Silence consumed the great Sohma estate that night he first returned to the place of his nightmares…
… In the Sohma estate, everyone was forbidden to leave their individual homes, especially if they lived near Akito’s quarters…
… But just because they weren’t allowed outside didn’t mean that they couldn’t hear the Nezumi’s screams of terror, or see the blackened window in Akito’s house, which would now surely be splattered again with the crimson blood of his most prized Nezumi…
Only one person was outside on this fateful night – Hatori.
-‘Why?’ He thought to himself. ‘Because if I am not here, then I won’t be able to save him… I won’t be able to heal his wounds if he comes, not if I’m inside that house… Yuki would never come and ask for help, not now, not even when he was little… so I must be there to offer it to him, and carry it out even if he says that he is not worth the trouble…’-
So all Hatori could do was sit there on that cold night, smoking his cigar, and watching that blank room, waiting for the screams to cease, the moment when he could enter the household and rescue the teenaged Nezumi who still couldn’t escape from his nightmares, not even ten years after they had began…
-‘Please, if there is another god out there… please help Yuki… please…’-
It was only when he heard someone else running up to that room did he get of his lookout post and see who would intervene foolishly with what was happening…
***
But in the dark world of the Sohma’s, as Hatori only full well knew, there is only one god that will ever be with us – and that god is on earth… and called Akito Sohma… the one person who wouldn’t want to help me… Because it was actually Akito who was torturing me…
“Please… Akito… please… stop…” Amidst the echoing silence a small voice spoke, trying to keep the shuddering out of his frail tones… in vein…
My voice…
“Aww Yuki, my poor little Yuki… are you scared…?” As I sat there, terrified in the dark I could feel Akito’s frail, cold fingers stroke my face, lingering just long enough to send a shiver down my spine… “You know it’s only your fault that this is happening… don’t you…? You know that I wouldn’t be like this if you only did as I said, and stopped GOING AGAINST ME!”
As Akito’s temper rose I could feel his hand grip my silver hair roughly, before using it to propel me against the wall, blood trickling down the wall as I fell limp, helpless to stop the onslaught that I knew was to come…
“There, there, my little Nezumi, don’t cry…” As he spoke my hand flew up to my cheeks. Had I really been crying…? Apparently so… “Do not fear about being alone… sure, the others will leave you, but I never will…”
That made me cry out even more – how could he call a life seeing only one person, a person you feared as ‘not alone’? If being alone was having a life without Akito, then I would gladly choose to be ‘alone’ for all of my life – gladly…
“No! A… Akito… p… please stop… y…”
I could feel the tingling sensation on my back before I fully comprehended what was happening – that the blooded rope slashing against what was left of my cloths and my bare flesh wasn’t from a nightmare… at least not one that I could wake from and think of as a dream – because I was already awake… and this wasn’t a dream – it was a reality, and there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening…
“AKITO, OPEN THE DOOR!” We both paused for a moment as someone – or some people tried to open the locked door, and then began pounding upon it when they realised it was locked. But the voices… one I could unmistakeably identify as Hatori’s… but the other one… Was it Niisan’s?
“AKITO!”
Either way, it didn’t matter, and as the pounding of the rope resumed I forgot about the voices who had been trying to rescue me…
I closed of my ears to the words that Akito whispered around me, but it didn’t stop them being etched upon my soul, remaining there for all eternity, for everyone to see. I had grown a mask over the years I had been away from Akito’s cruel gaze… but it didn’t matter now. You would have to be blind not to notice what I was like.
So I lay there, unmoving as Akito tortured me, trying to keep my mind off the horrendous things that were happening to me… and failing dismally…
Then, as I thought I was about to collapse from exhaustion and the pain, he stopped, and crouched down threateningly next to me.
“Don’t worry, my precious little Nezumi… I won’t let you be corrupted anymore… I’ll make sure that you come back home…”
After all that pain I suffered through, it was only after he left that I was allowed the bliss of nothingness, of collapsing into a world that surely was better than this one…
… But the fates wouldn’t even let me stay in that state for long.
***
“AKITO, OPEN THE DOOR! AKITO!”
We stood there for what seemed like hours, pounding at the door, trying to force it open… but in the end it was Akito who let us in.
“You may see him now. Then you will leave.” His voice sent a shiver down my back as he left, completely unconcerned about what state Yuki could be in…
… And in a bad state he was.
In the corner of the dark room lay Yuki, but it wasn’t the calm, ‘masked’ Yuki we had known over the last few years. This Yuki was a wreck. Huddled as far as he could from the room, you could barely see him. But what you could see of him was enough to make even the most hardened hearts feel queasy. All around the room were shreds of cloth, and what was left on them barely covered Yuki… and played no part in protecting him from the pain that had been inflicted to the rest of him.
It simply looked as if he had been clothed in red – that was how bad he had been hit by the rope that lay on the floor abandoned…
“What has Akito done to him?” Never had I heard Ayame’s voice so quiet, so… serious… and it scared me in a way to see him like that… so vulnerable… “If I see him…”
“Then you’ll do nothing Ayame. You won’t, and Yuki won’t do anything either… because we can’t do anything about it.”
“So what?” Ayame’s voice had turned slightly annoyed as he fully understood the state that we were all in – his pretences of playfulness and ‘care freeness’ now completely gone from his system as hate boiled inside him. “Are we just going to let this… this…?”
“Yuki…?” I went slowly to him, and as I crouched down next to him he began to shiver violently. This can’t be good… “Yuki… are you alright…?”
“Leave me alone…” The teenager’s hoarse voice shocked me – how long had he been in this room, alone, with no food or drink…? “P… please… I… leave me…”
Why wouldn’t the boy look up…? Why wouldn’t he relax now his fears were gone…?
“Yuki…” Ayame crouched down at the other side of him, concerned at his brother’s health. “Akito’s not here anymore… You can look up…”
***
“Why won’t you look up my Yuki when I am speaking to you? I want to see your beautiful amethyst eyes…”
***
“NO! L… leave me alone!” Even though there was some power in his voice, by the end of his sentence it had crumbled away into a plea, rather than a demand.
“Yuki…” Ayame reached out and touched Yuki’s shoulder gently, but he flinched away, curling up into an even tighter ball.
***
“It’s such a pity that you haven’t learned from the mistakes in your past Yuki… I suppose I’ll just have to tame you again…” He grabbed my shoulder roughly and caressed my skin gently, before digging in his nails, slicing though everything in their path, flesh, cloth or bone… “And you know how much I love to keep you in your pitiful place now… don’t you…?”
“Get away from me Akito!” I awaited the punishment that would come from my words obediently – now those words had passed my lips there was no going back, and no time for please… pleas which would be sure to fail…
***
“Hatori…?” I looked up from my case and saw Ayame facing me, a worried expression on his face. And I only had to look down briefly to see what caused the expression on his face; the curled up Yuki was shaking violently now, and I knew instantly why that was – he was having flashbacks…
And there was only one way to stop him from having them…
“I’m sorry for doing this Yuki…” I whispered to him as I pushed the sharp needle into his bare flesh, causing him to go limp in my arms. “But it’s the only way to stop you from suffering… The only way…”
“What are you doing to him Hatori…?” Ayame whispered as I carried Yuki away from the room of his nightmares and into my office, careful not to wake him, as even the powerful sedative that was working in his bloodstream wouldn’t keep him in anything more than a light slumber – his rat DNA already becoming immune to the human sedative.
“Taking him to safety, at least for now. Call Shigure Ayame. Tell him that Yuki won’t be back… at least not until he is no longer in this state… I don’t want Honda-san to have to worry… its best if she doesn’t know…”
“Know what Hatori-san?”
“I have no authority to answer that Ayame - patient confidentiality… Only Yuki can answer that question… and the way he is, I doubt even he himself can remember why and how he became like this…”
