Disclaimer: Fruits Basket belongs to Natsuki Takaya
Shinjitsu
Truth
"We are special, that as one woman and one man we found each other. The world desired for us to be together—I love you, Akira-san."
"You were the only one to see me. For the rest of my life I want you to always turn and see me. I love you, Ren."
It all changed the day they knew.
"Thank goodness, there is an heir at last. Now Akira-san can die in peace."
The Souma family and the maids never said it as a way to congratulate Ren for her pregnancy. They always spoke of it as Akira-san's duty. They considered it his fate to be born and suffer in silent dignity until he produced a proper child to carry on his bloodline. They treated Akira-san himself as if he had no life, no further purpose—a tool and not a person.
Ren was merely the thing that bore the child. To the older, jealous maids, she was a self-serving whore who had tricked the vulnerable head of the family; she was dirt. To the younger people she was a player in a tragic love story, dooming herself to a widowed and broken heart for Akira-san's sake; both admired and pitied.
For the two of them to be so degraded and trivialized, reduced to this…
No. She and Akira-san were special. Ren was the only one who had seen his pain, and the only one who could take it away from him. She could save him, and he would not die.
But now that she was pregnant with a healthy baby, Akira-san spoke like the rest of them. He was tired; he was happy. When he died—why would he not say if?—Ren would still have the child, the affirmation of their special love.
She didn't want a child, and she certainly didn't want the child to replace Akira-san.
After the revelation that the baby was possessed by the god of the Souma curse, the family was especially overjoyed that Akira-san had managed to create an heir. They glanced at Ren's stomach and promised a "special" child, destined to be loved by everyone. She hated those eyes that gazed past her like some thing merely tolerated for its temporary usefulness—a thing to carry the burden of Akira-san's duty. It was worse than the sly, scornful eyes that met her face; at least then she could smirk haughtily in return, secure in the promise of herself and Akira-san.
He loved her with a special love. But then he also looked at her with those hated eyes sometimes. As if he were seeing something she could not. Going someplace she could never follow.
It made her want to scream, scream until the baby died and Akira-san came back.
The doctors said the child was a girl. How could she ever stand to see Akira-san's loving eyes—the eyes meant only for her—on that thing instead of herself? When she told her husband the baby was to be born male or not at all, he was still too in love with it. He spoke of eternal love and unchanging, unbreakable bonds—as special as himself and Ren, but better. And they, who deserved it, were denied.
It was born, a cruel process that did not endear the thing to Ren at all. The little girl was named Akito and was called a boy. It looked like the mother, except the family called it beautiful.
For a while, Akira-san stayed happy and healthy. He no longer had that wistful look of vanishing to that place where Ren could not go. But he only stayed for the sake of the infant.
Why wouldn't she hold the baby? Why wouldn't she nurse it? Why wouldn't she look at it with happy eyes—Ren and Akira's baby?
It was enough for one man and one woman to love. Ren and Akira-san had found each other—they were special. But this greedy little infant intruded on that. It demanded that everyone love it, it demanded eternity—and it was all a lie. The bonds did not exist. But the least the stupid thing could have done was to leave her Akira-san.
It didn't. Instead, it continued to control Akira-san's love and attention. It took all the love he had for Ren, and still more—it took all his energy and life.
He died. Akira-san finally went away to a place Ren could not reach, no matter how special and true their love.
And it. Was. There.
It had been there the whole time, but Ren had not been called; she had not been allowed to ease his final suffering. The servants had conspired against the two of them from the very beginning. And now Akira-san was dead, his duty done, and she was left even lower than a "thing," a nameless part of his destiny.
No.
That child killed Akira-san. Its lies had smothered the truth, the reality of Akira-san and herself. It had prevented her from saving him. It had tried to take away their special love.
The least Ren could do, in honor of her husband's memory, would be to make certain that truth was victorious in the end.
…
Owari
…
-Windswift