Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Learning to Stand ❯ Warnings in Nightmares ( Chapter 13 )

Chapter 13: Warnings in Nightmares

We did talk again. It was strained for a while; I realized that more than my breaking her trust she was now deeply afraid of losing me. I was afraid of losing her, too, but I think that for her it was much deeper. Every time I saw her I vowed to stand as long as I could with her. But the same feeling I had when I spoke with Ayame-san lurked in my heart: I knew that eventually Akito would find out that I knew and that our friendship would be erased from my memory. Another term ended; I moved out of my dorm and into a tiny apartment nearby. Isuzu-chan visited me frequently. Sometimes she even stayed the night and I would hear her moan softly in her sleep, lost in nightmares. After a particularly bad one she sat bolt upright, eyes wide in pain and terror.

"Isuzu-chan? Daijobu?" She shook her head.

"Ie, Tamae-chan." Her hand went to the scar on her shoulder.

"How did that happen?" I asked her, gesturing towards the healed injury.

"In a fall. After Akito found out about Hatsuharu and me, he pushed me out a window. I was in the hospital for two weeks." She still paused slightly over Hatsuharu-san's name, as though savoring it. She hadn't mentioned him in a long time.

"Why did he push you?"

"Hatsuharu is a favorite. I'm not. Akito…doesn't like women very much." She looked sad. "Of all the female jyuunishi, he likes me least of all. I took Hatsuharu away from him."

"You broke up with Hatsuharu-san right after that, didn't you?" She nodded.

"He never found out the real reason I was injured. If he had, I know he would have gone black and done something he would have regretted. We can't go against our God." The bitterness in her voice tore at me. "I told myself that I would protect Hatsuharu more by not being with him than I could if we were together. I've been trying to find a cure for the curse since then. I even asked Shigure," she shuddered at the memory, "but he told me he couldn't help me. Wouldn't help me, is more like it. Shigure has his own agenda. I don't know what he wants, but I know he'll stop at nothing to get it. He's hurt several of us to get there." She paused. "I think…I think he's the most loyal to Akito of all of us. The rest of us love him as much as we hate him, but Shigure…I think he loves him most of all."

"You all love Akito? Despite what he's done?" She'd told me a few details over the last year and I felt sick at what they had had to endure.

"We must. Otherwise why would we put up with it? Blood bond be damned, none of us have even tried standing up to him." Not even I could make him stand. Haruko's words rang through my mind. I hugged Isuzu-chan close.

"Maybe…" I trailed off. "Maybe no one ever felt they were strong enough to."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," I tried collecting my thoughts. I wasn't even sure what I meant. "Akito has spent so much energy making you all feel like you owe him. Like you belong to him. Like you have no worth except what he gives you. After a lifetime of that, how could you feel like you could stand against him? I don't know what all of you feel, or what you've all experienced, but I know that Isuzu-chan discovered a horrible truth behind a beautiful lie and that Akito used that to keep her from being happy. He's still using it. And it's still working. If he keeps feeding you poison, how can you hope to find the strength to stop taking it?" She looked at me as though I'd gone nuts.

"Sometimes, Tamae-chan, I don't know what to think of the things that come out of your mouth."

"Say that the next time I get drunk." I joked. We both knew I never drank. She laughed all the same and snuggled closer to me.

"Arigatou, Tamae-chan." I nodded. Kami, please let me be able to stand for her. For as long as I can. I can't stop him from poisoning her, but maybe I can try to keep her from taking too much.