Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Custody ❯ Going back home ( Chapter 29 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

`What do you say after that kind of confession? What's the right answer? What is the right thing to do?'

Momiji couldn't believe that he had finally said it. It was not the way he had pictured it in his mind, but now that he was finally free from the burden of that secret he realized that it had been easier than he thought. All he had needed to do was to say those simple words aloud. He took a couple of slow breaths as he tried to reorganize his thoughts, waiting all the while for a reaction from Momo.

He sat back down on his chair across from her in the middle of the loudest silence he'd ever felt. Momo was there, across the table, her face an unreadable mask. She didn't even make a sound, and the only thing he could hear was his own breathing. It was the same feeling he had once, after he barely avoided a car accident. The only difference was that the blood ran frozen through his veins minutes after the shock passed, and that the fear didn't go away in a flash, but solidified to a crushing weight over his chest with every passing second. For an instant, he thought that that was the way a man waiting for a death sentence must feel: dreading the verdict but wanting the torture to be over. His worst fears were materializing in front of his eyes and he felt helpless. He wanted to run away, or better yet, to disappear so that he didn't have to face what he knew was coming.

Momo thought back to all those times when she knew they were hiding something from her, the times people could tell that they were brother and sister just by looking at them, and she finally came to acknowledge the fact her mother had denied to her years before: Momiji looked just like them. He had the same eye color, the hair, even that smile she saw on her mother's face sometimes. And then, the sadness in his eyes, his voice, so much like…

-“What about my Papa? Is he your father too?”

Momiji nodded. “Your Papa was my Papa too”, he explained. Hearing her father's sad voice again coming from Momiji, she knew that he was saying the truth.

-“You really are…” `Funny', she thought, `now that I know that he is really my brother, I can't say the word.' She felt stupid when she realized that the truth about who he was had been before her very eyes all along. Momiji was right: she just didn't see it because deep down, she didn't want to admit it to herself.

-“And you were going to leave without telling me…” She couldn't see his face because he lowered his head, so she didn't have a clue at that moment of what might be running through his mind. He nodded again slowly, not looking up.

-“Why?” It was the logical question, and he had expected it, but at that moment Momiji was exhausted. The emotional strain he had been under those past days drained him of the strength to go through yet another interrogation. However, he had to answer and he knew it. Gathering the last of his courage, he tried to explain:

-“I… I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't know how to say it, what I should do…” Momo was so wrapped up in her own feelings that she didn't notice the pain in his voice, the apology. She wasn't expecting an answer. She knew that he was saying something to her, but she couldn't focus her attention on anything anymore. She had a million questions and she didn't even know where to begin asking them. She didn't even know if she wanted to hear the answers to those questions.

The only argument he had in his defense sounded lame to his own ears and he knew that it was just a poor excuse to try to justify his cowardice. He had deliberately lied to her by hiding the truth. There was no way his sister could ever believe anything he said anymore. Suddenly, he felt the urge to tell her everything, but there were no words he knew, neither in his mother's nor in his father's language, that could help him tell Momo everything he wanted, everything he needed to say. Momo kept sitting there in silence, and Momiji wished she would give him a sign that he had a chance to talk, to explain more.

She didn't move, and her eyes were looking somewhere else, to a place far away where he couldn't follow. He had the feeling that it was the end. He lost his change to have a family again.

-“I'm sorry,” he whispered. It seemed to him that he kept on begging for her forgiveness since the moment he told her the truth. The idea that he shouldn't be apologizing crossed his mind for a second, but he didn't pay attention to it.

His father had been right all along. He had to stay away from Momo or she would get hurt.

`She can't even call me onii-chan now.' The thought stabbed him in one of the already open wounds.`I have to go.'

Momiji stood up and left his half eaten dinner on the table. She didn't seem to notice.

With every step a part of him died. She was not calling him back. She didn't even try to stop him. The silence was worse than anything. He'd gladly face her anger or even her hatred rather than her indifference. It was like he was with his mother again: her eyes were looking at everything and nothing at once, anywhere but at him.

He went to his room and hastily stashed the few things that had been lying around in the room in his suitcase. He resolved to keep his mind off what just happened. If he gave it too much thought the last thread of his sanity would snap. Numbness was safer. He needed to take the time to think things through, but not right now. Later. Right at that moment the only safe way for him was the way out. He had to get out of that house.

He had to disappear from his sister's life. Again.

In the midst of his chaotic mind Momiji decided to leave a parting gift for Momo on his bedside table. It had really been his gift to himself, one that he bought full of hope that his Christmas wish would come true for once, even while his subconscious was aware all the time of the impossibility of it.

He dared to believe back then, and now, even as he closed his luggage and walked to the door, he still refused to let that tiny spark of hope die: something in her eyes told him that everything was going to be all right, that she only needed time to think things over. It was the only thing he could give her now, his last gift as her brother. He desperately wanted to believe that it could be the first instead.

Momo was nowhere in sight as he made his way to the door and stepped out of the house into the falling snow carrying his luggage. He didn't mind the snowflakes falling on him, or the chilly wind pinching his skin through his coat. As he walked away, his mind focused on getting to the airport somehow, he secretly kept on hoping to hear Momo's voice calling him back home, to her home, back to his family.

`The rabbit is free of the curse now, but he's still sad because he can never go back to his family.'

He smiled wistfully.

`My home is not her home. It never was.'