Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ History, Like Love ❯ Where the World Bleeds White ( Chapter 3 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

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"History, Like Love"
a Fruits Basket fanfic by Ysabet MacFarlane (ba087@chebucto.ns.ca)

Chapter Three: "Where the World Bleeds White" [3/6]

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"You're sure that's what you want?" The woman behind the counter looked up from
the paper Haru had handed her, idly massaging the freshly-inked vine wending its
way up her inner arm. "Getting tattooed is addictive--I mean, I got my first
one when I was pretty young, but it's kinda my calling."

Haru took a third look around the studio. The sample artwork on the walls was
stunning, a silent explanation for the prices that would make most potential
customers his age walk right back out. "I got this on a whim," he said, pushing
his sleeve up to expose his left bicep. "I don't regret it. And that--" he
nodded down at the paper "--isn't a whim."

She picked it up, tracing the lines of the design. They were as strong and
graceful as the work on display, done by an uncursed relative who'd been
apprenticed to a master calligrapher in his youth. "Aren't you too old to be
year of the ox?" A calculating glance swept over him. "I'd guess you're a
bird?"

"Boar," he admitted, shrugging. "Never suited me."

"Huh." Another appraising look at the paper resulted in a faint smile. "Well,
this is gorgeous, and I guess if you're already inked you know what you're
getting into. Where do you want it?"

"Between my shoulder blades." It was the only part of the decision that had
required any thought.

"Exactly this size?"

"If it'll fit well. Can you scale it a bit if you need to?"

"In my sleep." She came around from behind the counter and held the paper up
beside him. "Do you want it done now? I have enough time before my next
appointment."

"Yeah." Haru shivered, remembering the last time a needle had touched his skin.
Rin's hands had been cupped around his right fist, her eyes trained on the
steady movement of the gun. She had insisted on being there, as if her physical
nearness could ease the pain that distressed her far more than him. That
tattooist, an older man, had picked up on her anxiety and kindly worked around
her without commenting on either her distress or the electric vibe that had
built up between her and Haru while he worked.

Having her there had taken the experience even farther beyond the quick
puncturing of his earlobes than he'd expected. She had no comprehension of the
euphoria he felt from the mix of vulnerability and endorphins, but she responded
to it through her own discomfort. She'd kissed him once while the tattooist
left the room for a moment, running her fingertips just below the design taking
shape on his skin; half-intoxicated on his own brain chemistry, he'd pulled her
close with his free arm, grinning foolishly against her mouth.

"Take your shirt off." His current artist arched a brow at his distraction,
gesturing to her working table. Haru came back to the present with a start and
obliged, draping the shirt over the back of a nearby chair before stretching out
on his stomach. Small, strong hands touched his back, sizing up their canvas.
"You've got good muscle tone, so that'll help. You know it'll hurt more when I
do your spine?"

"Mm hmm."

"Can I ask you a question?" Haru made another agreeable sound, obediently
rearranging himself when she prodded him. "Are you half?"

"No." Confused, he lifted his head. "Why?"

"'Cause you look Japanese, but most tats like this wind up on foreigners, even
if the calligraphy's not as good. I mean, I'm decent at it, but it's not the
kind of art I'm best at. And this is amazing--but yeah, there's that and your
hair. No mysterious ancestors?"

Haru snorted, thinking of the family's watchful eye on its bloodlines. "'fraid
I know my whole family tree for about seven generations back and out to about
five degrees on either side. We're kinda into that." He tried to sound
friendly about it, but bitterness seeped through.

"One of those families, huh?"

His curiosity about what she might be thinking wasn't strong enough to keep him
talking. Instead, he closed his eyes and waited while she finished prepping his
back and began to outline the design on his skin; he came back to full alertness
only when she took a photograph and showed him what it would look like. He
examined every stroke, picturing it nestled between his shoulders: the symbol of
his possession reduced to fleeting blood and permanent ink, only the size of his
outstretched hand.

"It's good. Thanks." He lay back down and waited, trying not to brace himself
against the initial shallow stab, forcing himself to relax for it.

When it came, he imagined it in his eyes.

**********

His entire back throbbed with pain by the time it was finished, as much from his
prolonged stillness as the fresh tattoo. He had refused her offers of breaks or
water, preferring to feel the lines being etched continuously into his skin in
slow, burning waves. With his eyes closed he could visualize it taking shape, a
reclamation of the tiniest bit of what he'd lost when he gained his freedom.

It was almost like being in the mild trance of karate practice, with his mind
floating slightly above the pain--close enough to touch it, from time to time,
and enough like a dream that he half-expected to imagine Rin's presence, her
wide-eyed fascination with what he inflicted on his body. *Mortification of the
flesh,* she'd challenged once, *but you're no monk.*

*Like you don't think it's hot,* he'd replied, not quite arguing. He liked the
difference between them, the smoothness of her skin unbroken by ink or metal.

The memory was interrupted by the artist's voice. "Do you have someone who can
help you take care of it?" A bandage was carefully taped down between his
shoulders. "It's not the easiest place to reach."

"Yeah," he said, trying not to show his distraction. He continued to nod
dutifully as she reminded him of each precaution he was to take--no sun, no
sleeping on his back, all of it familiar and obvious--and paid without further
discussion, comforted by the sign of the Ox throbbing under his skin.

**********

"How is she?"

Haru grimaced inwardly at the sound of his own voice. Regaining normal sleep
patterns and making an effort to hang out with Yuki and the others had restored
a sense of normalcy he could hardly have imagined the month before, although he
still guiltily kept the secret of his freedom. The tattoo on his back had
scabbed and healed cleanly, unseen by anyone but his mother, who he had been
forced to ask for help with the initial care.

But bringing Rin up, even if only with the adults who knew what had happened,
sent fresh stabs of pain through his chest. No matter how exhausted the
questions sounded, it was unthinkable not to ask. Hatori alone was in contact
with her, and some days the doctor took pity on him and offered vague answers
that did little to satisfy Haru's need to _know_.

Hatori took a slow drag off his cigarette, not particularly responding to either
the question or Shigure's arched brow. Despite the coolness of the afternoon,
Haru had found the pair sitting outside at Shigure's, sipping coffee like sake
as they watched the late autumn foliage falling.

"Just like old times," Shigure said when Hatori didn't answer immediately.
"Only it used to be her with the same questions over and over again. Are you
trying to take her place, Ha-kun?"

"What was she asking?" Haru countered.

Shigure smiled faintly. "That's between me and Rin-chan."

"Did you help her at all?" The silence was broken only by the flick of a
lighter as Shigure lit another cigarette. "I just want to know if anyone was
kind to her."

"Do you really think she'd have kept coming here if I'd been kind to her?"
Hatori cleared his throat warningly, and Shigure shrugged, getting to his feet.
"Your time might be better spent learning how to live without her walking ahead
of you." He touched Haru's collar, making a show of examining the spikes.
"What are you, underneath what you took from her?" A tiny red dot marked the
middle of his fingertip when he took it away, turning his attention to Hatori.
"Are you going to tell him?"

"I spoke with Isuzu two days ago," Hatori said when Shigure had gone back into
the house. There was a hint of irritation when he glanced up, but Haru wasn't
sure whether it was directed at him. "Sit down, Hatsuharu, and I'll tell you
what I can.

"She's doing well in her classes," he continued when Haru obeyed, hungry for
news. "She says she's starting to feel more at home in her apartment, and she
sounds rather frustrated by learning to cook." He stubbed out his cigarette,
frowning in thought. "But she's eating, and while it's hard to inquire too
directly about her health, it's my belief that she's getting stronger."

"And...?"

"And she's seeing someone."

The sensation of sickness that washed over him was so immediate and intense that
Haru only half-realized that he'd made a sound at all. He pulled his knees up
to his chest, trying to still the churning in his guts and the shaking in his
limbs.

"Do you want to know?" Hatori asked. The genuine empathy in the question was
all that made the hand on his shoulder tolerable; his entire body ached with the
need to be touched by someone familiar, and there was no one. He nodded, not
trusting his voice or wanting to second-guess his first impulse. "She says it's
casual," Hatori said, "but she also mentioned that it's been going on for a
while, and this is the first I've heard of it. She told me his name when I
asked, and I had a quick background check done to make sure he's no threat to
her."

"'A while'?"

"A month or two, I gather. I had no reason to press her for more than that."
Hatori withdrew his hand awkwardly, giving privacy where he couldn't offer
comfort. "I can't tell you his name."

*Any more than you can tell me what city she lives in, or even what she's
studying.* Haru swallowed hard against the nausea. "I don't want to know."
There was no room for anger in the cold emptiness making its way through his
veins. "I want her to be happy, more than anything--"

"But she was happy with you," Hatori finished, putting words to the feeling Haru
wanted to avoid.

"She was. I screwed up so badly, Tori-nii, but I _know_ she was." He stared
bleakly at the madcap dance of the leaves caught in the wind. "If she can be
happy with this guy and this life you invented for her, then I'm glad. I will
be. But it's not her life, and I don't believe for a second it's what she
wanted."

The lighter sparked and crackled as Hatori tried to produce a flame against the
breeze. "Would you be more forgiving if I'd let her die? Or if I'd helped
her?"

Voices reached them from the front of the house--Kyo and Tohru coming back from
school, but if the good-natured tone of Kyo's grumbling was any indication,
without Yuki. Haru stood too quickly, and caught himself on the wall as blood
rushed to his head. His hand looked unfamiliar against the wood, fingers
splayed so that each ring caught the light. The sound of the front door opening
and closing seemed to belong to another world; he stood distracted, remembering
the contrast of hard silver against Rin's skin and hair, trying to imagine that
familiar softness reduced to ash and bone.

"Are you staying?" Hatori asked, pitching his voice low to avoid being overheard
by anyone inside.

"No." His earlier desire for company had dissipated entirely. "No, I'm gonna
head home."

"I'll drive you."

**********

Letting himself go numb was almost effortless. Hatori's vagueness about Rin's
whereabouts and life had been frustrating, but having a rough idea for his
imagination to work with was worse--and somehow liberating. Schoolwork being
done, food being cooked and eaten, an apartment of her own; it was the most
ordinary of descriptions, made up of things he'd supposed must be going on, but
it was confirmation.

She was alive. Without him, being touched by people he'd never seen--his
thoughts shied away from imagining detail--but living. He erected that thought
between joy that she was alive and renewed grief at her loss, and lost himself
instead in the thought that he was the only one who'd seen so much of her life.

The desire that came out of it was to know what he'd missed, what she'd hidden
from him; to remember her as honestly as possible. *And then what?* a small
voice murmured, a mix of Rin's love and Shigure's pointed instruction to move
on. *And then?*

*********

For the next few weeks, Hatori steadfastly refused his requests for an
appointment. "Go live your life for a while," he said when Haru came to the
office the fourth time, cutting him off as effectively as hanging up on a phone
call. "Figure out what you actually want." But the only answer that ever came
to mind was Rin's name.

**********

"Closure," he said when Hatori opened the door, three weeks after their last
conversation. "That's all I'm here about, okay?"

"What exactly are you looking for?" Hatori asked, not unkindly, but with more
than a trace of weariness.

"I want to see her medical records."

"Those are confidential," Hatori said flatly, fixing him with a reproving look.

Haru leaned back against the door, crossing his arms. "Sohma Isuzu doesn't even
remember them." He made no effort to hide the bitter anger that spilled over.
"Whose confidence are you betraying by showing me?"

Hatori minimized the screen he'd been looking at. "Why do you want to see
them?"

"Because someone needs to remember, besides you." Haru bit his lip, glancing at
the spines of the books lining the shelves. "Because I spent so long _not_
seeing what happened to her, and I owe it to her to look. Please."

Minutes crawled by while Hatori considered it.

"They're not all here," he said finally. "The tapes from this year are at the
hospital where she was treated."

"Fine. I'll start at the beginning."

"Hatsuharu..." The doctor stared over his head, obviously torn. "The records I
kept are extremely detailed. Most people would have trouble looking at some of
the material, and I don't know if you should--"

"Has anyone else seen them?"

"Shigure saw the photos from her first admission to the hospital. No one else."

"Huh." Haru did the math, working out how old Shigure--and Hatori--would have
been when Rin was abandoned. "Were you even a doctor then?"

"A student, but that hospital all but belongs to our family. There was a
certain amount of looking the other way when I accessed Isuzu's information."
Hatori pressed the back of his hand against the windowpane, watching the rain
streaming down the glass. "I also did some additional documentation of my own.
The Sohma influence made some of the senior staff wary of doing more than was
strictly necessary." He took a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked a desk
drawer, unburying a file from beneath loose papers. "The x-rays and scans were
done officially. The photographs are mine, although a few that belong in the
first folder aren't here."

"Where are they?"

"Shigure has them. They were gone after he looked at the records, and I imagine
he's kept them even more hidden than I have." They both looked at the thick,
unlabeled file in his hands. "You're sure?"

Haru squared his shoulders, remembering the layers of bandages on Rin's body,
and tried to swallow his fear. "I want to see everything."

Hatori slowly handed him the file. "Nothing in those folders leaves this room,
except in your head. Understand?" He turned to leave, and made it halfway to
the door before Haru called out to him

"Wait--why does Sensei have those pictures? Why'd you let him keep them?"

"You aren't the first to want to remember." Hatori hesitated on the threshold.
"Shigure doesn't go halfway. Trust me on this: the ones he took are the ones
you least want to see. They don't have any information you won't see in that
file, which is one reason why I never had them reprinted or returned." He
stepped out into the hallway. "The other reason is that I would prefer not to
see them again, and I _took_ them. I'll be back in an hour."

The door slid shut and locked, leaving Haru alone with the ghosts of Rin's past.
He hugged the file against his chest before sinking down in the chair by the
window.

There were three folders in the file, also unlabeled, but Haru knew what they
were before he opened the first one. He named them silently. *Sohma Isuzu, age
eleven. Age seventeen. Age eighteen.* She'd had two birthdays since he'd last
had the chance to mark them with her; Kagura's mother wasn't the sort to let
them pass unnoticed, but for years Rin had come to him as much to escape the
unwanted attention as to accept his kisses and small gifts.

The first folder made no attempt at easing him in gently. There was no
paperwork, no explanation, only a photograph of a girl at the very onset of
adolescence. Haru stared at it, entranced and repelled. From his own visits he
remembered the wan, exhausted shadows in her eyes, that she'd been malnourished
enough to need an IV, that there'd been bruises visible when she raised her arms
high enough to lift the edge of her shirt. But she'd still been _Rin_, still
older and untouchable.

In the photo, she looked back wearily, her shirt hitched up under her arms to
show the fading purple marks running up her side and onto her back. The picture
itself was carefully shot, taking advantage only of the natural light, not
uncovering any hint of the curves that were beginning to think about reshaping
her body. Haru looked at it with a stranger's eyes, seeing a child almost six
years younger than himself instead of a girl he was constantly struggling to
catch up to.

"She was just a kid," he whispered to the empty room, looking at the awkward way
she held herself--in pain, but also uncertain of her limbs, the changing
boundaries of her skin.

The next photos were worse.

He kept looking, going from one folder to the next without really noticing.
Rin's body changed dramatically between them, belonging to a girl on one page
and a woman on the next, but it was a blur; it was impossible to reconcile the
images with his memories of desire and pleasure. It was a nightmare collage:
photos of open wounds and bruises, x-rays of ribs with fractures in all stages
of healing, closeups of gloved hands stitching flesh and muscle back together
over an exposed shoulder blade. A note paperclipped to one of the surgical
images included only a name he didn't recognize: Akechi Norihide, reconstructive
surgeon.

Haru turned to the next picture, thoroughly heartsick; he had touched the
permanent evidence of so much of what had been done to her over the years, had
seen her bandaged and battered, but seeing what had been covered by bandages and
scars--by her skin itself--was something else again. And looking at the next
photograph, he froze.

The date in the corner of the image was months more recent than the ones he'd
set aside. The moment it had captured was within hours of his own enraged entry
into Akito's personal rooms. The picture showed only Rin's face and neck,
enough to tell him she'd been thinner than he'd ever seen her; with her eyes
closed, set too deep in their sockets, she looked dead. But it was her hair,
fanned out in a black corona, that caught Haru's eye. He had never even
imagined her without the glossy length of hair that had been her defining trait
among the family; until she began displaying her looks in what was widely
regarded as an appallingly inappropriate way, her beauty had been a quiet source
of pride among the old aunts. The other Jyuunishi, with their unnatural
coloring, were mostly off-limits for the polite bragging that went on among the
wealthy families, but Rin...

A flash of dream-memory came to life in his mind, of Rin's fingers adjusting
hair that fell only to her shoulders, and his spine prickled. He turned the
picture over and read, in Hatori's precise script, "Three hours after admission.
IV administered. Hair trimmed by nurse Hasegawa."

There weren't many more photos past that one, and none that were more revealing.
Copies of charts referred to the stress-related pain she had suffered for
years, and commented on her continued low weight, but there was little else. In
the few pictures, her face and eyes stayed empty, the only sign of the final
trauma that had broken her in ways that were impossible to measure.

Hatori returned not long after Haru had closed the file and set it gently on the
desk. The doctor assessed him thoughtfully while he locked the information away
again. "Did you find what you wanted in there?"

Haru turned away from the window and the soothing gray of the view it offered.
"You said there were tapes?"

*********

Entering the hospital at Hatori's side was an entirely new experience. The
comparison was unfair; logically, Haru knew that he hadn't set foot in the place
since the third or fourth time he'd tried to visit Rin and been unceremoniously
kept from seeing her. The Sohma name might have power, but she was as capable
of calling on it as he was, and the staff had been far more invested in her
state of mind than his.

"Other than the tapes, there's nothing here you haven't seen," Hatori said as
they walked, nodding briskly in reply to the bows and greetings directed at him.
"Most of them aren't terribly interesting--she was too uncommunicative for
audio recordings to do much good, and the general opinion was that recording her
visually when she was responsive would be too invasive."

"Is that why you said I could see them?"

"I said you could see them to keep you from feeling that I'm holding out on
you." Hatori stopped at a nurses' station and collected a key, opened a door
immediately across the hall. "In here."

The small storeroom was full of tapes and CDs, all carefully labeled, but the
apparent filing system made no sense until Hatori said, "They're in the process
of digitizing some records. Isuzu's haven't been touched." He produced a
second key from his pocket and opened a drawer in a small filing cabinet at the
back of the room. "Pick which you want to look at, and I'll take you down to an
A/V room."

Haru knelt carefully by the drawer, running his fingertip over the spines of the
cases. They were largely identical, with Rin's name and the dates tidily noted
in Hatori's now-familiar hand. Occasionally, other words followed: "responsive"
was marked on a few, while others said less encouraging things. Some cases
still had post-its attached, with more detailed notes written by nurses.
"Non-stop crying," he read aloud as he turned one over. "Twelve hours, with
recording interruptions."

"That was when her curse broke," Hatori said. "There should only be one or two
more."

Haru picked up the last tape, one of the few videos, and frowned. "You didn't
write on this one." The post-it was still firmly attached. "'New treatment?
Sixteen hours.' You let them tape it when you--"

"No, I had the recorders turned off. Let me see that." Hatori took the tape
and turned it over in his hands. "I haven't reviewed this one. Akito's orders
were to treat Isuzu immediately, and afterwards I spent most of my time dealing
with the result." He passed it back reluctantly. "The nurses said they had to
keep her sedated for most of the time this was recorded."

It went on top of the pile Haru was assembling; balancing carefully, he
straightened up and followed Hatori back into the hallway and down to a small
room with tape decks and screens.

Some of the tapes went by quickly, fast-forwarded over hours of complete silence
until some brief, empty exchange of words was made. They watched one of
Hatori's interminable and fruitless sessions with her, and several of her
erratic conversations with nurses, which clearly encouraged them. Haru supposed
he could see why it seemed like progress to have her answer questions
coherently, but when she spoke, the girl on the screen bore more resemblance to
a marionette than his lover. At least in her silence he could recognize her.

Even the second-last tape showed very little. It had been turned off when
Kureno visited, and no one had thought to turn it back on afterwards. Before
that, the footage only showed Rin curled around herself, tears soaking into her
pillow. "She was like that from the moment the bond released her," Hatori said
softly. "The actual release wasn't recorded, which may be just as well."

"She looks different." Haru kept watching, listening for the faint sounds when
she gasped for breath. "They just _left_ her like that?" Hours of watching and
listening had almost numbed the horror left by the images he'd seen in the
morning.

"There wasn't much they could do at that point--there was no reason to think she
was a danger to herself, and she's gone on record repeatedly saying she doesn't
want to be sedated unnecessarily."

"'At that point'?"

Hatori leaned forward, wearily resting his elbows on his knees. "After I left
that day, they did wind up sedating her. It's also when someone turned the
camera back on." He nodded at the unlabeled videocassette.

"Which you didn't look at before 'treating' her."

"This is not a justification, but you know as well as I do how hard it is to
disobey Akito's explicit orders. I altered Isuzu's memory as soon as I was able
to make arrangements to move her somewhere safe. There was no time to do
anything more."

The last tape was cued to the very end; Hatori rewound it with a small frown.
"It looks as if the tape ran out and no one noticed." Back at the beginning, he
fast-forwarded while closely watching the screen. "She was still sedated for
the first stretch of time," he explained. Haru watched the counter in the
corner, minutes and then hours speeding by with no apparent activity. When
there was finally a sign of movement on the bed Hatori stopped it, rewound
again, and began normal playback.

Rin's voice hit Haru like a physical shock--a piercing shriek of terror that
hardly broke for breath. The room the tape showed was dimly lit, presumably in
the hope that something resembling darkness would help her go to sleep; it was a
decision Haru couldn't argue with, but he wished he could see more clearly.
Hearing her was hard enough without leaving his imagination to fill in her
expression.

It lasted only a few minutes before a trio of nurses hurried in, flipping the
light on but blocking the camera's view with their bodies as they tried to calm
her. All women, Haru noted--apparently the lengthy list of specific
instructions for her care hadn't been altered. And they were clearly hesitant
to drug her again, even when her cries changed to pleading that sounded
irrational even to his ears, knowing what he knew.

"Hold her down," one of them said grimly, and they put actions to words, two of
them pinning Rin's arms while the third began preparing an injection. Haru
finally saw her face clearly as she struggled, her voice building back to a
scream.

"He's going to kill me!" The desperation in the cry gave the nurses pause for a
moment, staring at her in bewilderment; he remembered that they had probably
treated her for weeks, if not months. "Don't let him, let me go, please, he's
coming back to kill me--Tori-nii, don't--" The nurse with the needle was saying
soothing things, but Rin showed no sign of hearing. Finally, when it was clear
she couldn't be calmed, one of the women restraining her stretched her arm out
and immobilized it.

For the moments it took to them to inject her, Haru was transfixed. Despite
having seen her with IVs before--despite his willingness to let needles puncture
his own skin--there was a horrific fascination to seeing it done to her. He
belatedly registered that she choked out his name while it went in.

And then her screams were nothing but his name, punctuated with the same pleas:
"Don't let him, please, Haru," over and over again, searing into his brain.

"Do you want me to turn it off?" Hatori asked.

Haru shook his head and continued staring numbly at the monitor until the
sedatives kicked in and Rin slowly quieted, still sobbing his name. The nurses
dispersed after gently rearranging her on the bed, trying to make her
comfortable; one of them returned with an IV and did esoteric things to connect
it to the needle in her arm. "To keep her from coming out of it," Hatori
explained softly, and Haru nodded, unable to look away until the tape ran out
abruptly and the image crackled into static.

"It's the only time she ever screamed for me." Cold certainty gripped him; he
stared blindly at the blank screen, rubbing at his arms in a futile attempt at
banishing the chill. "The only time, and I didn't hear her."

"The bond was already broken for her," Hatori said, and his voice made Haru turn
to look. The doctor was unnervingly pale under his composed expression. "_She_
was already..."

"I need to see it again," Haru whispered, and Hatori nodded and got to his feet.
For the second time that day, a lock clicking into place told Haru that he was
alone. He waited for several minutes before rewinding the tape, making sure he
wouldn't be interrupted, and then quietly located a blank cassette in one of the
cupboards and slid it into the recording deck.

**********
"blow by blow
her mind cut
in sheets
layers deep
now unravelling

'carbon-made
only wants to be unmade'"
--Tori Amos, "Carbon" (Scarlet's Walk)
**********

"Can it be undone?" he asked on the way home, the dubbed tape tucked deep in his
coat pocket.

Hatori drove for several minutes before answering. "'Undone'? No. I can't
reverse the process and make her what she was."

"But can memories come back on their own? Look, I grew up with Momiji--there's
no way he wouldn't've seen his mom more often if someone hadn't convinced him
there was a damn good reason for him not to."

"Hatsuharu, you _saw_ her--"

Exhaustion made it easy for anger to flare up; Haru's hands shook with it as he
rounded on the older man. "Yeah, I saw her. And I heard her pleading with you
not to do what you did." The car came to an abrupt halt at the side of the road
as Hatori pulled over, provoking honks from other vehicles. "And _you_ heard
her begging me for help. If there's any chance in hell I can do what she wants,
I'm going to. So tell me if it's possible to get her memory back."

Time seemed to slow to a crawl while Hatori stared past him; it took everything
Haru had not to reach out and shake him. "She could never be what she was.
Humans are wired to forget things; some of those memories can never come back to
her. Others may surface as things she 'knows', but without the corresponding
emotions. Do you honestly believe that's what she wants, or are you only
desperate to have her with you again?"

"How bad would it be?"

"I have no way of knowing for certain. At worst, I would think... perhaps a
permanent loss of a sixth of her suppressed memories, although it could be
substantially better. But that level of memory loss due to physical causes
would be considered serious brain damage."

"But right now she's missing _all_ of it, and she doesn't even know!"

"She doesn't know there's anything wrong," Hatori said quietly. "What you're
proposing means that she'd remember things that no one should have to, and know
that there are permanent holes in her mind. Are you all right with that?"

"She always said she was all right because I was with her." The moment of rage
had melted away, leaving him almost too tired to keep his head up; Haru slumped
against the window, looking at the fog that was all that was left of the rain.
"She wasn't all right at all. She was still broken and scared, and I didn't do
everything I could for her. But she got out of bed every morning, Tori-nii, and
she knew everything was a mess, and she still smiled at me. I don't know if
that's enough for her, okay? And I know that a lot worse has happened to her
since then. But I want _her_ to choose. Not you. And not Akito."

"She can't just decide to remember, even if I let you see her."

"D'you know that for sure? If her memories are still--if _Rin_ is still there,
however deep you buried her--"

"In layman's terms, what I did was rewire her thought patterns to make her
incapable of thinking about certain things." Hatori rolled down the window and
took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "If it took well enough, she may not
even be able to retain your name if you say it to her, or make sense of things
you say. She doesn't remember you because she can't think about you."

"'If' it took well enough?"

Hatori lit a cigarette and inhaled slowly, breathing the smoke out into the fog.
"I don't have much experience with subjects who actively resist. Isuzu was too
sedated to fight back consciously--" Haru shuddered "--but I'm not psychic. I
can't do anything but observe results."

"So if I can make her think about me, maybe...?"

"There _might_ be a sort of domino effect, if you can find a crack in the
conditioning. Or maybe you'll do nothing but traumatize her and leave her with
no way to deal with it."

Thin plumes of smoke from Hatori's cigarette drifted through the car, visible in
the headlights of oncoming traffic; night was falling quickly behind the fog.
Haru closed his eyes, not fighting the smell's reminder of Rin's nose wrinkling
the first few times she noticed it lingering on Shigure's clothes, before she
started associating it with him. He wondered what cigarette smoke made her
think of now, if she still remembered Shigure's glee in provoking her or his
knack for changing her anger to startled laughter. *Scent is memory,* a teacher
had told him once, and the statement had stuck with him as few classroom lessons
did.

He wondered whether Rin remembered that scents had once been clearer for her,
when the Horse's heart beat in her chest.

"If I see her and it messes her up, can't you just make her forget again?"

Hatori left the question unanswered while he took a final lungful of smoke and
stubbed the cigarette out. Haru waited through the prosaic sounds of a slow
exhalation, the car window being raised, and a key turning in the ignition. As
the engine sparked back to life, it almost swallowed the doctor's grim reply.

"Have it your way."

*********

Once persuaded, Hatori was unstinting and efficient in making arrangements.
Haru wondered how he justified going so totally against Akito's will, but made
no comment; he remembered the odd flexibility of the bond, the fierce compulsion
to obey god's explicit will combined with remarkable leeway when Akito was
unaware of what was happening.

Four days later he found himself in Sapporo, armed with a cell phone, a
week-long hotel reservation, and notes including Rin's contact information and
class schedule.

*You sent her further north?* The Hokkaido region had barely crossed his mind
as a possibility, given Rin's loathing of the cold.

*I know someone who was able to quietly help with her admission to the college,*
Hatori had replied. *I needed to send her somewhere where I knew she'd be in
good hands while she stabilized. Officially, she was recovering from a severe
fever but didn't want to miss any more classroom time than she already had.*

The same person who had helped get Rin settled--Haru was unsurprised to discover
that Hatori's contact had a Sohma grandmother--put a paper trail in place that,
if anyone looked, indicated that Sohma Hatsuharu was considering attending the
college once he finished high school, and was spending a few days looking around
the campus out of curiosity.

Finding her wasn't the hard part; Hatori's warning to proceed cautiously was
unnecessary. For once, Haru paid intense attention to his surroundings,
learning the way from his hotel to the campus, and from there to the
ordinary-looking building that Rin lived in. The campus itself was more
difficult, laid out more whimsically than he was used to, but by the end of his
first day of wandering he'd found most of the rooms indicated on her schedule.

It was easy enough to get help from the students; the Sohma looks and his hair
drew attention even with most of his jewelry packed away. He was careful to ask
only general questions about the school, but the third girl who stopped to ask
if he was lost hesitated when he offered his name in response to hers.

"Sohma?" she echoed. Haru looked politely curious, trying not to betray the way
his heart skipped. "One of my classmates has the same name as you."

"Hmm? What's he like? My family's not from around here."

"Well, she's a girl." She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Sohma Isuzu-san.
She's quiet. She's got a pretty laugh. Well, everything about her is pretty."
She cast an appraising look over him and grinned. "You sure you're not her
brother or something?"

Haru made himself smile back. "Yeah, I'm sure about that."

"But that reminds me, has anyone showed you the club schedule? There's a dance
class I'm in--she's in it too, that's why I remembered--and there's a lot of
other stuff to do, too."

*Dance.* Intuition prickled down the back of his neck. "What kind of dance?"

Her eyes sparkled. "All kinds! It's nothing really formal, but we have guest
teachers come in and show us their styles. Is it something you like?"

"I've danced some," he admitted, trying not to show the mix of emotions the
words evoked. New Year's, and the bond burning so brightly he half-expected to
see it glowing through his skin. Akito's hands on his face when he finished,
her cheeks flushed with possessive pride. For a Jyuunishi, _that_ was dancing;
everything else paled in comparison, even the memory of Rin's lithe body pressed
close to his on a dance floor, on the sole occasion when horrible weather had so
thoroughly emptied the club they occasionally visited that they'd felt safe
trying it.

*If there's one thing Jyuunishi know how to do, it's dance. Together,* she'd
said once, before that night, prophesying the wonder of it. The two other
couples dancing had been easy to avoid in the wide-open space, and Rin had
laughed with pleasure, turning gracefully in his arms, outshining everyone else
he'd ever seen moving on that floor as if she spent every evening of her life
dancing.

The girl interrupted his memory. "You should come check it out while you're
here, then. We meet up tonight and Thursday, if you're interested."

Haru scrambled for her name. "It wouldn't bother anyone, Suzume-san?"

She looked pleased that he'd remembered. "Not a chance--not so many guys come,
so everyone'd probably be excited that you're showing interest." Her hand
brushed his arm innocently, and he managed to smile instead of recoiling.

"Sure, I'll come. What time?"

**********

None of it was enough time, in the end. What felt like a lifetime of loving
her, weeks of missing her, and most of an afternoon to accustom himself to the
idea of finally _seeing_ her added up to not nearly long enough to still the
shaking in his hands. It was almost comforting to know that he probably
wouldn't wind up speaking with her, much as it hurt.

He dressed in the tamest clothing he had with him--all black, but no spikes or
chains to set it off, much like everything else he'd brought--making sure he
looked like an observer rather than someone wanting to participate. Arriving
early, he had the chance to check out the small dance studio, with its single
mirrored wall and well-worn sprung flooring. Barefoot, he explored the boards,
learning the feel of it, and still managed to settle into a corner to watch
before the room began to fill.

It was clearly a casual affair. Suzume saw him and waved, introduced him to
some friends whose names evaporated as soon as they touched his ears. He had
time to wonder whether she'd remember the coincidence of family names and try to
introduce him to Rin, but then the evening's instructor began to organize the
students--mostly girls, but there were indeed a handful of guys, and he was left
alone to watch.

"Isuzu's coming," one of the girls said, when the instructor looked ready to
start. "She's got a proj--"

"I'm behind on my project. Sorry, I lost track of time."

Haru almost flinched at the sound of her voice, out of breath but calm. Before
he could decide whether to turn and look toward the door, or to wait for her to
come in, she was in his field of vision, making a quick bow of apology, and
taking her place in the room.

If he had imagined for a moment that his feelings for her were bound up in the
curse, the sight of her blew the illusion away like seeds in a windstorm.
*Rin.* It was all there--the hunger to feel her skin under his fingertips, to
hear the surprise in her laughter, to be in her arms and have her in his, so
tangled up in each other that every mood and heartbeat overlapped.

Her gaze skimmed past him without a flicker of hesitation or recognition.

*Rin.*

For the first time since leaving Akito's side, he felt a specific absence in the
deep parts of his soul, the dangling threads where he had been woven into the
bond. One of those frayed pieces of himself had once been part of her, and that
piece screamed for her.

He rested his forehead on his knees while the class started, half-listening to
the first instructions of a warm-up while he pulled himself together. There was
a good-natured warmth to the vibe in the air, a lack of competition; it reminded
him of lazy summer classes at the dojo, when sparring was as likely as not to
turn into careless roughhousing as soon as Kazuma gave up on drilling kata
deeper into his students' bones. He looked up without focusing on anyone in
particular, watching only the rhythm and flow of the class' movement.

When the hour-long class was up, his impression of Rin dancing was a mental
collage of glimpses from the corner of his eye. Her hair was longer than in the
photos he tried not to picture, but still short enough to be held back with
clips; she was the only girl in the class whose outfit covered her back
completely. And while every movement he saw her make was fluid and deft, it was
only her jumps that marked her as starkly different from the people around her.
Haru looked every time she left the ground, and since everyone else looked too,
no one noticed his particular attention to her. The unusual strength the curse
had built into her leg muscles was obviously still as much a part of her as his
unnaturally-colored hair was of him.

He wondered if anyone else saw the dissatisfaction that flared in her eyes every
time she landed a jump well--when she had room to improve, she simply tried
again, but each success left her smile a little more brittle. Before he made
himself look away the last time, Haru saw the confused frustration in the way
she stared at her reflection, and his heart went out to her. Part of her still
knew what dancing was supposed to be, and this--he could almost hear the sharp
annoyance in what she wasn't saying--was not it.

Afterwards, he lingered just long enough to nod politely to Suzume before
leaving, not wanting to risk Rin passing him by again without being able to
reach out to her. He went straight back to his hotel room and lay down on the
unfamiliar, too-large bed, where he fell asleep before he'd finished rereading
her class schedule and comparing it to the map of the small campus.

If he dreamed about her, he didn't remember it in the morning.

**********

Watching her over the next few days was almost alarmingly easy. Time and again
her eyes settled on him, sometimes long enough for a puzzled look to cross her
face, but the confusion melted away as soon as she looked elsewhere. After the
first couple of times he found it so disconcerting that he began trying to avoid
her attracting her notice at all.

It made it fairly easy to build a picture of her life. While she hadn't
transformed into a social butterfly, there were several girls with whom she was
obviously friendly--a few he recognized from the dance club, and others who
lived in her building. She ate and studied in a common lounge, comparing notes
with classmates, and he only once saw the subtle, telltale signs that her body
was complaining about being forced to take in food. Overall, she looked
healthier than he'd seen her since she'd entered adolescence, which made him
smile inwardly.

Seeing her with her boyfriend, on the other hand, was both harder and easier
than he'd expected. Itou Satoru's background checked out, as Hatori had said,
and he was clearly infatuated with her. For her part, Rin blushed slightly when
Satoru approached her, although she seemed comfortable with his casual touches;
to all appearances, she was a somewhat shy girl going through her first love.

More than anything else Haru saw, that made her a stranger. There was nothing
like it in their shared history--with him, even her occasional embarrassment or
shyness had been a surface current running over their deep familiarity with each
other. Seeing her sitting across the room beside Satoru made his chest ache,
but it was more than jealousy that stirred the refrain in the back of his mind.
*That's not Rin.* And in its way it was almost a relief, to see her simply
content; it was the only time other than when she was immersed in her books that
he didn't catch her hesitating at strange moments, reaching for something that
eluded her.

Even he might not have noticed if he hadn't seen her dancing, but having clearly
seen that hollow need in her eyes once made it impossible to miss afterwards,
even from a distance. Her smiles were genuine, but she was incomplete. *And
she knows it.*

With only two days left before his hotel reservation ran out, he found himself
staring at the ceiling instead of sleeping, trying to weigh Rin's apparent
happiness against a dissatisfaction he couldn't even be sure she recognized.

*********

Fruits Basket is the creation of Takaya Natsuki, and is licensed in North
America by FUNimation (anime) and Tokyopop (manga). Used without permission or
the intention of making a profit. Please support the original work!

"History, Like Love" © 2006-2007 by Ysabet MacFarlane (ba087@chebucto.ns.ca).
Edited by Alishya Lane.

Comments and criticism welcomed at the above address.

This story may be reproduced and archived so long as the original text is
preserved and the author's name and contact information remain attached.
Notifying the author of any such use is an appreciated courtesy. NO CHANGES OF
ANY KIND ARE PERMITTED.

All quoted lyrics/epigraphs are the property of their copyright holders, and are
also used without permission. The title "History, Like Love" comes from the
song "Human Remains" by Tom McRae, found on the album "Just Like Blood"; this
chapter's title comes from the song "Carbon" by Tori Amos, found on "Scarlet's
Walk".