The morning light played with delicate patterns across the
soft-pastel painted walls of a room that remained empty, the
preparations for a life not yet living, brought an emphasis and surge of
emotions, in hindsight, there were many reasons to be thankful that
nothing came about the relationship that repeatedly took a part of my
soul with it… for all the amount of emotion and care, of loyalty and
devotion I had given… nothing was ever enough, and now I find myself
with nothing else save the broken memories.

I approached the
white-washed bassinette, the rocking chair beside it set with a soft
purple cushion where I would have sat cradling our unborn and rocking
them to lull the infant to sleep, in the bassinette itself was a soft
plush calico kitten that looked up at me with solemn and ever loving
eyes, it hurt to look at, but despite the ache in my chest I picked the
item up and cradled it, finding that for all my efforts to remain
strong, I still broke into tears.

I hugged the item to my chest,
burying my face into the top of its head and sobbing. At my feet, Kin
repeatedly tried for my attentions and would eventually get them, as a
replacement for the toy that I’d put back down, I began to wonder if I
was ever meant for such joy. As I coiled my arms around the lithe, feral
fox’s frame, I paced the room and found myself sinking into a state of
upset that I’d promised never to revisit again.

I was stronger
this time, wasn’t I? The fact that I had lost two pregnancies, one I
didn’t even know I had, and the other out of stress of a broken heart
the first time, I would have thought that a third possible miscarriage
when my body could no longer handle the stress and strain of being
jerked around emotionally like a pull-toy, might have made me numb to
the same reactions. But it wasn’t a miscarriage that occurred, for
whatever intents and purposes the gods held this time round, my womb had
been left barren and empty.

I felt cheated. After the suffering
of my heart being so openly and formally toyed with, I felt as if I were
being mocked and that the gods themselves were the ones laughing, while
some part of me knows this isn’t true and my ‘fathers’ both have been
at my corner since I started this frustrating journey, there is a
bitterness in my heart at seeing others in their happiness, having loved
and lost better than never having loved at all? Tell that to my heart,
had I never loved at all, perhaps I would not feel such an angry sting
within my chest, every time I see my twin’s smiling face, or feel the
bitter pang of wanting to return those three simple words, without
thinking they will be turned against me somehow in the end.

‘I
love you’ meant more to me than any of the physical technicalities of
the relationship I’d be part of, and the first person to speak them to
me had meant them in a way that has shaped how my heart perceives fealty
today… when I first entered this world, my heart had nothing to hold
onto, so it clung to the first offering of affection it was given, and
heavens help me… the path that I was lead upon was darker than it is
today.

I was vicious, and violent, not only towards myself, but
also the people that would ironically, later on, become my family. I
drew blood and nearly cost one of them their lives… I injured myself
jumping from high windows, and fought… constantly. In the midst of this
vicious and violent anger, someone decided to take it upon themselves to
put a silk ribbon around my neck and use it to pull me forward from the
shadows that had inherently consumed me and into a brighter station of
light that blinded me. I was afraid, for the longest time I had known
only hardship and pain, and because of that it’s what I sought as the
norm, but this person that had managed to collar me with an invisible
ribbon, showed me comfort, gentility, adoration… he left me notes that
at first infuriated me, confused me, and frustrated my thoughts, for
weeks on end we got into trouble around one another, I often got the
short end of the stick given my history, but… he shared the punishments
right along with me.

My sweet… dummy Cody.

I remember that
the biggest fight we had… wasn’t really a fight at all. He splattered
me with ketchup in cooking class, I had been shocked, stunned, furious
because I /hate/ being dirty… and I got him back, with a face full of
ricotta cheese… the ensuing food fight that came afterwards… oh… how
LIVID Ravid-sensei was… despite this, afterwards Cody had confronted me
and out and out stated, we were going to be friends. This lead to a few
confrontations in which I snapped at him you can’t just ‘claim’ who will
be friends… it shocked him at my manner of thinking… and he apologized
to me not realizing that’s how he came across… when I was at my worst,
he offered me something very few others did, a chance at life… at love.

It
devastated me at losing him; we’d been together six months… when the
illness he suffered silently began to take hold. It was debilitating, he
forgot things easily, became quickly frustrated, and disoriented… like
fragments of his mind were quickly being taken away from him bit by bit…
it was heartbreaking to watch, even worse, was the promise he made me
keep when he told me about the illness beforehand. It wasn’t bad before,
but Cody’s habit for drinking and smoking, probably didn’t help its
acceleration.

I kept my promise, not to let him suffer the agony
the disease would bring, but it left me without my heart… and my best
friend. I had promised that I would live life as he asked me to, giving
chance to the people around me, and being ‘normal’… I made the mistake
of falling in love with the wrong person, he behaved so much like Cody, I
was blinded by the warnings others had given me… including my guardian.

For
six months more… almost a year really… I was in and out of love with
someone I still don’t know if they loved me in return. At first, things
settled as a simple fling, he took interest, I wanted someplace warm,
and comfortable…sheltered to be. As time progressed however, things took
a far more serious turn, he’d asked I somewhere along the line to take
his name, whether that was a round-about way of making a proposal or not
I’m still unsure, but I had accepted the offering as it was given.

I was happy…

My
world was turned upside down when the one whom first gave me my
‘freedom’… was attacked and reportedly destroyed by the combined efforts
of the Guardians and my grandfather themselves, this devastating blow
to the realm resulted in a split between realities, where I was on one
side… and my ‘mate’ was on the other… our parents, the ‘adults’ thought
it best to consider those on the ‘other side’ of the rift… as good as
dead… the cataclysm that followed after wards, threatened to end my life
entirely, because I had foolishly given my hoshi-no-tama, to the one
that had been ‘destroyed’… the result of which caused me great and
grievous injury, and left me both with no recollection or memory that
anything had ever been. In the midst of this chaos, the budding growth
of a life that he, and I, created in our bond… was lost. The stress on
my body was too much to upkeep both I, and an unborn fetus, particularly
because my hoshi-no-tama no longer had enough strength to sustain more
than myself.

I miscarried. And never even knew I had been expecting.

The
time following became a heavy blur, I remember returning to the school
that my twin brother attended, with a temperament that was somewhat less
than…whole. I wandered in a daze most times, timid of my own shadow,
there was always something and some person missing from my heart and my
thoughts that nothing ever felt right, the people I once took comfort
in, became people that I started to shy away from. When Kubaki had
become agitated and frustrated in me being… unreceptive to his advances,
had frightened me enough into fleeing from him. Touya had found me
cowering, upset, confused, and afraid and had entrusted me in the care
of Rasmuson-san and for a couple of days… I simply hid from the rest of
the world.

Nothing made sense to me, I knew there was something
missing and despite the best efforts of others to convince me otherwise,
it was a chance meeting with ‘him’ again that brought the world once
more crashing down. The spiral that came from it was dizzying, we
‘rekindled’ our love, and for a while… things seemed all right, I know I
must have been terribly clingy… mainly because my thoughts were still
broken, pieced together jaggedly and I still didn’t know which was what,
but it was the rejection he suddenly gave to me, for no reason at all
other than claiming he felt ‘caged in’… that had struck me the most.

I
spent months with him, in love, and devoted to the point that no others
had ever crossed my mind, while there were curiosities I dared to
explore and never followed through… he had me… mind… body… and soul.
Where once he made me believe that the world and stars were mine, and he
himself had given them to me, just as certainly he took them away… the
times I spent with him there was always a different scent in his skin,
first the rabbit’s, then my own ‘would be brother’s’. Donovan’s I
suspect was there too, before we had found one another again, and
throughout it all I hadn’t cared, because he had said… he was mine… and
I… was his.

Gods what a fool I was.

When he suddenly just
started treating me so coldly, I tried to confront him on it, I didn’t
understand and didn’t know what was going on, I hadn’t been spoken to,
merely treated as if I were some stray dog looking for a hand out that
was tolerated but waiting to be kicked, and how hard a kick it was. He
turned on me… spat near in my face that we were not mates, he had no
desire to be, and then, smirking, left with the rabbit, who arrogantly
strode off as if he’d won some contest against me.

I’d never been so heartbroken before.

The
sudden blow couldn’t have come at a worse time, retrieving my brother
from my grandfather’s hold, while I concentrated on making sure that
Gregori, Touya, “My elder brother”, and Itsuki would return unharmed,
every part of my mind kept going through that horrible scenario. “We’re
not mates”, after all I had given including my soul, literally… as I had
given my shattered hoshi-no-tama as my promise to be always his… the
regret and madness that settled in, eventually drove me past my limit
and into the deep spiraling dark that ended me in a hospital that caters
to the supernatural kind.

I had gone so far in my grief and regret… I cut myself.

I
had split my arm open from wrist to elbow, just to find some physical
source for the pain I felt, instead of the ache that I couldn’t even
see, I wanted to bleed there on the floor and threw my blood everywhere,
my room at the Kaori compound looked like the scene from a horror
movie, and it was Itsuki, and Donovan that found me.

Kenin was worthless.

Like
most people that think only of their own, he was more eager to push me
off on someone else’s burden, and leave as quickly as he came. My poor
twin was left trying to keep me awake and stable… as the paramedics
came. The days following was one stressful encounter after another,
transfusions, tests, and being kept in isolation to be sure I didn’t
hurt myself again, the strain was again too much to bear. It was
Yohko-sensei that had discovered my second pregnancy from ‘him’, and had
called my paternal grandfather, Satoshi-san, regarding a grim
prognosis.

My body had neither the ability, or strength to
sustain the live(s) that were growing in my womb, this was made apparent
with the amount of distress I kept going into, just sleeping at night,
for several evenings, every time I was set to sleep, I required oxygen
just to keep from suffering apnea. The combined lack of oxygen in my
blood, the stress to my body, and the fact that not one, but three,
embryos were founds, lead to another miscarriage. My body just wasn’t
able to handle all of it, at once.

My depression was near manic
then, for a long while I couldn’t lift my arms enough to hold myself let
alone to pick something up to cause myself harm, and when I /had/
earned enough strength to do something, I took to painting. So much of
my art had been dark, violent, pained. Even the entries within my
journal were bitter, angry; I wanted to see him suffer for what he had
done to me, to feel the way I had.

Lo and behold, he came back to me… again.

He
proclaimed he was sorry, that he was a fool, that I had every right to
hate him, he worked on my every sympathy, and came almost daily to the
hospital to try and rekindle the embers that had long gone cold. I was
cautious, untrusting, for every time he tried to make things ‘right’, I
wanted to just be as far away from him as I could, and like a foolish
mortal in an abusive relationship, I went crawling back to him, again.

He
had become all I knew… my heart still beat for him, and he promised me
the one thing I have craved since I came to this god-forsaken place.
Love. Adoration. Family.

My family.

One of my own.

I still didn’t want to give in, but allowed him to be… close…

It was a mistake.

My mistake.

I
had found another that I took to as a mentor, Avalore, and while for a
long time I had followed in his footsteps, closing myself off from the
feel of my heart and ignoring the calling my nature betrayed, I couldn’t
deny that for all that had been done to me, I still had feelings for
‘him’. Gods what is wrong with me? For all he’s put me through my heart
still yearned for, and devoted itself to what he made seem true, he lied
to me… he used me… he went with everyone else when I was alone… he’s
not a wolf, he’s just another goddamn dog.

All his pristine talk
of devotion, of loyalty, of exalting himself as one of the ‘pure
breeds’… he was just another mortal mutt looking for a quick way of
getting himself off, and apparently… I happened to be the best one. I
exposed myself to him in ways I had never done to others, including my
inborn ability to ‘shift’ my gender, to better accommodate the plans we
had made, he bred me nearly every day, and made sure to keep me there
until we tied. He wouldn’t allow me to move, I was with him for hours
after, and even then, the subtlest of movements had him ready, and
mounting me again.

Some part of me was disgusted, that the wanton
need when I was in heat had me practically crawling and begging for it,
the other part just wished for more… to make the promise of starting a
family true. I exposed to him my deepest secrets, the desires I held,
and my weaknesses, I fell for him all over again, and thought that… the
third time was the charm. With others at least giving space and some
complaining that I would end up hurt again, I was blissfully ignorant,
and when he made good on a promise to take me somewhere, away from
everything, from everyone, where we would be alone, like a honeymoon to
keep ‘trying’ for a family… I thought I’d finally found home. There in
his arms.

//Salt-scented drops on the paper streak downward and
smear some spots of ink like a dark colored border, crinkles in the page
indicate being gripped a bit too firmly, near threat of ripping.//

I
believed him. I wanted to. I believed everything he said to me and kept
giving my heart to him, over, and over, and over again. Now, what have I
left to give? He’s abandoned me again… left me to the carrion feeders
and the wilds, used, forgotten, and alone. Not knowing what else to do, I
called the only person I had left… as a friend. I was in a place I
didn’t recognize, far away from Japan and the safety of the complex
walls, out of reach and shelter of the guardians, and /alone/. I don’t
remember what I told Hayate, just that I was someplace I didn’t want to
be, I was scared, hurt, and unprotected.

I was a mess of tears,
by the time that Hayate actually managed to get to me, it had been at
least a day, I’d not eaten, I’d barely slept, and I was on the verge of
hysteria, when Hayate took me ‘home’, the first thing I was made to do,
was bathe. I was left to soak in a hot bath, Haya had called Seiryu, and
Kiyoshi both and I don’t know what he told them of the situation, all I
know is that all three… were angry, and I didn’t know if it was because
I was stupid enough to fall for what I was told, what I was given, and
how I was so easily lead on, or because of the one that did the leading.
This dance I ended up participating in left me shattered, broken, and
untrusting of the world.

I couldn’t understand how a love as pure
as Cody’s, could have been so readily twisted in the hands of someone
that acted so frighteningly like him.

No.

I can’t say that he acted like Cody.

Cody
never betrayed me. He never hurt me. He didn’t put all my hopes and
dreams within my reach and then take them away without a second glance,
Cody LOVED me. And obviously, he did not.

I spend my time in the
empty nursery, and find myself grieving. While I’m sure that perhaps
Gregori and Itsuki might have use for the room in the near future, or,
may create one of their own, its being in this room that reminds me of
everything I had taken away from me… and yet… in the scent of the
powder-soft perfume that permeates from the linens in the crib, and the
baby scented down of the soft toys that are scattered across the floor, I
see some fragment of hope… that maybe things are, as they were meant to
be.

I hold Kin close to my chest and nuzzle the back of his neck
quietly, he’s young still and has a few more months of growing still
before he can be on his own, for now, he is something to protect… and
while he has grown more independent in recent days than I am comfortable
with, I am proud in knowing that I at least… had a hand in his
survival. Where the future is headed for me I have yet to know or see,
but in speaking with others, in letting them take the hurt from me and
turn it into something more, in washing from my body the marks and scars
that were left emotionally behind, I am left wondering.

Will I ever be given the chance for what my heart desires?

The
answer still eludes me, and as I come to terms with my last attempt at
creating a family, with someone I had loved, more than I loved myself, I
have come to the conclusion… regardless of who, or what might sire my
future… the fact remains that a part of myself will be within that
future and it must be nurtured. I have caught myself thinking of how I
want the ones whom have caused me this grief, enough harm to warrant
their own insanity, but in such thoughts, I find myself asking. ‘If I
were angry enough, to wish harm on them, when once they loved me and had
given me two gifts that cannot be replaced, and when times were good,
they were the most wonderful days I’d ever spent on this world… how can I
expect to love one born of my own blood and pains unconditionally?’

Kin
licks my chin as I linger in this repeat question, and pulls me from
the silent daze of my thoughts and back into reality. I find that my
fingers are grasping firmly to the fleece baby blanket that was laid out
on the bassinette’s mattress, and it has caused me to topple the soft
teddy bear that sat on it over, I relax my hand and smooth it softly
against the crib’s interior again, and reset the bear back to its place,
to guard the bed as most teddy bears are meant to do, from the monsters
beneath it, and in the closet.

I smile a moment and find myself
softly stroking its ears…and think of two tiny bundles that lie there in
its watchful stare invisibly, waiting.

“Kana…” I reply softly,
absently stroking the air where a pink-swaddled newborn would be, and
turn my attention to the more active invisible presence of the blue-clad
infant I can see within my mind. “Kody…”

In my thoughts they are
waiting… they themselves told me their names, and repeating them makes
me quiver in the anticipation of when they might actually be. I settled
my free hand on my own abdomen, barren and slowly ticking down to that
time I might actually be able to again conceive, and I wonder… if I do,
will the faces in my thoughts be the same as those I might actually be
able to hold?

This room was set up for me, as a promise.

To myself, to the people that mean the most to me and to the ones that honestly do love me…

Perhaps…
soon… perhaps I will fill it soon, so that the toys are no longer left
unclaimed, the crib empty, and the blankets cold. Perhaps, soon, when I
have found my heart again… my little Kody… and Kana… will be the ones I
hold in my arms.

Kin reminds me that it’s time to go, and though
reluctant, I set him down upon the ground and watch him make way for the
door, looking back at me in eager earnest to go outside, to play, to
explore, to LIVE and leave the emptiness somewhere else. I promise him
we’ll go, and take one last longing look towards the empty crib and tuck
the bear in where Kana should be sleeping. I lift my fingers to my
lips, and press the ghostly kiss upon the bear’s forehead, a poor
substitute for the real thing.


“Soon, my loves.” I reply
softly, and reach to brush the hurt tears from my eyes again, following
Kin out and sliding the door to the waiting nursery shut, following Kin
to the outside yard, I whisper softly as I regain my composure, and try
to hold my head high.

“Soon.”