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31_days2011-01-15 01:08 am
treeflamingo.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2011-01-15 01:08 am
[Jan 14] [Fruits Basket] Like Pulling Teeth From Empty Sockets
Title: Like Pulling Teeth From Empty Sockets
Day/Theme: Jan 14/Every human folly
Series: Fruits Basket
Character: Akito (Shigure, Hatsuharu, Rin, Kyo)
Rating: K+
Akito believed that the house stank. She believed it the way that children believe there are monsters under the bed. Her olfactory senses kept mute, but the way her heart pounded and the sweat stood out on her brow belied reason. There was a stench, a ripening sort of carcass smell, and it permeated even the grooves upon which the paper doors slid.
She could not be there.
Shigure never asked her why she came to live at his house. She wanted to hate him for it (Doesn’t he want to know? Does he even care what I’m thinking? Does he assume he understands already, that pompous bastard? I’ll kill him if he’s treating me like a child, I swear to God… I swear to…). But instead she loved him.
Sometimes she still slid her hand up his tie to seduce him, stretching slender claws into his chest, willing him down onto the bed beneath her where she could pretend to be both male and female simultaneously, to be both her father’s daughter and her mother’s son. But most of the time she let him love her. She didn’t want to be the creature (not human, not woman, not anything) that slept with one man only because she could, that didn’t sleep with another only because she couldn’t. Not anymore. Never had, really.
Afterwards, while he slept, she would excuse herself to him. (His reaction was the same, sleeping or waking – the same cool silence, the same delicious set to the jaw – the only difference was, when he was sleeping, she didn’t have to see the lovelight in his eyes.)
“I didn’t do it to hurt you,” she would tell him. “I did things to hurt Yuki, but not you. I just wanted to see you react to me. If you’d have just reacted to me, I could have been different.” But she wasn’t really blaming him. “I was so unforgiving,” (she always whispered this), “I wish you had gotten mad at me.”
The first time she actually spoke to Hatsuharu was harrowing. He looked at her with the blank stare of a dumb beast, with the amoral violence of an animal, the exclusivity of a creature that cannot communicate. But he was, she knew, human, a boy becoming a man, and his distance terrified her. She admitted to her fear (her weakness, her vile folly, the source of all her cruelty), and he, like a thing which senses the hot blood in fear, grew colder. But later (so much later, epochs later, and she had only snapped her fingers), he smiled for her. And Rin slid her strong limbs around him with a wildness in her eyes, but Akito wasn’t jealous anymore (not of that, not of them, but maybe of their purity), and so Rin quieted too.
It was years later, when she had grown quite used to the vision of little red-headed kitten-angels scampering around at knee-to-waist height, that Kyo put it into words for her. (Not even Shigure had done it, because he would spoil her rotten but not lift a finger in her service; not even Tohru had done it, because no matter how sullied she believed herself to be, she was a saint, and could never truly understand. Only Kyo, who had been the nesting place of a traitor, could feel with her the way her insides crawled, like an anthill repulsed with itself.)
“I hated you back then,” he told her, “You deserved to be hated. You did the worst stuff. But you know what I’ve learned? Everyone’s the same. You, me, Yuki. Maybe even Tohru. Everybody’s just trying to protect themselves. People do the most unforgiveable things because they think, “Hey, if nobody’s ever gonna love me anyway, I might as well put some space between us.” It’s stupid. It’s really damn stupid. All anybody wants is for somebody else to want them around, so how’s it gonna help to deliberately make people hate you? But that’s what we do. It’s sick. We don’t wanna be forgiven.” He looked at her and smiled, and she could see behind him, in the backyard, his son held a puppy in his lap, and wore the exact same smile. “But actually, we really, really do.”
Akito never had children. She passed the family headship to Yuki’s son. It wasn’t until she was old that she finally believed she was capable of being a good human being. It wasn’t until she was old that truly, finally, believed she was loved.
Day/Theme: Jan 14/Every human folly
Series: Fruits Basket
Character: Akito (Shigure, Hatsuharu, Rin, Kyo)
Rating: K+
Akito believed that the house stank. She believed it the way that children believe there are monsters under the bed. Her olfactory senses kept mute, but the way her heart pounded and the sweat stood out on her brow belied reason. There was a stench, a ripening sort of carcass smell, and it permeated even the grooves upon which the paper doors slid.
She could not be there.
Shigure never asked her why she came to live at his house. She wanted to hate him for it (Doesn’t he want to know? Does he even care what I’m thinking? Does he assume he understands already, that pompous bastard? I’ll kill him if he’s treating me like a child, I swear to God… I swear to…). But instead she loved him.
Sometimes she still slid her hand up his tie to seduce him, stretching slender claws into his chest, willing him down onto the bed beneath her where she could pretend to be both male and female simultaneously, to be both her father’s daughter and her mother’s son. But most of the time she let him love her. She didn’t want to be the creature (not human, not woman, not anything) that slept with one man only because she could, that didn’t sleep with another only because she couldn’t. Not anymore. Never had, really.
Afterwards, while he slept, she would excuse herself to him. (His reaction was the same, sleeping or waking – the same cool silence, the same delicious set to the jaw – the only difference was, when he was sleeping, she didn’t have to see the lovelight in his eyes.)
“I didn’t do it to hurt you,” she would tell him. “I did things to hurt Yuki, but not you. I just wanted to see you react to me. If you’d have just reacted to me, I could have been different.” But she wasn’t really blaming him. “I was so unforgiving,” (she always whispered this), “I wish you had gotten mad at me.”
The first time she actually spoke to Hatsuharu was harrowing. He looked at her with the blank stare of a dumb beast, with the amoral violence of an animal, the exclusivity of a creature that cannot communicate. But he was, she knew, human, a boy becoming a man, and his distance terrified her. She admitted to her fear (her weakness, her vile folly, the source of all her cruelty), and he, like a thing which senses the hot blood in fear, grew colder. But later (so much later, epochs later, and she had only snapped her fingers), he smiled for her. And Rin slid her strong limbs around him with a wildness in her eyes, but Akito wasn’t jealous anymore (not of that, not of them, but maybe of their purity), and so Rin quieted too.
It was years later, when she had grown quite used to the vision of little red-headed kitten-angels scampering around at knee-to-waist height, that Kyo put it into words for her. (Not even Shigure had done it, because he would spoil her rotten but not lift a finger in her service; not even Tohru had done it, because no matter how sullied she believed herself to be, she was a saint, and could never truly understand. Only Kyo, who had been the nesting place of a traitor, could feel with her the way her insides crawled, like an anthill repulsed with itself.)
“I hated you back then,” he told her, “You deserved to be hated. You did the worst stuff. But you know what I’ve learned? Everyone’s the same. You, me, Yuki. Maybe even Tohru. Everybody’s just trying to protect themselves. People do the most unforgiveable things because they think, “Hey, if nobody’s ever gonna love me anyway, I might as well put some space between us.” It’s stupid. It’s really damn stupid. All anybody wants is for somebody else to want them around, so how’s it gonna help to deliberately make people hate you? But that’s what we do. It’s sick. We don’t wanna be forgiven.” He looked at her and smiled, and she could see behind him, in the backyard, his son held a puppy in his lap, and wore the exact same smile. “But actually, we really, really do.”
Akito never had children. She passed the family headship to Yuki’s son. It wasn’t until she was old that she finally believed she was capable of being a good human being. It wasn’t until she was old that truly, finally, believed she was loved.