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Darkness Drowning	By : GhostHelwig Category: Fruits Basket > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 4321 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Fruits Basket, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Darkness Drowning
- 1
Disclaimer – I do not own or profit
from Fruits Basket. Rated
R for character death, yaoi, rape, violence, language, and just general dark
themes. A one-shot.

Author’s Notes – I’ve seen the four
DVDs, and read the first three manga, but I’ve also read many different fan
fiction stories and surfed through many a Fruits Basket website, so there are references
to all kinds of things from even stuff I’ve yet to see myself in this
story. So, SPOILERS be ahead. Consider yourself warned.

Also, a girl in this story, Rin, who
wasn’t on the anime but is in the manga (though I’ve yet to read one with her in
it), is in this story. I’ve read her background, and though normally
I would never include someone I don’t really know in a story I had to include
her, because this is based on a dream I had, and she was in it. In fact, there weren’t nearly as many changes
from my dream as I’d prefer for my own piece of mind... So prepare to learn why I don’t like to
sleep. (‘lol’)

Dedicated to the two lovely people
who introduced me to this world just a few short weeks ago, darthelwig and
Mysticlynx. I love you both, and I hope you like what
I’ve written.

Anyway, enjoy. Peace, all.

Darkness Drowning

by Ghost Helwig

Yuki was kneeling, his burning forehead
pressed up against the cool iron bars.
In the cage closest to his, he could hear Kyo swearing, in every
language he knew and some Yuki was sure he was making up. Beyond him, Haru was laid out, still
unconscious, while in the cage beside him Rin was curled up in a tight
ball. Yuki didn’t know where the others
had been taken, where Momiji and Kagura and Hiro and poor little Kisa were, and
part of him didn’t want to know. The
knowledge would just be too painful.

Kyo finally stopped swearing, and Yuki
began rummaging around in the shadows at the corner of his cell. Seeing what he was doing, Kyo snapped, “don’t bother. There’s
nothing there.” Ignoring him, Yuki kept
fumbling around, finally withdrawing a flashlight from the heavy darkness and
turning it on. Kyo stared in stupefied
amazement, until knowledge finally socked him in the gut. Quietly he asked, “did you... did you sleep
here last night?”

Yuki nodded, his aching head protesting
the movement. Leaning his forehead once
more against the cool iron, he whispered, “I had... nowhere else to go.”

At that, the cat said nothing. And Yuki was grateful for the abrupt plunge
into silence. The irony of his situation
was glaring at him, hurting him, violating him.
He had slept in this very cage the night before, feeling it to be the
safest place in the main house, yet now here he was, stuck in it. The thought that Akito had known this was
where he’d been and had put him back here for that very reason crossed his
mind, but he decided not to think about it much.

As with everything else that had happened
recently, it was best to just not think about any of it.

He knew the instant Haru woke up, because
it was Black Haru who greeted the world by swearing and yelling out insults to
their captors, who undoubtedly couldn’t hear a word he said. But his fellow captives could, and while Rin
begged him to calm down and Kyo further angered him by yelling at him to shut
up, Yuki sat back and wondered why Haru had woken up angry. Perhaps he hadn’t been captured unawares
then, perhaps he’d gotten in a few punches and kicks, or at least known what
was going on before he’d been knocked out.
That might even explain why it had taken him so much longer to awaken...

But the rest of them had been caught with
insulting ease, or so they’d discovered when they shared their stories. Kyo was given a drugged drink by a (equally
unaware, Yuki fervently hoped) Shigure, while Rin had been brought down here in
her sleep. And Yuki himself was the most
mortified of them all, as the last thing he remembered was sharing a relaxing
cup of tea with Hatori when someone managed to slip past his guard and cover
his nose and mouth with a foul-smelling cloth...

He knew he’d been drugged, he even knew
the name of the drug – chloroform. But
who would do that in front of Hatori, who could get past his defenses, and why
would Hatori allow it? Why would he just
sit there, sipping his drink, as Yuki struggled and pleaded with his eyes to be
saved?

Yuki shut his eyes, his heavy, aching head
still resting on the bars, and tried his hardest not to cry. Betrayed. They’d been betrayed...

And only he knew, because he’d only
muttered something vaguely coherent about tea when he’d been asked how he’d
come to be there. There was no point in
letting the others know how truly hopeless their situation was.

But he knew.

-------

Yuki crawled to the corner of his cage,
the only corner that was aligned with anyone else’s. His cell was along one wall, the others’ all
lined up side by side on another, so that the only cage his touched was Kyo’s. He could see the others, though, see Rin’s
bent dark head and Haru’s shaking white one.
And so close to him, so close, there was Kyo’s, red as blood in the
darkness surrounding him. Yuki shook his
head to clear it of that disturbing thought.
Now was not the time to see blood everywhere-

Not when he was so sure he’d be seeing the
real thing later.

Kyo frowned at him, and Yuki snapped back
to the present. He knew he’d been
staring, but all he did was curl up, turning his back to Kyo and the
others. He could hear the furious cat
hissing insults at his back, hear Haru getting turned
black all over again as he defended him from Kyo’s snide remarks, but their
voices sounded so far away. He felt like
he was floating, like he wasn’t really there, and only distantly did he wonder
why Kyo and Haru were wasting their time with petty arguments. They should be looking for a way out, not
fighting amongst themselves...

But he didn’t have the heart to stop
them. What was the point? Why have the heart
when he didn’t have the hope?

A door banged above them, jarring Yuki
from his despair and returning him to his miserable body. As footsteps pounded
heavily down the stairs Haru and Kyo fell silent, all four teenagers standing
up and moving closer to the front of their cages. Only Yuki didn’t think, even for a moment,
that perhaps now they’d be set free. He
knew better.

Two tall, muscular men entered the room,
one carrying with him a set of chains that ended in cuffs. They looked familiar to Yuki, these men, but
he couldn’t remember why...

One, the one not carrying chains, stepped
over to his cell, and he remembered.
Sohmas, of course, men he’d seen at every New Year’s celebration, though
he could not recall their names.

When
the other man moved to Rin’s cage, Yuki heard himself unwisely calling out,
“wait! Please! Let me speak!”

The man in front of him laughed, and to
his surprise reached between the bars of his cage and grabbed his arm. Before he could even begin to struggle a
hearty tug had gotten his slender arm through the bars, and rough hands were
pulling up his torn, dirty sleeve, exposing the vulnerable crook of his
elbow. Knowing now what was coming, Yuki
waited, letting his arm be injected with some unknown
fluid, while Kyo and Haru screamed things he could neither hear nor understand
in the background. Akito wouldn’t want
him dead, not yet, he was sure of that, and whatever happened before that
didn’t matter. He had a feeling that he
would be allowed to speak after this, and that was what he wanted. All he wanted.

Sure enough, as heaviness settled all
along his limbs his cell door was flung open, and he was abruptly free. He was too tired to run, too weak to fight,
but he was free. It was meant to make a
mockery of him, and he knew it. But he
relished it, anyway.

As the other man pulled a struggling Rin
from her cell and clasped the chains about her wrists, Yuki remembered what he
was supposed to do. Falling to his knees
both from exhaustion and as supplication, he didn’t even have to bother
steeling himself to say what he had to say-

And that scared him most of all.

“Let her go,” he pleaded, not feeling the
three sets of horrified eyes that bore into him. “Lie to him, tell him you beat her. Or beat me instead! I’ll let you, I’ll
let you do whatever you want, just let her go!”

He heard Rin’s strident cry of “Yuki, no!” but, once started, he could not
stop.

“Leave her alone,” he begged, unsurprised to feel himself
near tears once again. He moved forward,
still on his knees, and clung to the hem of the nearest man’s shirt. “She has done nothing, nothing at all!
It’s me Akito really wants to suffer!
So please, I’m begging you –
let her go! Don’t hurt her! Don’t let him – don’t let him hurt her – because of me.”
Tears overwhelmed him, swallowed his voice. Within moments, the only sound was his quiet
sobbing.

But then the man he clung to moved,
freeing his shirt from desperate hands with a disdainful shove of Yuki’s weak
shoulder. As Yuki looked up at him from
his place on the floor, the man smiled, brushing long dark hair from his eyes
before he removed something small and dark gray from his pocket.

A deep, gloating voice rang throughout the
dungeon, hurting Yuki’s ears with its obvious pleasure.

“Akito said you would beg.”

He held that strange object in his hand up
to the dim light shining through the small slit of a window at the top of the
room. Yuki stared at it, feeling a
forlorn sob and a startled laugh intertwine and catch in the back of his
throat.

It was a small tape recorder.

At the two men dragged the still
struggling Rin from the room, Yuki crawled on his hands and knees back towards
his cell. He heard Kyo speak, heard him
say something about how Yuki was not acting like himself, and Yuki turned his
face blindly towards Kyo’s voice to spit out, “Fuck you.” There was no real venom in the words, but he
had to say them, because he was irritated – and to prove to himself that he
still could.

He reached his cage and collapsed into the
closest corner, pulling his knees up to his chest. When the door upstairs had banged shut, all
was quiet – until Kyo spoke again, his voice unusually soft and compassionate.

“I
hear your voice though I cannot hear your name.”

Yuki thought about that, and when he
understood he had to close his eyes. So
Kyo still knew him even though he’d changed?
That thought was... strangely comforting.

A few tears slipped down his pale cheeks,
though he no longer felt the need to cry.

-------

Akito sat up in bed as the body was
carried from the room, and when he spoke it was as dark as midnight.
“Take her downstairs.” He smiled,
though it looked like anything but. “I
want Yuki to see what he’s done.”

-------

Haru couldn’t look, instead drawing his
thin body up into a corner and hiding his face in the uncaring wall. Kyo took one small glance, and disgraced
himself on the floor of his cage while the two burly men pointed and laughed.

But Yuki stared. And he learned just what Akito had wanted him
to.

To love him was a very dangerous thing
indeed.

-------

With heavy steps Tohru walked along the
forest path, wishing this week was over.
Yuki, Kyo and Shigure had only been at the main house for a couple of
days, and already she was lonely.

But that was selfish of her, and she knew
it. She chided herself for her
selfishness, even as her heart bleed for missing them. It was so cold, without the loud, lively
presence of three of the most important people in her life...

“But they need to spend time with their
families,” she muttered aloud to herself.
“It’s wrong of me to want them here all the time...”

She was so lost in her thoughts that she
didn’t see the limo pull up behind her, didn’t notice anything amiss until she
heard Akito’s voice over her shoulder.

“Well, Miss Honda,” came
the mocking purr, “we meet again.”

Something in her froze at his tone, at the
way he used the name Yuki used for her.
She could practically feel his breath on the back of her neck, and it
chilled her to the bone. She turned
around very slowly, and Akito smiled at her.

And she suddenly knew.

His long-fingered hands wrapped around her
neck, but even as the breath was forced from her body there was something she
knew she had to say. Her fingers
scrabbled at his, trying to find purchase, to free her struggling lungs even
though she knew it was hopeless. Only
near the end, right before the darkness took her, was she able to gasp out the
words she needed to say.

“I... forgive you.”

-------

Another day. Yuki could feel it. They’d slept, on and off, all of them, but
now he could feel that it was a new morning-

And
that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

Kyo’s hand found its way through the
bars. Yuki stared at it, then took it in
his, bestowing a soft kiss on the tip of each finger. Finally he threaded their fingers together,
pressing their palms against each other.

He wished he could do the same for Haru,
but Haru was still facing the wall, blind to all but his own pain. Kyo gave his hand a gentle, reassuring
squeeze, and Yuki realized – Kyo must feel it, too.

But neither of them spoke about it, or
about anything. Instead, they just
waited, listening to the sound of the oppressive silence.

-------

Shigure was the one to find her body.

He saw her hair first, spread on the
autumn ground like a blanket of dark silk, and he ran towards her, fear deep in
his heart. By the time he took her in
his arms, she was already cold.

But he ran anyway, ran to his house so he
could drive her to Hatori. And even
though she was heavy and stiff, even though she obviously wasn’t breathing, he
spoke to her, told her to hold on, told her everything would be alright.

If Tohru had been alive, she would’ve
thanked him.

-------

“Does it seem colder to you?” Yuki
whispered, clinging tighter to Kyo’s hand.
Kyo didn’t say a word.

But Haru looked over from his place by the
wall, and spoke in a dull, dead voice that was just enough like his usual tone
to feel like a perversion.

“It’s colder because we’re going to die
here.”

Neither Yuki nor Kyo contradicted him.

-------

Hatori stared at the lifeless body before
him, fighting off the unfamiliar urge to cry.
His voice felt too thick, but he forced it out of his constricted throat
anyway, trying to give comfort where there could be none.

“She’s gone, Shigure. But I – I don’t think she suffered much...”

How hollow those words sounded, how wrong
they felt, even to him. Shigure glared
at him, thinking of everything he knew about the girl they’d all grown to love,
and finally found breath enough to speak his piece.

“You’re wrong. She suffered a lot.”

-------

Akito stood at the top of the stairs,
smirking as he stared at the scene below him.
Haru, cringing. Kyo and Yuki,
clinging. Well, he would change all of
that to suit him, right now.

After all, inside him now were the four
words that could break them all. And
when he stood in front of the cages, he waited until he was staring in Yuki’s
violently violet eyes to say them.

“Tohru Honda is dead.”

-------

Considering his conviction concerning their own fates, Haru was the only one surprised. He jerked like he’d been punched in the gut,
and looked like he was going to make the same kind of mess Kyo had, remnants of
which were still stinking up their confined home. But Kyo’s head only lowered, his thin
shoulders trembling with withheld emotion, while Yuki continued staring in
Akito’s eyes.

Something was growing in him, something dark
and foolhardy and pissed. News of Tohru’s death wounded him, saddened
him, sickened him, but more than anything it just made him mad. She was a
good, kind, loving, absolutely beautiful girl, the kind of girl who only existed once every million or so years, and why had she
died? What had her crime been? She’d gotten involved with, charmed and saved
and loved, the screwed-up members of his family. Her crime had been that she was better than
them, better than Akito. And that galled
him.

So he spoke, unthinkingly, and that doomed
him.

“And how did she die, Akito?” he
hissed. “Did you break her? Did you finally get her to see the error of
her ways? Or did she defy you even in
death?”

He must’ve hit a nerve. Akito’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and for a
moment Yuki was sure Akito was reconsidering letting him live. But then a wicked, unholy light lit his eyes,
and he turned away with only a small smile.

He walked to Haru’s cell and began to
speak in that deceptively low, seductive murmur of his. Whatever he was saying was obviously
displeasing to the young man, as Kyo and Yuki could tell he was holding onto
his legendary temper by only a thin thread.

And then Yuki understood, but it was too
late.

Akito called to some of his lackeys, had
them manhandle a very peeved Black Haru into Yuki’s cell. And then Yuki watched as Akito whispered
through the bars, whispered words that brought a new but oh-so-familiar gleam
to those slightly deranged eyes. Kyo
still didn’t understand what was going on, his shouted insults to Akito proved
that, and Yuki spared a moment to think stupid
cat before Black Haru was on him.

His hand slipped from Kyo’s as Black Haru
tore open his shirt and started kissing him, but though Kyo tried to grab it
again Yuki didn’t let him. Kyo did not
need to feel this. Yuki could spare him
that much.

Black Haru was whispering to him, words of
lust and madness, words Yuki knew Akito had planted in the willing-to-believe
darkness that was Haru’s mind when he was black. When he found his voice,
Yuki called out, “stop! Haru, stop!
You’re going to regret this!”

His screams continued in that vein as
Black Haru yanked at his pants, with Yuki still too weak to stop him, the drugs
not yet gone from his system and his head throbbing with pain. And though he cried, the rage inside Haru was
just too much – he would be Black for a lot longer, now that he’d finally let
loose, and when he was black tears meant less than nothing; even when they were
Yuki’s.

And only when Black Haru was buried inside
him did Yuki stop screaming. And only
then did Akito choose to speak.

“He won’t regret it, dear Yuki. He won’t even remember it.”

-------

When it was over, Haru was quickly dragged
out of Yuki’s cage, before the satisfaction could overcome the rage and turn
him back to white. Yuki was too
exhausted, too worn, to even move, though modesty dictated that he cover
himself up – especially since he could feel eyes all over his skin, caressing
and memorizing. He looked to the side of
his cell, looked up into Kyo’s eyes, and the worry he saw in the crimson depths
eased his discomfort somehow. Though
these eyes also touched him, they were kind, and that made all the difference.

A gentle hand brushed over the side of his
face, a satin voice entered his ears, and a fear not even Black Haru’s attack
could’ve caused rose up in him. But
Akito just kept touching him, running his perversely gentle hands all over him,
and Yuki could only lie there and unwillingly submit.

It was over fairly quickly. And when Akito was lying on top of him,
exhausted and sated, Yuki’s numb ears finally picked up on the growling coming
from the cage beside his. He glanced
over to see Kyo shooting a fiery, deadly glare at Akito. That furious protection, though useless and
dangerous, made the tense, bruising ache in his stomach ease just a
little. Abruptly unaware of Akito’s
intense stare and naked body, Yuki smiled a ghost of a smile at Kyo, and
whispered tenderly, “baka neko.”

Kyo’s eyes met his, connecting, sharing, understanding. And
Akito could only watch, not share.

But he was, above all things,
cunning. Where Tohru Honda’s death and
Black Haru and Akito himself had apparently failed, maybe Kyo Sohma would not.

He shoved himself off Yuki, and slammed
his way out of the cage, taking a brief moment of pleasure from locking the
rebellious mouse inside. This would be delicious.

-------

Ayame burst into Hatori’s office, Ritsu at
his side, both men stopping only when they saw the body laid out on his
desk. Ritsu swooned, collapsing on the
floor in a swirl of his skirts, but Ayame stared, repulsed and amazed. On shaky legs he stepped forward, holding out
his hand, intending to brush silky hair away from that still pretty face-

“So it’s true then,” he whispered to
himself. He drew his hand back to his
chest before he could touch her, and in an unusually serious tone he asked the
two silent men who’d already been occupying the room, “does
my brother know?” Hatori and Shigure
exchanged an uneasy glance, and Ayame’s gaze narrowed. Tension invaded the already anxious energy in
the room, and suddenly Ayame knew, he knew,
what Hatori would say before he even spoke.

“Yuki is with Akito.”

-------

Akito brought in help for this stage of
his plan, for even though it was only the freakish cat he knew that all cats
had claws, and this one’s were extraordinarily sharp. So three men held a
struggling Kyo for him, while Yuki only watched, mind gone numb from shock.

“This is what happens when you disobey
me,” Akito hissed. “I have to punish you
in whatever way works best.”

Yuki screamed, a denial, a plea, but he couldn’t
even hear his own words over the blood pounding in his ears. And Kyo just stared at him, stared like he
wanted to remember this in eternity, like he wanted Yuki to be the last thing
he saw.

And he was.

-------

“But why?” Though he’d asked this question before, the
answers his two oldest friends were giving him just could not be
processed. “Akito’s orders...” “Never thought it would go this far...” “We had to obey...” When Hatori began explaining yet again about
how Akito was the head of the family and his words were law, Ayame just...
broke.

“Bullshit,”
he snarled, his voice carrying easily over the whimpering of Ritsu, who huddled
on the floor, unable to stand and ignored by the others. “Since when have the three of us been bound
by rules? What would Akito do if we all stood against
him? If he had no one to carry out his
orders, what power would he have?”

But Hatori just shook his head, and with
that small gesture Ayame could feel all his respect and love for this gentle,
unswervingly loyal (and obedient) man
just dripping out of him. That, more
than anything else, brought tears to his eyes.

But he shook them away, and knelt to help
Ritsu to his feet. Keeping one arm
around the shaking young man’s waist, Ayame asked, “where
is my brother now?”

Shigure opened his mouth, but his voice
didn’t seem to be working properly. It
was alright, though – he could convey all he knew easily enough. He shrugged his shoulders.

Ayame didn’t bother waiting to see if
Hatori would answer – he knew he wouldn’t.
Without a backward glance he swept from the room, dragging the
practically boneless Ritsu along with him.

Though the pain of it killed him, showing
his loyalty to Yuki was the proudest moment of his life.

-------

Akito had them leave the corpse just
outside Yuki’s cell, close enough to touch.
Yuki could hear Black Haru’s maniacal laughter and furious swearing, but
the sound came filtered through static, like a radio station that wasn’t quite catching. All he could hear above it was the sound of
Kyo’s body hitting the floor, repeating like a broken record.

Stress was consuming him, debilitating
him, and if he’d been aware he would’ve been amazed that it hadn’t yet turned
him into a rat. But even as a rat he
would not have escaped this pain, or this place...

A coughing fit overwhelmed him, and he
doubled over, hands reaching out and grabbing the flashlight he’d hidden in the
darkest, farthest corner of his cage in order to keep it secret. He was huddling in this corner to escape
Kyo’s open eyes, to escape the knowledge, but as his shaking fingers
accidentally flipped the light on he knew his hiding was over. The dim orange beam caught in Kyo’s crimson
eyes, making them sparkle like they did when he was alive, and Yuki suddenly
couldn’t breathe.

-------

Ayame was struggling to drag Ritsu around
the huge house, annoyed by the helplessness of his only companion but unwilling
to leave Ritsu here alone. If Akito had
truly killed that sweet girl-

He blinked back tears. Of course Akito had killed her – thinking
she’d been targeted randomly by some evil person was just too much of a
coincidence, and he knew in his gut it wasn’t true. So he had to find Yuki, find Yuki and run,
run as he should’ve done years ago, the very first time Yuki had ever needed
him to escape Akito...

That thought drove him on a little faster.

-------

Akito smiled as he lay back on his soft
bed. This was what Yuki got for his
betrayal. This was what he got for not
remembering where his true loyalties would always lie...

-------

Akito
heard voices, soft but unmistakable, coming from the gardens. He never usually drifted this far from his
rooms, but with Yuki somewhere in the compound he found he couldn’t help it –
he had to be out and about, and alone, blessedly alone...

But those voices – he knew them.
So he peeked around a corner at the two boys, watching with
heavy-lidded, jealous eyes...

“Not here, neko,” Yuki whispered, pulling away from Kyo’s arms. “There are two many people around.”

“Damn rat,” Kyo growled, only half-kidding, as he pulled Yuki back into
his arms. Oblivious to the danger, he
pressed his lips to Yuki’s, adding out of the corner of his mouth, “who cares?”

Yuki pulled away again, eyes shining so dark they appeared black as he
glanced fearfully around, just missing Akito as he briefly ducked his head back
around the corner. “Stupid cat,” Yuki
muttered, “what if Akito or one of his spies sees us? Do you have any idea what will happen
then? Do you?”

Kyo glared at him, his own eyes sparkling dangerously, his notoriously
short temper lit by Yuki’s words. “What
is it with you?” he spat. “Are you
ashamed of me, Prince? Is the filthy,
freakish cat not good enough for you?”

“You know that isn’t it,” Yuki said hastily, but Kyo cut him off.

“Isn’t it? Then what’s the
problem? At home it’s Tohru and Shigure,
here it’s Akito and whoever else – if you don’t want me, you damn rat, that’s
all you had to say. Quit wasting my
time.”

Yuki was struck speechless by the vehemence in his
tone, but all Kyo knew was that Yuki wasn’t speaking. He let the anguished silence last for all of
two seconds before he spun on his heel.
“Forget you-“

“Kyo.”

Just that one pleading word, said in a strained, unrecognizable voice,
was enough to stop him in his tracks.
Then he was spun around by needy hands, and hot, desperate lips were on
his, begging for forgiveness, asking him to stay. He didn’t need more of an invitation than
that.

He wrapped his arms around the warm, willing body pressed against his,
kissing deeply, hungrily, and they sank to the ground, slowly losing themselves
in each other.

-------

Yuki’s vision was blurring, and he knew
that the stress and the fever he just wasn’t shaking were sending his bronchial
tubes into another attack. He hated
these attacks, this weakness of his, but for a reason no one suspected – he
believed that if he hadn’t been born sick, he and Akito would never have spent
so much time together when they were younger, and then maybe Akito wouldn’t
have fixated on him like he had. Maybe
things like this, days with blood and pain and regret, would never have
happened.

The shortness of breath was
worsening. Still through that static
haze he heard Black Haru’s laughter turn to White Haru’s fear and concern, and
he wished he had the breath to tell his younger cousin, ‘no matter what, I still love you.
And it’ll be alright’.

But the first part, however true, was
followed by a blatant lie, and even if he’d had the breath he would not have
wanted to give voice to that.

With the last of his strength he crawled
forward, blindly reaching for Kyo’s hand through the bars. He grabbed it somehow, and brought it shakily
to his lips for a soft kiss as he choked and gasped for air.

He was swimming, now, fighting to stay
afloat in the blackness, when it finally occurred to him that he had no more reason
to fight.

So Yuki let himself drown.

-------

By the time Ayame found them Haru was
curled up, clutching his sides and sobbing brokenly into his knees. At first, his pain was so vivid it blocked
all else from Ayame’s vision, and he moved
unthinkingly towards Haru’s cage.

But then he heard Ritsu cry out, a
forlorn, broken sound, and he turned to see.

Kyo was sprawled on the other side of the
room, unmoving, unblinking. And beyond
him, inside another cell, Yuki lay curled around himself. Unmoving. Unblinking.

And Ayame decided that it was time to lay
waste to a god.

-------

He sent Haru and Ritsu away, to find the
missing children and then to flee. He
knew they’d be fine – Haru had a terrible sense of direction and Ritsu couldn’t
lead to save his life, but together they could make it. Together they could find the remaining
members of the Zodiac and start anew.

But in order for that future to happen,
the past had to be put to rest.

He snuck into the room easily, for no one,
in all the years of the curse, had ever dared what he was about to. Akito was lying on his bed, a dreaming smile
plastered on his face, and the very fact that he could smile after what he’d
done snapped Ayame’s last nerve. He
straddled the thin body easily, pinning Akito and waking him in one quick move
of his lithe form. Before Akito was even
oriented enough to blink, Ayame covered his mouth with his hand, and leaned in
as close as he could without tempting himself into biting something off.

“You and I don’t know each other well,” he
hissed softly, sounding every bit the furious snake, “but as I understand it,
you knew my brother well enough to more than make up for that.” Akito’s eyes glared up at him, but the fear that look had inspired in so many could not even reach
Ayame through his pain.

“You’ve killed him,” he whispered,
watching as a flicker of emotion flitted through Akito’s dead eyes. Did he regret? Ayame stared deeply into those eyes, as deep
as he could, but in the end he let it go.
It didn’t matter if Akito did.

No mere tinge of regret could inspire him
to mercy.

“I want you to know,” he said softly,
“that you took the best of us, when you took their lives. All you’re left with is turncoats and
psychotics-“

He leaned in even closer, until all Akito
could see were his big yellow eyes.

“-and murderers.”
- 1
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Darkness Drowning