FicWad

It seems like there have always been some certainties in my life. The curse, for one. I don't even know where to begin imagining my life without it, as much as I'd like to do so. It is the core around which my personality was built, the overriding factor in everything I did and every decision I made. Always there, always needing to be considered. Making it pretty much a given that I would never date a girl-- and you know, maybe because I've always known that, maybe out of self-preservation or whatever, I've never really been tempted to try. Tohru made me come close to wanting to give it a shot, but-- nothing ever came of it. I wonder if something in me just decided that it wasn't worth the effort.

Another one of those constants in my life is the Rat.

Yuki. My cousin, my rival. My enemy? Perhaps. He is infuriating, with that arrogant attitude of his-- no surprise that there's half the reason I go after him so often. He just /pisses me off/, and I guess I've never been one to rein in my temper.

The other half of the reason-- well, it's considerably darker. I don't like to admit it, but I know it's there. There is a part of me that wants to see that smirk broken, see the arrogance brought down to nothing until he knows that he's no better than me. That part doesn't want to fight him out of anything so clean as anger but out of a cold, rational desire to shatter that damned Princely face he wears so well.

Like I said-- not the nicest of feelings to know you want to raise yourself up by pushing someone else down. But it's there, and I do try not to lie to myself. It's just one part of the constant in my life that is Sohma Yuki.

I'm explaining all of this because I want to make it clear just how very wrong it seemed to hear that Yuki slit his wrists in the school bathroom, just a few weeks into our senior year.

One of our classmates found him, and screamed bloody murder until all of the teachers in earshot came running. I didn't hear about it until Shigure showed up at the door of the classroom, with Haru and Momiji trailing pale and silent behind him.

I can't remember just what I was thinking as the dog, looking uncharacteristically serious, explained things to me and asked me to take my younger cousins out to the house while he went to the hospital. I think that I was half-convinced he was joking. Or maybe that I was asleep, and dreaming-- because no matter which way I thought about it, my mind just wouldn't accept the truth. Yuki. Suicide. The Prince, the hit of the school, the self-satisfied prick that everyone loved-- had taken a knife and bled himself all over the bathroom floor.

I did manage to get my two silent cousins where they were supposed to be, but I don't really remember how, because I'm not sure I was in much better shape than them. One of my constants, the pillars that supported the way my life was, had after all just crumbled.

And I had no idea what to think about that.

They brought him home late that night-- Hatori pulled some strings at the hospital, I guess, and bypassed all the usual administrative crap. None of us were sleeping, just sitting downstairs at the table and staring off into space. All three of us jumped when the door slid open.

There wasn't much of Yuki to see, outside of the blanket they had him wrapped in. And Shigure carried him away pretty quickly, up the stairs and into his room with Hatori right behind carrying all sorts of equipment. But they didn't shut the door behind them, and-- well, you might expect me and curiosity to go hand in hand. It was like a car crash-- I had to stare, just couldn't help it, even though I knew I shouldn't. So I followed them up and peered around the corner, and the first things I saw were the thick white bandages on Yuki's wrists and hands, not much different in colour than the skin they were wrapped around.

"Kyou."

Shigure's voice startled me, I admit it. I hadn't even noticed him coming towards me-- there was something hypnotizing about that sight of white on white, with the faintest spotting of red-- but the dog was suddenly in my view, and the spell was broken. I fell back on instinct-- I glared. "What?"

"Ha-san is going to take the others home, and I need to make some calls," Shigure replied, unfazed. "Could you sit and watch Yuki? He shouldn't wake up for a while yet, but if he does, just come and get me."

I know I blinked-- I must have nodded, too, because the dog was through the door and gone, and Hatori wasn't far behind him after he finished whatever doctoring he'd been doing. Which left me alone in Yuki's bedroom, with Yuki himself no doubt drugged and comatose nearby.

With gashes cut into his arms. Let's not forget that.

I somehow ended up at the bedside, looking down. His face was as bloodlessly pale as his arms, and there were dark, bruised shadows under both eyes. He looked thinner than usual, lying there-- /fragile/, the word came to me, which made me wonder because I'd never seen him as a particularly sturdy guy. But maybe it was his attitude, or maybe I just knew from much experience that he really wasn't as helpless as he looked, because I'm not sure I'd ever tried to apply that particular word to him before. Fragile. Easily broken.

I don't know how long I stood there, but it must have been a while, because the next thing I knew those bruised eyelids were flickering, and raising, and Yuki was blinking in muzzy confusion around the room, at me--

And then realization came-- I could see it hit him, as his eyes went chillingly flat and dead, and his mouth twisted up into this thin little line. He just lay there, staring up at me as I stared down at him, neither of us talking until he took it upon himself to break the silence.

"If you're going to gloat," he told me, voice flat and raspy, "get it over with. Or get the hell out."

I might have gaped-- just a bit, just for a moment. There was something different about him, something in his voice that hadn't been there before, or had at least been very well hidden. The same something that flickered darkly in those dulled eyes. That made me back up without a word and leave the room.

It somehow reminded me of the dark little voice that lived in the back of my own head, that part of me that I wasn't proud of. And that made me shiver.

I went down and found the dog, relayed the appropriate message, then went off to the roof as fast as I could without running.