Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Eden ❯ Eden (1/1) ( One-Shot )

Title: Eden

Author: Flamika

E-mail: flamika27@yahoo.com

Genre: Drama, Shounen-Ai

Disclaimer: They don't belong to me. I don't make profit. No sue.

Pairings: very light Akito/Hatori

Warnings: light shounen ai, child abuse, violence, probably some typos and grammar slips

Rating: PG-13

Notes: First Furuba fic. Be gentle. More author's notes at the end of the fic.

Summary: The fall of one god. The rise of another. And the one who aids the ascension.

*

Did you ever think of me,
As your best friend.
Did I ever think of you,
I'm not complaining.
I never tried to feel.
I never tried to feel.
This vibration.
I never tried to reach.
I never tried to reach.
Your eden.

"Eden"

Sarah Brightman

Hatori hunched his shoulders against the weight of his backpack, knowing he looked odd and not really caring. He kept his head bowed, watching the tops of his shoes as his feet descended onto the gray flagstones gently curving their way to the front of his house. Right, left, right, left. Such a normal, comforting rhythm. The afternoon sun beat down on the back of his head just like it had the entire way home, heating the dark material of his school uniform until sweat trickled down the nape of his neck.

Readjusting his heavy load to ease the stinging bite of the straps into his shoulders, he continued towards his house at an unhurried pace. He was never particularly happy to be at home, but he had no friends to hang out with save for Shigure and Ayame, who were both in detention for disrupting class. Hatori had warned them several times that they were going to get in trouble, but Shigure was a charming yet defiant thirteen-year-old, and despite Hatori's cautionary words, Ayame usually got dragged into whatever mischief Shigure caused.

Hatori had offered to wait in the library until they got out of detention, but the two had nixed the idea.

"Ha-san doesn't need to wait for us irresponsible children!"

"'Gure is right! Unlike us, Tori-san doesn't deserve to be subjected to the horrors of detention and the long hours of juvenile delinquents in rumpled school uniforms-"

Ayame had continued to wax poetic until Hatori had informed him that they were going to be late if they dallied any longer.

The front door of his house appeared all too soon, and Hatori hesitated briefly with his hand outstretched towards the sliding panel. He didn't want to go inside and see his mother, but it wasn't safe to wander the Souma's inner grounds nowadays. Yukiko, the head the family, was rumored to be in the final stages of her life, and when she had the strength, she prowled the inner circle like a hungry lioness, soundless as a shadow but far more ominous. Hatori would rather stay holed up in his room all day than risk encountering her.

With an internal sigh, he slid the front door open and removed his shoes, making sure to shove them to the side so no one could complain that they were in the way.

"Hatori?" his mother called sharply, her harsh tone warring with the once-sweet sound of her voice. "Is that you?"

Who else would it be?

"It's me, Mother," he said calmly, knowing she would snap at him if his tone fluctuated even a little from a total deadpan.

She emerged from the living room, beautiful as usual in a flowing sundress patterned with blue flowers, her long brown hair brushed and shining even in the shadowy entryway. At thirteen, Hatori was already considered a very handsome young man with his sloe-dark hair and fathomless gray-green eyes, and it was obvious from who he inherited his physical prowess. Souma Miya was always resplendent even if she stayed at home all day, as lovely as the day Hatori's father, a member of the Souma family, had whisked her off her feet and gotten her pregnant with a child she could never hold or love. You could cuddle a dog or even a cat. You couldn't cuddle a seahorse.

Hatori knew his mother didn't love him, and he couldn't really blame her. She had desperately wanted to shower her firstborn with affection, but every time she embraced him, he turned into a strange animal. She had shed so many tears over her cursed son already. Hatori was fine with her not loving him, if it lessened her suffering.

He fully expected an angry admonishment for not announcing himself, but instead all he got was a terse, "Did you happen to see Akito as you were coming in?"

Hatori frowned. "No."

Miya tossed her hair and glanced nervously around the room as if expecting the five-year-old heir to the Souma family to pop out of the woodwork. "He ran away from his caretakers again. Yukiko-sama is furious. I swear, they should keep a better eye on that boy. Doesn't he know that while he has his fun giving everyone the slip, Yukiko comes and tears apart everyone's homes trying to find him?"

"He's only five," Hatori pointed out. And I doubt he does it for fun.

His mother looked at him sharply, as if surprised to find he was still in the room. "Why are you home so early?" she demanded suspiciously. "Why aren't you with your friends?"

"Shigure and Ayame are in detention."

"I don't mean them. Don't you have other friends?"

"No," Hatori replied.

Miya nodded, satisfied. Hatori was never encouraged to make friends with outsiders, not even other Soumas who lived outside the inner circle.

"What are you going to do today?" she asked.

"Studying," Hatori replied, turning a little so she could see his overstuffed backpack. He'd purposely brought all his books home so she wouldn't shanghai him into running errands for her. Although he wasn't averse to helping his mother, he didn't want to chance meeting Yukiko when he was by himself.

"Fine," his mother said shortly as she turned and headed back towards the living room. "I'll call for you when I have dinner ready."

"Yes, ma'am," Hatori said politely.

He trudged off in the direction of his room, heart a little heavier, as it always was after a conversation with his mother. She didn't hate him, but she certainly didn't like him very much. Sometimes, it made him sad.

After depositing his backpack at the corner of his desk, he absently undid the buttons of his stuffy uniform jacket and tugged the stiff material off his shoulders. A blessedly cool breeze whisked through the open window, ruffling his dark hair and cooling some of the sweat on his skin. Ayame must have forgotten to close the window when he'd come knocking with Hatori's morning summons. Since Miya hated having two teenagers, cursed ones nonetheless, traipsing around the house at seven in the morning just to rouse her son, Ayame had resorted to banging at Hatori's window every morning.

He made his way over to his closet to hang up his jacket, but as soon as he opened the doors, he recoiled with a loud cry. Stormy gray eyes stared up at him from beneath a fringe of silky-looking hair. Pale skin flushed and smudged with dirt. Expensive kimono in no better condition.

"Hatori?" his mother called. "What's wrong?"

Hatori glanced towards the open doorway and then back to the small figure of Souma Akito huddled at the bottom of his closet. The boy didn't meet his eyes, only stared sullenly at Hatori's feet. He had a huge, ugly bruise on his left cheek, almost hidden by the soft fall of ebony hair that lay against his face.

"Nothing," Hatori called back. "I dropped something."

"Well, be more careful!" she snapped.

Hatori called an apology and quickly closed the bedroom door. He couldn't believe he just lied to his mother. Shigure was the one who fabricated stories to avoid getting in trouble. Hatori was just the one who sighed and went along with it.

Akito's eyes followed the older boy's every move as he hung up his jacket without glancing down at the diminutive child. Wordlessly, Hatori went up on tiptoe and pulled a first aid kit from the top shelf of his closet. It was one of the last things Hatori's father had given his son before an untimely car accident prematurely claimed the man's life. He'd been the family doctor, and everyone expected Hatori to follow in his father's footsteps.

He peeled off the sterile wrapping from one of the band-aids and started to reach for Akito's legs, which were scraped in several places, presumably from running through bushes to escape his captors all day. Akito flinched away from his touch.

"Mother beat Shigure the last time he put band-aids on me," the child said in a soft, quiet voice that for some reason reminded Hatori of the silky dinner gown his mother had tucked away in her closet, carefully wrapped in plastic, a forgotten treasure from a life she could never return to. A life before she'd given birth to the Dragon of the Zodiac.

Hatori shrugged and put the band-aid back in the kit, closing the box and putting it inside his closet in case Akito changed his mind later. He knew he should have told his mother where Akito was so they could return him to Yukiko and appease her wrath, but he knew all too well what would happen to Akito once he was back in his mother's hands. He would probably be given another bruise to match the one he already had, among other things.

Despite his instinctive desire to help the abused child, Hatori also didn't want to get into trouble. His loyalty was to Yukiko, not Akito. If the maniacal head of the family came demanding if her son was here, Hatori would hand him over without pause.

Fortunately, though, she wasn't here.

Without a second glance at Akito, Hatori got to his feet and sat down in his desk chair, digging through his backpack and pulling out a couple of books. He really didn't need half of the stuff he had packed, but if he was going to fulfill everyone's expectations of being the next family doctor, he had to keep his grades up. A little extra studying wouldn't hurt.

A light, shuffling step on the carpet behind him heralded Akito's sudden appearance at his elbow. Hatori ignored him, hoping the child would leave. He hadn't the slightest idea what to do with Akito. Aside from New Year's, he rarely saw the sickly boy, and he'd always been at a loss at how to deal with children, much less the future head of the family.

Akito coughed into a tiny fist, and Hatori spared him a momentary look, noting how painfully thin the boy looked in his light, summer clothing. Five years old and already dying.

"You should go back home," Hatori told him. "You need medicine for your cough."

Akito's eyes flashed defiantly. "Shigure's not at home right now, but he said if he wasn't at home, I could come to your house. He said you'd take care of me."

Hatori sighed. Of course, Shigure knew that Hatori was too soft-hearted to turn Akito away. Whenever Akito ran away, he headed straight for the dog's house. Shigure sincerely adored the child, but Hatori was worried such deep affection had given rise to a darker emotion.

"I hate Yukiko," Shigure had said casually a couple of weeks ago when he, Ayame, and Hatori were eating lunch on the grass at school.

Ayame had panicked and tried to get Shigure to take back his words, but the dog hadn't relented even when the silver-haired boy upset himself almost to the point of tears. Hatori was stunned by the admission and could only stare at his friend's serious brown eyes with a mixture of awe and dread. It had never occurred to Hatori to hate Yukiko for all the pain she caused. She was sick. It wasn't her fault.

"I don't really have anything for you to do," Hatori said, still hoping Akito would find another house to hide in. He would be sad if he had to turn the young boy over to his mother or one of the elder members of the Juunishi who took care of him.

Akito sidled up to him, gripping the edge of the desk with slender fingers that had none of the baby fat most children still retained at his age. "Can I look at one of your books?"

Hatori contemplated the pair of hardcovers in front of him and removed the Biology book from the pile. It had more pictures than the Algebra book. He set it in front of Akito and watched as the child strained to lift the cover with his skinny arms. A little frown tugged the corners of his small mouth as he saw the complex symbols on the pages.

"Oh," he said. "These are big words. I can't read these."

"You can look at the pictures."

Akito turned those deep gray eyes up to him, and Hatori was struck by how much Akito resembled his mother, right down to the sensuous lips and graceful nose. Age would enhance such beauty while it stole away Akito's health and sanity. It was cruel.

He tugged on Hatori's shirtsleeve. "I want to sit in your lap."

The dragon pivoted in his swivel chair and awkwardly helped Akito clamber into his lap. The child was tiny, almost undernourished, his small body shivering slightly despite the low-grade fever that stained his cheeks a light crimson. Running around all day had no doubt exacerbated his sensitive condition.

With Akito's narrow back pressed against his chest, Hatori carefully slid back up to the desk and pulled his Biology book in front of him, flipping to the chapter they were going to cover later in the week.

"What's this book about?" Akito asked.

"Biology."

"What's that?"

"The study of life."

"Mother says you're going to be a doctor."

Hatori shrugged, the bottom of his chin brushing the sun-warmed strands of Akito's hair. The dark locks were unbelievably soft, like water, silken and pliant against his skin.

"You don't want to be a doctor?" the boy asked.

"I don't really mind."

"You have to be a doctor," Akito said firmly, but Hatori could hear the hint of panic in his voice. "Mother says someone has to be a doctor so they can take care of me when I really start to die. I told her I just wouldn't die at all, but all she did was laugh and hit me." The tiny boy shuddered slightly.

Hatori frowned as he realized Yukiko and her caretakers were probably dripping poison into the child's ears. When he thought about it, he supposed he really couldn't fault Shigure for being angry at the head of the family.

"Don't worry," he said levelly. "I'll be your doctor."

Akito shifted in his lap, craning his head backwards so he could stare at the side of Hatori's face. "Really? Will you?" He sounded so happy. "You're my dragon, right?"

"Not yet," Hatori corrected. He didn't want to imagine what would happen if Akito went back to his mother and mentioned that the Dragon was defying the God.

"Oh," Akito said, sounding a little disappointed. "But one day you will be, right?"

"Yes."

Akito paused for a moment, but said in a smaller voice, "And you won't hate me, will you? Like Shigure hates Mother?"

"I won't hate you," Hatori assured him with completely sincerity because at that moment, he could never conceive of hating the affection-starved child perched in his lap.

Akito seemed satisfied with the answer and tucked his head underneath Hatori's chin, squirming a little until he was comfortably cushioned in the circle of the other boy's arms. Hatori wondered if Akito would fall asleep like that and decided he didn't really mind. He wasn't bothering him.

The patch of sunlight pooling on Hatori's midnight blue comforter slowly shifted as the day grew old, Hatori immersed in the Biology chapter and Akito dozing idly save for brief coughing fits that wracked his thin body so harshly that Hatori expected to hear his bones rattling.

It was during a momentary pause in of these fits that Hatori heard the pounding of feet on the floors of the house, and his mother's frantic voice assuring someone that Akito was not in the house.

Hatori had no trouble guessing who that "someone" was, and apparently Akito didn't either. He tried to gasp and ending up coughing uncontrollably instead, small hands clamped over his mouth to try and muffle the noises, but to no avail. Helpless whimpers escaped his throat in between coughs.

"AKITO!" the high, shrill voice of Souma Yukiko roared. Feet pounding in the direction of the room.

Akito jumped off of Hatori's lap, and the dragon made no move to stop him. The little boy tried to stumble towards the window, but gave up halfway there and just stood in the center of the room, still coughing, tears streaming from his eyes as he resigned himself to his punishment.

A second later, Hatori's door flew open with a bang that nearly knocked the sliding mechanism off its track. Yukiko clung to the threshold, her bony chest heaving, lovely face twisted with years of rage and madness. Her yukata had come undone slightly, baring the inner curves of her small breasts and porcelain skin stretched too thin over her sternum. She looked insane. And beautiful.

"You wretched little child!" she exploded with fury, storming up to Akito and slapping him viciously across the face. The force of blow sent the boy to the floor, where he sat coughing and gasping for air, raising his arms to shield his face.

Yukiko fell to her knees and grabbed her son by the hair, jerking him from side to side. "Why you? Why my son? Why him?" she wailed, voice so loud and full of anguish that Hatori knew it would echo in his room long after she was gone. A sudden terror seized him, grabbing his heart and squeezing painfully.

She'll kill him.

"My son shouldn't have to die for these cursed, ungrateful little MONSTERS!!" she shrieked, flinging Akito to the floor. The boy's face was blue, his eyes showing too much white around the edges.

He's going to suffocate. He's going to die.

Yukiko rose to her feet with furious grace that belied her weak, sickly body. She pulled a bare foot back, ready to deliver a vicious kick that would no doubt break something in her son's fragile body.

This evil woman was going to kill the head of the family.

Hatori sprung out of his chair and hit her with his shoulder, knocking her off balance. She fell against his bureau, the lamp on top of it tottering for an indecisive moment before careening off the edge and falling to the carpet with a muted thud. Yukiko collapsed in a shocked heap at the base of the dresser, dark hair and yukata in wild disarray.

"Yukiko-sama!" Hatori heard his mother exclaim fearfully as she rushed into the room. "Are you alright? I'm so sorry! I don't know what's wrong with Hatori!"

Hatori went to his knees and carefully picked Akito off the floor, cradling the boy's shuddering body against his chest. Akito's limbs were weak and boneless, all the strength drained from them by his coughing fit.

"My...my..." Yukiko stammered, her voice hoarse from all her screaming.

"I'm so sorry!" Hatori's mother apologized fervently. "My son is - I mean he's never been like this! Punish him if you will, just please forgive him!"

Akito's gray eyes were half-lidded as he gazed up into Hatori's dark green ones, his cheeks flushed bright red as he struggled to draw shallow breaths past his slightly-parted lips. Hatori stroked those flushed cheeks with trembling fingers, willing Akito to breathe easier. In his peripheral vision, he could see Yukiko struggling to her feet, but he only had eyes for Akito.

"My dragon," the woman murmured to herself in a panicked voice. "My dragon...attacked me! He...he cannot leave me...he can't...!"

Footsteps out in the hallway, receding. Her insane mumblings fading along with the lingering remnants of her dark presence.

Hatori's mother was yelling at him now, but he was past hearing her. He braced his back against the side of his bed and just sat there, rocking Akito in his arms and whispering soothing words to him, wanting nothing more than to ease the ache of betrayal in those haunted eyes, to mend the everlasting scar that would forever remain branded on the heart of the little boy whose mother wanted him dead.

That was how Shigure and Ayame found him half an hour later, curled against the edge of the bed with evening falling around him and Akito asleep in the protective embrace of his dragon.

*

Yukiko went straight to bed that night. She never got up again.

Her death shouldn't have come as such a shock after spending her entire life suffering through one bout of illness after another, but it still hurt in some vague, distant fashion to sit at her bedside while she murmured incoherently from the depths of delirium. But what hurt more than the passing of Yukiko were the whispers he heard amongst the members of the inner circle.

"Did you hear? Hatori attacked Yukiko-sama."

"No way!"

"Yes, you saw those bruises on her arms! He shoved her into a chest of drawers."

"I never thought Hatori would do something like that. He seemed like such a gentle child."

"No, he's ugly inside, just like all the other cursed children."

Akito cried when his mother died. He cried and cried and clung to Shigure and Hatori with all the strength in his grief-weakened limbs, refusing to eat, sleep, or even function unless they were with him. But he never once blamed Hatori for what happened to Yukiko. On the contrary, if he overheard someone saying bad things about Hatori, he went into a rage.

"Shut up! Hatori is MY dragon, and he's not ugly! If you say bad things about him, I'll have you killed!"

Whether they were five years old or fifty, the head of the family was the head of the family. No one defied the God. But the words had still been spoken, and Hatori remembered every single one of them. They were like knives in his heart.

Ugly. Cold-hearted. Pitiless. The Dragon's defiance had killed the head of the family. Yukiko had died from a loss of purpose. And a broken heart.

She was only twenty-three.

*

Hatori stared dully at the charts in front of him until his eyes began to blur and sting from overexposure as well as lack of sleep. He squeezed his eyelids closed and rubbed them tiredly, moisture surfacing to try and ease the weary burn out of them.

Akito had pushed Rin out of a window.

It was the most physically violent act he had committed to date, and Hatori's endurance was stretched thin driving back and forth between the Souma house and the hospital where Rin was staying. It would have been easier to let one of the doctors on staff at the hospital care for Rin's injuries, but if her body weakened to the point where she transformed, Hatori would just have more work on his hands erasing all the witness' memories. It was easier to cut out all the middle men and care for Rin on his own. Outsiders didn't need to get involved in affairs involving cursed members of the Souma family. Except for the special case involving one Honda Tohru.

One of the servants, a portly middle-aged woman, suddenly appeared in the doorway of his office, bowing respectfully. "Sensei, Akito-sama says he's ready for his afternoon check-up."

Hatori nodded. "Thank you." The servant bowed and left.

Exhausted limbs protested their owner's movements with a chorus of dull aches as Hatori rose from his chair, feeling twenty years older than his actual twenty-seven years. He mechanically began gathering all the bottles that held the individual pills of Akito's drug cocktails. Truthfully, it didn't take a doctor to deliver Akito's pills to him. A monkey could do it, as the American adage went.

Hatori immediately retracted the thought as he imagined Ritsu trying to give Akito his medicine.

The difficult part wasn't bringing Akito the pills. It was ensuring Akito took them that sometimes kept Hatori in the god's rooms for half an hour, enduring idle questions and snide comments until Akito finally downed the medicine with a weary sigh. If he just left the pills with Akito to swallow on his own, they would still be in the same place when he returned for the evening check-up. And Akito would most likely be sick by the next morning.

He set all the medication into his black bag and made his way from his house to the area of the Souma compound that contained Akito's rooms. The land was alive with the golds and greens of summertime, but as always, the house belonging to the head of the family was full of shadows and ghosts. It was a wonder Akito could spend most of his time here. But maybe he felt right at home with the phantoms. He would be joining them one day, after all.

The thought depressed Hatori more than he suspected, but he chalked up the effect to the chemical imbalances in his brain from overdoses of caffeine and not enough sleep.

Since Akito was expecting him, he didn't bother announcing himself as he slid open the door to his god's room. The frail young man sat outside on the edge of the garden, sunlight making the dark strands of his hair shine like polished onyx. His outer coat lay in a heap of somber purples and blues on the floor behind him, and Akito looked thinner than usual in just his light yukata.

He must have lost more weight during the winter.

Hatori fell into his usual pattern, sitting a little ways from Akito and setting his bag next to him.

"How are you feeling, Akito?" he asked, as he always did.

The dark-haired young man didn't bother replying, just contemplated the white bird settled on his frail wrist, its bright orange beak lightly pecking at the thin skin on the back of his hand. They both knew it was an idle question, but Hatori always felt the need to ask.

After a while, Akito said, "You didn't tell me to put my coat back on. Perhaps you don't care if I catch a cold."

"The sun will do you some good."

Akito made a derisive noise. "It burns."

"Only if you stay out too long." Hatori raised a hand to stifle a yawn.

The bird on Akito's wrist suddenly took flight with a rapid flutter of pristine wings as Akito stood up, wandering away from the wooden floor at the edge of his room and onto the stone path that lead further into the garden. After an entire winter of overcast skies and nighttime freezes, Akito's skin looked nearly translucent as he angled his face up towards the sunlight, dark eyes slipping closed.

Hatori watched him for a moment, taken as always with Akito's dark allure. Sickness. Madness. Akito could take the most obscene things and make them beautiful. Twisted, but beautiful.

Opening the bag at his side, Hatori began to remove bottle after bottle of pills. The sound of the capsules striking one another within their plastic cages made Akito stir slightly, half-turning towards the dragon.

"How are you feeling, Hatori?" he suddenly asked in an oddly lilting tone that might have been mocking or simply apathetic.

"Tired," he replied.

Akito laughed quietly, hugging himself around the midsection as if such expression of mirth caused him pain. "Busy taking care of that horrible Rin, no doubt. How is she?"

"She regained consciousness this morning," Hatori said, remembering walking into her room and seeing dark brown eyes watching him guardedly from between the bandages wrapped around her head.

"Ah, that's good," Akito said, walking to stand in front of Hatori, blocking out the sun. "She got what she deserved. I didn't want to kill her despite the fact that she's a vile, disgusting woman."

Hatori stared up at him wordlessly, wondering what he should say, or if Akito even expected an answer.

Akito reached out and touched Hatori's hair, running his fingers through the soft strands that hung over his sightless eye. "Your hair is getting long again." His fingertips trailed down Hatori's jaw, nails lightly scraping the skin, raising gooseflesh, before settling on his shoulders. "Poor Hatori works so hard. Do you hate me for punishing that troublesome Rin?"

"No, Akito," he replied honestly.

You're sick. It's not your fault.

Though the blinding glare of the sun had cast Akito's face into shadow, Hatori felt a soft sigh stir the strands of longish hair that framed the sides of his face. Akito's thin, soft arms slid around Hatori's neck as he settled himself sideways in his lap, the scent of lavender rising from his pale skin. Hatori instinctively put a hand on Akito's waist to prevent the head of family from sliding off of his legs. Akito's lips touched his cheek for a moment so brief Hatori couldn't decide if he'd been kissed, or if Akito had accidentally grazed that soft mouth over his jawline.

Hatori brought his other arm up to secure his grip on Akito's waist as he felt a slightly feverish forehead press against the side of his neck. Tired green eyes slipped closed, preparing for a rest that would last as long as Akito wanted to be held. It seemed all Hatori could do for Akito these days was shove pills down his throat and hold him when Akito wished it. He wondered if his usefulness was coming to an end, and the day was rapidly approaching when the Dragon would once again destroy the head of the family by betraying the past for the future.

In his half-dozing state, Rin's pale, emotionless face suddenly floated in front of him, her words from earlier this morning resounding in his ears.

"Whether it's Akito or someone else, it make no difference. The head of the family is always the same. One dies, another takes their place. It's just a cycle of madness that never ends."

Hatori agreed that it was a cycle. He agreed that it was madness. But he didn't agree with the rest of her words.

There would always be a head of the Souma family, but there wouldn't always be an Akito.

Sometimes, it made him sad.

~fin

18 June 2004

Did I ever think of you,
As my enemy.
Did you ever think of me,
I'm complaining.
I never tried to feel.
I never tried to feel.
This vibration.
I never tried to reach.
I never tried to reach.
Your eden.

"Eden"

Sarah Brightman

-- In the manga, Hatori's eyes are blue. In the anime, his eyes are gray-green. I like green eyes, so Hatori's eyes are green.

-- Well, this was my first Furuba fic so it may not be the best, but I wanted to write an Akito and Hatori fanfic. I wanted to show Akito as a young child who didn't yet have true power over the Juunishi, who was caught between demanding things and asking for them.

-- As for Yukiko dying once Hatori defied her, well, if the sole purpose of the head of the family is to die for the Juunishi, and someone suddenly begins to show loyalty to the new head of the family, well, that removes the purpose of the current head. So, death is all that is left. It was more a mental thing.

-- I also tried to show in this fanfic a gradual transfer of loyalty from Yukiko to Akito. Technically Shigure was the first to defy the head of the family since he started to hate Yukiko, but Hatori was the first to actively defend Akito against an aggressor.