Author's Note: Thank you SOOO much to everyone who has commented and encouraged me to continue to work on this fic. Especially to Nekoyoukaiaila who told me to "Never give up". I really needed that push to finish this chapter. I'm sorry it's not the best one I've written, but I promise the ones after this will be better. :)

Tipped Over

By: Ghost of the Dawn

Chapter Seven: Ribbons and Bows

Motoko studied herself in the mirror. She carefully put new ribbons in her hair, each strand in place. This was a very important day. Not only was she to be graduating and passing on her role as President of the Yuki fan club. But this would also be the last time she would ever be able to tell her Prince exactly how she felt.

"This is your last chance, girl!" she told her reflection. "You must tell him today or he'll be lost forever. You can't screw it up now. Just because he's a year behind you doesn't mean it can't work. I'LL WAIT FOR YOU FOREVER, MY LOVE!"

Her mother poked her head in the door.

"Good grief, what's wrong with you? Come down to breakfast or you'll be late."

Motoko turned to her mother, her eyes tearing at the rude interruption. How could she ever understand the pain of a young girl's heart?

"You never let me have my moments!"

---

Kyo nonchalantly descended the stairs. He was in an okay mood until he heard an exceptionally annoying voice coming from below. He was not too happy to see Momiji at the breakfast table along with the usual inhabitants.

"Kyo, were you going to sleep all day?" the rabbit laughed. "Girls won't like you if you're lazy."

"What's that supposed to mean?" the cat snapped as he sat himself down and grabbed some breakfast.

"But aren't you excited?" Momiji pressed. "I couldn't sleep at all. This is the last day of school. Then we get summer break!"

Kyo just sulked as he ate. Though he welcomed summer as much as any other student, he wasn't about to make a big deal about it. He wasn't the type to make a fuss over anything he liked.

"I will probably have to attend the entire graduation ceremony so I may speak with the soon-to-be former class president," Yuki announced. "But the rest of you don't have to stay for that."

"I will," Tohru volunteered. "It sounds like fun."

She really didn't know any Senior students well enough to attend, but she felt it was the polite thing to do to see her sempais off.

"If Tohru stays, I will stay," Momiji sing-songed. "Kyo won't be there so we'll have lots of fun."

"What makes you think you know me?" Kyo demanded, though he really hadn't planned on attending.

Yuki sighed, Kyo was probably going to make an appearance just to try to prove his younger cousin wrong. Though, from the way the rabbit was smiling, it seemed that was his plan from the beginning. Kyo was so easy to manipulate sometimes, it was sad.

"I may not be home when you come back," Shigure said as he passed by, heading for his study. "I'm going out this afternoon and I'm not sure when I'll return. So it's okay to start dinner without me if I'm not back in time."

Tohru wasn't sure, but Shigure seemed a bit melancholy that morning. The way he had spoken also left little room for the Sohma boys to ask what he was up to. Not that they cared anyway, Yuki and Kyo decided, and went on to eat their breakfast.

---

Motoko peeked around the corner at her target. She should have been off to the ceremony practice, but the sight of her dear prince getting in his locker had detained her. Her heart was beating fast. He was all by himself! Now was her chance to go up to him and say...

"Yuki, there you are. Now we have time to be alone together before the year ends."

Yuki frowned as he turned to his two-toned cousin. "I told you to stop talking like that. Especially here, Haru."

Motoko cursed to herself. Her chance was lost. There was no way she could spill her heart now with Yuki's psychotic cousin around. With her luck, he would lash out in one of his rages on her. She was no match for him."

"What are you doing here?" a voice demanded behind her.

She glanced back to see the student council president.

"You should be at the practice right now."

Motoko gritted her teeth at yet another obstacle.

"Fine," she huffed as she straightened and marched away. "BUT I WON'T EVER FORGIVE THIS!"

She shook her fists at him before running away.

The president just sighed. He had put up with Motoko's outbursts for years now. He had gotten used to them, but he was also glad this would be his last day to deal with her and her Yuki fan club. And speaking of Yuki...

"There you are, Sohma-Kun. Shall we discuss some of your new duties for the next year?"

Yuki sighed. Though he had decided to stop trying to escape responsibility, it didn't mean he was ecstatic about it.

---

Shigure was already waiting at the door when he heard a familiar car pull up. It honked for him to come outside. Apparently, Hatori wasn't willing to get out for him. Shigure took in a deep breath. He wasn't sure how he felt about this outing. Was it good or bad? He really couldn't tell. All his emotions were mixed up as he thought about where they were going. However, he did know for sure this was where he should be so he stepped outside and got in the car.

It wasn't too long of a drive and the destination was very familiar. It was a large, aging house at the very end of the main Sohma estate. It was clear that no one current lived there, and yet, someone was sitting on the steps waiting for them.

"Aya," Shigure greeted as he got out of the car. "You are early. That's uncharacteristic of you."

"Early!" Ayame jumped to his feet with gusto. "How can you be so late, Gure-San? We are now closing a great chapter of our childhood! This was where we spent the tender days of our youth! Can you FEEL the songs of our past drifting to us? Calling us? We must...begin to..."

He started to trail off.

"Begin to what?" Shigure asked, but Ayame was already gone.

He had run to a car that had pulled up during his rant and opened the door for the driver.

"Sachi-Chan! How fantastic of you to come! We were just talking about the days of our youth and the memories we shared and..."

Sachi got out of her car, not really acknowledging Ayame as he continued to go on about days of beauty and youth and such. Instead, she pulled off her sun glasses and stared at the old house before her.

"There it is," she breathed. "Feels like it's been forever since I last saw this place."

"It does," Hatori agreed quietly. By now, all of them had gotten good at tuning Ayame's voice out when he was ranting.

Sachi looked to Hatori then Shigure, if not for Ayame's voice still in the background, it would have passed as an awkward silence.

"Well," she breathed out gustily. "Let's have a look at the place."

---

Practice for the graduation ceremony was over and all the seniors were allowed a break before the real ceremony began. Motoko set off once again to hunt down her prey. It took a while of lurking through the school grounds, but she managed to find Yuki cleaning out his locker for the year. Helping him was that hussy Tohru Honda.

Motoko steamed. Why couldn't that girl ever leave her prince alone? And more importantly, how was she going to get Tohru to leave now so she could have some alone time with her beloved? Then, for a brief moment, Motoko felt as if her pleas were heard from above.

"Hey Tohru!" came a deeper female voice. "His Highness is capable of cleaning out his own junk! You better clean out your own locker before you run out of time."

Tohru paused and looked at Arisa Uotani who was glaring at her. Then she looked helplessly at Yuki. He had so much more stuff than her –more books and manuals and things not only related to school, but to his new duty as the class president next year.

"Go on, I'm fine," Yuki assured her. "Thank you for your help. I can finish now."

"H–hai!" Tohru chirped and turned on her heels to skip off. "Coming Uo-Chan!"

Motoko couldn't believe her luck! There was no one else in the hall right now, the gods had set this up as the perfect meeting place for her to confess her feelings and then he for returning them in kind. That was the way it would turn out! Fate was pushing them together, Motoko could feel it.

'This is a once in a lifetime chance!' Motoko told herself. 'This won't ever happen again so I have to be serious and do this right.'

"Hey, you!" a deep male voice sounded behind her, causing her to jump.

Motoko spun around to come face to face with one of the teachers.

"You're in the graduation class, aren't you?" The teacher accused. "The ceremony is about to start! What are you doing here? This is a once in a lifetime chance! This won't ever happen again so be serious and do it right!"

Motoko stared slack jawed at him, stunned. She glanced down the hall to see Yuki had already left. He was gone and her chance ruined forever.

She looked back at the teacher, almost teary eyed.

"You...you," she stuttered out. "THAT WAS MY LINE!"

It was now the teacher's turn to be stunned as she took off down the hall towards the ceremony in tears.

---

Ayame wandered the halls of the old, double level building. The entire place was empty of both inhabitants and any kind of furnishing. The house was getting old and rickety and infested with termites. The Sohma family had decided to demolish it and rebuild a new structure in its place. That was why the four of them were there, to say good bye to the place they all grew up in. It was soon to be gone forever.

It was an extremely large house, meant to accommodate a few families at once. Which was exactly how he had lived out a better part of his youth. There were small rooms clustered together, making it feel like a home within a home. And there were big spaces in the middle for everyone to share. He had lived there with his mother and Yuki–his father having disappeared shortly after Yuki was born. Ayame surmised he was getting frustrated with siring cursed children.

Sachi lived there, too, with her mother and her stepfather–a member of the Sohma family. Ayame couldn't even remember who the man was any more. He didn't see him often. There were other people and families there as well. Shigure and Hatori both lived there, but their families didn't. Both were sent there by their parents to attend a close-by boys school with their fellow member of the Zodiac.

From grade school to the end of high school, Ayame had walked and played in these halls and in these rooms. There were happy times here and not so happy times. Most of the time, Ayame recalled, were spent hanging out with Shigure and Hatori, ignoring his mother and trying to pretend his little brother didn't exist.

Ayame gave almost a sad chuckle to himself when he then recalled that any time not spent in this house was spent running away from it. Older family members that lived there had spent countless hours hunting him down over the countryside on the days he felt like not coming home. How ironic that soon after he finally was rid of the house to strike out on his own, everyone else was asked to leave as well.

They were confusing and angering times for Ayame and he suddenly felt a wash of regret sweep over him at remembering them all.

Above him, Shigure was strolling around the upper level. It was where his old room had been and he thought he had better visit one last time before it was gone. Upon entering, it only took a second for him to recall where all his old junk had been. Each poster, his books, his bed, he remembered it all. He chuckled as the room seemed a lot smaller than he had remembered it to be.

Next to his room had been Hatori's. Shigure recalled keeping his more serious cousin up many night and being yelled at not only by others trying to sleep nearby, but by Hatori himself. Very few people had ever heard Hatori really raise his voice. But Shigure had.

However, it seemed Hatori had not been as interested to see his old room as Shigure had. The doctor was no where to be found on the upper level so Shigure decided to head back down. Once he neared the stair case, a sudden wave of a deep memory hit him and he couldn't help but visualize a blonde little girl standing there. She had pink ribbons in her hair and a stubborn expression on her face. At that age, the years that separated her and his younger self were obvious. She was a good foot and a half shorter than he had been at that time.

"No! I want to go, too!" the girl had screamed. "Take me with you!"

"No way, you're too small," his younger self had shot back. "You'll just slow us down. And besides, this is BOY stuff. No girls allowed!"

"I can do anything you do," the girl retorted. "I'll keep up, I promise."

"No way! Stay here and play with your dolls, little girl."

"If you don't let me come, I'll tell everyone where you're going!"

That threat had gotten to him. Shigure remembered how angry he had been over something so stupid. But then again, he had been angry over a lot of stupid things in those days. For some reason, when he was young, that girl's stubborn face just really pissed him off.

"Don't you dare say anything or I'll..."

"You can't do anything to me! Watch, I'm going to go tell my mom right n–"

There had been a smooth, silent, brainless motion. Without thinking, his hands just moved, pushing forward and for a sickening moment that seemed to last forever, Shigure saw that small body hang in the air over the stairs. It was as fast as he had pushed her that Shigure realized what he had done.

"Sachi!"

Still moving by gut reaction alone, Shigure jumped after her, grabbing the smaller body and taking the brunt of the collision with his own.

He still remembered the sound he made when he collided with the stairs. It wasn't a human sound, but a high, canine yelp. Shigure didn't remember much after that but Hatori had informed him that Sachi was found at the foot of the stairs, crying over a badly battered black dog.

From that day on, Shigure never raised a word or a hand to her again.

He sighed at the memory. Too bad he couldn't say the same for everyone else at that time. But that was in the past. Slowly descending the stares, he paused for a moment when he saw Hatori staring silently into a room below. The dog Sohma stayed where he was and wondered what kind of memory his cousin was thinking of at the moment.

"You've done this to me before, haven't you?"

Hatori could still hear that voice like it was yesterday. He was looking into a small sunroom near the front of the house. He remembered where he had sat on his heels with the younger, blonde girl kneeling in front of him. She was about 12 at the time and was looking at him accusingly. Hatori was about to wipe her memory of her latest zodiac encounter when she had asked this.

It took Hatori by surprise that she even had an inkling to what he was planning to do. This was the first time she or anyone else had displayed some kind of recollection of his mind sweeps. But then again, he had never erased one memory as much as he had erased hers. All by Akito's instructions.

"Why do you say that?" he had asked her, genuinely curious.

Young Sachi looked at him, furrowing her brows seriously.

"I can feel it," she whispered. "Something inside me tells me you're here to take my thoughts away from me. I'm going to forget again, aren't I?"

It took Hatori a moment to recover from the bluntness of the conversation, but then he sighed. "Hai," he said quietly. "The things you have seen, you are not supposed to remember."

"Yes," Sachi agreed sadly. "And you have taken away these memories from me before, I know. I can feel them missing in my mind. And now you will do it again."

"Hai."

"And you might do it more in the future, too."

"...hai."

Hatori remembered her sucking in and letting go a long breath, waiting for what she would say.

"Do you enjoy it, Hatori-Ni?" she asked, not looking up. "You must if you keep doing this."

It was Hatori's turn to sigh. Sachi looked so sad, but he was not very good at these things. He didn't have much of a consoling nature. Akito reminded him often of this. That he was cold.

"It is not my wish to do this," he told her quietly. "I do want you to remember, and I want you to be happy, but I cannot go against what I've been told to do."

"Akito..."

He heard her say it so quietly. Then Sachi's head snapped up and she looked at him seriously.

"Can you...can you make it so that I won't forget this conversation?"

Hatori blinked at her.

"Please! I want to remember. Otherwise...I'm afraid I might end up hating you."

That conversation had remained in Hatori's head for years. Every word, every tone of voice; he remembered it all.

He was knocked out of his reverie when a smaller body moved past him into the room. Sachi strolled over to the thick beams of light coming out of the large windows and then twirled in the sunlight.

"Ah, I remember this room," she grinned at him.

Hatori looked like he was going to say something when another voice called out.

"Sachi-Chan! Oye!"

Sachi ran over and poked her head out. Ayame was down the hall.

"Do you remember that time we took the hall rugs and rode them down the stairs? Ha ha! Your mom got SO mad at us!"

Sachi gave a confused smile. "Sorry Aya, that wasn't me. You must be confused."

Ayame blinked blankly at her and then smiled. "Hai, hai, you must be right."

Sachi turned to Hatori.

"Do you remember doing that?"

Hatori looked away. He remembered cleaning up after them. He remembered sweeping up the vases they had broken upon their landing. He remembered trying to find Ayame's battered snake body after the collision. And he did remember that Sachi had been there. He then glared in Ayame's direction as he remembered how willingly the snake continued to do those things with Sachi even though they would obviously all end up with her flying into him, him about dying, and Sachi getting her memory wiped. And it would all happen again the next time.

"It must have been you and me, Aya," Shigure added to the pretend as he came down the stairs.

Sachi laughed. "It sounds like you two. You were always doing such reckless things." She laughed again as she skipped off.

Shigure and Ayame exchanged looks before following after her.

---

This was the end. The last. The final try for victory. Motoko's heart was practically beating from her chest. The graduation ceremony was over. This was the last time she would be able to tell her prince how she felt. It was now or never. If only...she knew where he was.

Motoko and searched the school grounds high and low, but she had no idea where Yuki had gone. Maybe he was hanging around that slut Tohru Honda. If she could find that girl, then maybe-

"Motoko Sempai! Congratulations!"

Motoko paused from peeking around a corner to stare at the one congratulating her backside.

"GAH!" she cried, wide eyed. "It's you! H-Honda! What do you want?"

"Sempai," Tohru grinned happily. "I am so happy for you! You get to go on now. You can go off to college or do whatever you want. I'm sure you will be so successful! Maybe even famous! And I can say I went to school with Motoko Sempai. How great that would be? So congratulations and do your best out there, okay?"

Motoko just stared at Tohru's friendly face. What was this girl trying to pull with her? No, she would not be tricked so easily.

"Yeah, you just watch Honda, I WILL become successful!" At taking Yuki from you! "And when I come back I-"

Just then, Motoko had an inspiration. Maybe this wasn't her last chance after all. What if she DID go out and become successful? She still knew where to find Yuki through one more year of school. What if she became even more beautiful, then came back for HIS graduation? How would he resist her then? It was the perfect plan!

"You just wait, Tohru Honda!" Motoko pointed a finger at her. "I'll be successful and then I'll come back next year! Ha ha ha!"

Tohru's grin grew even wider. Motoko sempai would come back to see her graduation? How sweet!

"I'll see YOU again!" Motoko laughed as she ran off, her new plot playing over in her head.

Behind her, Tohru waved and wished her luck.

"What was that about?" Yuki asked as he came up behind her.

Tohru turned to him happily. "Motoko Sempai really is a kind person."

Yuki smiled back. "I see. Everything is done. Let's go home now."

Tohru energetically agreed.

---

The deep orange sun set over a large house on an even larger estate. A blonde woman sat on the porch, watching the last rays of light splash pinks and purples over the clouds.

"So this is it," Sachi stated. "They're tearing this place down in a few days."

Ayame was sitting on the steps next to her and nodding. Behind them stood Shigure and Hatori, each leaning on the support beams at either side of the stairs.

"Why did we come here anyway?" Sachi then asked.

"Why, to say a fond farewell to our childhood, of course," Ayame smiled at her.

Sachi shook her head. Ayame watched curiously as she got up and took a few steps down the path before turning to look at the three of them.

"It just doesn't seem like you," she told them all. "You, the Mabudachi Trio are more like the Never-Look-Back Trio. As long as I've known you, you have all run forward, never looking back at the past. So why now? Why this place?"

Shigure was the first to recover from the question. He smiled himself as he walked down the steps to join her. "Why not?" he asked before turning around. "Soon it will be gone and we wouldn't be able to visit it again, whether we wanted to or not."

Hatori walked down the steps as well and Ayame stood up to follow.

"There is nothing wrong with visiting memories," the doctor told them on his way to his car. After all it was you...

"Hai, hai," Ayame agreed. "Look straight ahead, but never forget where you came from." Because it was you who caused us to make a promise...

Sachi chuckled to herself. "I see. Then this place will still exist after it's gone, I suppose. Is that what you want?" She looked up at Shigure.

"I think that will be okay," he replied to her. "After all, some things should not be forgotten." And we promised, though we look forward, to never forget what you have forgotten here, Sachi-Chan. This is the second curse- the curse we brought upon ourselves.

As they all got into their vehicles, Sachi turned and looked back at the house again.

"What is it, Sachi-Chan?" Ayame asked.

"I feel...like there is a piece of me I'm leaving there, for some reason," Sachi admitted. "Do you think that's weird?"

The three men looked at each other. Then Ayame laughed.

"Nonsense!" Ayame sang happily. "Don't worry, we made sure to take it out for you! It won't be left there! Ha ha!"

The other two shot him a sharp look. Sachi just shook her head.

"You really don't make sense sometimes, Aya-San."

"But you like me anyway, right?" Ayame grinned.

"Hai, Aya-San. I like you anyway."