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When the call comes at 2am, his heart almost stops.
It’s the deceptive kind of summer night people write romance novels about; the kind people daydream about prettily but wouldn’t want to actually live through. It’s hot, it’s sticky, and there’s no A/C, but Kyo only takes a split second to register this before he sits up in bed, staring in trepidation at the phone.
As a general rule, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to get a call at two in the morning, unless something really, really shitty happened.
And Kyo has experience with really, really shitty things.
Before he can pick up, he feels a hand in his. Tohru is blinking up at him from the other side of the bed, worried but determined- she gets weirdly calm in emergency situations, and he feels himself relaxing marginally just from being near her.
He takes a deep breath, a thousand nightmare scenarios going through his head, and then picks up the phone.
“Hello?” His voice is shaky, but that’s to be expected.
“I’m sorry to wake you so early, Kyo,” Shishou says, and Kyo breathes again. Shishou is okay. He’s okay, and he sounds shaken but not devastated, so whatever happened can’t be that bad, can it?
“Shishou, what’s wrong?” Kyo asks with no preamble. Tohru looks fully awake at his side, now, brown eyes shining in the dark. Shishou is okay, and Tohru is okay. Things are going to be okay.
“It’s your father.” To his credit, Shishou barely stumbles on the word, though it sounds foreign on his tongue. For an entire two seconds, Kyo’s sleep addled brain is again overwhelmed with fear that something has happened to Shishou, until his rational brain wakes up and reminds him that hey, dumbass, you’re talking to him right now.
Then that means-
Oh.
~
He doesn’t go to the wake, and he doesn’t go to the funeral. In all honesty, he’s not sure if he does this for his own sake or for his father, who most definitely would not want Kyo to be there. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that, technically, he’s now an orphan. He mentions this to Tohru a few hours after they get the news, when she asks how he’s doing in an impossibly soft voice.
He doesn’t meet her eyes. He doesn’t want to admit any of this, not even to Tohru.
“I don’t…I don’t feel anything at all, really,” he says. “Isn’t that kind of…terrible? My father died and I’m sitting here thinking of the groceries we have to buy tomorrow. We need eggs, by the way, did you write that down?”
Tohru smiles at him, but there’s no humor in the sad way she quirks her lips. “It’s not terrible.” She takes his hand again, and this time it’s Tohru who’s avoiding his eyes. “A part of me is a little bit relieved,” she admits, her voice barely above a whisper. “But- but not because he’s gone!” She sounds surprised, like her brain didn’t quite line up with her mouth, like she didn’t know what she was going to say before she said it.
“I didn’t mean it like that, I mean, you lost someone, and no matter how terrible he was to you he was still related, and death is never a good thing, so-“ Kyo rubs his thumb in circles across her palm, letting her know. It’s okay.
It’s okay.
She takes a deep breath, and then finally meets his eyes. “I’m really glad he can’t hurt you anymore.” Her voice breaks a little bit, and she leans in when Kyo opens his arms.
They hold each other for the rest of the night
~
The grave is bare when Kyo arrives, empty handed, a few days later. This doesn’t come as a big surprise. His father didn’t have much immediate family left at the time of his death, and Kyo can count on one hand the number of people he remembers his father talking to regularly. He tries to find it in him to find that idea sad.
When he can’t, he just stands there for a minute, alone and uncomfortable in his black suit. Tohru had offered to join him, but she understood when he told her that this was something he had to do alone.
His tie threatens to choke him, and he resists the familiar urge to rip it off. He stares at his father’s grave for a few moments, feeling supremely awkward.
What are you supposed to say at a time like this? Kyo sighs, and resolutely puts his hands in his pockets.
Well. It’s not like anyone will hear him if he fucks this up, so what the hell.
“I always thought this would go a little differently,” he admits to the empty air, squinting a little in the bright sunlight. “If one of us was going to die first, I always assumed…” he trails off, wondering how to say what he wants without it sounding morbid. He snorts at the thought. He’s standing in a graveyard, talking to his dead father. Morbid is kind of the rule, here.
“Dad,” he finally says, wincing slightly at the word. “I always thought it would be you burying me.” Kyo blinks, but he feels no tears threatening the corners of his vision. He stands taller and sighs, letting the tension out of his shoulders. “I guess maybe that’s not something most people think, that they’d die before their parents, but our relationship was always…special.” He makes a valiant attempt to not sound sarcastic. Once he’s certain he succeeded, he continues.
“You know, when I was a kid, there was a part of me that was always preparing for the end. And now that I think about it, how fucked up is that? Man,” He laughs bitterly. “Do you remember that stuffed cat I used to carry around? I was, like, five or something. Mom gave it to me when I was really little, and I used to take that thing everywhere. I remember you making fun of me for ‘needing’ it. You told me I was acting like a baby, that I shouldn’t need a comfort blanket at that age. But yknow something I never told you? I didn’t just carry it around because I liked it.”
He remembers the toy, an orange thing he’s pretty sure his mother bought him in a fit of irony. He’d spend hours looking into its lifeless black eyes, wondering if the cat saw anything back, and, if it did, if it could tell that Kyo was just as trapped inside himself as it was.
He takes a deep breath. He’s never actually said this part out loud, and it’s completely bizarre that this is how he’s doing it, but again. What the hell.
“I took that cat with me everywhere because I’d heard someone say that people are buried with things they love, and I thought it was only a matter of time before…before I was dead.” He swallows and takes in a shaky breath. “So I wanted to be ready.”
The grave says nothing in response to his admission, which is probably for the best. The air feels colder now, and he’s not sure if he’s shivering because of the wind or because his heart is frozen in place. He’s pretty sure it hasn’t beat since he’d stepped foot in the graveyard, as if he’d entered a liminal space reserved solely for mourning and dramatic graveside confessions.
“I’d almost forgotten about that cat.”
It’s definitely gotten colder.
“I wonder what happened to him.”
It hits him, then, the gravity of the situation. Bizarrely, he realizes that he’s mad at his father for depriving him of this conversation. For leaving. For leaving, and giving Kyo no closure, no place to put all the ugly things he thought he’d always have time to say.
“You know, I think the only thing sadder than a fucking five year old being suicidal is a five year old thinking it was only a matter of time before his father murdered him.”
His words echo off the stones and into the empty air. He’s finding it hard to breathe, now. Regardless, he stands taller.
“But I didn’t come here to yell at you. I didn’t come here to blame you for my problems, because that’s one thing I’m sure I’m done with. No matter how shitty of a father you were, no matter how much you tortured me and made me believe I was worthless, no matter what you’ve done to me, I’m here to tell you what I should’ve told you while you were alive.
I’m here to tell you that I forgive you.”
The wind blows harder, and he finally loosens his tie. He’s almost done, here.
He takes a step closer to the grave and tries to imagine his father standing there. He sees his black hair, his sharp nose. The horrifying sweater vests he used to wear. The constant look of cruelty in his eyes that Kyo now realizes was also the look of the hunted.
“Don’t get me wrong, you were a shitty person. And I’m forgiving you, but I’m forgiving you for me, I’m not doing it for Mom. Whatever happened there, it’s between the two of you. And if by some miracle you end up finding each other again somehow,” his face quirks into a small smile for the first time all day.
“I hope she kicks your ass.”
When he leaves, it’s with the comforting knowledge that he’ll never have to look back.