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.”