuunishi, with pathetic weeping hypocritical eyes! Not from you, who stole all other eyes from me! I don't need YOU! I need HIM to look at me! LOOK AT ME!" Hands clenched around my hair, whipped back my head, a face so damnably like my own filled my vision, leering. Such mad eyes, that craved the loving gaze of only one other, who was dead. "All I need is Akira! Akira! And I will have him! You will be dead and I will have him again!"

I don't know why I smiled. And the words came unbidden, searing. "You're an idiot, Ren. You know why?" The cruelest words she had ever spoken to me, and suddenly I could use them on her. I did not stop to think before they spilled out my mouth: "After all, 'if you kill me, my soul will ascend to heaven, and I'll be the one with Akira.' I'll be with father, and you will still be here." It dawned on me, something I thought I had known, but that hit me with fullest impact in that very moment: "…Mother, I don't need you anymore, either. I have others."

Ren's whole body trembled. Miserable tears, not the first, by the sight of her drizzling mascara, drained from her empty eyes. "Then where are they?" she demanded through her teeth.

She pulled out that box—the box father's maid had given me, in a misguided attempt to comfort a little girl whose frail parent was swiftly dying, saying his soul was in it—the box that, truly, was empty. She put it down right next to my face—just out of reach—and opened it. She giggled again. She lifted the poker for a final blow to my skull.

"I…!" A very timid voice indeed. Too sweet to frighten, too gentle to command. But pure and faithful, and sincere. "I'm here!" Tohru. In the doorway, clutching our purses, gaping at Ren hovering malevolently over my body. What a shock my sick, feral mother must be to someone whose own mother had been as extraordinary as Kyoko Honda. I felt my desolate smile broadening at the thought of the Red Butterfly soaring in on her motorcycle to sweep me out of Ren's clutches. An absurd fantasy but it kept me conscious as Tohru spoke. "And it's my choice to be here too, Ren-san! I…I've never really met you, but…" Her swallowing was audible. Her nondescript chestnut hair was backlit in the doorway, transforming her into the compassionate, shy saint that she was. "…but…! A parent is a child's whole anchor! Akito-san will understand her whole world based on how you show it to her! No matter what your daughter has done, you can't just hurt her back like that! The damage has already stretched so far!"

My mother turned fully to Tohru. Still holding the poker. Ah, no. No.

"TOHRU, GET OUT!" I think I shrieked. I struggled onto my knees.

"The interloper." Ren chuckled, suddenly frostily calm. "You were a fantastic tool at the time, Honda-san, but you had an expiration date just like everyone else. Hai, you turned the chemistry of this family against me even more…" She advanced on Tohru.

"RUN!" I am sure it was me screaming the second time.

Ren lifted the poker.

Tohru didn't budge. She must have known that if she ran I would die. "Please, Ren-san!" she breathed, almost soothingly, almost like she was trying to reach even my mother with her uncanny healing powers. "Things must always, eventually, change. You must let it happen. Akito-san has."

"DON'T LEAVE ME…!" It was the last retort I would have ever expected my mother to give.

And it wasn't for Tohru, and it wasn't for me.

And I pitied Ren.

And I forgave Ren. Right that instant.

And finally, though dripping my own blood, I felt healed.

Then Ren released an animal shriek, and lunged at Tohru.

I grabbed my father's empty box without thinking. I hurled it with all my strength at my mother's head.

The box grazed her left cheek, dazing her.

Tohru gasped, and actually reached out to steady her.

Well, fine then. Fine. Perhaps I could never match people like Tohru for boundless gentleness, boundless kindness, boundless trust.

But Momiji had said something about a Foolish Traveler, and cherishing that so-called Fool forever. So I could do my damndest to keep people like Tohru safe. I could die trying. And so I, too, lunged. I seized Ren's neck and hurled her back to the ground on top of me.

She thrashed around—she was a bigger woman than me, and she had not been beaten with a fire poker, so she rolled onto her side and overpowered me quickly. Finally Tohru was screaming for help.

I don't know where he came from or how he knew.

But suddenly Kyo with his gaudy orange hair and his faceted garnet eyes was on top of us both. Silently he slid his arms around my mother's waist and with a precise, staccato squeeze, he rid her lungs of air. She paled and went limp in his arms. Uncharitably, he threw her off me, and onto the ground by the doorway.

Shigure was standing in the doorway then, over Ren, with that expression of measured placidity, tight smile and all. His eyes were keen and knowing, and he nodded once.

Kyoko, totally unharmed, was in his arms. He handed her to Tohru, whose cheeks were regaining color, and rushed to my side.

I wept. I crumbled in his arms and wept and wept.

"I was wondering," he commented quietly, "after I got that weird phone call from you. Akki, I let the servants off for the day. Kyo was on his way over to meet Tohru after your outing. Since you weren't home yet…we went to a park, and Kyo showed our butterfly some karate moves. She really had a ball with that."

The words took a moment to absorb. Then I nodded, grateful for the darkness that burying myself in my husband's arms produced. I wondered if I was getting any blood on his shirt. He always wore nice shirts and ties when he went out. God, I loved him.

"You…" Not Tohru, not Shigure, not Ren. Kyo, of all people, speaking. "You got her away from Tohru. You mighta died."

I was afraid to look up and meet my rescuer's eyes just yet. "Don't make such a big deal about it," I grumbled.

"…Arigato. Tohru's…ya couldn't have done much more for me." Kyo cleared his throat. His voice was oddly thick. I understood. I accepted.

"It was nothing," was all I managed to reply.

"Even my love turns on me." Ren.

I emerged from my Shigure-cocoon, ready to defend.

He stopped me, with but a single finger on my lips. He turned expressionlessly to face my mother, rousing in the doorway. "Ren, you were not my love." His voice was acid, biting quiet acid. He leaned over her threateningly. "You were my mistake. That's all. Tohru. Get Kyoko out of here, hmm? Kyo, call the police."

Tohru obliged swiftly. For an instant as she passed my mother, Kyoko's wide, scrutinizing gaze, so unnervingly perceptive in a child, pierced Ren. And my mother was nullified, rendered speechless.

Perhaps my father had spoken quelling words through my daughter. I may never know what passed between Kyoko and Ren. All I know is she didn't open her mouth again until the police, with a consultant from the psychiatric ward of Tokyo Hospital, came and took her away.

I have not spoken to Ren since.

Perhaps I should have. But I weigh Tohru's wise, gentle words heavily in my heart: At some point, everything must change. And we can only hope for change that mobilizes better days to come.

Explanations for the cruel prank and assault came later that evening through the police report, when we were all in bathrobes and patched up by the faithful Hatori.

Kyo and Shigure had indeed taken Kyoko out to teach her some karate moves in a nearby park. Unfortunately, Kyo's father—not Kazuma, but his biological father—had been visiting main house and saw Kyo with the daughter of the head of house, my Kyoko. Just as he had been in the grocery a few days past, the man was enraged. He found a servant on her way out the door for the day off. She told him that I was out with Tohru—his "abominable" son's girlfriend. He sought the most damaging person possible to "rectify" the situation between Kyo, the "monster," and future head of Sohma House. He sought out, and tipped off, Ren, through Yuki's father and mother, socialites with every conceivable phone number in their address book. He fully expected Ren to harm Tohru, and threaten Kyo into submission, in the process of harming me.

On the plus side, when he was called in for questioning, Kyo's father received a nice juicy restraining order.

Nevertheless, I was appalled and I said so in no uncertain terms.

Kyo was unsurprised. "That's my old man," he murmured, gazing at the television, featuring some brainless kid's show called Mogeta, numbly.

"He doesn't deserve you!" I growled bitterly.

For some reason, this earned a surprised and crooked smile from my Cat, sitting on the ground in front of Shigure and me, curled up with Tohru under a blanket. "Ano…bout time ya noticed," he retorted with a boyish blush.

"Kyo's reeed," Shigure sang, an impromptu melody which Kyoko, sandwiched between Shigure and me, happily joined.

"You're corrupting her," Kyo hissed at my husband.

"He doesn't deserve you," I repeated. "Kazuma is your real father anyway."

He swallowed, and nodded. "Arigato, Akito-sama. I'll try and believe ya."

"Drop the formalities!" I snapped. "All that's obsolete now anyway. Good grief."

My Cat appeared, then, to be highly amused at me, from the midst of his mysterious self-imposed gloom. That gloom lifted as he mulled this concept over. "I guess it is, innit?" He snorted a laugh and returned his gaze to the television. Apparently he recognized a kindred spirit of spunky verbal barbs when he saw one. I was just glad that he could even conceive of me as a kindred spirit, now.

"Well anyway, you share the same hair color as my daughter's namesake…" A pathetic attempt at a joke.

"Tohru's mom told me she dyed her hair, actually," he retorted, with a flat, "that-was-a-stupid-joke" gaze leveled right at me. Well, he was right. I freely admit my monumental lameness in many matters, these days.

"It's true!" Tohru interjected, blissfully unaware of my awkward state, and Kyo's amusement at it.

My cheeks burned. I pretended to be imperious and confident a moment longer, even though my entire family saw through that façade at this point. "Well, Tohru," I haughtily continued. "About that favor for your dear grandfather. Shall we step out onto the back porch and discuss it?"

Why in hell did she look like a caged fawn under the gaze of a tigress?

Don't answer that, reader.

"Er, um, watashi…"

I glared—lovingly, I hope—at her. "Come on, Tohru-chan, out with it."

"Go for it," Kyo mumbled to his fiancée, brushing some strands of her hair over her shoulder the better to whisper in her ear.

Though her blush now easily rivaled mine (and yes, Shigure was giggling and singing "Tohru's reddd tooooo"), she was galvanized to action by his encouragement. "Very well, I will do my best to ask you this favor!" she chirped, pumping her fists, absurdly and adorably cheerful.

My embarrassed, proud demeanor was shattered. I barked a laugh, and covered my mouth. "Gomen, gomen," I chortled, when Tohru looked all the more bewildered.

Kyo wiped his face in an effort to look tired instead of equally prone to fond laughter. He pushed Tohru gently to her feet. "Go," he chuckled. "Conquer mountains and stuff."

"What am I, Fuji-sama?" I cracked back.

"Sometimes I wonder," Shigure mused out loud.

"Shut up," I told him. "Flattery will get you nowhere."

"In the evenings, you sing a different tune, wife."

"Okay, I have no need for that information," Kyo moaned.

Tohru looked even more confused.

"Mama's reddd," Kyoko giggled.

I covered my face and exited to the porch that instant. Tohru followed, blinking, leaving behind Kyo and my tittering husband and child.

The evening was serene, the sky clear and jeweled with stars. I sought some guiding constellation, cheeks cooling, as I waited for the Rice Ball to speak.

"Oji-san is sick…and I…I want him to see my wedding. I know…I know that for every 'nice to meet you,' there is a 'goodbye'…I know that everyone has a time…but I don't want to lose him yet…"

I could hear the choke, the lump obstructing her throat, without even looking. "What can I do? Is it that you want me to ask Hatori to look at him? It depends on the illness…"

"Cancer. Colon cancer."

My blood froze. My extremities tingled. Hatori was a brilliant doctor, but he was no oncologist. There was nothing he could do about something as dismal and frequently terminal as colon cancer. "Tohru, we…I…"

"I..I know…I know! But Akito-sama—"

"Chan. Akito-chan. Or A-Chan, if you like to go by your friend Saki's style. I can't believe she figured out that I was a woman so fast…"

I could tell just how grave Tohru's problem was by the fact that this allusion to Hanajima-san's eccentricities didn't even extract a nervous giggle from her. She just gawked back at me, pale and stricken.

"But seriously, Tohru, where is this going?" I gently probed. I envisioned her as one of the white birds in my back gardens, crooning about my head, lighting timidly on my hand.

"A—Akito-chan! Please! Don't hate me for asking this…but…" Her eyes squeezed shut. "But we need money! Kyo and I need money! For the surgery to remove the cyst!"

A long pause. I waited for more. Surely mere monetary assistance could not be all that this precious child, who had saved my very soul, could be asking of me.

Not above me.

Not below me.

Beside me, Tohru. Tohru, my first real adulthood friend.

"And?" I urged. It was almost an insult to our friendship, the peace we had finally won, that this could be all she wanted from me.

"…And what?" She peeped open one eye at me, confounded.

"That's it?"

"It?! It! Akito-chan! It is so presumptuous by itself!"

"Ah, Tohru." I chuckled, slowly rubbing my temples. "Tohru."

"Oh no! Oh dear! You ARE angry!"

I laughed harder, and simply rushed forward to embrace her, pulled her by the shirt collar up against me, nestling my face against her neck, as I had on the day that the curse was fully lifted from the Sohma Clan. We stood there for another respite from sound before I began. "Tohru Honda…you're my twin. I mean, my mirror twin. My inverse. We're two sides of the same person. I've had this figured out for a while. And you are the one who inspired me to change. You've taken care of my family and shown me how to do the same, by your example. Come on. Don't embarrass me by making me have to make this any more plain: I have no hesitation helping you in any form or fashion, because you became a part of my family a long time ago—before even I realized it. And I have this funny weakness, you see…for keeping my family close to me."

Tohru was weeping quietly into my kimono. The wetness on my neck made me feel oddly more courageous. It meant I mattered to her, too.

"Thank you for being kind enough to need me, Tohru," I breathed. "The money—whatever money you need—is yours."

"What did yo…" She hiccupped, trailing off, pulling back to look me in the eyes. A strangely tender, maternal gesture: She brushed my bangs from my gaze. My cheeks heated again, as I felt transformed to every bit a helpless little girl once more. "My mom said that…my mom said just that….to Kyo-kun when he was a little boy. She said 'I'll be okay because there are people in this world kind enough to need me.' And…and it's so true, Akito-sam…chan. That's why we're all going to be okay."

I gulped down the lump in my own throat. "Well…there you go, then," I murmured, hoping my grin wasn't quite so stupid looking as it felt. "We'll all be okay."

The morning of Honda-oji-sama's surgery, I called a family meeting. There was one last thing I had to make certain of.

My mother had forgotten her empty box from my father when she had been escorted to Tokyo Hospital. Tohru's friend Saki, with her vague purple stare, had called it "fate," and told me to do something about it.

I had been ready to laugh off her remark when Kyoko crawled over to the box and stared inside it with an intensity I had never seen her display—except when looking at my mother, at Shigure, or at me. Like recognition. Recognition of a kinsman. Recognition of something meant to occur.

And that had been what had convinced me to call the meeting.

I expected a few absences—though out of Yuki, Kyo, and Isuzu, only Isuzu proved me correct, and did not attend. It was alright. I knew what I was still asking of all my cousins. It would still take effort for us to all get along, feel safe and comfortable in the same room, healed, for a long while.

But that was the exciting part. We had our whole lives ahead of us, to do that healing.

"Thank you all for coming," Kyoko in my husband's lap beside me, I greeted my family cordially, with a nod of my head. I clothed myself in the lady's kimono that Shigure had given me the very day I had confessed my real gender to the Jyuunishi and begged their forgiveness, and released them of my hold. I wore it for a reason. "Not many of you know of this trinket, passed from my father Akira to me, via his chief maidservant." I held up the little red brocaded box for all to see. I opened the lid and showed them the void inside.

Yuki, sandwiched next to Ayame, exchanged a confused scowl with his older brother, who gave a flamboyantly exaggerated shrug.

Kureno, it seemed, stiffened in his spot between Yuki and Hatori, turning to cast our family doctor a deeply concerned look.

Hatori didn't budge.

Kyo narrowed his eyes and muttered, "Is that it?" to Tohru, who nodded.

Kisa, Hiro, Momiji, Hatsuharu, Ritsu, and Kagura all proffered a confused but polite expression, blinking, at the pretty but apparently pointless empty box.

Ever the blunt one, Hiro blurted, "Uh, it's empty, Akito."

"Exactly," I said.

"Akki-ko, are you feeling well?" Shigure quipped, even though he knew precisely what my plan was.

For the second time, Kyoko reached for the silken red lid and fingered it fervently.

"Of course I am," I retorted firmly. "The box is empty. It always has been, since I was born, since well before that. And that's been our problem. That emptiness, of the Bond we once had, the pointlessness and cruel arbitrariness of it. We never really got to know one another as us—just as us, possessed. Hai, hai, the box is empty. And we're going to fill it."

A pause.

Then someone was slowly, loudly applauding, his two-toned head bobbling in accord. Hatsuharu. "Rin'll find out," he added, around his applause.

"I'm counting on that," I mumbled in his direction. "Arigato." I am not sure when praise became so embarrassing to me, but at any rate I continued speaking to pass the attention from myself back to the subject. "If it is not too much trouble, I should like to see that each of you places in this box something self-representational…something personal, significant. It could even just be a slip of paper with a fond memory. A trinket. An object that reveals something bigger. Please understand…I will never look inside. I will never breach your privacy, or your trust, again. But the box will be full of things that matter to each of us. And I would like to see that as the beginning of a real bond among the members of this family. But the decision is yours to make."

With that I stood, bowed to them all, took Kyoko from Shigure, and excused myself. I did not dare look back and witness their reactions to my proposal. I did not expect ever to know what was in Akira's Box, nor did I expect to know who agreed to my symbolic whim.

I did not know that they would take mercy on me so completely. But I know now, and how I will treasure that fact, that event, until I breathe my last.

To the closing point of this story, reader: the wait in the hospital, for Tohru's grandfather to come out of surgery.

I had purchased for myself one of those baby satchels that a parent straps to the chest, like a papoose. Kyoko hung merrily from it as I made my way, in a modest sun dress, to the waiting room where Tohru sat. Kyo had found a local job as a karate instructor, and he was teaching a late class that evening. He had no way of calling off work; every bit of spare change was precious to the engaged couple, with their modest income, particularly while saving up for their wedding.

To this day, I don't know why she called me to wait for him with her.

She could have called Arisa or Saki, her girlfriends since childhood. She could have called Yuki, her confidante and male best friend.

But she called me instead.

Maybe it was because she was still thinking about everyone besides herself first: maybe she knew I would crave that validation, that chance to be supportive for someone inside the family. Or maybe it was because I was the only other genuine orphan she knew anywhere near her age—because I would understand best how terrified she felt for her last link to either of her parents to be wheeled out of that surgery intact.

I will never know. But I am glad she did call me. So very glad.

I found the waiting room empty, and inquired at the desk as to why. The nurse behind the computer had a round, dimpled, maternal face. Something about her made a lump rise in my throat, as she explained to me that Tohru had been so nervous that she had been admitted past staff lines and was waiting in the hallway directly outside the surgical room.

I begged to be let in with her, and the nurse took pity on me. I am sure it had something to do with Kyoko's sweet and expectant facial expression.

And Tohru I found: sitting on a backless stool outside the ominously white swivel doors. She turned at the sound of my approach, and for a moment my stomach turned in fear for her at the tears cascading down her cheeks. But she shook her head happily at my alarm, and choked out, "H-he'll be fine-! They just came and told me he's out of danger! It was a success—they're closing him up!"

A great gust of air blew out my lips, stirring the black hair on the top of Kyoko's head. My daughter giggled as I dashed over to Tohru and embraced her from behind.

"Lean on me," I said. "I don't mind."

And the exhausted girl did just that, her eyes fluttering closed.

I don't know how long I stood there like that, bracing Tohru upright, allowing her to sleep, to be the one saved and cherished for once, rather than the other way around. My mind went back to the day she took my hand on that cliff, and then fell, and nearly died, one last time before at last the guilt was washed from the recollection forever. It was okay now: I belonged to people who, of their own free will, believed that I mattered. Mistakes could be forgiven, cast over the shoulder, like a bright wishing penny into a cleansing fountain.

Someone, a woman, cleared her throat behind me.

I craned my neck backwards.

It was Isuzu.

Wearing not black, but a shirt and skirt set that were white, pure snowy white, with a gentle floral pattern of red, vibrant life-giving red, and bright red stiletto boots that reminded the forgetful that her spirit was still that of a fighter.

Oh God.

She gave a tentative smirk at my shock; her dark, bottomless eyes, that of prey and predator all at once, but most of all, the eyes of a creature deeply wounded, still unnerved me. "Don't look so horrified. I bring good tidings and shit like that."

"…Ah." It's said that skittish mares are less likely to kick if you make no sudden movements; so it was with Isuzu. I held still as she inched closer, holding, of all things…

Akira's box.

"Ha'ru insisted that I be the one to bring it. Damned if I know why, but he's the only person in the world…more stubborn than me…besides maybe you two….so, uh…We just got done putting stuff in it, and he figured Tohru, and maybe you, might need to see something cheerful…is she alright?"

"Just sleeping. Exhausted. Her grandfather's going to be alright, it seems," I replied. My voice was about an octave too high, and far too eager. I tried to smile. Please don't hate me, the faintest echoes of my insecure voice of childhood called. Please give me a chance. One last time, before that burning, sour, frightened and angry voice was extinguished forever.

I don't think Isuzu can read minds, but it was uncanny how she rolled her eyes just then, snorted, and shoved the box into the arm I wasn't using to stroke Kyoko's hair. "Stop being dramatic. Open it."

I blinked. "Um. Isuzu-san…"

"Call me Rin, damn it. And don't be so jumpy. I doubt you have shears on you this time."

I winced. "Er, yeah. Not something I carry in my purse these days. But uh…Rin…I promised I'd never look inside the box."

"The family took a vote, seeing as we're a democracy now," Rin threw back dryly. "We decided you should be allowed to look."

"…Oh."

"Good grief. Don't cry…" She reddened.
"I'm not," I lied. "I'm uh glad to see you're growing out your hair…"

"It felt like time. You too, I guess. You look…girly. You're actually sort of pretty."

I bobbed my head in thanks as Kyoko took a fistful of the hair in question. She yanked my hair, hair that was not my mother's only because I chose to walk a path different than hers, and I tolerantly ignored Kyoko's loving abuse as all new mothers are swiftly able to manage. I chuckled and kissed her forehead, shifting weight behind Tohru, who still peacefully napped.

Rin moved out of sight. For a moment I thought she'd left.

And then to my astonishment I felt her standing behind me, slightly taller, slightly stronger, supporting me as I was supporting Tohru.

"Like I said," she breathed, "I felt like it was about time."

"Open, mama," Kyoko trilled.

"I'll do just that, butterfly," I whispered, as the chains, the fullness of emptiness, the blame and guilt, the endless wandering and the solitude, fell off. Weightless. Forgiven. New.

And with my family leaning on me and holding me up, before me and behind me, I opened the box.

I cannot tell you what was in that box, reader—what my family members donated to the cause of our loving union. But I can tell you this as you and I part ways at last:

It was the beginning of every good change and every real bond.

Our beginning.