Work Text:
My lover, dearest
Let me share your last breath
I care not for my own life
As long as we're together.
- Unknown, Request of a dying man
Tohru was suffocating. She was suffocating, and nobody could do anything about it.
When it started, it had been a beautiful morning in September, the first week of school after summer vacation – and Tohru had woken up unable to breathe, choking. Shigure had burst into her room as she coughed, and she’d just barely been able to tell him that she was okay, right before the object in her throat finally came loose and dropped into her hands.
It was a flower petal, round and white like a rose’s. She recalled how Shigure had looked at it, how she’d expected him to laugh and be as relieved as she was, but the worry in his expression had only increased. “We need to go see Hatori,” he’d said, “right now.” His eyes had been wide and panicked; there was always something playful in Shigure’s eyes, but not that time. Nor any time after that.
Hanahaki, that was what Hatori had called it. Kyou and Yuki had been there with her when Tohru got the diagnosis – they’d practically fought their way into the doctor’s office, too worried to wait outside. They’d both skipped school to be there for her.
Kyou had scoffed when Hatori didn’t explain further. “Are we supposed to know what that means?” he’d said. “Is she going to die, or what?” His tone had been tense, the way it was when he tried to hide his true feelings beneath anger. He was scared.
Hatori had shaken his head. “No,” he’d replied, although his face was pale. “People develop hanahaki when they love somebody, but that person doesn’t love them back. Or when they believe that that person doesn’t love them back.”
“But it can be cured, right?” Yuki had cut in softly.
“Yes,” Hatori had replied. “When a kiss is shared between two people who love each other equally, hanahaki is cured.”
That had visibly startled both Yuki and Kyou, but Tohru hadn’t understood. “That’s easy, isn’t it?” she asked. “Then it should work if I kiss a friend who sees me as a friend as well, shouldn’t it?”
Hatori nodded. “That’s correct.”
So Tohru had turned around to the boys, bowing her head to them politely. “Kyou!” she’d announced. “Or Yuki! As your friend, I ask you to let me kiss you.”
Kyou had immediately been reduced to stutters and loud protests – Yuki seemed calmer, but his face was regardless a bright red. “Tohru,” he’d said, nervously, “I’m not sure if that’ll work…”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out, right?” And so, Tohru had strode up to him and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
It had been silent for at least ten seconds as they waited for something to happen. “How…” Kyou had started eventually. “How do we know it worked?”
Right then, Tohru started to cough again, her hands pressed against her mouth as she struggled to breathe. When the fit finally stopped, she saw how a cherry blossom petal drifted gently towards the ground.
“It didn’t work,” she said, but she didn’t really think anything of it – she didn’t even notice how Yuki flinched in the corner of her eye. Instead, she stepped towards Kyou, stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek as well.
He basically launched himself away from her, blushing furiously. It made Tohru laugh, and the laughter turned into a coughing fit, and she spit out another petal into her hands.
“Uhm, Hatori?” she’d asked, her voice hoarse. “Shouldn’t this have worked? I mean, Yuki and Kyou are my friends, right?”
And next to her, Yuki fell to his knees.
“Oh- Yuki!” Tohru rushed towards him, but Hatori gestured that she should keep her distance.
“Yuki,” Hatori said, kneeling beside him. “Talk to me. Are you having an asthma attack?”
Yuki shook his head. He was visibly trembling, his breath coming out in short and shallow gasps. “No,” he choked out. “This is… It’s different…”
He curled in on himself, coughing – Hatori rubbed Yuki’s back. To Tohru’s shock, when Yuki stopped coughing, there was a flower petal lying on the floor.
Tohru’s voice sounded small when she spoke, even to her own ears. “You didn’t tell me that hanahaki is contagious, Hatori.”
“It’s not.” Hatori didn’t quite look her in the eyes; he continued to rub Yuki’s back, almost absent-mindedly. “It’s not supposed to be.”
“How in the hell does that work?” Kyou shot back, but before he could say anything else, his face twisted into a grimace and he forcibly cleared his throat. When he, too, spat out a petal, Tohru wasn’t surprised, just frozen with worry.
Hatori clenched his jaws. “Tohru,” he said. “Don’t let this stop you from trying to cure your hanahaki. Just… don’t kiss any more Sohmas until I figure out what’s going on.” He looked away. “I need to speak with Yuki and Kyou alone.”
Tohru was sent back into the hallway, and that was it. There was no easy cure, no medicine. Just the flower petals that she coughed up and the knowledge that she would die if she didn’t stop it.
She went to school, that afternoon. Hana-chan cried as soon as she entered the classroom, before Tohru had even had the chance to explain what was going on. Uo-chan cried after she’d explained.
The three of them were sent to an empty classroom to calm down. Both Hana-chan and Uo-chan gave Tohru a kiss on the cheek as soon as they learned that that might cure her hanahaki. It didn’t work. Hana-chan explained through her tears that it hadn’t worked because she and Uo-chan saw Tohru as someone they needed to protect – Tohru, instead, saw them as equals.
Tohru didn’t have any friends outside of Hana-chan and Uo-chan that weren’t Sohmas, nor was she in love with anybody. It was odd, Hana-chan had mused one afternoon when she’d come over to visit Tohru at home. “Tohru, are you sure you aren’t in love with someone?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Tohru had replied, and she meant it, although it inexplicably felt like she was lying. “Why?”
Hana-chan had shrugged, looking troubled. “It’s just that I studied up on hanahaki a little,” she said, “and people always get it when they feel rejected romantically.” She bit her lip. “And I could swear that Kyou and Yuki’s waves…”
She trailed off, and Tohru shook her head. “It didn’t work when I kissed them,” she replied. “In fact, I only made everything worse, and I… I don’t want to try again.”
“I understand that completely.” Hana-chan smiled sadly, and she leaned against Tohru, a warm and solid presence. “Just do your best to keep the two of them close. I have a feeling that things will work out if you do that. So don’t give up hope, Tohru, please.”
Hana-chan was always right when it came to things like that, so Tohru had followed her advice. She hadn’t given up hope, not even when her coughing got so bad and frequent that she couldn’t go to school anymore, or make dinner, or clean the house.
She didn’t give up hope, not even the times Yuki fainted after a particularly bad coughing fit, or whenever Kyou tried so hard to pretend he was fine when she could see the exhaustion in his eyes.
She didn’t give up hope, but it was getting difficult.
From September onwards, their hanahaki had gradually gotten worse, much worse – bad enough that Tohru, Kyou and Yuki had by now taken up the tatami room on the first floor, each of them bundled up on their own futon, because their lungs could no longer bear the effort of walking up and down the stairs.
There were moments that the boys would start to cough, a rasping and horrible sound, and Tohru would wonder every time; what if this was it? What if today was the day they died?
She could only wonder – there was nothing else she could do. She could do nothing to help them except rub their backs and pray that she would get to spend just one more day with them.
Tohru was suffocating, and Yuki wished with all his heart that he could help.
He remembered the day that it started – how he had woken up to Shigure shouting that he was taking Tohru to see Hatori, how harsh anxiety had flooded his system instantly, how he’d shot into his clothes. How he’d yelled at Shigure that he didn’t care about school, he just wanted to be sure that Tohru was okay.
He remembered how, until that morning, he’d believed that he had a chance with Tohru. He’d been in love with her since the moment they met. He’d believed, somewhere deep down, that she felt the same way about him.
If only he hadn’t been in love with her. If he had just been her friend instead of a lovesick fool, then he would’ve saved her life right then.
Instead, she’d called him her friend, and she’d fully believed that he loved her equally – as a friend. When she kissed him, and when that did nothing to help her, Yuki could feel his soul grow cold with shock. He didn’t feel rejected, not truly, but it was crushing to realize that they both loved each other fiercely but in the wrong way.
The next thing he knew, he was on his knees, coughing up flower petals.
Hatori had confronted him about it afterwards, him and Kyou. It had been a difficult conversation, because the only way to cure both Yuki’s and Kyou’s hanahaki, was either if Tohru loved one of them romantically, or if they could both love her as a friend.
The last option was undoubtedly the best – Yuki would never attempt to make Tohru love him, and he was sure that Kyou saw that the same way.
They both agreed not to tell Tohru anything. It wasn’t fair to make her feel guilty about their hanahaki when it was their own fault in the first place. And so, the two of them each started trying to change their feelings towards Tohru. Which wasn’t easy, because Yuki’s feelings for Tohru soon became less than his biggest worry.
His biggest worry, currently, was breathing.
He’d always known that he was one of the weakest members of the Zodiac. Not necessarily in terms of physical strength – he’d beaten Kyou in hand-to-hand combat more often than he cared to count – but his health had always been his biggest weakness. His immune system had never been great, and he always spent at least one week each winter sick in bed. And then he had his asthma, and then hanahaki on top of that…
He was sure that he’d never been weaker.
During the first few weeks after they’d gotten sick, Tohru and Kyou had continued going to school, while Yuki had been bedridden, useless. His asthma medication had helped, at least at first, but he still hadn’t been well enough to get out of the house – even the simple act of walking down the hall to the bathroom left him gasping for breath. He hadn’t been outside in months.
Deep inside, he was furious. He could accept that he and Tohru weren’t made for each other, because it was her choice whether she loved him or not, but he hated the fact that he didn’t even get to see her anymore. He needed so much more time with her than he could get. It was just another way he was cursed, he supposed.
And by the time he did get to be around her more, he instantly wished he hadn’t prayed for more time with her at all. If staying away from him meant that she was healthy, then he’d prefer her to be on the other side of the world instead of right next to him. Because the reason why he got to be around her more, was because Tohru had gotten too sick to go to school.
It was awful. It was mostly awful because Tohru never stopped smiling – not even when her coughing got so bad that she couldn’t breathe, not even when she first coughed up a fully-formed flower and they knew that this was it, that she could start dying any moment now. If anything, her smiles became even more radiant, and it made Yuki feel guilty for feeling desperate.
“Don’t worry, Yuki,” she told him one winter morning after she’d just coughed up another entire flower, minutes upon minutes of desperate coughing. Her voice was barely there, and yet she was smiling. Her hands were curled into the blanket of her futon, relaxed after they’d been balled into fists for what felt like ages. “I can breathe, again. I’m okay.”
“Tell that to Shigure,” Kyou grumbled – Shigure had rushed out of the house to get Hatori when it became clear that Tohru wasn’t going to stop coughing. Yuki had never yet seen him this worried. Kyou sat next to the open door, on the lookout for when they returned. “Also, you don’t have to lie to us, Tohru. We’re all in this shitshow together.”
Yuki managed a smile towards Tohru. “It’s true,” he agreed. The mere effort of talking was immense enough to send him into a coughing fit, not because his body wanted to expel a flower, but because he could hardly get enough oxygen into his lungs to speak. These past few days, breathing had become enough of a struggle that he could no longer lie down; he was propped up against the wall with pillows. Kyou quietly tossed him his asthma inhaler.
Kyou stared outside while Yuki took his medication. “They’re back,” Kyou said simply, nodding his chin towards the front door. “Relax,” he then called at Shigure and Hatori, “no one’s dead yet.”
“Thank goodness,” Shigure huffed, leaning against the wall. He was out of breath from running.
He slid the door to the tatami room further open to step inside. Cold winter air from outside blew into the room. Yuki buried his nose in his blanket to avoid breathing in the stinging frozen air.
Hatori followed, sitting down on the floor and setting the suitcase that he carried with him down next to him. He, too, was panting; they must’ve been running the whole way here. Yuki couldn’t explain why, but it worried him to see Hatori so disheveled. He was always so composed, but that wasn’t the case right now. The collar of his suit was visibly damp with sweat.
He examined Tohru quietly – the same examination they’d each had dozens of times over the past months. He listened to her lungs as she breathed as deeply as she could, her breaths occasionally interrupted by coughs. Yuki could hear her breath wheeze in her throat from where he sat.
Eventually, Hatori took off his stethoscope. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years over the past few minutes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He swallowed difficultly, clearly unable to continue.
“What is it?” Kyou snapped. “What’re you so sorry about?” His words were broken off when his voice caught in his throat – a forceful coughing fit wracked his body.
Hatori looked them all in the eye, one by one. There was something frustrated about him, underneath his professional façade. “I’m sorry to all of you,” he said quietly. “It seems that you’re in the final stages of hanahaki.”
“Oh,” Yuki breathed. He’d known, of course, but it was harsh to hear it like this. The three of them had been consistently developing hanahaki at the same rate. He was dying, and so was Tohru, and Kyou. They were dying.
Tohru sought eye contact with Hatori, and smiled at him – of course she’d smile at him. “It’s okay,” she said, “Hatori, don’t be sad. You said so yourself: there was nothing you could’ve done.”
“Yeah,” Kyou quietly agreed. Yuki just nodded, not wanting to risk triggering another coughing fit by talking.
Hatori nodded his head and got up from the floor. “I will help you in any way I can,” he said, his jaw set in grim determination. “I’m staying here for as long as needed.”
Tohru was suffocating, and there was nothing Kyou could do about it.
He hated it. He hated it because he would’ve given his life to save hers in a heartbeat, but that wasn’t how this worked.
Either both of them survived, because they loved each other, or neither of them survived, because Tohru didn’t love him back. No, actually, that wasn’t fair to her. Kyou had seen enough to know that she loved everybody equally and whole-heartedly. There was no doubt that she loved him, but in the same way that she loved her friends at school or her grandpa or something. Not in the way Kyou loved her.
He couldn’t ask her to change – he would never force her to love him, he wasn’t an asshole like that. So he tried his hardest to love her as a friend. If he could just do that, then he could save them both; but most importantly, he could save her.
Every time he thought he was succeeding, though, she smiled at him the way only she could smile, or she said something stupid or sweet or frighteningly smart and his heart skipped a beat and he knew that he was still in love with her. No matter how important it was, he couldn’t stop loving her, and it was the most frustrating thing in the world.
But he’d done his best not to show anyone that, no matter how loudly he wanted to scream from the rooftops that he hated everything about this. He’d even toughed it out and had gone to school until he became physically unable to. It wasn’t that he liked school that much, but Tohru had asked him to take notes for her in class, so he’d dutifully done so every day, making sure that his handwriting was as neat as possible.
After walking in on Tohru having a late-night study session while she was stuck in bed, he’d asked her why she cared so much – why she still cared so much about school when it no longer mattered. She’d simply smiled at him that if she didn’t study well now, she’d probably regret it later, and that was so typically her that Kyou had stomped off and punched a wall. It seemed that Tohru was determined to continue living until she was dead.
Kyou could kind of see the logic behind that, so he tried to stay out of her way as much as he could; let her live her life. He and that damn rat had even agreed to a truce – Tohru was near-constantly stuck in a room with both of them, so it’d probably annoy her if they were fighting the whole time. Plus, and Kyou didn’t like admitting this, he kind of took pity of Yuki. He could hardly recognize a worthy rival in the wheezing, shaking boy on the other side of the room.
Well, he couldn’t really blame Yuki for trembling so bad. Hatori had just told them that they were dying, and probably soon. Kyou had still been a child when he accepted that every day could be his last, but it probably wasn’t fun when you were new to the idea.
Somehow – likely Shigure’s work, the bastard – the news of their approaching demise spread. By noon, the small tatami-room-turned-bedroom was filled to the brim with people. Tohru’s friends were there, and some of her family, and almost every damn Sohma.
Tohru was mostly the center of attention – there were at least a dozen people present who were just bawling over her. That was good. Tohru deserved people who would ugly-cry about her.
Of course, no one had shown up to see Kyou. Not that he had expected anyone to, but it did kind of sting that his sensei wasn’t there. Oh, well. Kyou trusted the old man’s instincts. If he thought that it wasn’t necessary to come see him, then he was probably right. Something inside him was still stubbornly hopeful that he’d make it out alive.
The only one who’d shown up to see him, was Kagura, and Kyou wasn’t incredibly keen on talking to her on his deathbed. So for most of the time, Kyou just sat in the corner and tried not to make it glaringly obvious that he couldn’t take a full breath.
Well, at least he could find solace in the fact that Yuki had it even worse. His annoying brother came over to visit him. Yuki looked close to exploding all afternoon as his brother blubbered all over him.
By the end of the day, Hatori had more or less kicked everyone out of the house, claiming that he couldn’t do his work if there were so many people around. He was a terrible liar. Hatori was the best doctor Kyou knew – there was no way that any amount of people could keep him from his work. He just wanted to give Tohru, Kyou and Yuki some privacy.
Kyou appreciated that. He didn’t like the idea of keeling over and dying in a crowded room. It was bad enough that he was dying; he didn’t want to traumatize a whole damn village’s worth of people on top of that. When had Tohru made this many friends?
So now, they were alone again. Kyou turned away as Tohru tried in vain to dry her tears, allowing her as much privacy as he could.
“Are you okay, Tohru?” he heard Yuki ask her quietly – Kyou was sure that Yuki was only breathing words at this point. There was no way that he was still using his vocal chords, with how quietly he whispered. “Please don’t cry.”
“No, it’s fine,” Tohru replied, although her breaking, nasal voice sounded far from fine. “These are tears of happiness. I’m… I was just glad to see everyone again, that’s all.”
Kyou scoffed, stubbornly swallowing down a cough. “You don’t have to lie to us, you know.” He turned to meet her eyes, which were still overflowing. “I mean it,” he said. “It’s okay if you cry because you’re sad. We get it. You’re allowed to think that all of this sucks.”
Tohru sniffled, wiped at her eyes with the palm of her hand. “Kyou…”
“I get it, yeah?” Crap, he wasn’t good enough with words to say this sort of stuff. “We were all going to die someday, but it really sucks that that ‘someday’ is soon. It’s shitty to know that we were supposed to live for so much longer, do so much more stuff.” He angrily wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “So I get it if you don’t think that this is fair…”
He coughed violently into his elbow – a rose dropped to the ground. Red, like blood. What a cruel reminder that they were all dying rapidly.
“Don’t yell, Kyou,” Tohru said. “You’ll just tire yourself out faster.”
“I know that.”
“And, actually…” She bit her lip, hard enough that it had to hurt. “Please don’t spend your time worrying about me. I’m… fine, truly.” Her shoulders were shaking. “I’m… honestly just glad I’ll get to see my mom again…”
Damn it – damn Tohru and her stupid stubborn optimism. Damn the way she always somehow saw light in some crappy situation when Kyou was still surrounded by pitch-black darkness. She didn’t deserve to die. Such a beautiful person was supposed to continue making the world a better place, instead of dying while he looked on helplessly.
His eyes stung. “We should probably try to sleep a little,” he said, turning away from Tohru as she sobbed. He’d never wished to embrace her more than he did right now. “If we do that, then maybe we’ll see tomorrow.”
He doubted it. But he would try to make it. If he had one more day, then he had one more chance to try and love Tohru as a friend.
He just needed her to live.
Tohru was suffocating, and so were Kyou and Yuki.
Day had quietly turned into night, but nobody was sleeping. Tohru couldn’t sleep – Kyou’s and Yuki’s coughing, and her own, kept her awake – but she was sure that she wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if they’d been silent. She didn’t dare to. She was too afraid that if she closed her eyes, she wouldn’t wake up again.
Shigure had wished them a good night an hour or so ago, informing them that he and Hatori were in the next room in case something happened. His eyes had been red-rimmed.
The day had clearly tired everybody out pretty badly. Tohru could hear Yuki breathe irregularly next to her – he was whimpering quietly. Kyou was tossing and turning on his futon, his breaths coming out as harsh panting.
And Tohru… Her chest had started to hurt, awfully so. It had been aching for a couple of days, now, but it had never been this bad. It felt as if her lungs were trying to escape through her back, as if the flowers that grew inside were pushing their way through her ribs. She’d considered calling for Hatori, but he probably wouldn’t be able to help her.
Poor Hatori. He was already so sad all the time, and now she’d made him even sadder. She didn’t want to confront him with his helplessness again.
And so, she lay underneath her blankets, her body warm but still shivering. Every breath was a gasp, careful and shallow so that she wouldn’t start coughing.
Her breath caught in her throat, and she coughed, turning her head to the side because she was too tired to sit up. The flower rasped against the raw inside of her throat. It took a while before the flower came out, and Tohru smothered her coughs in her blanket – she could do this, she could get through this, she didn’t need to alarm anybody.
The flower was slick with blood.
Now lightheaded, Tohru panted. She saw from the corner of her eye that Kyou shifted to look at her.
“You okay?” he asked. His voice no longer held that angry tone that it had had earlier; now, he just sounded really exhausted.
Tohru couldn’t bring herself to reply – she desperately wanted to, but she couldn’t get her voice to work, couldn’t speak. Her chest hurt even worse than before from the effort of coughing, and she curled into herself, eyes squeezed shut.
She could hear how Kyou got up, took two heavy steps towards her, and sat down next to her. On her other side, Yuki dragged himself closer as well, his legs already too tired to walk.
Tohru wanted to ask them not to push themselves, to just lie down and rest, but she appreciated knowing that they were here. It made her feel less alone.
She coughed again, her body trembling heavily, but no flower came out this time, thankfully. Once she’d regained some control over her breathing, she could feel arms wrap around her from both sides.
For a moment, she sat there stunned, in the middle of Yuki and Kyou’s embrace. They were both warm; she stopped shivering, if only for a second.
Mostly on reflex, because her brain was too tired to make logical decisions, she hugged them back. They both transformed immediately, because of course they did. Of course she couldn’t hold them close, not even when they most needed it. It was as much her curse as it was theirs.
She looked up to see Kyou standing on a pile of his pajamas. Tohru had hardly ever seen him calm in his cat form, but he seemed calm right now. After a beat, he curled up against her slack hand. She could feel his ribs stick out underneath his fur, shuddering with each breath.
Yuki followed Kyou’s example; his small body fit so perfectly into her hand. His heartbeat was fluttering – a rat’s heartbeat was much faster than a human’s, Tohru had learned – but it was weak, almost unnoticeable. Tohru carefully curled her fingers around him. She may not be able to hold him close, but this was as close as they could get.
They lay there, quietly, unmoving. The world was shifting around Tohru. It felt as if she was floating in nothing, with Kyou and Yuki as her only anchors. She wondered if the two of them felt the same way, if they were dizzy as well, if their ears were ringing like hers.
If they were dying like she was.
She was too exhausted to think, almost to exhausted to register that she’d somehow managed to sit up. All she knew, was that she couldn’t let Yuki and Kyou die. She wanted them to live – she needed them to live.
She needed just one more chance to save their lives.
Slowly, because she didn’t want to faint before she could succeed, she leaned towards Yuki and pressed a kiss against his forehead. He didn’t react; Tohru wasn’t sure if she could still feel his heartbeat underneath her fingertips.
Her eyes were falling shut, but she managed to lean towards Kyou as well and kiss his forehead. Kyou only tensed up and uttered something that sounded awfully like a sob.
Nothing happened. Nothing happened, and Tohru was tired. She lay back down on her futon, her whole body trembling uncontrollably. She wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. She wanted to cry for her friends that she couldn’t save.
She couldn’t hear her own voice. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She was running out of breath, but she somehow managed to choke out:
“I… I love you both so much.”
Instantly, Yuki and Kyou transformed back to their human selves, both of them coughing intensely. Something large pressed against the end of Tohru’s windpipe, choking her – she forced her body upright and coughed, fighting desperately to breathe. This was it, she thought. Right now, right here, she was going to die.
The door to the tatami room was shoved open, letting in the yellow light from the living room. Hatori and Shigure rushed into the room. Tohru only recognized them from their silhouettes, because her vision was too blurry to see much of anything. She was crying, after all.
A strong hand – either Hatori’s or Shigure’s – rubbed her back. It didn’t really help her breathe, but she felt at ease underneath the support. As if the hand wouldn’t let her leave, no matter how hard she coughed.
Finally, the flower in her lungs came loose, and she spat it out into her hands. Somebody gasped behind her, not in a breathless sort of way, but in a surprised way. She realized belatedly that the ringing in her ears had stopped.
Tohru opened her eyes to see a large flower lying in her hands. She’d expected to see blood, but that wasn’t the case. The flower…
It was crumpled, wilted. Dead.
“How did you…” Hatori started, but he couldn’t finish his sentence before Tohru started coughing again. The hand on her back pressed down a little harder – Tohru could feel the new strength behind it. “Just get it all out,” he said, his voice truly comforting for the first time in ages. He sounded relieved. “You’re going to be okay.”
Tohru realized at some point that Yuki and Kyou were coughing up dead flowers, just like she was. The flowers became smaller one by one as the minutes passed, until they were only spitting out tiny gray flower petals.
Tohru sat back afterwards, out of breath – but she could take deep breaths again, she could breathe again. Her lungs were filled with nothing except air. The flowers were gone.
Hatori’s hand tightened around Tohru’s shoulder, keeping her tired and trembling body in place. “You did it,” he said. “You managed to get better.”
Shigure smiled at her from where he was supporting the exhausted boys – he’d wrapped a blanket around them at some point. They were both leaning against his sides, entirely out of breath but alive. Tohru couldn’t remember the last time she saw Yuki draw in a full breath, or saw Kyou without a frown on his face. “I don’t know what you did,” Shigure said, “but I’m glad you did it. I’m glad it’s over.”
“Me, too,” Hatori said softly.
Shigure loudly clapped his hands, startling Yuki and Kyou away from him. “Right,” he said with that trademark playful smile that Tohru had sincerely missed. “Would you like to do something to celebrate getting better? Do you want to go somewhere? Or maybe eat something other than soup for a change?”
Kyou glared at him, but his brow soon relaxed and he closed his eyes. “To be honest,” he mumbled, “I just want to sleep.”
“It’s the middle of the night, Shigure,” Yuki agreed sleepily.
Tohru smiled, because she’d missed this – she’d missed them, the happy versions of them. “Let’s do something fun tomorrow,” she proposed, stifling a yawn. “For now, it’s probably for the best if we all go to sleep.”
The three of them had a lot to figure out in the morning. But for now, they were content to just lie down and rest and breathe.
They were no longer suffocating.
-END-